Los estándares para el diseño y implementación de entornos de enseñanza-aprendizaje en red

El objetivo de esta comunicación es presentar un resumen de la situación actual en el marco de la creación, aceptación y adopción de estándares para el diseño e implementación de Entornos Tecnológicos de Enseñanza-Aprendizaje. En este sentido, se presenta la arquitectura LTSA, base de un futuro estándar internacional para este tipo de entornos. También se analiza la especificación IMS, como muestra de una de las pocas implementaciones actuales de estos conceptos. Finalmente, se realiza una comparación entre la estructura organizativa IMS para un centro formativo virtual con la correspondiente a la Universidad en España, concluyendo que los estándares tecnológicos se inspiran en planteamientos de la Organización Escolar.The aim of this paper is to present an overview of the current situation in the process of development, acceptance and adoption of International Standards for the design and implementation of Learning Technology Systems. In that sense we introduce the LTSA architecture as the basis for a future international standard for this kind of environments. We analyse also the IMS specification as the most used model for the implementation of these concepts. Finally, we do a comparison between the IMS structure for virtual centres and the structure of the Spanish University, concluding that all these technological standards are mainly based on educational organization concepts

Identification of the design variables of e-learning tools using concept mapping techniques

Thanks to the use of stadisthic techniques is posible to stablish an technological acceptation model of e- Learning tools. This article describes the application of concept mapping techniques to identify the most relevant extern variables on the design process of an e-learning tool and a reliability analisys of the concept map obtained as result of the experimen

Identification of Designing Variable of an Elearning Tool

En este artículo se muestran, a través de mapas bidimensionales, los resultados procedentes de un proyecto de investigación mediante el cual se han identificado las variables externas a tener en cuenta en el diseño de una herramienta de eLearning para conseguir evaluar, posteriormente, su uso real. La técnica empleada para ello es la "Elaboración de mapas conceptuales". Asimismo, se observa la necesidad de tener en cuenta cómo llevar a cabo la gestión de la herramienta por parte del usuario. Finalmente, se ha analizado la fiabilidad de nuestros mapasIn this paper the results from a research project1 are shown. A scientific technique called "Concept Mapping Process" has been used to identify the external variables to be kept in mind in the design of an eLearning tool, in order to evaluate its true usage later. Results are shown through two-dimensional maps. Another important result is the necessity of designing tools to carry out the management of the tool on the part of the user. Finally, there has been analysed the reliability of our mapsMinisterio de Educación y Ciencia EA2005-017

Mapping Cumulative Environmental Risks: Examples from The EU NoMiracle Project

We present examples of cumulative chemical risk mapping methods developed within the NoMiracle project. The different examples illustrate the application of the concentration addition (CA) approach to pesticides at different scale, the integration in space of cumulative risks to individual organisms under the CA assumption, and two techniques to (1) integrate risks using data-driven, parametric statistical methods, and (2) cluster together areas with similar occurrence of different risk factors, respectively. The examples are used to discuss some general issues, particularly on the conventional nature of cumulative risk maps, and may provide some suggestions for the practice of cumulative risk mapping

CATMoS: Collaborative Acute Toxicity Modeling Suite.

BACKGROUND: Humans are exposed to tens of thousands of chemical substances that need to be assessed for their potential toxicity. Acute systemic toxicity testing serves as the basis for regulatory hazard classification, labeling, and risk management. However, it is cost- and time-prohibitive to evaluate all new and existing chemicals using traditional rodent acute toxicity tests. In silico models built using existing data facilitate rapid acute toxicity predictions without using animals. OBJECTIVES: The U.S. Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM) Acute Toxicity Workgroup organized an international collaboration to develop in silico models for predicting acute oral toxicity based on five different end points: Lethal Dose 50 (LD50 value, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hazard (four) categories, Globally Harmonized System for Classification and Labeling hazard (five) categories, very toxic chemicals [LD50 (LD50≤50mg/kg)], and nontoxic chemicals (LD50>2,000mg/kg). METHODS: An acute oral toxicity data inventory for 11,992 chemicals was compiled, split into training and evaluation sets, and made available to 35 participating international research groups that submitted a total of 139 predictive models. Predictions that fell within the applicability domains of the submitted models were evaluated using external validation sets. These were then combined into consensus models to leverage strengths of individual approaches. RESULTS: The resulting consensus predictions, which leverage the collective strengths of each individual model, form the Collaborative Acute Toxicity Modeling Suite (CATMoS). CATMoS demonstrated high performance in terms of accuracy and robustness when compared with in vivo results. DISCUSSION: CATMoS is being evaluated by regulatory agencies for its utility and applicability as a potential replacement for in vivo rat acute oral toxicity studies. CATMoS predictions for more than 800,000 chemicals have been made available via the National Toxicology Program's Integrated Chemical Environment tools and data sets (ice.ntp.niehs.nih.gov). The models are also implemented in a free, standalone, open-source tool, OPERA, which allows predictions of new and untested chemicals to be made. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP8495

Automated Phenotype Recognition for Zebrafish Embryo Based In Vivo High Throughput Toxicity Screening of Engineered Nano-Materials

A phenotype recognition model was developed for high throughput screening (HTS) of engineered Nano-Materials (eNMs) toxicity using zebrafish embryo developmental response classified, from automatically captured images and without manual manipulation of zebrafish positioning, by three basic phenotypes (i.e., hatched, unhatched, and dead). The recognition model was built with a set of vectorial descriptors providing image color and texture information. The best performing model was attained with three image descriptors (color histogram, representative color, and color layout) identified as most suitable from an initial pool of six descriptors. This model had an average recognition accuracy of 97.40±0.95% in a 10-fold cross-validation and 93.75% in a stress test of low quality zebrafish images. The present work has shown that a phenotyping model can be developed with accurate recognition ability suitable for zebrafish-based HTS assays. Although the present methodology was successfully demonstrated for only three basic zebrafish embryonic phenotypes, it can be readily adapted to incorporate more subtle phenotypes