Analysis of digital competence of educators (DigCompEdu) in teacher trainees: the context of Melilla, Spain

This study was partly funded by the autonomous city of Melilla, Spain, through PROMESA and the UGR-Enterprise Foundation.The Spanish autonomous city of Melilla, located in northwest Africa, has one of the highest academic failure and abandonment rates in Europe. An effective way to improve this situation would be to improve students’ digital competence. In order to do so, teachers must have competent digital skills themselves and also be able to teach them. To determine teachers’ level of digital competence, the Spanish adaptation of the European Framework for Digital Competence of Educators was used to analyse the self-assessment responses of teachers in training at the Faculty of Education and Sport Sciences in Melilla, Spain. Several quantitative techniques were used to analyse data collected from a questionnaire based on the items in the framework. Indicators were given to each competence using a factor analysis to contrast differences between undergraduate and postgraduate students. Correlations between some of the students’ characteristics and the competences were estimated using OLS. The results show students’ self-assessment level of digital competence in different areas and differences between the bachelor’s and master’s programmes. Digital competence gaps were also detected in teacher training, especially in security. The conclusions highlight the need to improve digital security and facilitate a higher level of digital skills in line with the framework. Indeed, more hours of training in digital competence are required while taking into account the educational context and the technological, pedagogical and content knowledge needed to teach. Equally, the same skills must be developed by educators in order for them to transmit digital competence to their students and support them in educational centres.autonomous city of Melilla, Spain, through PROMESAUGR-Enterprise Foundatio

Sistema digital de catalogación y consulta de documentos académicos: Tesis, Tesinas, Proyectos de Fin de Carrera

A digital system has been developed on order to catalogue and consult academic documents: Theses, First Degree Dissertations and Technical Degree Final Projects. The system uses a listing of bibliographical subjects which makes easy the catalogue and search of theses documents. The system guarantees the copyright because the document can be consulted, but they can not be printed or copied on external devices. In addition, a cataloguing and search protocol is proposed in order to the system can be correctly used. This system is available to be integrated in the Web information system of the Library of Córdoba University.Se ha desarrollado un sistema digital de catalogación y consulta de documentos académicos: Tesis, Tesinas y Proyectos de fin de carrera. El sistema incorpora un listado de materias bibliográficas que facilitan la catalogación y búsqueda de los documentos. El sistema garantiza la propiedad intelectual de los autores, porque permite que los documentos sean consultados, pero impiden que sean impresos o copiados en dispositivos externos. Además, se propone un protocolo de catalogación y consulta de estos documentos académicos para que el sistema pueda ser correctamente utilizado. Este sistema está disponible para ser integrado en la página Web de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Córdoba

Vector-based word representations for sentiment analysis: a comparative study

New applications of text categorization methods like opinion mining and sentiment analysis, author profiling and plagiarism detection requires more elaborated and effective document representation models than classical Information Retrieval approaches like the Bag of Words representation. In this context, word representation models in general and vector-based word representations in particular have gained increasing interest to overcome or alleviate some of the limitations that Bag of Words-based representations exhibit. In this article, we analyze the use of several vector-based word representations in a sentiment analysis task with movie reviews. Experimental results show the effectiveness of some vector-based word representations in comparison to standard Bag of Words representations. In particular, the Second Order Attributes representation seems to be very robust and effective because independently the classifier used with, the results are good.XIII Workshop Bases de datos y Minería de Datos (WBDMD).Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Vector-based word representations for sentiment analysis: a comparative study

New applications of text categorization methods like opinion mining and sentiment analysis, author profiling and plagiarism detection requires more elaborated and effective document representation models than classical Information Retrieval approaches like the Bag of Words representation. In this context, word representation models in general and vector-based word representations in particular have gained increasing interest to overcome or alleviate some of the limitations that Bag of Words-based representations exhibit. In this article, we analyze the use of several vector-based word representations in a sentiment analysis task with movie reviews. Experimental results show the effectiveness of some vector-based word representations in comparison to standard Bag of Words representations. In particular, the Second Order Attributes representation seems to be very robust and effective because independently the classifier used with, the results are good.XIII Workshop Bases de datos y Minería de Datos (WBDMD).Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Development of negative test cases in Moodle VPL activities

[ES] VPL (Virtual Programming Lab) es un plugin de Moodle que permite automatizar la evaluación del código de un programa  escrito en un determinado lenguaje de programación. Actualmente, VPL solo permite configurar casos de prueba positivos durante la evaluación, es decir, posibilita mostrar un mensaje de error al estudiante cuando la salida del programa difiere de la esperada para cada caso. Esto limita la identificación del tipo de error cometido y su consecuente retroalimentación, ya que podrían existir problemas para los que sea conveniente comprobar si se obtiene una salida específica que no debería darse y que estaría motivada por algún error que se está cometiendo en el programa. Este trabajo presenta una mejora para paliar esta limitación que consiste en incluir casos de prueba negativos en el proceso de evaluación de VPL, de manera que también se pueda mostrar un mensaje de error cuando la salida del programa coincida con la configurada para cada uno de los errores previstos en el problema a resolver. Dicha mejora facilita al docente la identificación de errores previsibles en el código que entrega el estudiante y permite, en cierto modo, orientarle hacia el tipo de error cometido sin que este conozca el caso de prueba que lo provocó.[EN] VPL (Virtual Programming Lab) is a Moodle plugin that automates the code evaluation of a program written in a given  programming language. Currently, VPL only allows the configuration of positive test cases during the evaluation, i.e. it makes it possible to display an error message to the student when the output of the program differs from the expected output for each case. This limits the identification of the type of error committed and its consequent feedback, since there could be problems for which it is necessary to check if a specific output is obtained that should not be given and that would be motivated by some logical error that is not being controlled in the program. This work presents an improvement to alleviate this limitation, which consists of including negative test cases in the VPL evaluation process, so that an error message can also be displayed when the output of the program matches the one configured for each of the errors expected in the problem to be solved. This  improvement makes it easier for the teacher to identify potential errors in the code delivered by the student and allows, in  some way, to guide the student towards the type of error committed without the student knowing the test case that caused it.Carmona Del Barco, P.; Fernández Muñoz, JÁ.; Perea Ortega, JM. (2023). Implementación de casos de prueba negativos en actividades VPL de Moodle. Modelling in Science Education and Learning. 16(2):43-50. https://doi.org/10.4995/msel.2023.192564350162Amaya Berssanette, J. H., y De Francisco, A. C. (2021). Active learning in the context of the teaching/learning of computer programming: A systematic review. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 20. https://doi.org/10.28945/4767Cardoso, M., Vieira, A., y Rocha, A. (2018). Integration of virtual programming lab in a process of teaching programming EduScrum based. En Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies, CISTI. https://doi.org/10.23919/CISTI.2018.8399261Cheah, C. S. (2020). Factors contributing to the difficulties in teaching and learning of computer programming: A literature review. Contemporary Educational Technology, 12. https://doi.org/10.30935/cedtech/8247Rodríguez del Pino, J. C., Rubio Royo, E., y Hernández Figueroa, Z. (2010). VPL: laboratorio virtual de programación para Moodle.En XVI Jornadas de Enseñanza Universitaria de la Informática. https://upcommons.upc.edu/bitstream/handle/2099/11840/r51.pdfRodríguez del Pino, J. C., Rubio Royo, E., y Hernández Figueroa, Z. (2012). A virtual programming lab for Moodle with automatic assessment and anti-plagiarism features. En The Internacional Conference on e-Learning, e-Business, Entreprise Information Systems, & e-Government. http://worldcomp-proceedings.com/proc/p2012/EEE3753.pd

Historic Public Paths in rural areas: Engine of development and origin of new conflicts

Purpose: In this article, the authors analyse a complex social process affecting historic public paths in rural areas in southern Spain. Despite the fact that urban populations are demanding the enhancement of this type of natural heritage for tourism, sports and recreational use, some parts of the network have been abandoned or usurped. Design/methodology/approach: The study is multidisciplinary, comprising three interlinked studies. The cartographic study comprises an inventory of public paths in rural areas based on administrative sources. The legal study analyses local, regional and national regulations governing agricultural, environmental, heritage, sports and tourism uses of the infrastructure. The sociological study analyses social discourses on the uses of public paths, and identifies conflicts between farmers, landowners, environmentalists, sportspeople and tourists. Findings: The preliminary results identified an important public paths network in Andalusia, approximately 160,000 km. The legal study found that there are laws regulating use, although local authorities do not monitor compliance or provide solutions to enhance management. The sociological study determined the attribution of environmental, cultural and economic value to public paths, but also the existence of conflicts between rural and urban populations. Research limitations/implications: Given that this is ongoing research, only state of the art and some preliminary albeit sufficiently consistent results are presented. Practical implications: The results could help to guide public policy and governance of public paths. Social implications: Public paths promote rural development and a green/sustainable economy. Originality/value: The research results and conclusions are original

“Involuntary Photogrammetry”: rescuing 3D geometric information from library pictures

[ES] En la actualidad la fotogrametría digital se ha consolidado como una de las técnicas más eficientes para la documentación del Patrimonio. La generación de modelos tridimensionales a partir de imágenes realizadas con cámaras fotográficas digitales es el procedimiento habitual. Es objeto de este artículo mostrar los resultados obtenidos con el estudio y análisis fotogramétrico de imágenes de archivo, tomadas principalmente en excavaciones arqueológicas, para recuperar la información tridimensional que pueda estar latente en ellas, aunque las capturas no hubieran sido realizadas con el propósito de crear modelos 3D. De esta forma hemos generado modelos tridimensionales en los que se pueden recuperar datos geométricos que no quedaron reflejados en los dibujos o fotografías realizados en campo.[EN] Nowadays digital photogrammetry has become one of the most efficient techniques for Heritage documentation. The creation of three-dimensional models from images taken with digital cameras is the usual procedure. The aim of this paper is showing the results obtained by photogrammetric analysis of library pictures, taken mainly in archaeological excavations, to recover three-dimensional information that maybe latent, although the shots had not been made with the purpose of creating 3D models. In this way we have generated three-dimensional models in which can be recovered geometric data that were not reflected in the drawings or photographs made during fieldwork.Aparicio Resco, P.; Carmona Barrero, JD.; Fernández Díaz, M.; Martín Serrano, PM. (2014). “Fotogrametría Involuntaria”: rescatando información geométrica en 3D de fotografías de archivo. Virtual Archaeology Review. 5(10):11-20. https://doi.org/10.4995/var.2014.4205OJS1120510ALMAGRO GORBEA, A. (1988): "La representación de la arquitectura a través de la fotogrametría: posibilidades y limitaciones", Fotogrametría y representación de la Arquitectura, "X Symposium Internacional del Comité Internacional de Fotogrametría Arquitectónica CIPA", Granada, pp. 81-90.ANGULO FORNOS, R. (2013): "La fotogrametría digital: una herramienta para la recuperación de arquitecturas perdidas. Torre del homenaje del Castillo de Constantina" En Virtual Archaeology Review, Volumen 4, número 8, pp. 140-144.ÁVIDO, D., VITORES, M.: "El archivo fotográfico como fuente para la reconstrucción tridimensional". Póster presentado en V Congreso Nacional de Arqueometría. UTN-Rosario (Argentina). [URL: http://goo.gl/3PrFX0]. Acceso el 19/01/2014.BINFORD, L. R. (1971): "Mortuary practices: their study and their potential". Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology, pp. 6-29.BUILL, F., NÚÑEZ, M. A., RODRÍGUEZ, J. J. (2007): Fotogrametría arquitectónica. Ediciones UPC, Barcelona.CABALLERO, L.; ARCE, F., FEIJOO, S. (1996): "Fotogrametría y el análisis arqueológico", Revista de Arqueología, nº 186, pp. 14-25.CASTRO MARTÍNEZ, P.V., LLULL, V., MICÓ PÉREZ, R., RIHUETE HERRADA, C. (1995): "La prehistoria reciente en el sudeste de la Península Ibérica. Dimensión socioeconómica de las prácticas funerarias". En Fábregas, R., Pérez, F. y Fernández, C. Arqueoloxía da Morte. Arqueoloxía da morte na Península Ibérica desde as Orixes ata o medievo. Excmo. Concello de Xinzo de Limia, pp. 129-167.CHAPA BRUNET, M.T. (2006): "Arqueología de la muerte: aspectos metodológicos". En Anales de Arqueología Cordobesa, 17, I, pp. 25-46.DUDAY, H. (2000): "Antropología biológica de campo, tafonomía y arqueología de la muerte". En Malvido, E., Pereira, G. y Tiesler, V. El cuerpo humano y su tratamiento mortuorio. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia de México, pp. 91-126.FARJAS, M., MORENO, E., GARCÍA LÁZARO, F. J. (2011): "La realidad virtual y el análisis científico: De la nube de puntos al documento analítico.", Virtual Archaeology Review, Vol.2, Nº4, pp. 139-144. https://doi.org/10.4995/var.2011.4570FIORINI, A. (2008): "Esperienze di fotomodellazione e stereofotogrammetria archeologica" en VOLPE, G., DE FELICE, G., SIBILANO, M. G. (eds.), Digitalizzare la pesantezza. L'Informatica e il metodo della stratigrafia, Atti del Workshop, Foggia, pp. 175-186.LÓPEZ LILLO, J. A., CHARQUERO BALLESTER A. M. (2012): "Registro tridimensional acumulativo de la secuencia estratigráfica: Fotogrametría y SIG en la intervención arqueológica de lo Boligni (Alacant)", Virtual Archaeology Review, vol. 3, nº 5, pp. 81-88. https://doi.org/10.4995/var.2012.4529MAYS, S. (2010): The archaeology of human bones. Edición ampliada y revisada. Abingdon, Routledge.PÉREZ GARCÍA, J. L., MOZAS CALVACHE, A. T. et al. (2009): "Fotogrametría de bajo coste para estudios arqueológicos de la arquitectura: aplicación a la muralla este de la fortaleza de la mota. Alcalá la Real (Jaén)", en Mapping, nº 138, pp. 6-13.RODRÍGUEZ-NAVARRO, P. (2102): "Fotogrametría digital automatizada (SFM) con apoyo aéreo de proximidad". En XI Congreso Internacional. Expresión Gráfica Aplicada a la Edificación, Universitat Politècnica de València. (Pre Print).TEJADO SEBASTIÁN, J. M. (2005): "Escaneado en 3D y prototipado de piezas arqueológicas: las nuevas tecnologías en el registro, conservación y difusión del Patrimonio Arqueológico", IBERIA, nº 8, pp. 135-158

The role of native lichens in the biomonitoring of gaseous mercury at contaminated sites

Contamination by atmospheric mercury has been assessed in two different areas from Spain (Las Cuevas, Ciudad Real and Flix, Tarragona) using lichens as biomonitors. The relationship established between mercury contents in the soils and the gaseous mercury (GM) was also observed. It was found that the GM is highest in the vicinity of the source and it is dispersed depending on of the distance to the source and the wind directions. The mercury concentration in the gas phase in Flix was higher than that found in Las Cuevas and also higher than the value that the US EPA recommended. The mercury bioaccumulation in the native lichens from genders Ramalina and Xanthoria were used as biomonitors for absorbing mercury in Las Cuevas and Flix, respectively. The mercury uptake by Ramalina was higher than the amount accumulated by Xanthoria, a difference that was mainly due to the lichen characteristics. The content of mercury in lichens in relation to the mercury in gas was fitted by a Freundlich type equation, indicating that the equilibrium between both phases was established. Besides, transplanted Ramalina lichen in Las Cuevas allowed to obtain the kinetic of mercury uptake. A kinetic model of first order based on the equilibrium was proposed and the mass transfer constants for each sampling station were estimated. As it was expected, these values increased with the predominant wind flow direction.Se ha evaluado la contaminación por mercurio atmosférico en dos zonas diferentes de España (Las Cuevas, Ciudad Real y Flix, Tarragona) utilizando líquenes como biomonitores. También se observó la relación establecida entre los contenidos de mercurio en los suelos y el mercurio gaseoso (MG). Se comprobó que el MG es más alto en las proximidades de la fuente y se dispersa en función de la distancia a la misma y de las direcciones del viento. La concentración de mercurio en fase gaseosa en Flix fue mayor que la encontrada en Las Cuevas y también mayor que el valor que recomienda la EPA estadounidense. La bioacumulación de mercurio en los líquenes nativos de los géneros Ramalina y Xanthoria se utilizaron como biomonitores de absorción de mercurio en Las Cuevas y Flix, respectivamente. La absorción de mercurio por parte de Ramalina fue mayor que la cantidad acumulada por Xanthoria, diferencia que se debió principalmente a las características del liquen. El contenido de mercurio en los líquenes en relación con el mercurio en el gas se ajustó mediante una ecuación de tipo Freundlich, indicando que se estableció el equilibrio entre ambas fases. Además, el liquen Ramalina trasplantado en Las Cuevas permitió obtener la cinética de captación de mercurio. Se propuso un modelo cinético de primer orden basado en el equilibrio y se estimaron las constantes de transferencia de masa para cada estación de muestreo. Como era de esperar, estos valores aumentaron con la dirección del flujo de viento predominante

Vector-based word representations for sentiment analysis: a comparative study

New applications of text categorization methods like opinion mining and sentiment analysis, author profiling and plagiarism detection requires more elaborated and effective document representation models than classical Information Retrieval approaches like the Bag of Words representation. In this context, word representation models in general and vector-based word representations in particular have gained increasing interest to overcome or alleviate some of the limitations that Bag of Words-based representations exhibit. In this article, we analyze the use of several vector-based word representations in a sentiment analysis task with movie reviews. Experimental results show the effectiveness of some vector-based word representations in comparison to standard Bag of Words representations. In particular, the Second Order Attributes representation seems to be very robust and effective because independently the classifier used with, the results are good.XIII Workshop Bases de datos y Minería de Datos (WBDMD).Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Mitochondrial dysfunction and mitophagy activation in blood mononuclear cells of fibromyalgia patients: implications in the pathogenesis of the disease

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.[Introduction]: Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain syndrome with unknown etiology. Recent studies have shown some evidence demonstrating that oxidative stress may have a role in the pathophysiology of fibromyalgia. However, it is still not clear whether oxidative stress is the cause or the effect of the abnormalities documented in fibromyalgia. Furthermore, the role of mitochondria in the redox imbalance reported in fibromyalgia also is controversial. We undertook this study to investigate the role of mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, and mitophagy in fibromyalgia. [Methods]: We studied 20 patients (2 male, 18 female patients) from the database of the Sevillian Fibromyalgia Association and 10 healthy controls. We evaluated mitochondrial function in blood mononuclear cells from fibromyalgia patients measuring, coenzyme Q10 levels with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and mitochondrial membrane potential with flow cytometry. Oxidative stress was determined by measuring mitochondrial superoxide production with MitoSOX™ and lipid peroxidation in blood mononuclear cells and plasma from fibromyalgia patients. Autophagy activation was evaluated by quantifying the fluorescence intensity of LysoTracker™ Red staining of blood mononuclear cells. Mitophagy was confirmed by measuring citrate synthase activity and electron microscopy examination of blood mononuclear cells. [Results]: We found reduced levels of coenzyme Q10, decreased mitochondrial membrane potential, increased levels of mitochondrial superoxide in blood mononuclear cells, and increased levels of lipid peroxidation in both blood mononuclear cells and plasma from fibromyalgia patients. Mitochondrial dysfunction was also associated with increased expression of autophagic genes and the elimination of dysfunctional mitochondria with mitophagy. [Conclusions]: These findings may support the role of oxidative stress and mitophagy in the pathophysiology of fibromyalgia.This work was supported by grants FIS PI080500 and FIS EC08/00076, Ministerio de Sanidad, Spain. The authors dedicate this manuscript to FM patients and AFIBROSE (Asociación de Fibromialgia de Sevilla) for their unconditional help.Peer Reviewe