A new early Pliocene murine rodent from the Iberian Peninsula and its biostratigraphic implications

In the last years, a murine identified as Paraethomys aff. abaigari has been repeatedly recognized in several early Pliocene localities of the Iberian Peninsula. We have revised these occurrences, as well as other samples of similar morphology, and propose that all these records correspond to a new species. We diagnose Paraethomys baeticus sp. nov. based on a large sample from the early Ruscinian site of Baza-1 (Guadix-Baza Basin, Spain). It is a medium-sized representative of the genus, with relatively well-developed longitudinal connections both in upper and lower molars, but incomplete stephanodonty. M1 displays high tubercles t6-t9 and low t4-t8 connections. M1 and, to a lesser extent, M2 have posterior spurs on t1 and t3. The t9 and t12 are absent in M2. In m1, a round islet of enamel between the anteroconid and the protoconid-metaconid is regularly observed, as well as a general lack of medial anteroconid, moderate labial cingulum with large posterior accessory cuspid, and longitudinal spur. The new species differs from other European representatives of the genus Paraethomys mainly in its size, which is intermediate between that of the small-sized Paraethomys meini and the large-sized Paraethomys abaigari. In addition, both the size and relative width are smaller than those of Paraethomys jaegeri. The frequency of posterior spurs on t1 and t3 of M1 and M2 is higher than that of P. meini and lower than that of P. jaegeri. The new species here described represents a key biochronological and biostratigraphic marker, since it is restricted to levels of late early Ruscinian age. Thus, this species is useful for establishing divisions within the early Ruscinian, and becomes a characteristic taxon for the early Pliocene in the terrestrial record of the Iberian Peninsula. Magnetobiostratigraphic correlations suggest a chronological range for P. baeticus sp. nov. between ca. 4.6 and 4.3 Ma.Fil: Piñero García, Pedro. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. División Zoología de Vertebrados. Sección de Mastozoología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Verzi, Diego Hector. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. División Zoología de Vertebrados. Sección de Mastozoología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata; Argentin

Formative Potential of the Development and Assessment of an Educational Escape Room Designed to Integrate Music-Mathematical Knowledge

In the particular case of Spain, student and teacher difficulties associated with the mathematical discipline have been evidenced in PISA and TEDS-M reports. As we consider that the teachers' difficulties are connected to the students' performance, we propose a multi-disciplinary approach to deliver specific didactic/mathematical knowledge to the trainee teachers. Such additional instruction shall be meaningfully connected to the real needs of the schools, so a service-learning approach is proposed here. In the present manuscript, the trainee teachers have co-designed educational escape rooms (in coordination with local schools) with the aim of mobilizing curricular knowledge. The goal of the educational escape rooms is to foster the mathematic-related competencies by establishing meaningful connections to other curricular disciplines (music-related knowledge, in the case of this study). This paper reports on the particular experience developed with a group of students (trainee teachers) while designing their educational escape rooms, focusing on the particular case of a specific student to evidence the formative potential of the procedure. The didactic suitability of the proposed escape room has been analyzed and professional development has also been discussed, showing the mobilization of relevant professional skills and fostering the related music and mathematical didactic competencies by shifting the teaching perspective from an algorithmic point of view to a more "reasoning and designing" strategy. This constitutes an evidence of the formative potential on the co-design of educational escape rooms, when designed in the frame of a service learning approach

Comparison of Standard and Total Keratometry Astigmatism Measured with three Different Technologies

Purpose: To compare the keratometric and total corneal astigmatism measures provided by three different technologies as well as to assess the level of interchangeability among them. Methods: A Prospective, comparative study enrolling 94 eyes from 53 patients (age, 29-77 years) was carried out. All participants were patients with the diagnosis of cataract or patients with a transparent crystalline lens but seeking surgical presbyopia correction. A complete eye examination was performed in all eyes, including corneal analysis with three different devices: IOL-Master 700 (Carl Zeiss Meditec), Cassini (i-Optics), and Pentacam (Oculus Optikgeräte GmbH). Interchangeability of standard and total keratometric readings (equivalent keratometric readings for Pentacam) and astigmatism measures with these three systems were evaluated with the Bland-Altman analysis. Results: Significantly higher standard and total keratometric readings were obtained with the IOL-Master compared to the other two systems (p<0.001). Likewise, a significantly higher magnitude of standard and total keratometric astigmatism was obtained with the Cassini system (p<0.001). Ranges of the agreement for corneal power measurements between devices varied from 0.58 D to 1.53 D, whereas they ranged from 0.46 D to 1.37 D for standard and total astigmatism measurements. Conclusion: Corneal power and astigmatism measures obtained with IOL-Master 700, Cassini, and Pentacam systems cannot be used interchangeably. The impact of these differences on the refractive predictability achieved with different types of intraocular lenses (IOL) should be evaluated in the future in order to define which is the best corneal evaluation approach for optimizing the IOL power calculations.The author, David P Piñero, has been supported by the Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness of Spain within the program Ramón y Cajal, RYC-2016-20471

The pedagogical importance of evacuation drills in schools as a means of increasing the preventive culture in Spain

[ENG] Education centres in general represent one of the places in which safety becomes something totally essential, due to the special vulnerability of children. The normal day-to-day practice of a school, supposes a series of risks and therefore it is important for the Educational Community to work actively to ensure that the school environment is as safe as possible. Of all the possible risks, fire is perhaps one of the most feared by society, and it is also that which is most likely to occur. The Educational Community in general, should be aware that the spreading of a correct preventive culture, has as its starting point the “Educational Centre” (Lewis, 2009), and it is of vital importance that this prevention culture, reaches all the pupils and teachers in order to be able to increase the level of prevention in schools and to achieve important progress in this matter at a social level. The schools must be prepared to react correctly when faced with any emergency situation that may arise and thus, if it is important to carry out annual evacuation drills, it is even more determinant that the pupils receive adequate prevention training

EVALUACIÓN Y GERENCIA PARTICIPATIVA DE LOS APRENDIZAJES EN EL AULA. UNA MIRADA EN LA PRÁCTICA EVALUATIVA EN EL TIEMPO

El presente artículo es de naturaleza descriptiva-explicativa con un abordaje documental. En él se esbozan las principales teorías y enfoques relacionados con la evaluación de los aprendizajes, en línea con el tiempo de su aparición, para luego configurar un escenario de la gerencia participativa en el aula desde la mirada de la práctica evaluativa como parte constitutiva del proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje que, a su vez, implica la asimilación del conocimiento con la consecuente transformación. Se asume una gerencia participativa con miras a propiciar un ambiente lo suficientemente dinámico, interactivo, crítico y reflexivo que permita la búsqueda de la calidad y la excelencia en el aula. Se propone un enfoque de la gerencia de los aprendizajes en el que cada uno de los actores educativos asume el liderazgo compartido en la planificación, organización, dirección, evaluación y realimentación, el cual se desarrolla en un ambiente de comunicación, reflexión crítica y autorregulación durante el proceso que implica la construcción y reconstrucción de los saberes y el desarrollo de competencias

Color-texture image segmentation based on multistep region growing

A new method for color image segmentation is proposed. It is based on a novel region-growing technique with a growth tolerance parameter that changes with step size, which depends on the variance of the actual grown region. Contrast is introduced to determine which value of the tolerance parameter is taken, choosing the one that provides the region with the highest contrast in relation to the background. Color and texture information are extracted from the image by means of a novel idea: the construction of a color distance image and a texture energy image. The color distance image is formed by calculating CIEDE2000 distance in the L*a*b* color space. The texture energy image is extracted from some statistical moments. Then, a novel texture-controlled multistep region-growing process is performed for the segmentation. One advantage of the method is that it is not designed to work with a particular kind of images. This method is tested on 80 natural color images of the Corel photo stock collection with excellent results. Numerical evidence of the quality of these results is provided by comparing them with the manual segmentation of five experts and with another color and texture segmentation algorith

Argumentación y metáfora en el discurso político en torno a la inmigración

The conceptual metaphor, developed within the framework of cognitive linguistics, constitutes a tool for both supporting and refuting trains of argument; it therefore enables a collection of polyphonic voices to be identified, reflecting opposing ideologies and representing their particular vision of the events under debate. From a corpus of texts belonging to the “hypergenre” of the social debate concerning immigration, we analyse the conceptual and linguistic metaphors that categorize the host country and the image of immigrants. Through a study of this imagery, we demonstrate that the choice of source domains and of conceptual structures generates a virtual dialogue between opposing ideologies—supporters and detractors of the phenomenon of immigration— and show that, in effect, metaphor plays an important role in the process of argument.La metáfora conceptual, desarrollada en el marco de la lingu..stica cognitiva, constituye una herramienta más al servicio de las operaciones de apoyo y refutación propias de la secuencia argumentativa y, por ello, permite reconocer un juego de voces polifónicas a través del cual se reflejan ideologías opuestas que representan su particular visión sobre los acontecimientos debatidos. A partir de un corpus de textos pertenecientes al hipergénero del debate social en torno a la inmigración, se analizan las metáforas conceptuales y lingüisticas que categorizan el país receptor de inmigrantes y la imagen que de estos se tiene. Mediante el estudio de esta imaginería se comprueba cómo la selección de los dominios fuente y de las estructuras conceptuales que generan propician el diálogo virtual entre ideologías opuestas, defensora y detractora del fenómeno de la inmigración, y se pone de manifiesto que, efectivamente, la metáfora desempeña una función relevante en la argumentació

Systematic review of potential causes of intraocular lens opacification

Intraocular lens (IOL) opacification is an infrequent complication of cataract surgery. Surface analysis has demonstrated that the opacification of IOLs is related to calcium or phosphate precipitation on or within the lenses, but the associated mechanisms are unknown, and the scientific literature is heterogeneous and limited to case series and retrospective studies. The purpose of this systematic review was to analyse the most frequent conditions associated with opacification of IOLs reported by studies. A search was carried out using the PubMed MEDLINE, Web of Science and Scopus databases. The quality of the studies selected was evaluated using the Pierson tool. The search provided a total of 811 articles, of which 39 were selected following the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The most common opacified lenses were hydrophilic IOLs according to our analysis. The mean time of appearance of lens opacification was 14.93 ± 17.82 months. The most frequent conditions associated with opacification of the IOLs were Descemet Stripping with Automated Endothelial Keratoplasty (DSAEK/DSEK) and diabetes mellitus (DM), followed by pars plana vitrectomy (PPV), blood hypertension (HT), and glaucoma. Concerning the quality analysis, the mean score was 7.00 ± 1.43 (scoring range from 0 to 10), indicating an acceptable quality of the case reports and retrospective studies. In conclusion, DSAEK/DSEK, DM, PPV, glaucoma and hypertension are conditions with potential risk of IOL opacification after cataract surgery, especially when implanting hydrophilic acrylic IOLs.Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness of Spain, Grant/Award Number: RYC‐2016‐20471

Perceptual color clustering for color image segmentation based on CIEDE2000 color distance

In this paper, a novel technique for color clustering with application to color image segmentation is presented. Clustering is performed by applying the k-means algorithm in the L*a*b* color space. Nevertheless, Euclidean distance is not the metric chosen to measure distances, but CIEDE2000 color difference formula is applied instead. K-means algorithm performs iteratively the two following steps: assigning each pixel to the nearest centroid and updating the centroids so that the empirical quantization error is minimized. In this approach, in the first step, pixels are assigned to the nearest centroid according to the CIEDE2000 color distance. The minimization of the empirical quantization error when using CIEDE2000 involves finding an absolute minimum in a non-linear equation and, therefore, an analytical solution cannot be obtained. As a consequence, a heuristic method to update the centroids is proposed. The proposed algorithm has been compared with the traditional k-means clustering algorithm in the L*a*b* color space with the Euclidean distance. The Borsotti parameter was computed for 28 color images. The new version proposed outperformed the traditional one in all cases