In-service training on teaching in the University of Granada: an answer to the teaching needs of academics

International Conference on Education. Bilbao, 18-20 de julio de 2013In the last years, Spanish universities have given great importance to in-service training focusing mainly on the quality of teaching. This increase, which is a clear sign of the effort done by Spanish universities to improve the professional competence of academics, must be accompanied by asp ects such as the evaluation of the given training/courses, the inclusion of different elements to be assessed, i.e. the lecturers, contents, structure of the course, number of participants, degree of satisfaction of the participants with the received training, the impact of the course on the development of teaching competences and the impact of the new skills on the teaching practice, considering, mainly, the teaching of the participants. This paper analyses the needs expressed by academics as well as the offer proposed by the University of Granada to those needs. A survey conducted in 2012/13 of more than 500 academics is used to gather informatio

Comenzar como docente universitario ¿un proceso intuitivo o una experiencia formativa y profesionalizadora?

La transformación actual que experimenta la Universidad Española está llevando a cuestionar la tradición, durante largo tiempo aceptada, de que la actividad que marca la excelencia del profesorado universitario es la investigación, y no así la docencia. Esta tendencia, enraizada aún en la esfera universitaria, ha ido acompañada de una devaluación de las tareas/competencias más vinculadas con el ejercicio de la docencia propiamente dicha. Por otra parte, y en esta misma línea, se ha sobreentendido que para ser un buen docente basta con dominar la materia o tener experiencia. Esta devaluación de la docencia, unido a la falta de compromiso institucional con la formación docente del profesorado, la debilidad epistemológica desde la que se concibe y el impacto de todo ello en la cultura profesional, han colocado al profesorado universitario en una posición de debilidad y fragilidad desde la que resulta complejo hacer frente a los desafíos que supone la adopción del nuevo modelo centrado en el aprendizaje que se propone desde el Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior

Análisis de emisión de volátiles en Arabidopsis thaliana : efecto de la sobreexpresión del gen CrDOF

Los compuestos orgánicos volátiles (COVs) son el interfaz de interacción entre plantas y el resto de los organismos vivos. Su síntesis puede ser sistémica, relacionada con un órgano como las flores o provocada como repuesta a estrés biótico y abiótico. Presentan aplicaciones agrícolas que van desde la búsqueda de métodos sostenibles para el control de plagas y defensa de las plantas, a la producción de sabores y fragancias. Se ha estudiado el efecto de la sobreexpresión del gen CYCLING DOF FACTOR (CDF) de Chlamydomonas reinhadtii (CrDOF) en Arabidopsis sobre la emisión de volátiles de hoja. Se ha analizado la producción de volátiles, por cromatografía de gasesespectrometría de masas (GC-MS), de 4 líneas de plantas de Arabidopsis thaliana del ecotipo Columbia (Col-0), de las cuales 3 eran líneas independientes en las que se había sobreexpresado el gen CrDOF y la restante era una variedad silvestre. Los volátiles mayoritarios encontrados y en los que se ha centrado este trabajo han sido: Hexanal, (E)-2-Hexenal, Benzaldehído, β-Cyclocitral, β- Ionona y Dihydroactinidiolide. Éstos tienden a emitirse en niveles superiores en las plantas que sobreexpresan CrDOF. Dicho aumento es estadísticamente significativo en diferentes horas del día. De hecho, las diferencias tienden a observarse en las horas diurnas. Los cambios observados, aunque no son homogéneos, permiten concluir que el gen CrDOF activa la emisión de volátiles en hojas de Arabidopsis.Escuela Técnica superior de Ingeniería AgronómicaUniversidad Politécnica de Cartagen

H-P2PSIP: Interconnection of P2PSIP domains for Global Multimedia Services based on a Hierarchical DHT Overlay Network

The IETF P2PSIP WG is currently standardising a protocol for distributed mul- timedia services combining the media session functionality of SIP and the decentralised distribution and localisation of resources in peer-to-peer networks. The current P2PSIP scenarios only consider the infrastructure for the connectivity inside a single domain. This paper proposes an extension of the current work to a hierarchical multi-domain scenario: a two level hierarchical peer-to-peer overlay architecture for the interconnection of different P2PSIP domains. The purpose is the creation of a global decentralised multimedia services in enterprises, ISPs or community networks. We present a study of the Routing Performance and Routing State in the particular case of a two-level Distributed Hash Table Hierarchy that uses Kademlia. The study is supported by an analytical model and its validation by a peer-to-peer simulator.En prens

A simulation-based study of TCP performance over an Optical Burst Switched backbone with 802.11 access

13th Open European Summer School and IFIP TC6.6 Workshop, EUNICE 2007, Enschede, The Netherlands, July 18-20, 2007. ProceedingsThe combined effect of optical and wireless subnetworks in an hypothetical future scenario where core networks have evolved to the still prototype Optical Burst Switching (OBS) technology is an open research issue. This paper studies this hybrid scenario, in the particular case of 802.11 access, by reviewing the key aspects of OBS and 802.11 with an impact on the performance of TCP, and makes a simulation-based assessment of the relative influence of both technologies over the effective end-to-end behaviour of TCP.This work has been partly supported by the EU under the IST e-Photon/One+ project (FP6-IST-027497) and by the Spanish CAPITAL project (TEC2004-05622-C04-03).Publicad

Research challenges on energy-efficient networking design

The networking research community has started looking into key questions on energy efficiency of communication networks. The European Commission activated under the FP7 the TREND Network of Excellence with the goal of establishing the integration of the EU research community in green networking with a long perspective to consolidate the European leadership in the field. TREND integrates the activities of major European players in networking, including manufacturers, operators, research centers, to quantitatively assess the energy demand of current and future telecom infrastructures, and to design energy-efficient, scalable and sustainable future networks. This paper describes the main results of the TREND research community and concludes with a roadmap describing the next steps for standardization, regulation agencies and research in both academia and industry.The research leading to these results has received funding from the EU 7th Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under Grant Agreement No. 257740 (NoE TREND)

A collaborative P2P Scheme for NAT Traversal Server discovery based on topological information

In the current Internet picture more than 70% of the hosts are located behind Network Address Translators (NATs). This is not a problem for the client/server paradigm. However, the Internet has evolved, and nowadays the largest portion of the traffic is due to peer-to-peer (p2p) applications. This scenario presents an important challenge: two hosts behind NATs (NATed hosts) cannot establish direct communications. The easiest way to solve this problem is by using a third entity, called Relay, that forwards the traffic between the NATed hosts. Although many efforts have been devoted to avoid the use of Relays, they are still needed in many situations. Hence, the selection of a suitable Relay becomes critical to many p2p applications. In this paper, we propose the Gradual Proximity Algorithm (GPA): a simple algorithm that guarantees the selection of a topologically close-by Relay. We present a measurement-based analysis, showing that the GPA minimizes both the delay of the relayed communication and the transit traffic generated by the Relay, being a QoS-aware and ISP-friendly solution. Furthermore, the paper presents the Peer-to-Peer NAT Traversal Architecture (P2P-NTA), which is a global, distributed and collaborative solution, based on the GPA. This architecture addresses the Relay discovery/selection problem. We have performed large-scale simulations based on real measurements, which validate our proposal. The results demonstrate that the P2P-NTA performs similarly to direct communications with reasonably large deployments of p2p applications. In fact, only 5% of the communications experience an extra delay that may degrade the QoS due to the use of Relays. Furthermore, the amount of extra transit traffic generated is only 6%. We also show that the P2P-NTA largely outperforms other proposals, where the QoS degradation affects up to more than 50% of the communications, and the extra traffic generated goes beyond 80%.This work has been partially funded by the Grants MEDIANET (S2009/TIC-1466) from the Regional Government of Madrid and CON-PARTE (TEC2007-67966-C03- 03) by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain.Publicad

El enfoque por competencias en el contexto universitario español: la visión del profesorado

La adopción del enfoque basado en competencias comporta un cambio importante desde el punto de vista pedagógico y didáctico que afecta directamente a la formación universitaria y a la práctica docente. Sin embargo, los esfuerzos institucionales desplegados para favorecer los cambios estructurales han sido superiores a la atención deparada al cambio cultural y pedagógico que afecta al profesorado. Por esta razón, y con el propósito de ampliar los espacios de reflexión y valorar los progresos alcanzados en estos últimos años, hemos profundizado en las percepciones que tienen los docentes de distintas universidades españolas sobre el enfoque por competencias. El estudio, de corte cualitativo, se ha basado en grupos de discusión como técnica de recogida de datos. En él han participado 43 profesores de seis universidades españolas públicas. La información resultante de las grabaciones ha sido transcrita y categorizada siguiendo un proceso deductivo-inductivo. La información proporcionada ha sido estructurada en torno a 36 subcategorías, agrupadas en 5 categorías. El análisis de resultados permite concluir que el profesorado universitario tiene dificultades para incorporar las competencias transversales al currículum académico, tiende a mostrarse pesimista respecto al impacto del enfoque por competencias en la mejora de la práctica educativa y considera que la incorporación exitosa de este enfoque pasa por profundizar en la actual reforma educativa, adoptar perspectivas más holísticas y atender a los aspectos culturales del cambio.The adoption of the competency-based approach means an important change from the pedagogic and didactic point of view that directly affects university education and teaching practice. However, there is a certain tendency to admit that the institutional efforts made to stimulate structural changes have been superior to the attention given to the pedagogical and cultural change that affect teachers. For this reason and with the aim to expand the areas of critical thinking and value the improvement achieved in recent years, and to make visible the complications detected, our purpose is to delve into the perceptions that teachers of different Spanish universities have about the competency-based approach. The qualitative study was based on discussion groups as a data collection technique. Forty-three professors from six public Spanish universities had participated in the study. The recorded information given has been transcribed and categorized following a deductive- inductive process. The information has been structured around thirty-six subcategories and grouped in five categories. The analysis of the results concluded that the university professors have difficulties with incorporating the transversal competencies into the academic curriculum. They tend to be pessimistic regarding the impact of the competency-based approach in improving educational practice and consider that the successful incorporation of this approach requires deepening the current educational reform, adopting more holistic perspectives and addressing the cultural aspects of change

Met signaling in cardiomyocytes is required for normal cardiac function in adult mice

et al.Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) and its receptor, Met, are key determinants of distinct developmental processes. Although HGF exerts cardio-protective effects in a number of cardiac pathologies, it remains unknown whether HGF/Met signaling is essential for myocardial development and/or physiological function in adulthood. We therefore investigated the requirement of HGF/Met signaling in cardiomyocyte for embryonic and postnatal heart development and function by conditional inactivation of the Met receptor in cardiomyocytes using the Cre-α-MHC mouse line (referred to as α-MHCMet-KO). Although α-MHCMet-KO mice showed normal heart development and were viable and fertile, by 6. months of age, males developed cardiomyocyte hypertrophy, associated with interstitial fibrosis. A significant upregulation in markers of myocardial damage, such as β-MHC and ANF, was also observed. By the age of 9. months, α-MHCMet-KO males displayed systolic cardiac dysfunction. Mechanistically, we provide evidence of a severe imbalance in the antioxidant defenses in α-MHCMet-KO hearts involving a reduced expression and activity of catalase and superoxide dismutase, with consequent reactive oxygen species accumulation. Similar anomalies were observed in females, although with a slower kinetics. We also found that Met signaling down-regulation leads to an increase in TGF-β production and a decrease in p38MAPK activation, which may contribute to phenotypic alterations displayed in α-MHCMet-KO mice. Consistently, we show that HGF acts through p38α to upregulate antioxidant enzymes in cardiomyocytes. Our results highlight that HGF/Met signaling in cardiomyocytes plays a physiological cardio-protective role in adult mice by acting as an endogenous regulator of heart function through oxidative stress control.This work was supported by grants: (AFM)-13683 from Association Française contre les myopathies, France, FIS-PI07/0071 and SAF-2010-20198-C02-01 from Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain, and grants from Comunidad de Madrid/Universidad Complutense de Madrid: CAM/UCM 920384 and UCM-BSCH 920384, Spain to A.P.; BFU2011-25304 from Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain, RD12/0019/0022 (TerCel network, ISCIII), P11-CTS-7564 (Junta de Andalucía) to R. M.-Ch.; FRM (Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale), Fondation Bettencourt-Schueller, and Association Française contre les myopathies (AFM) to F.M.; SAF2010-15881 from Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain, and RD012/0021 (RedinRen network, ISCIII), and GR100 (Junta de Castilla y León) to J.M. L.-N. The cardiovascular phenotyping unit of the University of Salamanca, including the telemetry equipment, has been acquired with the support of the European Regional Development Funds (FEDER).Peer Reviewe

“Education Network” a new way to teach Chemistry

The complexity of chemistry has implications for the teaching of chemistry. That chemistry is a very complex subject. The majority of the students at University think that chemistry is a difficult discipline and they have difficulty in understanding the concepts. Moreover, students' interest in chemistry decreases the first year at university. The reason for this decrease might be that the contents of chemistry laboratory classes are boring, out of date and lacking of dynamism that students experience through visual media tools. For these reasons, new programs and methodologies should be developed. Those are based on making chemistry relevant through problem solving and collaborative learning hold promise for reforming chemistry education. It is about an education according to circumstances, which is adapted to context and virtual behaviour of people. It's time to CRUSH boredom by transforming your classroom into an Escape Room adventure. School-based escape games are a great teaching tool. The students while playing, learn. The most important point is that they won’t realize they’re doing both at the same time. In this work, an educational gamification experience based on the escape room concept was developed. The first (Do It Yourself) DIY Escape Room was built the year before at Mechanical Engineer Degree started, that took more than three weeks of work. It was presented to other professors to the same subject at different degrees. That DIY Escape Room was modified and adapted to each group. Each professor changed the clues, problems and so on in order to orientate the topic as much as possible to their students.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech