Chemical ecology and olfactory behaviour of an aphid parasitoid and a lacewing predator

Female parasitoid (Aphidius colemani) olfactory preference was consistently biased in olfactometer experiments towards the Brassica cultivar on which it was reared when offered other Brassica cultivars as alternatives using either whole plants or detached leaves. Using gas chromatography, differences could be detected in the volatile composition of whole plants and detached leaves of five Brassica cultivars and the volatiles responsible for the fine distinctions the wasps are capable of making between plant cultivars are suggested. By subjecting female wasps to olfactory conditioning protocols, studies were carried out to understand the learning process for individual green leaf volatiles (6-carbon molecules), known to elicit behavioural responses in many insect species. Wasps were exposed to primary alcohols with differing carbon chain lengths in conjunction with aphids in an attempt to condition the wasps to the alcohols. When tested for learning, wasps changed their responses towards alcohols with molecules consisting of between 5 and 6 carbon atoms. The effect of cold temperature on olfactory preference was also investigated. After treating females at 0 °C for 0.5 h or longer, preference for the odour of the Brassica cultivar on which they were reared was lost for one hour after the cold treatment had finished, after which, the preference returned. However, when Brassica or unencountered plant odours were presented with clean air as the alternative choice, females could discern plant odour even immediately after the cold treatment. This suggests that the olfactory and locomotive systems were not altered by cold, whereas responses arising from learning-produced memories appear to have been inhibited temporarily and revealing underlying innate responses. The results indicate that temperature treatments could offer the possibility of dissecting innate and learnt behaviours in these parasitic wasps. The importance of controlling humidity arising from odour choices in olfactometers is also observed. In addition to assessing the parasitoid’s behaviour, various aspects of the role that neomatatabiol, a chemical compound closely related to aphid sex pheromone was investigated in relation to its role in the chemical ecology of the green lacewing Peyerimhoffina gracilis

Rethinking the role of Higher Education

The market has to change as our current society becomes increasingly diverse and so do workers¿ competences, which are now more and more cross-disciplinary. New training models have appeared seeking to meet such market and society needs. This editorial reflects on the pressing need to redefine university education and the accreditation processes in non-formal education

La era Post-MOOC : oportunidades para la educación abierta y a distancia

Desde que el 2012 fuera acuñado por el periódico The New York Times como The Year of the MOOC la comunidad académica y científica ha desarrollado una actividad casi frenética alrededor de esta nueva -o no tan nueva para algunos- modalidad de aprendizaje online. Desde 2008 los MOOC han adoptado roles distintos que se han puesto al servicio de las instituciones académicas, los usuarios y la sociedad en general. La investigación científica nos ha dejado un abanico considerable de trabajos que han analizado las distintas perspectivas de este fenómeno (pedagógica, económica, social, etc.) y son diversos los monográficos y estudios de revisión bibliográfica que han abordado en profundidad este fenómeno. Aun así, sigue siendo objeto de interés de las agendas académicas y de las políticas educativas. El presente número especial de la revista "@tic. revista d'innovació educativa" ha pretendido contribuir a ese corpus de estudios, no solo con el objeto de ampliar nuestro conocimiento sobre esta modalidad de aprendizaje disruptivo sino, más bien, intentando promover una lectura más crítica -en algunos casos- y más práctica -en otros-

Los métodos de ELE españoles, ¿modelos de lengua? Hacia una integración de la variación sincrónica en los libros del alumno

El presente texto tiene como objetivo proponer un cambio de orientación en los modelos de lengua de algunos manuales de ELE españoles, puesto que estos no tienen en cuenta suficientemente un aspecto fundamental inherente a todas las lenguas: la variación sincrónica. Así, en esta contribución, a raíz de una descripción detallada sobre las deficiencias e inadecuaciones de algunos métodos de ELE publicados en España, se anotan algunas propuestas de mejora de estos materiales para que puedan servir mejor de complemento para un modelo de lengua que tenga en cuenta la realidad variacional del español y que sea adaptable a todas las situaciones de enseñanza de esta lengua.The objective of this text is to propose a change on the orientation of the language models from some of the handbooks used to teach Spanish as a foreign language, as they do not take into account sufficiently a fundamental aspect inherent to all the languages: the synchronic variation. This way, in this contribution, as a result of a detailed description about the deficiencies and inadequacies of some of the manuals published in Spain to teach Spanish as a foreign language, some suggestions to improve these materials have been written down, which can work as a complement for a language model that takes into account the different varieties of Spanish and that is adaptable to all the situations of teaching this language

Psychological adaptation to extreme environments: Antarctica as a space analogue

Space analogues are settings where particular conditions can be reproduced to study physiological and psychological variables experienced in space. Antarctica is one of the most reliable analogues to assess the effects of isolation, confinement, light-dark cycle and extreme environmental conditions in human being. In the present review we describe some of the aspects of psychological adaptation to extreme latitudes. Most of the studies found some evidence about changes in emotional states during Antarctica expeditions. However, these changes are highly variable, and beneficial as well as detrimental aspects of adaptation have been described. Adaptation to extreme environments is a complex phenomenon that needs multidimensional studies to be fully understood, comprising aspects such as seasonality, psychological traits, isolation conditions and social interactions.Fil: Tortello, Camila. Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina "Santa María de los Buenos Aires". Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas; ArgentinaFil: Barbarito, Marta. Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Comercio Interno y Culto. Dirección Nacional del Antártico. Instituto Antártico Argentino; ArgentinaFil: Cuiuli, Juan Manuel. Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Comercio Interno y Culto. Dirección Nacional del Antártico. Instituto Antártico Argentino; ArgentinaFil: Golombek, Diego Andrés. Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. Departamento de Ciencia y Tecnología. Laboratorio de Cronobiología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Vigo, Daniel Eduardo. Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina "Santa María de los Buenos Aires". Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas; ArgentinaFil: Plano, Santiago Andrés. Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. Departamento de Ciencia y Tecnología; Argentina. Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina "Santa María de los Buenos Aires". Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas; Argentin

Towards a human-centric data economy

Spurred by widespread adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning, “data” is becoming a key production factor, comparable in importance to capital, land, or labour in an increasingly digital economy. In spite of an ever-growing demand for third-party data in the B2B market, firms are generally reluctant to share their information. This is due to the unique characteristics of “data” as an economic good (a freely replicable, non-depletable asset holding a highly combinatorial and context-specific value), which moves digital companies to hoard and protect their “valuable” data assets, and to integrate across the whole value chain seeking to monopolise the provision of innovative services built upon them. As a result, most of those valuable assets still remain unexploited in corporate silos nowadays. This situation is shaping the so-called data economy around a number of champions, and it is hampering the benefits of a global data exchange on a large scale. Some analysts have estimated the potential value of the data economy in US$2.5 trillion globally by 2025. Not surprisingly, unlocking the value of data has become a central policy of the European Union, which also estimated the size of the data economy in 827C billion for the EU27 in the same period. Within the scope of the European Data Strategy, the European Commission is also steering relevant initiatives aimed to identify relevant cross-industry use cases involving different verticals, and to enable sovereign data exchanges to realise them. Among individuals, the massive collection and exploitation of personal data by digital firms in exchange of services, often with little or no consent, has raised a general concern about privacy and data protection. Apart from spurring recent legislative developments in this direction, this concern has raised some voices warning against the unsustainability of the existing digital economics (few digital champions, potential negative impact on employment, growing inequality), some of which propose that people are paid for their data in a sort of worldwide data labour market as a potential solution to this dilemma [114, 115, 155]. From a technical perspective, we are far from having the required technology and algorithms that will enable such a human-centric data economy. Even its scope is still blurry, and the question about the value of data, at least, controversial. Research works from different disciplines have studied the data value chain, different approaches to the value of data, how to price data assets, and novel data marketplace designs. At the same time, complex legal and ethical issues with respect to the data economy have risen around privacy, data protection, and ethical AI practices. In this dissertation, we start by exploring the data value chain and how entities trade data assets over the Internet. We carry out what is, to the best of our understanding, the most thorough survey of commercial data marketplaces. In this work, we have catalogued and characterised ten different business models, including those of personal information management systems, companies born in the wake of recent data protection regulations and aiming at empowering end users to take control of their data. We have also identified the challenges faced by different types of entities, and what kind of solutions and technology they are using to provide their services. Then we present a first of its kind measurement study that sheds light on the prices of data in the market using a novel methodology. We study how ten commercial data marketplaces categorise and classify data assets, and which categories of data command higher prices. We also develop classifiers for comparing data products across different marketplaces, and we study the characteristics of the most valuable data assets and the features that specific vendors use to set the price of their data products. Based on this information and adding data products offered by other 33 data providers, we develop a regression analysis for revealing features that correlate with prices of data products. As a result, we also implement the basic building blocks of a novel data pricing tool capable of providing a hint of the market price of a new data product using as inputs just its metadata. This tool would provide more transparency on the prices of data products in the market, which will help in pricing data assets and in avoiding the inherent price fluctuation of nascent markets. Next we turn to topics related to data marketplace design. Particularly, we study how buyers can select and purchase suitable data for their tasks without requiring a priori access to such data in order to make a purchase decision, and how marketplaces can distribute payoffs for a data transaction combining data of different sources among the corresponding providers, be they individuals or firms. The difficulty of both problems is further exacerbated in a human-centric data economy where buyers have to choose among data of thousands of individuals, and where marketplaces have to distribute payoffs to thousands of people contributing personal data to a specific transaction. Regarding the selection process, we compare different purchase strategies depending on the level of information available to data buyers at the time of making decisions. A first methodological contribution of our work is proposing a data evaluation stage prior to datasets being selected and purchased by buyers in a marketplace. We show that buyers can significantly improve the performance of the purchasing process just by being provided with a measurement of the performance of their models when trained by the marketplace with individual eligible datasets. We design purchase strategies that exploit such functionality and we call the resulting algorithm Try Before You Buy, and our work demonstrates over synthetic and real datasets that it can lead to near-optimal data purchasing with only O(N) instead of the exponential execution time - O(2N) - needed to calculate the optimal purchase. With regards to the payoff distribution problem, we focus on computing the relative value of spatio-temporal datasets combined in marketplaces for predicting transportation demand and travel time in metropolitan areas. Using large datasets of taxi rides from Chicago, Porto and New York we show that the value of data is different for each individual, and cannot be approximated by its volume. Our results reveal that even more complex approaches based on the “leave-one-out” value, are inaccurate. Instead, more complex and acknowledged notions of value from economics and game theory, such as the Shapley value, need to be employed if one wishes to capture the complex effects of mixing different datasets on the accuracy of forecasting algorithms. However, the Shapley value entails serious computational challenges. Its exact calculation requires repetitively training and evaluating every combination of data sources and hence O(N!) or O(2N) computational time, which is unfeasible for complex models or thousands of individuals. Moreover, our work paves the way to new methods of measuring the value of spatio-temporal data. We identify heuristics such as entropy or similarity to the average that show a significant correlation with the Shapley value and therefore can be used to overcome the significant computational challenges posed by Shapley approximation algorithms in this specific context. We conclude with a number of open issues and propose further research directions that leverage the contributions and findings of this dissertation. These include monitoring data transactions to better measure data markets, and complementing market data with actual transaction prices to build a more accurate data pricing tool. A human-centric data economy would also require that the contributions of thousands of individuals to machine learning tasks are calculated daily. For that to be feasible, we need to further optimise the efficiency of data purchasing and payoff calculation processes in data marketplaces. In that direction, we also point to some alternatives to repetitively training and evaluating a model to select data based on Try Before You Buy and approximate the Shapley value. Finally, we discuss the challenges and potential technologies that help with building a federation of standardised data marketplaces. The data economy will develop fast in the upcoming years, and researchers from different disciplines will work together to unlock the value of data and make the most out of it. Maybe the proposal of getting paid for our data and our contribution to the data economy finally flies, or maybe it is other proposals such as the robot tax that are finally used to balance the power between individuals and tech firms in the digital economy. Still, we hope our work sheds light on the value of data, and contributes to making the price of data more transparent and, eventually, to moving towards a human-centric data economy.This work has been supported by IMDEA Networks InstitutePrograma de Doctorado en Ingeniería Telemática por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: Georgios Smaragdakis.- Secretario: Ángel Cuevas Rumín.- Vocal: Pablo Rodríguez Rodrígue

Impacto e resultados de Recursos Educacionais Abertos: A essência do conhecimento aberto e sua contribuição social

This article identifies the main social contributions of Open Educational Resources (OERs), their impact and the results of several initiatives related to them. Based on a theoretical and reflexive framework, we analyze the evolution of business models around OERs, their contribution to open knowledge and the common educational policies related to this phenomenon. Finally, we point out the new horizons and models of knowledge based on OERs. Design/methodology/approach: This study utilizes a theoretical and conceptual framework based on references coming from journals with an impact factor, complemented with quotes by important authors and OER representatives. The review offers a conceptual and applied overview regarding the business models around OERs, their contribution to open knowledge and their impact on current society. Because the study is not empirical, the authors justify their statements on existing scientific literature with high academic impact. Practical implications include knowledge about the OER phenomenon, its social contributions, and the economic models established around it.  Este artículo identifica las principales continuaciones sociales de los recursos educativos abiertos (REA), su impacto y los resultados de diversas iniciativas relacionadas con los mismos. A partir de un marco teórico y reflexivo se analiza la evolución de los modelos de negocio en torno a los REA, su contribución al conocimiento abierto y las políticas educativas más comunes relacionadas con el fenómeno. Finalmente se señalan los nuevo horizontes y modelos de conocimiento basados en los REA. Este estudio pretende ofrecer un marco teórico y conceptual basado en referencias procedentes de literatura con factor de impacto. Dicho marco es complementado con citas de autores relevantes y representantes del fenómeno REA, ofreciendo un marco conceptual integral. la presente revisión ofrece una visión conceptual genérica y aplicada de los modelos de negocio entorno a los REA, su contribución al conocimiento abierto y su impacto en la sociedad actual. El presente artículo no es empírico por lo que los autores justifican sus afirmaciones sobre la literatura científica existente de alto impacto académico. Implicaciones prácticas: conocimiento del fenómeno de los REA, de su contribución social y de los modelos de negocio establecidos a su alrededor. Este artigo identifica as principais continuações sociais de recursos educacionais abertos (OER), seu impacto e os resultados de várias iniciativas relacionadas a eles. A partir de um referencial teórico-reflexivo, analisa-se a evolução dos modelos de negócios em torno da REA, sua contribuição para o conhecimento aberto e as políticas educacionais mais comuns relacionadas ao fenômeno. Finalmente, os novos horizontes e modelos de conhecimento baseados nos REA são apontados. Este estudo tem como objetivo oferecer um referencial teórico-conceitual baseado em referências bibliográficas com um fator de impacto. Essa estrutura é complementada por citações de autores relevantes e representantes do fenômeno REA, oferecendo uma estrutura conceitual integral. A presente revisão oferece uma visão conceitual genérica e aplicada dos modelos de negócios em torno da REA, sua contribuição para o conhecimento aberto e seu impacto na sociedade atual. O presente artigo não é empírico, então os autores justificam suas afirmações sobre a literatura científica existente com alto impacto acadêmico. Implicações práticas: conhecimento do fenômeno REA, sua contribuição social e os modelos de negócios estabelecidos em torno dele

La reflexión crítica de Bolívar Echeverría sobre el arte, la cultura y la modernidad capitalista

En esta investigación abordo dos momentos fundamentales de la reflexión de Bolívar Echeverría sobre la dimensión cultural del sujeto en la Modernidad capitalista. En primer lugar analizo su pensamiento en torno al concepto de cultura y su articulación con la vida social del ser humano. Desde esta perspectiva el concepto de ethos histórico se revela como fundamental, pues permite entender justamente dicha articulación. En segundo lugar miro cuál es la importancia del concepto de arte en su definición de cultura. Con este objetivo analizo la relación del pensamiento de Echeverría con el de Walter Benjamin y luego brevemente con el de la sociología francesa. En este punto me interesa poner de relieve un concepto básico como el de mímesis y reflexionar a partir de esto si para Echeverría el arte tiene o no un potencial crítico de la modernidad capitalista