The Teaching of Computer Science, Programming and Computational Thinking in Pre-University Studies

Llorens Largo, F.; García -Peñalvo, FJ.; Molero Prieto, X.; Vendrell Vidal, E. (2017). La enseñanza de la informática, la programación y el pensamiento computacional en los estudios preuniversitarios. Education in The Knowledge Society (EKS). 18(2):7-17. doi:10.14201/eks2017182717S71718

Relación de la melatonina con el metabolismo del óxido nítrico en espermatozoides ovinos

En la especie ovina la reproducción tiene un carácter estacional muy marcado regulado por la secreción de melatonina. Esta molécula tiene, además, una gran capacidad antioxidante y es capaz de reducir, entre otras especies reactivas, los niveles de óxido nítrico (NO). El NO se genera vía oxidación de L-arginina por la actividad de la óxido nítrico sintasa o sintetasa (NOS). Existen tres isoformas de esta enzima: la neuronal (nNOS), la endotelial (eNOS) y la inducible (iNOS). En espermatozoides humanos se han identificado las tres isoformas de NOS y se ha demostrado que su actividad se incrementa a lo largo del proceso de capacitación in vitro. En espermatozoides ovinos, cuya capacitación in vitro resulta mucho más complicada que en otras especies, no existen estudios que hayan identificado alguna de las isoformas de NOS. Por tanto, el objetivo de este Trabajo de Fin de Master es estudiar la acción de la melatonina a diferentes concentraciones fisiológicas, sobre los niveles de NO en espermatozoides ovinos incubados en condiciones capacitantes, identificar si las tres isoformas descritas de NOS están presentes en espermatozoides ovinos y evaluar el efecto de la melatonina sobre estas isoformas de NOS. Para ello, espermatozoides ovinos seleccionados por swim-up se incubaron durante 3 horas en condiciones capacitantes (39 °C y 5% de C02) en medio TALP (control), con alto cAMP (cocktail) y con dos concentraciones de melatonina (100 pM y 1 µM) añadidas al medio cocktail, y se evaluaron los niveles de NO mediante citometría de flujo. Para determinar si este efecto estaba mediado por la acción de la óxido nítrico sintasa, previamente se identificaron en espermatozoides ovinos las tres isoformas de la enzima descritas para otras especies, tras poner a punto los protocolos de western blot y de inmunofluorescencia indirecta (IFI). Finalmente se evaluaron los cambios en la distribución de estas isoformas de NOS mediante IFI tras incubación de los espermatozoides en presencia de melatonina. Los resultados obtenidos indican que la melatonina, a concentración 1 µM, es capaz de reducir significativamente los niveles de NO, los cuales se ven incrementados durante la capacitación espermática. Además se han identificado, por primera vez en el espermatozoide ovino, las tres isoformas de NOS, mediante western blot e inmunofluorescencia indirecta. La IFI también reveló tres inmunotipos espermáticos para cada una de las isoformas de NOS, cuyos porcentajes se modificaron durante la capacitación y el tratamiento con melatonina. Así, la localización en el borde apical de las isoformas eNOS e iNOS disminuye con la capacitación y la melatonina, a concentración 1 µM y 100 pM, modifica el efecto producido por los agentes capacitantes sobre el porcentaje de los inmunotipos de la nNOS e iNOS, revirtiéndolo en la primera y aumentándolo en la segunda. Por tanto, la melatonina durante la capacitación de los espermatozoides ovinos parece ejercer un papel antioxidante reduciendo los niveles de NO, posiblemente generado por las isoformas identificadas de la NOS. Además, el tratamiento con melatonina parece modificar la localización de alguna de las isoformas de la NOS en el espermatozoide ovino

BIG-DATA and the Challenges for Statistical Inference and Economics Teaching and Learning

The  increasing  automation  in  data  collection,  either  in  structured  orunstructured formats, as well as the development of reading, concatenation and comparison algorithms and the growing analytical skills which characterize the era of Big Data, cannot not only be considered a technological achievement, but an organizational, methodological and analytical challenge for knowledge as well, which is necessary to generate opportunities and added value.In fact, exploiting the potential of Big-Data includes all fields of community activity; and given its ability to extract behaviour patterns, we are interested in the challenges for the field of teaching and learning, particularly in the field of statistical inference and economic theory.Big-Data can improve the understanding of concepts, models and techniques used in both statistical inference and economic theory, and it can also generate reliable and robust short and long term predictions. These facts have led to the demand for analytical capabilities, which in turn encourages teachers and students to demand access to massive information produced by individuals, companies and public and private organizations in their transactions and inter- relationships.Mass data (Big Data) is changing the way people access, understand and organize knowledge, which in turn is causing a shift in the approach to statistics and economics teaching, considering them as a real way of thinking rather than just operational and technical disciplines. Hence, the question is how teachers can use automated collection and analytical skills to their advantage when teaching statistics and economics; and whether it will lead to a change in what is taught and how it is taught.Peñaloza Figueroa, J.; Vargas Perez, C. (2017). BIG-DATA and the Challenges for Statistical Inference and Economics Teaching and Learning. Multidisciplinary Journal for Education, Social and Technological Sciences. 4(1):64-87. doi:10.4995/muse.2017.6350.SWORD648741Akerkar R. (Ed.). (2014). Big Data Computing. CRC Press.Anderson, C. (2009). "Living by Numbers". Wired Magazine. July 2009.New York: Conde Nast Publications.Cukier, Kenneth and Mayer-Schönberger, Viktor (2013). Big Data: A Revolution that Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think. John Murray Publishers. London, UK.Dean, J., & Ghemawat, S. (2008). MapReduce. Communications of the ACM, 51(1), 107. doi:10.1145/1327452.1327492Diebold, F. X. (2012). A Personal Perspective on the Origin(s) and Development of «Big Data»: The Phenomenon, the Term, and the Discipline, Second Version. SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2202843Duboc, L., Rosenblum, D. S., & Wicks, T. (2006). A framework for modelling and analysis of software systems scalability. Proceeding of the 28th international conference on Software engineering - ICSE ’06. doi:10.1145/1134285.1134460García Ros, R., Pérez González, F. & Talaya González, I. (2008). Preferencias Respecto a Métodos Instruccionales de los Estudiantes Universitarios de Nuevo Acceso y su Relación con Estilos de Aprendizaje y Estrategias Motivacionales. Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology, 6(16), 547-570.Gould, R. (2010). Statistics and the Modern Student. International Statistical Review, 78(2), 297-315. doi:10.1111/j.1751-5823.2010.00117.xKambatla, K., Kollias, G., Kumar, V., & Grama, A. (2014). Trends in big data analytics. Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, 74(7), 2561-2573. doi:10.1016/j.jpdc.2014.01.003Leedy, P. & Ormrod, J. (2001). Practical Research: Planning and Design. 7th Editon. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.Meyer-Schonberger, Viktor and Cukier, Kenneth (2013). Big Data: A Revolution that Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think. John Murray Publishers. London. UK Company.Müller, Martin U., Rosenbach, Marcel and Schulz, Thomas (2013). Living by Numbers: Big-Data Knows What your Future Holds. DER SPIEGEL No. 20. Germany (Translated from German by Christopher Sultan).Pe-a, D., Prieto, J. and Viladomat, J. (2010) "Eigenvectors of a Kurtosis Matrix as Interesting Directions to Reveal Cluster Structure", Journal of Multivariate Analysis 9, 1995 -2007, 2010. https://doi.org/10.4995/muse.2015.2245Peñaloza Figueroa, J. L., & Vargas Perez, C. (2014). Construction and Evaluation of Scenarios as a Learning Strategy through Modelling-Simulation. Multidisciplinary Journal for Education, Social and Technological Sciences, 2(1), 40. doi:10.4995/muse.2015.2245Zhang, J., Wang, F.-Y., Wang, K., Lin, W.-H., Xu, X., & Chen, C. (2011). Data-Driven Intelligent Transportation Systems: A Survey. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 12(4), 1624-1639. doi:10.1109/tits.2011.215800

Mollusca from a species-rich deep-water Leptometra community in the Alboran Sea

Postprint1,006

The merger that led to the formation of the Milky Way's inner stellar halo and thick disk

The assembly process of our Galaxy can be retrieved using the motions and chemistry of individual stars. Chemo-dynamical studies of the nearby halo have long hinted at the presence of multiple components such as streams, clumps, duality and correlations between the stars' chemical abundances and orbital parameters. More recently, the analysis of two large stellar surveys have revealed the presence of a well-populated chemical elemental abundance sequence, of two distinct sequences in the colour-magnitude diagram, and of a prominent slightly retrograde kinematic structure all in the nearby halo, which may trace an important accretion event experienced by the Galaxy. Here report an analysis of the kinematics, chemistry, age and spatial distribution of stars in a relatively large volume around the Sun that are mainly linked to two major Galactic components, the thick disk and the stellar halo. We demonstrate that the inner halo is dominated by debris from an object which at infall was slightly more massive than the Small Magellanic Cloud, and which we refer to as Gaia-Enceladus. The stars originating in Gaia-Enceladus cover nearly the full sky, their motions reveal the presence of streams and slightly retrograde and elongated trajectories. Hundreds of RR Lyrae stars and thirteen globular clusters following a consistent age-metallicity relation can be associated to Gaia-Enceladus on the basis of their orbits. With an estimated 4:1 mass-ratio, the merger with Gaia-Enceladus must have led to the dynamical heating of the precursor of the Galactic thick disk and therefore contributed to the formation of this component approximately 10 Gyr ago. These findings are in line with simulations of galaxy formation, which predict that the inner stellar halo should be dominated by debris from just a few massive progenitors.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures. Published in Nature in the issue of Nov. 1st, 2018. This is the authors' version before final edit

La capellanía colativa del hospital municipal de Villena. Una capellanía del siglo XX.

In this study the certificate of incorporation and the handling of the file of the collative chaplaincy founded in 1900 in the Santiago’s Church in Villena are described and analysed. This chaplaincy made possible that the Servants of Jesus took over the local hospital care and it entailed the collaboration of the city Council.<br><br>En el trabajo se describe y analiza la escritura de fundación y el expediente de tramitación de la capellanía colativa fundada en 1900 en la Parroquia de Santiago de Villena pero servidera en el hospital municipal de esta ciudad. Esta capellanía facilitó que las Siervas de Jesús se hicieran cargo de la asistencia hospitalaria e implicó la colaboración del Ayuntamiento de la ciudad

Carreras eclesiásticas y redes clientelares en la Castilla bajomedieval: la provisión de beneficios menores en el cabildo de la catedral de Burgos (1456-1470)

The nature and evolution of the lower social groups that constituted cathedral chapters is still an unknown aspect of the middle ages in Spain. This evidence has not prevented historiographical notice of the important role of the offices and benefices enjoyed by this large sector of the clergy in their ecclesiastical careers and in the composition of the fortunes of high status clerics. This article sheds light on the status of a large group of prebendaries in the cathedral chapter during the first stage of the episcopate of Luis de Acuña (1456-1495). It analyses the provision and exchange of minor ecclesiastical benefices, which constituted the first step in the chain of promotion of the cursus honorum of Burgos’s ecclesiastical men. Also studied is the role played by the bishop Luis de Acuña as a promoter of a social network among the clergy of the cathedral of Burgos.<br><br>La naturaleza y evolución de los grupos sociales inferiores que constituyeron los cabildos de las catedrales continúa siendo un aspecto poco conocido de la España medieval. Esta evidencia no ha impedido a la historiografía advertir el papel determinante que los oficios y beneficios disfrutados por este amplio sector del clero jugaron en las carreras eclesiásticas y en la configuración de las fortunas de los miembros capitulares de mayor rango. El presente artículo pretende arrojar luz sobre el estatus del numeroso grupo de los prebendados menores que componían la estructura del cabildo burgalés durante la primera mitad del episcopado de Luis de Acuña (1456-1495). Para ello se analiza el sistema de provisión y permutas de beneficios eclesiásticos menores; primer eslabón de importancia en la cadena de promociones que constituía el <em>cursus honorum</em> de los capitulares burgaleses. Además, se examina el protagonismo del Obispo Acuña como impulsor de una red clientelar entre el clero catedralicio

Co-opetition models for governing professional football

In recent years, models for co-creating value in a business-to-business context have often been examined with the aim of studying the strategies implemented by and among organisations for competitive and co-operative purposes. The traditional concepts of competition and co-operation between businesses have now evolved, both in terms of the sector in which the businesses operate and in terms of the type of goods they produce. Many researchers have, in recent times, investigated the determinants that can influence the way in which the model of co-opetition can be applied to the football world. Research interest lies in the particular features of what makes a good football. In this paper, the aim is to conduct an analysis of the rules governing the “football system”, while also looking at the determinants of the demand function within football entertainment. This entails applying to football match management the co-opetition model, a recognised model that combines competition and co-operation with the view of creating and distributing value. It can, therefore, be said that, for a spectator, watching sport is an experience of high suspense, and this suspense, in turn, depends upon the degree of uncertainty in the outcome. It follows that the rules ensuring that both these elements can be satisfied are a fertile ground for co-operation between clubs, as it is in the interest of all stakeholders to offer increasingly more attractive football, in comparison with other competing products. Our end purpose is to understand how co-opetition can be achieved within professional football

Urinary MicroRNA Profiling in the Nephropathy of Type 1 Diabetes

Background: Patients with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) are particularly vulnerable to development of Diabetic nephropathy (DN) leading to End Stage Renal Disease. Hence a better understanding of the factors affecting kidney disease progression in T1D is urgently needed. In recent years microRNAs have emerged as important post-transcriptional regulators of gene expression in many different health conditions. We hypothesized that urinary microRNA profile of patients will differ in the different stages of diabetic renal disease. Methods and Findings: We studied urine microRNA profiles with qPCR in 40 T1D with >20 year follow up 10 who never developed renal disease (N) matched against 10 patients who went on to develop overt nephropathy (DN), 10 patients with intermittent microalbuminuria (IMA) matched against 10 patients with persistent (PMA) microalbuminuria. A Bayesian procedure was used to normalize and convert raw signals to expression ratios. We applied formal statistical techniques to translate fold changes to profiles of microRNA targets which were then used to make inferences about biological pathways in the Gene Ontology and REACTOME structured vocabularies. A total of 27 microRNAs were found to be present at significantly different levels in different stages of untreated nephropathy. These microRNAs mapped to overlapping pathways pertaining to growth factor signaling and renal fibrosis known to be targeted in diabetic kidney disease. Conclusions: Urinary microRNA profiles differ across the different stages of diabetic nephropathy. Previous work using experimental, clinical chemistry or biopsy samples has demonstrated differential expression of many of these microRNAs in a variety of chronic renal conditions and diabetes. Combining expression ratios of microRNAs with formal inferences about their predicted mRNA targets and associated biological pathways may yield useful markers for early diagnosis and risk stratification of DN in T1D by inferring the alteration of renal molecular processes. © 2013 Argyropoulos et al

Urban Movement and Alcohol Intake Strongly Predict Defaulting from Tuberculosis Treatment: An Operational Study

BACKGROUND: High levels of defaulting from treatment challenge tuberculosis control in many African cities. We assessed defaulting from tuberculosis treatment in an African urban setting. METHODS: An observational study among adult patients with smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis receiving treatment at urban primary care clinics in Kampala, Uganda. Defaulting was defined as having missed two consecutive monthly clinic visits while not being reported to have died or continued treatment elsewhere. Defaulting patients were actively followed-up and interviewed. We assessed proportions of patients abandoning treatment with and without the information obtained through active follow-up and we examined associated factors through multivariable logistic regression. RESULTS: Between April 2007 and April 2008, 270 adults aged ≥15 years were included; 54 patients (20%) were recorded as treatment defaulters. On active follow-up vital status was established of 28/54 (52%) patients. Of these, 19 (68%) had completely stopped treatment, one (4%) had died and eight (29%) had continued treatment elsewhere. Extrapolating this to all defaulters meant that 14% rather than 20% of all patients had truly abandoned treatment. Daily consumption of alcohol, recorded at the start of treatment, predicted defaulting (adjusted odds ratio [OR(adj)] 4.4, 95%CI 1.8-13.5), as did change of residence during treatment (OR(adj) 8.7, 95%CI 1.8-41.5); 32% of patients abandoning treatment had changed residence. CONCLUSIONS: A high proportion of tuberculosis patients in primary care clinics in Kampala abandon treatment. Assessing change of residence during scheduled clinic appointments may serve as an early warning signal that the patient may default and needs adherence counseling