The EDINSOST project: improving sustainability education in spanish higher education

The EDINSOST R+D+i “Society Challenges” Project, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities under the research challenge in the field of social change and innovation, aims to contribute to the improvement of social challenges across the (1) Spanish Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation, (2) the State Plan of Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation, and (3) the European 2020 Strategy. The research is both highly multidisciplinary and contextualized and is applied in Ten Spanish Universities working together in the “Curriculum sustainability" group of the CRUE Sectorial Commission of Sustainability. The goal of this group is to create synergies and action frameworks agreed at a national level. This is an area of research action whose lack of common criteria for integrating sustainability competencies, learning processes and assessment hinders their achievement. To meet this challenge, frameworks and processes have been designed to facilitate the integration of sustainability into the university curriculum holistically through mapping and validation of pedagogical practices and the diagnosis of the state of Spanish universities, for which building materials for teaching and learning sustainability competencies have been developed. The project objectives and results are focused on: 1) Defining the map of sustainability competencies of the university degrees involved in the project, and establishing the framework to facilitate their integration in a holistic manner; 2) validating teaching strategies for the acquisition of sustainability competencies from a constructivist and community-oriented pedagogical approach; 3) diagnosing the state of faculty sustainability training needs and developing and pilot training proposals; and 4) diagnosing the state of learning of sustainability competencies in university students as well as preparing and piloting training proposals. The research methodology has an interpretive focus and uses quantitative and qualitative techniques to cover a population with three impact levels. Firstly, Bachelor and Master Degrees that integrate the three pillars of sustainability (environmental, social and economic). Secondly, and taking into account their long-term multiplier effect, special emphasis is made on five Bachelor and Master degrees in Education, since these graduates are the future teachers of the next generation of citizens. Finally, seven technological Bachelor Degrees are studied for their great impact on societal challenges.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Embeddability and rate identifiability of Kimura 2-parameter matrices

Deciding whether a Markov matrix is embeddable (i.e. can be written as the exponential of a rate matrix) is an open problem even for $4\times 4$ matrices. We study the embedding problem and rate identifiability for the K80 model of nucleotide substitution. For these $4\times 4$ matrices, we fully characterize the set of embeddable K80 Markov matrices and the set of embeddable matrices for which rates are identifiable. In particular, we describe an open subset of embeddable matrices with non-identifiable rates. This set contains matrices with positive eigenvalues and also diagonal largest in column matrices, which might lead to consequences in parameter estimation in phylogenetics. Finally, we compute the relative volumes of embeddable K80 matrices and of embeddable matrices with identifiable rates. This study concludes the embedding problem for the more general model K81 and its submodels, which had been initiated by the last two authors in a separate work.Comment: 20 pages; 10 figure

A mathematical formulation of the loop pipelining problem

This paper presents a mathematical model for the loop pipelining problem that considers several parameters for optimization and supports any combination of resource and timing constraints. The unrolling degree of the loop is one of the variables explored by the model. By using Farey’s series, an optimal exploration of the unrolling degree is performed and optimal solutions not considered by other methods are obtained. Finding an optimal schedule that minimizes resource and register requirements is solved by using an Integer linear programming (ILP) model. A novel paradigm called branch and prune is proposed to eficiently converge towards the optimal schedule and prune the search tree for integer solutions, thus drastically reducing the running time. This is the first formulation that combines the unrolling degree of the loop with timing and resource constraints in a mathematical model that guarantees optimal solutions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Valoración y salida a bolsa de las sociedades anónimas deportivas españolas. Análisis comparativo con el caso inglés

La necesidad de grandes sumas de dinero por parte de las SAD (básicamente clubes de fútbol) conlleva que éstas se planteen el financiarse en la Bolsa de valores como una opción más para conseguir la liquidez necesaria que les permita realizar nuevas inversiones, tanto en jugadores como en inmovilizado. Y los inversionistas parecen dispuestos a entregarles dinero a cambio de acciones, por considerar que el fútbol tiene un porvenir económico rentable y porque la participación en la Bolsa obliga a los clubes a efectuar un enorme cambio en sus estructuras financieras, haciendo que sus operaciones económicas sean más transparentes y estén sometidas a más controles. Pero la rentabilidad de una SAD no está sólo vinculada a los tradicionales criterios racionales (económico-financieros), sino también a criterios “pasionales” (sentimientos de pertenencia a un grupo, valores intangibles, etc.) Esta circunstancia se refleja en una mayor prima de riesgo, de forma que la valoración en Bolsa de los clubes es inferior a la de cualquier otro sector con similares expectativas de beneficios, obligando a los clubes a diversificar este riesgo, sobretodo cuando las expectativas de beneficio se han corregido a la baja por la experiencia vivida en otros mercados donde ya cotizan estos valores

La font bizantina d’un passatge del Tirant: l’episodi del filòsof calabrès al capítol cx

La nota present reexamina la qüestió de les fonts del capítol cx del Tirant per al qual s’ha proposat molt versentblantment, ateses les similituds pel que fa al contingut, l’origen en un conte folclòric (Beltrán Llavador 2006). L’autor suggereix una font concreta, el poema narratiu grec, de caire didàctic, titulat Ptocoleont, i basa la seua hipòtesi en l’anàlisi intertextual, tant de motius com de determinats manlleus lingüístics