Impact of a metacognitive program on the environmental awareness of the students of the primary education degree

La obtención de niveles elevados de conciencia ambiental se define como objetivo prioritario para un desarrollo humano sostenible desde las actuales políticas en el campo de la educación ambiental. En este artículo se evalúa el impacto de un programa de intervención con enfoque metacognitivo diseñado para mejorar la conciencia ambiental de estudiantes universitarios de grado en formación inicial como futuros docentes de Educación Primaria. El marco metodológico se ajusta a un diseño de investigación cuasiexperimental de grupo único con pretest y postest, empleando sobre una muestra conformada por 54 estudiantes de tercer curso del Grado en Educación Primaria de la Universidad de Valladolid un instrumento diseñado y validado para la medida de conciencia ambiental que evalúa cuatro dimensiones: cognitiva, conativa, afectiva y activa. El análisis de los resultados muestra una clara tendencia hacia la mejora de la conciencia ambiental en los participantes del estudio tras su aplicación, apoyando así la potencial relevancia de la implementación de programas de este tipo para contribuir a la consecución del objetivo principal pretendido.Obtaining high levels of environmental awareness is defined as a priority objective for sustainable human development from current policies in the field of environmental education. In this article, the impact of a metacognitive intervention program designed to improve the environmental awareness of undergraduate students in initial formation as future teachers of Primary Education. The methodological framework is adjusted to a quasi-experimental research design of a single group with pretest and post-test, using a sample made up of 54 third-year students of the Degree in Primary Education of the University of Valladolid, a tool designed and validated to measure environmental awareness that evaluates four dimensions: cognitive, conative, affective and active. The analysis of the results shows a clear trend towards the improvement of environmental awareness in the study after the application of the metacognitive program, thus supporting the potential relevance of the implementation of programs of this type to contribute to the achievement of the main objective sought

A Piezoelectric Minirheometer for Measuring the Viscosity of Polymer Microsamples

This paper describes the electromechanical design, operating principles and performance of a rheometer able to characterize the rheological behavior of microsamples of viscoelastic materials, such as polymer solutions, melt, and rubbers. It was developed with a view to portability, robustness, and ease of operation for very small samples. The rheometer operates by subjecting the samples to small-amplitude sinusoidal strain rates via an inverse piezoelectric actuator and detecting the stress response of the material via a direct piezoelectric sensor. The device operates under frequency-sweep mode in a very wide range of frequencies. Required sample sizes are typically three orders of magnitude smaller than for conventional rheometers. Owing to its lack of moving parts, the rheometer has an extremely simple design and is insensitive to vibration. Measurements on pressure-sensitive adhesives and other polymeric systems are presented and validated against a standard cone-and-plate rheometer

Comment on “The extent of forest in dryland biomes”

Bastin et al. (Reports, 12 May 2017, p. 635) claim to have discovered 467 million hectares of new dryland forest. We would argue that these additional areas are not completely “new” and that some have been reported before. A second shortcoming is that not all sources of uncertainty are considered; the uncertainty could be much higher than the reported value of 3.5%

Virtual environment for evaluating the QoS of distributed mobile applications

The increasing capabilities of end devices has led to a wider distribution of the computation and the massive deployment of distributed mobile applications. The success of these applications is highly dependent on the Quality of Service they provide. This quality is especially difficult to assess due to the large number of entities involved and their heterogeneity. Current tools are usually focused on evaluating the QoS provided by a single entity. Nevertheless, the QoS of distributed applications not only depend on the QoS of each entity, the interactions among entities has also to be evaluated. Therefore, new techniques are required to perform a comprehensive evaluation of the expected QoS of these applications before their production deployment. This paper presents a framework, called Perses, for launching virtual environments to simulate and test the execution of distributed mobile applications. This simulation provides results of the QoS achieved. Moreover, the framework has been integrated into a DevOps methodology in order to automate its execution. Video showcase- https://youtu.be/wpIApe_sPFE.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades RTI2018-101204-B-C21 (HORATIO)Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad BELI (TIN2015-70560-R)Interreg V-A España-Portugal (POCTEP) 0499-4IE-PLUS-4-EMinisterio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades TIN2016-81978-REDTJunta de Extremadura GR18112Junta de Extremadura IB18030Junta de Andalucía APOLO (US-1264651

Stream data cleaning for dynamic line rating application

The maximum current that an overhead transmission line can continuously carry depends on external weather conditions, most commonly obtained from real-time streaming weather sensors. The accuracy of the sensor data is very important in order to avoid problems such as overheating. Furthermore, faulty sensor readings may cause operators to limit or even stop the energy production from renewable sources in radial networks. This paper presents a method for detecting and replacing sequences of consecutive faulty data originating from streaming weather sensors. The method is based on a combination of (a) a set of constraints obtained from derivatives in consecutive data, and (b) association rules that are automatically generated from historical data. In smart grids, a large amount of historical data from different weather stations are available but rarely used. In this work, we show that mining and analyzing this historical data provides valuable information that can be used for detecting and replacing faulty sensor readings. We compare the result of the proposed method against the exponentially weighted moving average and vector autoregression models. Experiments on data sets with real and synthetic errors demonstrate the good performance of the proposed method for monitoring weather sensors.This research was partially funded by Spanish Government under Spanish R+D initiative with reference ENE2013-42720-R and RETOS RTC-2015-3795-3

Planar magnetoinductive wave transducers : theory and applications

Transduction of magnetoinductive waves (MIWs) in planar technology is demonstrated. A transducer consisting of a one-dimensional periodic array of metallic split squared ring resonators (SSRR), placed between a pair of microstrip lines on a planar substrate has been fabricated and measured. The microstrip lines are inductively coupled to the SSRRs located at the ends of the periodic array and excite MIWs that propagate along the array. The theoretical model for the dispersion of MIWs is used to predict the dispersion relation and the delay time in the device. The delay time was measured and a good agreement was found with the theoretical predictions. The transmission coefficient of the device was also measured. The theoretical and experimental results suggest that the proposed configuration can find application in the design of delay lines and other microwave devices. In fact, the behavior of the proposed transducer is similar to that of the conventional ferritemagnetostatic-wavetransducer. However, ferrite devices are fragile, difficult to integrate, and require a heavy external magnet or electromagnet to magnetize the ferrite to saturation. Since all these drawbacks are not present in the proposed configuration, it may be a useful alternative to those devices for many practical applications

Artifact: virtual environment for evaluating the QoS of distributed mobile applications

Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades RTI2018-094591-B-I00Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades RTI2018-101204-B-C21 (HORATIO)Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad BELI (TIN2015-70560-R)TIN2016-81978-REDTJunta de Extremadura GR18112Junta de Andalucía APOLO (US-1264651)Junta de Extremadura IB1803

Gruta Nova da Columbeira (Bombarral, Portugal): un modelo de ocupación en cueva durante el Paleolítico Medio. Resultados del estudio del registro de macromamíferos

Gruta Nova of Columbeira is one the most important late middle Palaeolithic sites of Portuguese Estremadura and one of the few Portuguese sites in which Neandertal remains have been found. In this paper, we present the zooarchaeological analysis of layers 6 to 9 of the 1962 excvations. Our work provides information about site functionality, human occupation dynamics and the activities these involved. The cave was used both by hominids and carnivores. Furthermore, both human and non-human (biological, hydrological) taphonomical agents seem to have been involved during the formation of the bone assemblages. These facts, together with the dates published by Zilhão et al. (2011), lead us to dismiss the hypothesis that Gruta Nova contains one of the last vestiges of Neanderthals in the Iberian Peninsula.Gruta Nova da Columbeira es uno de los conjuntos del Paleolítico medio más relevantes de la Estremadura Portuguesa y uno de los pocos yacimientos portugueses con restos de neandertal. En este trabajo se presentan los resultados del análisis zooarqueológico y tafonómico de los restos óseos de los macromamíferos recuperados en los niveles 6, 7, 8 y 9 de la excavación arqueológica llevada a cabo en 1962. Este estudio aporta información sobre el uso de la cavidad, el tipo de ocupación y las actividades desarrolladas en la misma. La cueva fue utilizada indistintamente por homínidos y carnívoros. Además, se han identificado otros agentes tafonómicos no antrópicos que han intervenido en la formación del registro óseo. Estos datos junto con los resultados de las dataciones aportadas por Zilhão y otros (2011) nos lleva a considerar que no es posible mantener que Gruta Nova sea uno de los últimos vestigios de la permanencia de los neandertales en el sur de la Península Ibérica, como se ha venido haciendo hasta ahora