Design of the laboratory script by the students in chemistry practicals: Analysis of water

Comunicació presentada a INTED2018, 12th International Technology, Education and Development Conference. (March 5-7, 2018, Valencia, Spain).The laboratory practices during the Degree in Chemistry are currently designed so that the student must learn and execute a fully developed experimental protocol, previously written up by the professor, which contains all the information and requirements for the correct development of each laboratory session. Under these conditions, students do not need to take any initiative and, consequently, they do not put enough effort in reaching practical abilities with a well-based scientific criterion and do not try to think over the purpose of each lab operation, as well as the reason to use each material and/or each reagent. Thus, with the aim to promote a more active role of the students in their learning process and to improve their autonomy, a new laboratory practices design has been developed in this work, which follows methodologies on project-based cooperative learning: the students have been requested to elaborate themselves the laboratory script by pairs. With this innovative design, we pursue to involve the students in both elaboration and execution steps of the laboratory practicals, and then to increase their attention on them. Besides, the required bibliographic research would improve their knowledge about the studied topic and all aspects about the work at the laboratory. The practicals to-be-developed were related to the study of the physico-chemical quality of natural water, which has a high social relevance

Management of diversity in master classroom: an increasing challenge for science education in valencian universities

Comunicació presentada a INTED2018, 12th International Technology, Education and Development Conference. (March 5-7, 2018, Valencia, Spain).Currently, many foreign students study a Master degree at the Valencian Universities. We can find students, which have immigrated to Spain in the recent years, and then have partially or fully follow the Spanish curricula (High School and/or Grade), and others which have come specifically to study the Master, attracted by the reputation of the Universities and the job and way-of-life offered by the country, and then have achieved their Grade in their countries. This has increased the diversity of the students in the classrooms, related to the ethnic origin, mother language, study practices, background and integration in the society. The present work gives an overview on how students and teacher manage the heterogeneity and diversity in a Master classroom related to chemistry. The term “diversity” is first detailed prior to discussing explicit studies. Different aspects of diversity are stated. The personal experience of the foreign students to adapt to the Spanish courses and environment was investigated. The actions taken by the lecturer to take advantage of diversity and minimize its negative effects were examined. A comparison between the academic results obtained by international and national students is given. Finally, the attention will be focused on language, study practices and background, since these dimensions are frequently discussed in the Valencian context. The implications and opportunities that offer diversity for national but also for international science research are presented

First tests of the applicability of γ\gamma-ray imaging for background discrimination in time-of-flight neutron capture measurements

In this work we explore for the first time the applicability of using $\gamma$-ray imaging in neutron capture measurements to identify and suppress spatially localized background. For this aim, a pinhole gamma camera is assembled, tested and characterized in terms of energy and spatial performance. It consists of a monolithic CeBr$_3$ scintillating crystal coupled to a position-sensitive photomultiplier and readout through an integrated circuit AMIC2GR. The pinhole collimator is a massive carven block of lead. A series of dedicated measurements with calibrated sources and with a neutron beam incident on a $^{197}$Au sample have been carried out at n_TOF, achieving an enhancement of a factor of two in the signal-to-background ratio when selecting only those events coming from the direction of the sample.Comment: Preprint submitted to Nucl. Instr. and Meth.

Who is who at different cameras: people re-identification using depth cameras

This study proposes the concept of bodyprints to perform re-identification of people in surveillance videos. Bodyprints are obtained using calibrated depth-colour cameras such as kinect. The author's results on a database of 40 people show that bodyprints are very robust to changes of pose, point of view and illumination. Potential applications include tracking people with networks of non-overlapping cameras. © 2012 The Institution of Engineering and Technology.The work presented in this paper has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology under the CICYT contract TEVISMART, TEC2009-09146.Albiol Colomer, AJ.; Albiol Colomer, A.; Oliver Moll, J.; Mossi García, JM. (2012). Who is who at different cameras: people re-identification using depth cameras. IET Computer Vision. 6(5):378-387. https://doi.org/10.1049/iet-cvi.2011.0140S37838765Dee, H. M., & Velastin, S. A. (2007). How close are we to solving the problem of automated visual surveillance? Machine Vision and Applications, 19(5-6), 329-343. doi:10.1007/s00138-007-0077-zhttp://www.pointclouds.org/Zhang, Z., & Troje, N. F. (2005). View-independent person identification from human gait. Neurocomputing, 69(1-3), 250-256. doi:10.1016/j.neucom.2005.06.002Bazzani, L., Cristani, M., Perina, A., Farenzena, M., & Murino, V. (2010). Multiple-Shot Person Re-identification by HPE Signature. 2010 20th International Conference on Pattern Recognition. doi:10.1109/icpr.2010.349Doretto, G., Sebastian, T., Tu, P., & Rittscher, J. (2011). Appearance-based person reidentification in camera networks: problem overview and current approaches. Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, 2(2), 127-151. doi:10.1007/s12652-010-0034-yBk, S., Corvee, E., Bremond, F., & Thonnat, M. (2010). Person Re-identification Using Spatial Covariance Regions of Human Body Parts. 2010 7th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Video and Signal Based Surveillance. doi:10.1109/avss.2010.34Da-Jinn Wang, Chao-Ho Chen, Tsong-Yi Chen, & Chien-Tsung Lee. (2009). People Recognition for Entering & Leaving a Video Surveillance Area. 2009 Fourth International Conference on Innovative Computing, Information and Control (ICICIC). doi:10.1109/icicic.2009.293Bird, N. D., Masoud, O., Papanikolopoulos, N. P., & Isaacs, A. (2005). Detection of Loitering Individuals in Public Transportation Areas. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 6(2), 167-177. doi:10.1109/tits.2005.848370Oliveira, I. O. de, & Pio, J. L. de S. (2009). People Reidentification in a Camera Network. 2009 Eighth IEEE International Conference on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing. doi:10.1109/dasc.2009.33Hamdoun, O., Moutarde, F., Stanciulescu, B., & Steux, B. (2008). Person re-identification in multi-camera system by signature based on interest point descriptors collected on short video sequences. 2008 Second ACM/IEEE International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras. doi:10.1109/icdsc.2008.4635689Office, U.H.: ‘i-LIDS multiple camera tracking scenario definition’, 2008)http://www.gpiv.upv.es/kinect_data/http://www.primesense.com/http://www.openni.org/http://opencv.willowgarage.com/http://www.ros.org/http://kinectforwindows.org/Grimaud, M. (1992). New measure of contrast: the dynamics. Image Algebra and Morphological Image Processing III. doi:10.1117/12.60650Beucher, S., and Meyer, F.: ‘The morphological approach to segmentation: the watershed transformation’, (Marcel-Dekker 1992), p. 433–4

Perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in chemically disordered FePd-FeV(100) alloy thin films

We find that the use of V(100) buffer layers on MgO(001) substrates for the epitaxy of FePd binary alloys yields to the formation at intermediate and high deposition temperatures of a FePd¿FeV mixed phase due to strong V diffusion accompanied by a loss of layer continuity and strong increase of its mosaic spread. Contrary to what is usually found in this kind of systems, these mixed phase structures exhibit perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) which is not correlated with the presence of chemical order, almost totally absent in all the fabricated structures, even at deposition temperatures where it is usually obtained with other buffer layers. Thus the observed PMA can be ascribed to the V interdiffusion and the formation of a FeV alloy, being the global sample saturation magnetization also reduced

Virtual synchronous-machine control of voltage-source converters in a low-voltage microgrid

In order to facilitate the further integration of distributed renewable generation into existing power systems, enhanced control schemes for grid-tied power electronic converters are necessary to ensure non-synchronous power sources can provide power and support to the grid. The virtual-synchronous-machine concept proposes the use of control schemes to enable static generators to operate with the dynamics of rotating synchronous generators. In this paper, a control scheme is presented based on the principle of active-power synchronization to regulate the active power of a grid-tied voltage-source converter based on an emulation of the synchronous-machine swing equation. Design of a cascaded inner-loop voltage and resonant current control is presented to regulate the output voltage as specified via the outer-loop virtual-machine control scheme responsible for power regulation. The performance of this control scheme is investigated within the context of microgrid operation for the provision of active and reactive power to the system, and microgrid frequency support. Experimental validation is provided via the use of a 15 kVA three-phase VSC in a 90 kVA 400V microgrid

An Innovative Project to Strengthen and Improve the Knowledge Acquisition in the Degree in Chemistry Using e-Learning Tools

Comunicació presentada a EDULEARN2018, 10th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (July 2-4, 2018, Palma, Mallorca, Spain).The subject "Chemistry II (QU910)" is taught at first academic year (second semester) of the Degree in Chemistry at the University Jaume I. Some of its specific and general competencies are selflearning and writing and oral communication, regarding the main chemical concepts: chemical reactions, elements of the periodic table and calculations of the concentrations of the formed products and the remaining reagents in acid/base, complex, precipitation and redox reactions. We have noticed that 65% of the students have not studied any chemistry subjects (or only one) in High School or Professional Training before undertaking the Degree in Chemistry. The present project aims firstly to help these students to overcome their lack of background, secondly to compare the academic results of the students with and without previous contact with chemistry and finally, to establish actions to solve this prejudicial situation. This objective was reached by the implementation of a zero course, a course including the basic content of chemistry taught in the last years of High School, the month before the beginning of the first academic year. After the first year, students having attended chemistry before university obtained only 0.75/10 points more than the others. The Virtual Classroom, the emails and tutorial played an important role in the achievement of this zero-course

Structural and functional characterization of (110)-oriented epitaxial La2/3Ca1/3MnO3 electrodes and SrTiO3 tunnel barriers

La2/3Ca1/3MnO3 (LCMO) films have been deposited on (110)-oriented SrTiO3 (STO) substrates. X-ray diffraction and high-resolution electron microscopy reveal that the (110) LCMO films are epitaxial and anisotropically in-plane strained, with higher relaxation along the [1¿10] direction than along the [001] direction; x-ray absorption spectroscopy data signaled the existence of a single intermediate Mn3+/4+ 3d-state at the film surface. Their magnetic properties are compared to those of (001) LCMO films grown simultaneously on (001) STO substrates It is found that (110) LCMO films present a higher Curie temperature (TC) and a weaker decay of magnetization when approaching TC than their (001) LCMO counterparts. These improved films have been subsequently covered by nanometric STO layers. Conducting atomic-force experiments have shown that STO layers, as thin as 0.8 nm, grown on top of the (110) LCMO electrode, display good insulating properties. We will show that the electric conductance across (110) STO layers, exponentially depending on the barrier thickness, is tunnel-like. The barrier height in STO (110) is found to be similar to that of STO (001). These results show that the (110) LCMO electrodes can be better electrodes than (001) LCMO for magnetic tunnel junctions, and that (110) STO are suitable insulating barriers

Distinct magnetism in ultrathin epitaxial NiFe2O4 films on MgAl2O4 and SrTiO3single crystalline substrates

Spinel ferrites are being considered for advanced spintronic applications. Here, we report on the magnetic properties of ultrathin (3-37 nm) epitaxial films of NiFe2O4 (NFO) on MgAl2O4 (MAO) and SrTiO3 (STO) single crystalline substrates. It is found that NFO films on STO display superparamagnetic response down to 50 K, whereas films grown on MAO display ferrimagnetic response up to room temperature. Microstructural information indicates that this distinct response can be attributed to the different growth mechanisms of the spinel ferrite on the isostructural MAO substrate (two-dimensional growth) and the perovskite STO (Volmer-Weber three-dimensional growth). We discuss the reasons for this distinct behavior and its relevance for the integration of ferrites in epitaxial heterostructures for tunnel devices