Competencias para el ejercicio de la dirección de instituciones educativas : reflexiones y experiencias en Iberoamérica

El presente texto es el resultado de las aportaciones al encuentro realizado por los miembros de la Red de Apoyo a la Gestion Educativa (http://www.redage.org) en junio de 2011 en la ciudad de Lima. Constituye el tercer documento de la Serie Informes que ha producido la RedAGE y es expresión del compromiso constitutivo por analizar y difundir temáticas relacionadas con la organizaciÓn y dirección de los sistemas y centros educativos. El ejercicio directivo analizado desde la perspectiva de las competencias es la temática que se aborda en esta ocasión. Por una parte, se continúa la reflexión iniciada con el segundo informe, dedicado a la Dirección de centros educativos en Iberoamérica (http://www.redage.org/files/adjuntos/ Libro%20Red_AGE%20vd.pdf); por otra, se profundiza desde la perspectiva de las competencias con la idea de difundir e impulsar el nuevo enfoque. Tratamos así de un tema incipiente en algunos de los países, pero presente y parte de la agenda de los responsables de la política educativa, con la idea de aportar elementos para las posibles acciones a desarrollar o a mejorar al respecto. Hablamos de competencias y sobre competencias1 y con ello nos referimos a las características de la persona relacionadas con una actuación de éxito en su lugar de trabajo. Se identifican así con la activación y aplicación de manera coordinada de elementos de diferente naturaleza (cognoscitivos, afectivos y procedimentales) para resolver situaciones profesionales concretas. El concepto de competencia es utilizado desde hace tiempo en el campo de la formación profesional, abriéndose camino, poco a poco, en todo el sistema educativo y en los procesos de formación continua, donde la gestión por competencias se ha convertido en un modelo integrador y orientador de las diferentes políticas de recursos humanos

Adjuvant hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) in patients with colon cancer at high risk of peritoneal carcinomatosis; the COLOPEC randomized multicentre trial

Background: The peritoneum is the second most common site of recurrence in colorectal cancer. Early detection of peritoneal carcinomatosis (PC) by imaging is difficult. Patients eventually presenting with clinically apparent PC have a poor prognosis. Median survival is only about five months if untreated and the benefit of palliative systemic chemotherapy is limited. Only a quarter of patients are eligible for curative treatment, consisting of cytoreductive surgery and hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (CR/HIPEC). However, the effectiveness depends highly on the extent of disease and the treatment is associated with a considerable complication rate. These clinical problems underline the need for effective adjuvant therapy in high-risk patients to minimize the risk of outgrowth of peritoneal micro metastases. Adjuvant hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) seems to be suitable for this purpose. Without the need for cytoreductive surgery, adjuvant HIPEC can be performed with a low complication rate and short hospital stay. Methods/Design: The aim of this study is to determine the effectiveness of adjuvant HIPEC in preventing the development of PC in patients with colon cancer at high risk of peritoneal recurrence. This study will be performed in the nine Dutch HIPEC centres, starting in April 2015. Eligible for inclusion are patients who underwent curative resection for T4 or intra-abdominally perforated cM0 stage colon cancer. After resection of the primary tumour, 176 patients will be randomized to adjuvant HIPEC followed by routine adjuvant systemic chemotherapy in the experimental arm, or to systemic chemotherapy only in the control arm. Adjuvant HIPEC will be performed simultaneously or shortly after the primary resection. Oxaliplatin will be used as chemotherapeutic agent, for 30 min at 42-43 degrees C. Just before HIPEC, 5-fluorouracil and leucovorin will be administered intravenously. Primary endpoint is peritoneal disease-free survival at 18 months. Diagnostic laparoscopy will be performed routinely after 18 months postoperatively in both arms of the study in patients without evidence of disease based on routine follow-up using CT imaging and CEA. Discussion: Adjuvant HIPEC is assumed to reduce the expected 25 % absolute risk of PC in patients with T4 or perforated colon cancer to a risk of 10 %. This reduction is likely to translate into a prolonged overall survival

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Contribution à l'étude de l'expression des gènes de végétaux supérieurs. Analyse des ARNm de racines de Fève et de différentes gliadines du Blé

With the purpose of studying the extent of gene expression during cell differentiation, we have analysed diverse mRNA populations. First the polysomal polyadenylated RNA populations of meristematic, elongating and mature root cells, were analysed and compared by performing homologous and heterologous hybridization kinetics beetwen cDNA and mRNA. The three populations are distributed in three abundance classes (abundant, intermediate and rare). The comparison of the three phenotypes shows that a few abundant sequences can be regarded as meristematic-stage specific. Furthemore, cell elongation is accompagnied by the appearance of new transcripts belonging to the intermediate and rare classes. The same approach was used to investigate the complexity of mRNA isolated from the wheat endosperm. We demonstrate that 60% of the mRNA molecules being translated in the endosperm, corresponding to less than 1% of total diverse sequences, contain the information for approximately 75 superabundant species which would encode most of the seed storage proteins especially gliadins. We have cloned double stranded cDNA corresponding to these sequences and characterized several clones representing each of the three gliadins sub-families. Such clones can be used to determine the amino acid sequence and the secondary structure of these proteins. cDNA probes representing the major gliadins were used to follow the expression of corresponding genes during the development of the wheat seed. The gliadins structural genes will be a valuable substrate for studying the regulatory sequences involved in the control of such a multigenic family activity.Dans le but d'étudier l'étendue de l'expression des gènes au cours de la différenciation cellulaire, nous avons analysé diverses populations d'ARNm. Tout d'abord, les populations d'ARN polyadénylé polysomique de cellules racinaires méristématiques, allongées et matures, ont été analysées et comparées en effectuant des cinétiques d'hybridation homologues et hétérologues entre l'ADNc et l'ARNm. Les trois populations sont réparties en trois classes d'abondance (abondante, intermédiaire et rare). La comparaison des trois phénotypes montre que quelques séquences abondantes peuvent être considérées comme spécifiques du stade méristématique. De plus, l'allongement cellulaire s'accompagne de l'apparition de nouveaux transcriptions appartenant aux classes intermédiaires et rares. La même approche a été utilisée pour étudier la complexité de l'ARNm isolé de l'endosperme de blé. Nous démontrons que 60% des molécules d'ARNm traduites dans l'endosperme, correspondant à moins de 1% du total des séquences diverses, contiennent les informations pour environ 75 espèces surabondantes qui coderaient pour la plupart des protéines de stockage des graines, en particulier les gliadines. Nous avons cloné de l'ADNc double brin correspondant à ces séquences et caractérisé plusieurs clones représentant chacune des trois sous-familles de gliadines. De tels clones peuvent être utilisés pour déterminer la séquence d'acides aminés et la structure secondaire de ces protéines. Des sondes d'ADNc représentant les gliadines majeures ont été utilisées pour suivre l'expression des gènes correspondants au cours du développement de la graine de blé. Les gènes de structure des gliadines seront un substrat précieux pour l'étude des séquences régulatrices impliquées dans le contrôle de l'activité d'une telle famille multigénique

BIOLOGICAL NITROGEN FIXATION AFTER STEM CUTTING IN TUBEROUS PACHYRHIZUS EROSUS

Yam bean (Pachyrhizus erosus) a tuber-forming legume, is particularly suitable for evaluating the potential availability of the plant reserve carbohydrates for nitrogen fixation (Vaillant et al., 1990,1993). The tuber of this species contains soluble sugars and starch which account, respectively, for 32 and 15% of dry weight. Furthermore, tuberous and non-tuberous plants may be avai lable in inductive or noninductive environment (Robin et al., 1990; Sorcnsen et al., 1993). A stem cutting experiment was conducted with tuberous Pachyrhizus erosus in order to evaluate its potential for maintaining N fixation after aphotosynthate stress. This paper report the effects of such a treatment on the Acetylene Reduction Assay (ARA) of nodules and on the concentration of N fixation products in underground organs

Characterization and Complexity of Wheat Developing Endosperm mRNAs

Free and membrane-bound (MB) polysomes and the corresponding polyadenylated RNAs (polyA(+) RNAs) have been isolated from developing wheat endosperm (Triticum aestivum L.) Free and MB poly(A)(+) RNAs, analyzed on isokinetic sucrose gradient with [(3)H]polyuridylic acid [poly(U)] hybridization detection, appear to be 11S to 12S in size with a 7% poly(A) tail for MB RNAs. cDNAs synthesized using both of these mRNA populations in presence of a potent RNase inhibitor (RNasin), have been used for hybridization kinetics experiments. The mean square fitting analysis of the hybridization kinetics between MB cDNA and its template reveals the presence of two abundance classes representing roughly ⅔ and ⅓ of the MB poly(A)(+) RNAs and containing the information for approximately 75 superabundant species (21,000 copies per cell) and 750 intermediate species (530 copies per cell), respectively. The mRNA population extracted from free polysomes is divided into three abundance classes. The first one is composed of superabundant sequences which would correspond to the MB superabundant mRNAs. The free mRNAs consist of about 11,000 diverse sequences, most of them being rare sequences. Heterologous hybridizations of MB cDNAs to free mRNAs have shown that some mRNAs are common to both populations. This could be explained either by a partial contamination or by free polysomes en route to their membrane destination. Contrary to the low number of diverse mRNAs corresponding to the legume seed storage proteins, the wheat endosperm superabundant mRNAs consist of about 75 different sequences which would encode most of the seed storage proteins, especially gliadins

COMPARISON OF THE EFFECTS OF ALLOPURINOL AND NITRATE ON PHOTOSYNTHATE PARTITIONING IN YAM BEAN

The responses of yam bean (Pachyrhizus erosus) to an alteration of ureide metabolism was investigated by 14C02- labeling studies and analysis of photosynthate partitioning and utilization in nodules. Nodulated plants were treated with allopurinol or KN03 and then utilized in a pulse-chace experiment. Plants fertilized with 20 mM KN02 showed and increased amount of total 14C present in leaves relative to control plants and a decreased amount of 14C partitioned to the tubers and nodules. The large decline in nodule total radioactivity due to the 3-fold effect of nitrate on nodule weight, was accompanied by only a 36 % decline in specific radioactivity of nodules. In addition tuber weight per plant declined by 51 % whereas the tuber specific activity was unaffected. Contrary to nitrate, allopurinol treatment had few effects on the photosynthate allocation to nodules and tuber. Due to the inhibition of ureide synthesis; radioactivity in nodules increased as percentage of total plant label, in relation with sucrose and starch accumulation. These effects confirmed the carbohydrate-deprivation hypothesis as a main cause of the inhibition of tuberous legumes nodules by nitrate. ----- Nous avons étudié les réponses du Dolique tubéreux (Pachyrhizus erosus) à une altération du métabolisme des uréides par des expériences de marquage au 14C02 et d'analyse de la distribution et de l'utilisation des photosynthétats dans les nodosités. Des plantes nodulées ont été traitées avec de l'allopurinol ou du nitrate et ensuite utilisées dans des expériences de charge en 14C02 suivies de chasse. Les plantes ayant reçu du KN03 présentent au niveau des feuilles une augmentation du 14C par rapport à des plantes témoins et une diminution du 14C des nodosités et tubercules. La forte baisse de la radioactivité des nodosités due à une diminution d'un - facteur 3 de leur poids, n'est accompagnée que d'une diminution de 36 % de leur radioactivité spécifique. En outre le poids du tubercule diminue de moitié alors que sa radioactivité spécifique ne change pas. Contrairement au nitrate, l'allopurinol n'aque peu d'effets sur l'allocation de photosynthétats aux nodosités et tubercules. En raison de l'inhibition de la synthèse des uréides, la radioactivité augmente dans les nodosités en relation avec une accumulation de saccharose et d'amidon. Ces résultats nous confirment que l'inhibition par le nitrate de l'activité des nodosités d'une légumineuse tubérifère est due essentiellement au manque de photosynthétats