Un profesor experto en humanidad. Método y virtudes del educador

La aplicación del método científico a la tarea educativa ha tenido ventajas e inconvenientes. De una parte, ha permitido desarrollar ampliamente las técnicas educativas; de otra parte, entender la educación como una ciencia al modo moderno ha olvidado su finalidad más importante: el cultivo perfeccionador de la naturaleza humana. Se precisa recuperar este fin en la tarea educativa y se proponen para ello dos medidas. La primera, recuperar el método socrático para alcanzar lo verdadero, lo bueno y lo bello. La segunda, que el profesor desempeñe su tarea desde el desarrollo de su propia humanidad, es decir, desde las virtudes

Presentación. Razón práctica en la Ilustración escocesa

Recent scholarship on the Scottish Enlightenment has drawn our attention to the connection between moral philosophy and social sciences. As privileged witnesses of the process of modernization, the Scottish philosophers developed original approaches to moral issues, thereby raising epistemological questions too which are crucial to understand the development of social sciences. At the basis of these epistemological issues stands the reference to practical reason which gives title to this volume

From art to science: the functional damage due to thumb osteoarthritis finely described by Velazquez 300 years before its clinical description

Velazquez showed to know the entity of thumb osteoarthritis by finely describing it in one of his paintings. The concepts of anatomical damage, loss of strenght, and functional impairment are transmitted to the observer

Recurrence for discrete time unitary evolutions

We consider quantum dynamical systems specified by a unitary operator U and an initial state vector \phi. In each step the unitary is followed by a projective measurement checking whether the system has returned to the initial state. We call the system recurrent if this eventually happens with probability one. We show that recurrence is equivalent to the absence of an absolutely continuous part from the spectral measure of U with respect to \phi. We also show that in the recurrent case the expected first return time is an integer or infinite, for which we give a topological interpretation. A key role in our theory is played by the first arrival amplitudes, which turn out to be the (complex conjugated) Taylor coefficients of the Schur function of the spectral measure. On the one hand, this provides a direct dynamical interpretation of these coefficients; on the other hand it links our definition of first return times to a large body of mathematical literature.Comment: 27 pages, 5 figures, typos correcte

La formación del profesorado en las tecnologías de la información y comunicación

[Resumen] La formación en TICs! y más específicamente en Internet de los docentes es resaltada en muchos informes y estudios de casos nacionales e internacionales como el factor causal por excelencia para entender la mejor o peor integración de las TICs en las aulas. El hecho de que los profesores estén familiarizados a nivel personal con el uso de las TICs e Internet, no implica automáticamente que sepan cómo utilizarlos con fines pedagógicos. Con nuestra investigación pretendemos establecer las especificaciones de un proyecto de red2 informática educativa del Municipio de A Coruña dentro del programa "Descubrir la Informática" que se viene desarrollando cada curso educativo desde 1998. En este caso nos centramos en una de las secciones analizadas como es la formación del profesorado[Abstrac] The formation in Tics and more specifically in Internet of the educational ones is emphasized in many information and studies of national and international cases like the causal factor par excellence to understand best or worse integration of the Tics in the classrooms. The fact that the professors are familiarized at personal level with the use of the TIC and Internet, does not imply automatically that they know how to use them with pedagogical aims. With our investigation we try to establish the specifications of a project of educative computer science network of the Municipality of A Corunna within the program "To discover the Computer science" that comes developing each educative course from 1998. In this case we were centered in one of the analyzed sections as it is the lormation oft he teaching staf

Functional expression of a penicillin acylase from the extreme thermophile Thermus thermophilus HB27 in Escherichia coli

Background: Penicillin acylases (PACs) are enzymes of industrial relevance in the manufacture of beta-lactam antibiotics. Development of a PAC with a longer half-life under the reaction conditions used is essential for the improvement of the operational stability of the process. A gene encoding a homologue to Escherichia coli PAC was found in the genome of the thermophilic bacterium Thermus thermophilus (Tth) HB27. Because of the nature of this PAC and its complex maturation that is crucial to reach its functional heterodimeric final conformation, the overexpression of this enzyme in a heterologous mesophilic host was a challenge. Here we describe the purification and characterization of the PAC protein from Tth HB27 overexpressed in Escherichia coli. Results: Fusions to a superfolder green fluorescent protein and differential membrane solubilization assays indicated that the enzyme remains attached through its amino-terminal end to the outer side of the cytoplasmic membrane of Tth cells. In order to overexpress this PAC in E. coli cells, a variant of the protein devoid of its membrane anchoring segment was constructed. The effect of the co-expression of chaperones and calcium supplementation of the culture medium was investigated. The total production of PAC was enhanced by the presence of DnaK/J and GrpE and even more by trigger factor and GroEL/ES. In addition, 10 mM calcium markedly improved both PAC specific and volumetric activities. Recombinant PAC was affinity-purified and proper maturation of the protein was confirmed by SDS-PAGE and MALDI-TOF analysis of the subunits. The recombinant protein was tested for activity towards several penicillins, cephalosporins and homoserine lactones. Hydrophobic acyl-chain penicillins were preferred over the rest of the substrates. Penicillin K (octanoyl penicillin) was the best substrate, with the highest specificity constant value (16.12 mM-1.seg-1). The optimum pH was aprox. 4 and the optimum temperature was 75 [DEGREE SIGN]C. The half-life of the enzyme at this temperature was 9.2 h. Conclusions: This is the first report concerning the heterologous expression of a pac gene from a thermophilic microorganism in the mesophilic host E. coli. The recombinant protein was identified as a penicillin K-deacylating thermozymeL.T., A.H. and J.B. acknowledge funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science (grants CIT 010000-2009-29, RyC2006-02441) and an institutional grant from Fundación Ramón Areces to CBMS

Adam Smith: Anthropology and Moral Philosophy

Adam Smith was a moral philosopher. His economic and legal thought can't be separated from his moral psychology which frames his anthropological and social proposal. Experimental Newtonian methodology and Hume's empirism feed his approximation to the reality of human being. In this new context the traditional categories of society are defined and combined in a new way. In this paper I try to argue that the assumed optimism which sometimes is attributed to Smith about the proper functioning of a commercial society, it isn't so clear if we pay attention to his vision of human being from the experimental methodology which he uses. In addition, the hard-working man, once embarked in commercial society, experiences that the division of labor undermines his intellectual and moral capacities. The whole leads me to check his idea of work and to try to think an alternative solution to the questions that he poses.-----Adam Smith se consideraba a sí mismo un filósofo moral. Su doctrina económica y jurídica no se puede apartar de la psicología moral que enmarca su propuesta antropológica y societaria. La metodología experimental newtoniana y la epistemología humeana alimentan su acercamiento a la realidad del hombre. Desde ahí las categorías tradicionales de la sociedad quedan definidas y articuladas de un modo nuevo. En este artículo se pretende argumentar que el supuesto optimismo que a veces se atribuye a Smith acerca del buen funcionamiento de la sociedad comercial, no está tan justificado atendiendo a su visión del hombre desde la metodología experimental que emplea. Además, una vez embarcado en la sociedad comercial, el hombre trabajador experimenta que la división del trabajo mina sus capacidades intelectuales y morales. Todo ello me lleva a revisar la noción de trabajo que se desprende de su pensamiento y a ensayar una posible solución alternativa a la luz de los problemas que plantea