Learning roadmaps for Higher Education

An integrated platform for the support of teaching activities as been developed and deployed at the Aveiro Norte Polytechnic School of the University of Aveiro. In this paper we present an approach to Learning Roadmaps for Higher Education based on this platform. The aprend.e platform – Electronic Integrated System for Learning and Training - has at its core a Learning Management System with a number of plugins. It represents a new challenge for the University of Aveiro for higher education and is already being at its core is the concept of learning roadmaps that act upon two fundamental axes: education and learning. For the teachers, it aims at becoming a self-supporting tool that stimulates the organization and management of the course materials (lectures, presentations, multimedia content, and evaluation materials, amongst others). For the students, the learning roadmap aims at promoting self-study and supervised study, endowing the pupil with the capabilities to find the relevant information and to capture the concepts in the study materials. The outcome will be a stimulating learning process together with an organized management of those materials

CMB statistical isotropy confirmation at all scales using multipole vectors

We present an efficient numerical code and conduct, for the first time, a null and model-independent CMB test of statistical isotropy using Multipole Vectors (MVs) at all scales. Because MVs are insensitive to the angular power spectrum $C_\ell$, our results are independent from the assumed cosmological model. We avoid a posteriori choices and use pre-defined ranges of scales $\ell\in[2,30]$, $\ell\in[2,600]$ and $\ell\in[2,1500]$ in our analyses. We find that all four masked Planck maps, from both 2015 and 2018 releases, are in agreement with statistical isotropy for $\ell\in[2,30]$, $\ell\in[2,600]$. For $\ell\in[2,1500]$ we detect anisotropies but this is indicative of simply the anisotropy in the noise: there is no anisotropy for $\ell < 1300$ and an increasing level of anisotropy at higher multipoles. Our findings of no large-scale anisotropies seem to be a consequence of avoiding \emph{a posteriori} statistics. We also find that the degree of anisotropy in the full sky (i.e. unmasked) maps vary enormously (between less than 5 and over 1000 standard deviations) among the different mapmaking procedures and data releases.Comment: v4: additional analysis which increased statistical sensitivity, including new plots and tables; extended discussion; 15 pages, 14 figures, 7 tables. Matches published versio

On-site approximation for spin-orbit coupling in LCAO density functional methods

We propose a computational method that simplifies drastically the inclusion of spin-orbit interaction in density functional theory implemented on localised atomic orbital basis sets. Our method is based on a well-known procedure for obtaining pseudopotentials from atomic relativistic 'ab initio' calculations and on an on-site approximation for the spin-orbit matrix elements. We have implemented the technique in the SIESTA code, and we show that it provides accurate results for the overall band structure and splittings of group IV and III-IV semiconductors as well as for 5d metals.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. Published in J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 18 7999-8013, 2006. Some errata correcte