School Effects on the Wellbeing of Children and Adolescents

Well-being is a multidimensional construct, with psychological, physical and social components. As theoretical basis to help understand this concept and how it relates to school, we propose the Self-Determination Theory, which contends that self-determined motivation and personality integration, growth and well-being are dependent on a healthy balance of three innate psychological needs of autonomy, relatedness and competence. Thus, current indicators involve school effects on children’s well-being, in many diverse modalities which have been explored. Some are described in this chapter, mainly: the importance of peer relationships; the benefits of friendship; the effects of schools in conjunction with some forms of family influence; the school climate in terms of safety and physical ecology; the relevance of the teacher input; the school goal structure and the implementation of cooperative learning. All these parameters have an influence in promoting optimal functioning among children and increasing their well-being by meeting the above mentioned needs. The empirical support for the importance of schools indicates significant small effects, which often translate into important real-life effects as it is admitted at present. The conclusion is that schools do make a difference in children’s peer relationships and well-being

Understanding prejudice in terms of approach tendencies : the Dark Triad traits, sex differences, and political personality traits

We examined whether the Dark Triad traits predict race- and sex-based prejudice or just a generalized antisociality. American MTurk workers (N = 266) reported their approach tendencies towards targets who were varied by sex (i.e., same sex, other sex) and race (i.e., same race, different race) and responded to questionnaires capturing the Dark Triad traits (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) and political personality (i.e., social dominance and authoritarianism). Social dominance, narcissism, and psychopathy revealed a generalized pattern of limited approach (i.e., prejudice) towards members of both sexes and racial in-group and out-group members. In contrast, Machiavellianism and authoritarianism were only linked to limited approach towards racial out-group members. Sex differences in approach tendencies towards different race and opposite-sex others were fully and partially mediated by individual differences in the Dark Triad traits and social dominance (respectively), the Dark Triad traits accounted for more variance than social dominance in same sex and different race approach tendencies, and some of the links between personality and approach tendencies were moderated by the sex of the participant. Results were discussed in relation to how personality traits can account for prejudicial attitudes

Alineando un modelo mediano GPT en inglés a un dominio cerrado y pequeño en español

In this paper, we propose a methodology to align a medium-sized GPT model, originally trained in English for an open domain, to a small closed domain in Spanish. The application for which the model is finely tuned is the question answering task. To achieve this we also needed to train and implement another neural network (which we called the reward model) that could score and determine whether an answer is appropriate for a given question. This component served to improve the decoding and generation of the answers of the system. Numerical metrics such as BLEU and perplexity were used to evaluate the model, and human judgment was also used to compare the decoding technique with others. Finally, the results favored the proposed method, and it was determined that it is feasible to use a reward model to align the generation of responses.En este artículo se propone una metodología para alinear un modelo GPT de tamaño mediano, entrenado originalmente en inglés y de dominio abierto, a un dominio cerrado y pequeño en español. La aplicación para la cual se afina el modelo es para una tarea de preguntas y respuestas. Para lograr este objetivo también fue necesario entrenar e implementar otra red neuronal (a la cual llamamos modelo de recompensas) que pudiera calificar y determinar si una respuesta es adecuada para una determinada pregunta. Este componente sirvió para mejorar la decodificación y generación de las respuestas del sistema. Para la evaluación del modelo se utilizaron métricas numéricas como BLEU y perplejidad, y también se utilizó la evaluación a juicio humano, comparando la técnica de decodificación con otras. Finalmente, los resultados favorecieron el método propuesto, y se determinó que es factible utilizar un modelo de recompensas para alinear la generación de respuestas

Marine Tardigrada from the Mexican Caribbean with the description of Styraconyx robertoi sp. nov. (Arthrotardigrada: Styraconyxidae)

Pérez-Pech, Wilbert Andrés, Jesús-Navarrate, Alberto De, Demilio, Erica, Anguas-Escalante, Abril, Hansen, Jesper Guldberg (2020): Marine Tardigrada from the Mexican Caribbean with the description of Styraconyx robertoi sp. nov. (Arthrotardigrada: Styraconyxidae). Zootaxa 4731 (4): 492-508, DOI: https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4731.4.