No gender differences in egocentric and allocentric environmental transformation after compensating for male advantage by manipulating familiarity

The present study has two-fold aims: to investigate whether gender differences persist even when more time is given to acquire spatial information; to assess the gender effect when the retrieval phase requires recalling the pathway from the same or a different reference perspective (egocentric or allocentric). Specifically, we analyse the performance of men and women while learning a path from a map or by observing an experimenter in a real environment. We then asked them to reproduce the learned path using the same reference system (map learning vs. map retrieval or real environment learning vs. real environment retrieval) or using a different reference system (map learning vs. real environment retrieval or vice versa). The results showed that gender differences were not present in the retrieval phase when women have the necessary time to acquire spatial information. Moreover, using the egocentric coordinates (both in the learning and retrieval phase) proved easier than the other conditions, whereas learning through allocentric coordinates and then retrieving the environmental information using egocentric coordinates proved to be the most difficult. Results showed that by manipulating familiarity, gender differences disappear, or are attenuated in all conditions

The italian music superdiversity: Geography, emotion and language: one resource to find them, one resource to rule them all

Globalization can lead to a growing standardization of musical contents. Using a cross-service multi-level dataset we investigate the actual Italian music scene. The investigation highlights the musical Italian superdiversity both individually analyzing the geographical and lexical dimensions and combining them. Using different kinds of features over the geographical dimension leads to two similar, comparable and coherent results, confirming the strong and essential correlation between melodies and lyrics. The profiles identified are markedly distinct one from another with respect to sentiment, lexicon, and melodic features. Through a novel application of a sentiment spreading algorithm and songs’ melodic features, we are able to highlight discriminant characteristics that violate the standard regional political boundaries, reconfiguring them following the actual musical communicative practices

H2 production from bioethanol and its use in fuel-cells

Bioethanol was considered as raw material for hydrogen production by steam reforming, coupled with a proton exchange membrane fuel cell for heat and power cogeneration (5 kWelectrical + 5 kWthermal). The water/ethanol feeding ratio and the ethanol purity were considered for process optimisation. An increase of the water/ethanol ratio improved H2 yield at the expenses of higher heat input to the reformer and lower electrical output. However, the presence of a high enthalpy exhaust stream increased the available thermal output, with a consequent increase of the thermal and overall efficiency of the plant. Finally, the bioethanol purification step, which is energy- and cost-intensive, has been taken into account, searching for an optimisation of the bioethanol purification strategy for the overall process intensification

The TLK in academic knowledge building: a learning experience with university students

En la actualidad, las tecnologías forman parte de nuestra vida diaria y esta realidad es aún más notable entre los jóvenes. Tal familiaridad constituye un potencial motivador e indispensable para el desarrollo de procesos de aprendizaje en el campo de la educación superior. La incorporación de las Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicación (TIC) en las prácticas pedagógicas debe tener como objetivo la generación de aprendizajes significativos de los estudiantes en colaboración con sus colegas. En tal sentido, se transforman en Tecnologías para el Aprendizaje y Conocimiento (TAC). En este trabajo, se describe una experiencia educativa con estudiantes universitarios, en donde se seleccionaron dos herramientas tecnológicas, un documento de Google drive y el chat de WhatsApp, para la construcción de significados científicos. Las actividades diseñadas requirieron el trabajo colaborativo de los estudiantes con el fin de crear un producto final que sirva a las necesidades específicas de aprendizaje. A partir del análisis de sus trabajos, es posible identificar aquellos rasgos atractivos de esta propuesta educativa, centrando la atención en el desarrollo de competencias que estimulen el rol autónomo y activo de los estudiantes en el progreso de sus estudios superiores y en su futuro profesional.At present, technologies have become an important part of our daily life and this is even more noticeable among young people. The fact that students are so familiar with the use of technological devices constitutes a motivating and key opportunity for stimulating the student’s learning processes in higher education. The use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in pedagogical practices with higher education students should aim at promoting significant and collaborative learning experiences. In that sense, these tools become Technologies for Learning and Knowledge (TLK). In this research paper, an educational experience with university students is described, in which two technological tools, a Google drive document and the WhatsApp chat, were selected for the construction of scientific meanings. The activities designed required collaborative work of students in order to create a final product that meets their specific learning needs. By analyzing the students’ productions, it is possible to identify the most striking features of this pedagogical proposal, focusing attention on the development of skills that stimulate the autonomous and active role of students in their academic education and in their future professional lives.Facultad de Informátic

The TLK in academic knowledge building: a learning experience with university students

En la actualidad, las tecnologías forman parte de nuestra vida diaria y esta realidad es aún más notable entre los jóvenes. Tal familiaridad constituye un potencial motivador e indispensable para el desarrollo de procesos de aprendizaje en el campo de la educación superior. La incorporación de las Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicación (TIC) en las prácticas pedagógicas debe tener como objetivo la generación de aprendizajes significativos de los estudiantes en colaboración con sus colegas. En tal sentido, se transforman en Tecnologías para el Aprendizaje y Conocimiento (TAC). En este trabajo, se describe una experiencia educativa con estudiantes universitarios, en donde se seleccionaron dos herramientas tecnológicas, un documento de Google drive y el chat de WhatsApp, para la construcción de significados científicos. Las actividades diseñadas requirieron el trabajo colaborativo de los estudiantes con el fin de crear un producto final que sirva a las necesidades específicas de aprendizaje. A partir del análisis de sus trabajos, es posible identificar aquellos rasgos atractivos de esta propuesta educativa, centrando la atención en el desarrollo de competencias que estimulen el rol autónomo y activo de los estudiantes en el progreso de sus estudios superiores y en su futuro profesional.At present, technologies have become an important part of our daily life and this is even more noticeable among young people. The fact that students are so familiar with the use of technological devices constitutes a motivating and key opportunity for stimulating the student’s learning processes in higher education. The use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in pedagogical practices with higher education students should aim at promoting significant and collaborative learning experiences. In that sense, these tools become Technologies for Learning and Knowledge (TLK). In this research paper, an educational experience with university students is described, in which two technological tools, a Google drive document and the WhatsApp chat, were selected for the construction of scientific meanings. The activities designed required collaborative work of students in order to create a final product that meets their specific learning needs. By analyzing the students’ productions, it is possible to identify the most striking features of this pedagogical proposal, focusing attention on the development of skills that stimulate the autonomous and active role of students in their academic education and in their future professional lives.Facultad de Informátic

APEnet+: a 3D toroidal network enabling Petaflops scale Lattice QCD simulations on commodity clusters

Many scientific computations need multi-node parallelism for matching up both space (memory) and time (speed) ever-increasing requirements. The use of GPUs as accelerators introduces yet another level of complexity for the programmer and may potentially result in large overheads due to the complex memory hierarchy. Additionally, top-notch problems may easily employ more than a Petaflops of sustained computing power, requiring thousands of GPUs orchestrated with some parallel programming model. Here we describe APEnet+, the new generation of our interconnect, which scales up to tens of thousands of nodes with linear cost, thus improving the price/performance ratio on large clusters. The project target is the development of the Apelink+ host adapter featuring a low latency, high bandwidth direct network, state-of-the-art wire speeds on the links and a PCIe X8 gen2 host interface. It features hardware support for the RDMA programming model and experimental acceleration of GPU networking. A Linux kernel driver, a set of low-level RDMA APIs and an OpenMPI library driver are available, allowing for painless porting of standard applications. Finally, we give an insight of future work and intended developments