Control y mejora de la coordinación entre asignaturas de una titulación universitaria

Entre las múltiples exigencias que impone el EEES, la mejora de la coordinación entre las asignaturas de una titulación es una de las que más preocupan, y se ha convertido en uno de los temas de debate más vivos en la comunidad educativa. Por una parte los docentes nos hemos encontrado impartiendo asignaturas a un alumnado con notorias carencias en algunos contenidos, mientras que ellos, por su parte, no sólo tienen que suplir dichas carencias con esfuerzo adicional, sino que además se encuentran con numerosas duplicidades de contenidos que restan tiempo y calidad a su formación. Una de las causas de estos defectos es la celeridad en la implantación de titulaciones, unido posiblemente a una falta de recursos por parte de los responsables de la elaboración de los planes. Este trabajo presenta un conjunto de aplicaciones web orientadas a la elaboración de un mapa de dependencias entre las asignaturas de una titulación. Basándose en un sistema de encuestas, se ha implementado una base de datos de dependencias y un sistema web que permiten detectar e informar de los defectos de coordinación existentes, proporcionando una herramienta de gran valor para mejorar la coherencia y la calidad de los planes de estudiosUniversidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

An unexpected actor in ammonium assimilation in conifer trees

Conifers are tree species with enormous environmental and economic interests but with several characteristics that complicate their investigation (big size, secondary compounds, large long-life cycles, megagenomes…). However, they are well adapted to ammonium-rich soils being a good model to study ammonium assimilation in plants. Although they have a special feature, only two glutamine synthetase (GS, EC 6.3.1.2) genes, GS1a and GS1b, coding for cytosolic proteins, have been identified. In angiosperms and in the gymnosperm Ginkgo biloba there are two types of this enzyme responsible of the ammonium assimilation: GS1 expressed in the cytosol and GS2 in the plastids. Until the date, the searches of new GS1 and GS2 genes in conifers have been made with classical biochemical and molecular biology techniques without satisfactory results. In the present context, the emergence of the next generation sequencing (NGS) techniques has open new opportunities in the resolution of old problems. They have allowed the whole sequencing of the massive conifer genomes and the analysis of their transcriptomes. Thus, in the framework of the European project ProCoGen, a gene expression atlas of the tissues of one-month seedlings was carried out using laser capture microdissection (LCM) and massive sequencing in maritime pine (Pinus pinaster), which is a conifer tree from the Southwestern Mediterranean region1. From the analysis of this work, a new gene coding for a new putative cytosolic GS has been identified, PpGS1c. 1Cañas, RA et al. (2017). Plant J, 91. 1064-1087Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. Project funding by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad BIO2015-69285-R and MicroNUpE (BIO2015-73512-JIN; MINECO/AEI/FEDER, UE

Reliability and performance of UEGO, a clustering-based global optimizer

Den nya tullagen Union Customs Code (UCC) med målet elektroniskt tullhantering inom unionen kommer att börja tillämpas 1 maj 2016. Tullkodex för unionen innebär elektroniskt tullhantering såväl mellan näringslivet och Tullverket som mellan medlemsstaternas tulladministrationer. Syftet med lagen är att förenkla uppgiftslämning och tullhantering för företag vilket kräver omfattande uppgradering av IT-lösningar för både näringslivet och Tullverket. Kvalitet på de uppgifter som överförs till Tullverkets tull-system (TDS) antas ha större betydelse än tidigare då det genom UCC läggs en större vikt på spårbarhet.Organisationer bör därför optimera kvaliteten på de uppgifter som i samband med deklarationer lämnas till Tullverket. Detta för att undvika eventuella problem i framtiden. Optimal datakvalitet erhålls genom effektiva administrativa processer. Denna uppsats har därför genom en fallstudie studerat faktorer som förhindrar ett effektivt administrativt arbete. Resultatet visar att affärssystemets undermåliga funktionalitet, datakvalitetens opålitlighet, utebliven intern kommunikation samt avsaknad av standardiserade arbetsrutiner påverkar effektiviteten på de administrativa processerna negativt.The new customs regulation, Union Customs Code (UCC), with the goal of electronic customs handling within the European Union will apply 1 May 2016. The Union Customs Code means electronic customs handling both between business and customs Administration and between member states' customs administrations. The law aims to simplify disclosure and customs management for businesses, which requires an extensive upgrade of IT solutions for both business and customs administrations. Quality of the data transferred to Customs' Tariff System (TDS) is assumed will havegreater importance than today as the UCC places a greater emphasis on traceability. Organisations should therefore optimize the quality of the data associated with declarations submitted to Customs. It is to avoid any future problems. Optimal data quality is achieved through efficient administrative processes. This paper has therefore through a case study, studied factors that prevent efficient administrative processes. The results show that the business system's substandard functionality, data quality's unreliability, loss of internal communication and a lack of standard in operating procedures are affecting the efficiency of the administrative processes negatively

A polyconvex transversely-isotropic invariant-based formulation for electro-mechanics: stability, minimisers and computational implementation

The fabrication of evermore sophisticated miniaturised soft robotic components made up of Electro-Active Polymers (EAPs) is constantly demanding parallel development from the in-silico simulation point of view. The incorporation of crystallographic anisotropic micro-architectures, within an otherwise nearly uniform isotropic soft polymer matrix, has shown great potential in terms of advanced three-dimensional actuation (i.e. stretching, bending, twisting), especially at large strains, that is, beyond the onset of geometrical pull-in instabilities. To accommodate for this in-silico response, this paper presents a phenomenological invariant-based polyconvex transversely isotropic framework for the simulation of EAPs at large strains. This research expands previous work developed by Gil and Ortigosa for isotropic EAPs with the help of the pioneering work by Schr\"{o}eder and Neff in the context of polyconvexity for materials endowed with crystallographic architectures in single physics mechanics. The paper also summarises key important results both in terms of the existence of minimisers and material stability. In addition, a series of numerical examples is presented in order to demonstrate the effect that the anisotropic orientation and the contrast of material properties, as well as the level of deformation and electric field, have upon the response of the EAP when subjected to large three-dimensional stretching, bending and torsion, including the possible development of wrinkling

Parallel simulation of spiral waves in reacting and diffusing media

The propagation of the spiral waves in excitable media is governed by the non-linear reaction-diffusion equations. In order to solve these equations in the three-dimensional space, two methods have been implemented and parallelized on both shared- and distributed-memory computers. These implicit methods linearize the equations in time, following alternate directions in the first case (ADI), and using the Crank-Nicolson discretization in the second case. A linear system of algebraic equations has been obtained and it has been solved using direct methods in the ADI technique, while in the second case has been used the conjugated gradient (CG) method. An optimized version of the CG algorithm is presented here, in which the largest efficiency has been obtained

An energy-momentum consistent time integration scheme based on a mixed framework for non-linear electro-elastodynamics

The objective of the present work is the introduction of new mixed variational principles for EM time integrators in electromechanics, hence bridging the gap between the previous work presented by the authors in References [11] and [1], opening up the possibility to a variety of new Finite Element implementations

Predicting the spread of epidemiological diseases by using a multi-objective algorithm

The epidemiological models are able to predict the spread of diseases, but a previous work on calibrating some involved parameters must be done. In this work, we propose a methodology to adjust those parameters based on solving a multi-objective optimization problem whose objective functions measure the accuracy of the model. More precisely, we have considered the Between-Countries Disease Spread model because it involves a set of countries taking into account the migratory movements among them. As a result, using some real data about the number of detected cases and the number of deaths for the Ebola virus disease, we have shown that the methodology is able to find a set of values for the parameters so that the model fits the outbreak spread for a set of countries

A first order hyperbolic framework for large strain computational solid dynamics. Part I: Total Lagrangian isothermal elasticity

This paper introduces a new computational framework for the analysis of large strain fast solid dynamics. The paper builds upon previous work published by the authors (Gil etal., 2014) [48], where a first order system of hyperbolic equations is introduced for the simulation of isothermal elastic materials in terms of the linear momentum, the deformation gradient and its Jacobian as unknown variables. In this work, the formulation is further enhanced with four key novelties. First, the use of a new geometric conservation law for the co-factor of the deformation leads to an enhanced mixed formulation, advantageous in those scenarios where the co-factor plays a dominant role. Second, the use of polyconvex strain energy functionals enables the definition of generalised convex entropy functions and associated entropy fluxes for solid dynamics problems. Moreover, the introduction of suitable conjugate entropy variables enables the derivation of a symmetric system of hyperbolic equations, dual of that expressed in terms of conservation variables. Third, the new use of a tensor cross product [61] greatly facilitates the algebraic manipulations of expressions involving the co-factor of the deformation. Fourth, the development of a stabilised Petrov-Galerkin framework is presented for both systems of hyperbolic equations, that is, when expressed in terms of either conservation or entropy variables. As an example, a polyconvex Mooney-Rivlin material is used and, for completeness, the eigen-structure of the resulting system of equations is studied to guarantee the existence of real wave speeds. Finally, a series of numerical examples is presented in order to assess the robustness and accuracy of the new mixed methodology, benchmarking it against an ample spectrum of alternative numerical strategies, including implicit multi-field Fraeijs de Veubeke-Hu-Washizu variational type approaches and explicit cell and vertex centred Finite Volume schemes