Educational programs in Andalusia promoting linguistic skills

The Organic Law 2/2006, of 3rd of May, and the Organic Law 8/2013, of 9th December, for the Improvement of Quality in Education (LOMCE) establish the importance of reading as a quality education factor. The Andalusian Government promoted, under the Instructions of 30th of June 2013, the implementation of linguistic programs in order to encourage and support global projects based on the linguistic communication improvement (including non-linguistic subjects) focusing on reading, creativity, writing and multiple literacies. This paper aims to present linguistic programs and projects implemented in Andalusia as a way of sharing good teaching practices. Programs are divided in two groups according to level of participation of teachers. On the one hand, the only program of level 1 is the School Language Project. It requires the participation of 50 % of teachers and it promotes the educational innovation in order to build a linguistic project that will take part in the annual plan of the centre (including all areas). It is also linked to the integrated language curriculum that tries to implement the same structure and strands for Spanish as a mother tongue and English and French as foreign languages. On the other hand, level 2 programs required the participation of 10 % of teachers of an educational centre. These are: Classic Readings, Reading Families, Literary Creativity and Communication. Each program contains a syllabus with different activities and a collaborative space with a specialised community of teachers that are available on line (Portal de Lectura de la Junta de Andalucía). Examples of good teaching practices and projects will be shown during the paper to assess teachers of all areas and to be taken as a referee in other regions and countries.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Perceptual rigidity in Parkinson's disease and normal aging

Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by rigidity symptoms that extend motoric symptoms, including cognitive rigidity (e.g., reduced cognitive set-shifting) and "rigid" personality (e.g., reduced novelty-seeking). These non-motor symptoms have been associated with fronto-striatal dysfunction in this disorder. Disruption of fronto-parietal attentional networks in PD suggests rigidity may extend to perception. To examine perceptual rigidity, non-demented individuals with mild-moderate PD (16-27/experiment), matched normal control (NC; 15-25/experiment) and young control adults (YC; 17-22/experiment) were presented with bistable images. Study 1 examined perceptual flexibility in normal aging. The Necker cube, a bistable image that can be perceived as having the upper-left or lower-right face in front, was presented under passive-viewing and two volitional-control conditions: hold one percept in front, and switch between the two percepts. Under passive viewing, dominance durations (time spent on each percept) were shorter in YC than NC. Relative to YC, NC were less able to increase dominance durations in the hold condition but were comparable in the switch condition. Study 2 applied the Necker-cube experiment to PD and extended it to passive viewing during binocular rivalry. Inconsistently with our hypotheses, PD showed comparable dominance durations to NC in the passive viewing – Necker cube, while demonstrating shorter dominance durations (equivalent to faster perceptual alternation) during binocular rivalry. Relative to passive viewing, PD showed a trend toward less ability than NC to increase dominance durations in the Hold condition, and were significantly less able than NC to reduce dominance durations in the Switch condition, both results indicative of perceptual rigidity. Dominance durations on passive viewing correlated with personality (novelty-seeking) in PD, and not with cognitive rigidity in either group. Study 3 examined whether enhancement of low-level visual cues would reduce perceptual rigidity in PD. Low level cues helped both PD and NC to exert better control over the conditions they did not demonstrate difficulties in Study 1 and Study 2. These results suggest that perceptual rigidity occurs in mild-moderate PD. The provision of cues, however, does not compensate for this rigidity. Finally, these results further suggest an association in PD between novelty-seeking and the ability to explore the perceptually ambiguous world.2017-11-18T00:00:00

Length-weight relationships of coral reef fishes from the Alacran Reef, Yucatan, Mexico

Length-weight relationships were computed for 42 species of coral reef fishes from 14 families from the Alacran Reef (Yucatan, Mexico). A total of 1 892 individuals was used for this purpose. The fish species were caught by different fishing techniques such as fishhooks, harpoons, gill and trawl nets. The sampling period was from March 1998 to January 2000

The Nature of Deeply Buried Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies: A Unified Model for Highly Obscured Dusty Galaxy Emission

We present models of deeply buried ultraluminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and use them to construct a three-dimensional diagram for diagnosing the nature of observed ULIRGs. Our goal is to construct a suite of SEDs for a very simple model ULIRG structure, and to explore how well this simple model can (by itself) explain the full range of observed ULIRG properties. We use our diagnostic to analyze archival Spitzer Space Telescope IRS spectra of ULIRGs and find that: (1) In general, our model does provide a comprehensive explanation of the distribution of mid-IR ULIRG properties; (2) >75% (in some cases 100%) of the bolometric luminosities of the most deeply buried ULIRGs must be powered by a dust-enshrouded active galactic nucleus; (3) an unobscured "keyhole" view through <~10% of the obscuring medium surrounding a deeply buried ULIRG is sufficient to make it appear nearly unobscured in the mid-IR; and (4) the observed absence of deeply buried ULIRGs with large PAH equivalent widths is naturally explained by our models showing that deep absorption features are "filled-in" by small quantities of foreground unobscured PAH emission (e.g., from the host galaxy disk) at the level of ~1% the bolometric nuclear luminosity. The modeling and analysis we present will also serve as a powerful tool for interpreting the high angular resolution spectra of high-redshift sources to be obtained with the James Webb Space Telescope.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures. Accepted for publication in the Ap

Review manipolation in the hotel industry: the case of one- time contributors

Although, review manipulation has shown to have a significant adverse impact on consumer welfare, there is yet little understanding of which economic incentives drive this behavior as most of the current research has focused on the characteristics that define a fake review. The present study investigates these incentives using the innovative approach of examining one-time contributor user reviews as an alternative measure of review manipulation. With a sample comprising 450 hotels, registered on TripAdvisor, from the cities of Amsterdam and Brussels two type of studies were developed encompassing both cross-sectional and panel data analyses. The empirical results obtained show that review manipulation is sufficiently economically important since agents with different economic incentives will indulge in review fraud in a dissimilar extent. These incentives were found to include: the type of organizational structure; the total number of reviews; and the attributed user bubble rating

A mid-IR study of Hickson Compact Groups II. Multi-wavelength analysis of the complete GALEX-Spitzer Sample

We present a comprehensive study on the impact of the environment of compact galaxy groups on the evolution of their members using a multi-wavelength analysis, from the UV to the infrared, for a sample of 32 Hickson compact groups (HCGs) containing 135 galaxies. Fitting the SEDs of all galaxies with the state-of-the-art model of da Cunha (2008) we can accurately calculate their mass, SFR, and extinction, as well as estimate their infrared luminosity and dust content. We compare our findings with samples of field galaxies, early-stage interacting pairs, and cluster galaxies with similar data. We find that classifying the groups as dynamically "old" or "young", depending on whether or not at least one quarter of their members are early-type systems, is physical and consistent with past classifications of HCGs based on their atomic gas content. [...ABRIDGED...] We also examine their SF properties, UV-optical and mid-IR colors, and we conclude that all the evidence point to an evolutionary scenario in which the effects of the group environment and the properties of the galaxy members are not instantaneous. Early on, the influence of close companions to group galaxies is similar to the one of galaxy pairs in the field. However, as the time progresses, the effects of tidal torques and minor merging, shape the morphology and star formation history of the group galaxies, leading to an increase of the fraction of early-type members and a rapid built up of the stellar mass in the remaining late-type galaxies.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. Figure resolution degraded for arXiv limits, full resolution paper available at http://www.physics.uoc.gr/~bitsakis/paperII_bitsakis.pd

Spatially resolved dust emission of extremely metal poor galaxies

We present infrared (IR) spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of individual star-forming regions in four extremely metal poor (EMP) galaxies with metallicity Z around Zsun/10 as observed by the Herschel Space Observatory. With the good wavelength coverage of the SED, it is found that these EMP star-forming regions show distinct SED shapes as compared to those of grand design Spirals and higher metallicity dwarfs: they have on average much higher f70um/f160um ratios at a given f160um/f250um ratio; single modified black-body (MBB) fittings to the SED at \lambda >= 100 um still reveal higher dust temperatures and lower emissivity indices compared to that of Spirals, while two MBB fittings to the full SED with a fixed emissivity index (beta = 2) show that even at 100 um about half of the emission comes from warm (50 K) dust, in contrast to the cold (~20 K) dust component. Our spatially resolved images further reveal that the far-IR colors including f70um/f160um, f160um/f250um and f250um/f350um are all related to the surface densities of young stars as traced by far-UV, 24 um and SFRs, but not to the stellar mass surface densities. This suggests that the dust emitting at wavelengths from 70 um to 350 um is primarily heated by radiation from young stars.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, 7 tables, accepted for publication in MNRA

Phase Composition and Transport Properties of oxide ion conductors based on Sr1-xKxGeO3-x/2

Oxide ion conductors have been increasingly studied because of their potential applications in different electrochemical devices, such as, oxygen sensors, membranes for oxygen separation and components of fuel cells. Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) are electrochemical devices that operate at high temperatures, 600-1000 ºC, with higher efficiency for electrical generation than conventional systems based on fuel combustion. The high operating temperatures of the SOFC is mainly due to the limited ionic conductivity of the electrolyte. Zr0.84Y0.16O1.92 (YSZ) is the electrolyte most widely used in commercial systems due to its high stability and oxide ion conductivity at elevated temperatures (900-1000 ºC). However, there is a great interest in the development of devices with lower operation temperatures (600-800 ºC) to overcome collateral problems like difficulties in cell sealing or shorter lifetime of the components caused by the high operation temperature of YSZ. The high oxide ion conductivities recently reported in Na- and K-doped strontium silicates and germanates, make them potentially suitable for SOFC electrolytes. In this work, the structure, microstructure and electrical properties of Sr1-xKxGeO3-x/2 (x = 0.0, 0.1, 0.15 and 0.2) compounds have been re-investigated. The materials have been prepared by conventional ceramic and freeze-drying precursor methods. Different phases are stabilized depending on the synthetic method and the sintering temperature. Samples prepared by freeze-drying at 700 ºC exhibit a triclinic structure, which transforms to a mixture of monoclinic and trigonal related phases on heating at 1000 ºC. The presence of some broad diffractions peaks, which are not fitted in the Rietveld analysis, indicates the existence of an amorphous or low-crystalline phase (ACn) that have been quantified by an external standard procedure (G-factor approach). The homogeneity and chemical composition of the samples were checked by scanning electron microscopy combined with energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDX). The total conductivity of these materials was studied by impedance spectroscopy.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech