The change towards a teaching methodology based on competences: a case study in a Spanish university

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has promoted the implementation of a teaching methodology based on competences. Drawing on New Institutional Sociology, the present work aims to identify and improve knowledge concerning the factors which are hindering that change in the Spanish university system. This is investigated using a case study based on a Spanish university which is a pioneer in the implementation of a competence-based curriculum. The results show that factors identified and analysed are conditioning the change and causing a ceremonial adoption of the competence-based system by the teaching staff. The results of the study may be of use as a reference and orientation for educators and administrators as well as for the regulators of those countries integrated within the EHEA. The study may prove useful in the analysis of inertia factors present when designing and implementing the policies and measures necessary to achieve a comprehensive teaching methodology; one which incorporates learning and assessment of competences in a real manner

Efficient resources assignment schemes for clustered multithreaded processors

New feature sizes provide larger number of transistors per chip that architects could use in order to further exploit instruction level parallelism. However, these technologies bring also new challenges that complicate conventional monolithic processor designs. On the one hand, exploiting instruction level parallelism is leading us to diminishing returns and therefore exploiting other sources of parallelism like thread level parallelism is needed in order to keep raising performance with a reasonable hardware complexity. On the other hand, clustering architectures have been widely studied in order to reduce the inherent complexity of current monolithic processors. This paper studies the synergies and trade-offs between two concepts, clustering and simultaneous multithreading (SMT), in order to understand the reasons why conventional SMT resource assignment schemes are not so effective in clustered processors. These trade-offs are used to propose a novel resource assignment scheme that gets and average speed up of 17.6% versus Icount improving fairness in 24%.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Frontend frequency-voltage adaptation for optimal energy-delay/sup 2/

In this paper, we present a clustered, multiple-clock domain (CMCD) microarchitecture that combines the benefits of both clustering and globally asynchronous locally synchronous (GALS) designs. We also present a mechanism for dynamically adapting the frequency and voltage of the frontend of the CMCD with the goal to optimize the energy-delay/sup 2/ product (ED2P). Our mechanism has minimal hardware cost, is entirely self-adjustable, does not depend on any thresholds, and achieves results close to optimal. We evaluate it on 16 SPEC 2000 applications and report 17.5% ED2P reduction on average (80% of the upper bound).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A framework for lexical representation

In this paper we present a unification-based lexical platform designed for highly inflected languages (like Roman ones). A formalism is proposed for encoding a lemma-based lexical source, well suited for linguistic generalizations. From this source, we automatically generate an allomorph indexed dictionary, adequate for efficient processing. A set of software tools have been implemented around this formalism: access libraries, morphological processors, etc.Comment: 9 page

Control speculation for energy-efficient next-generation superscalar processors

Conventional front-end designs attempt to maximize the number of "in-flight" instructions in the pipeline. However, branch mispredictions cause the processor to fetch useless instructions that are eventually squashed, increasing front-end energy and issue queue utilization and, thus, wasting around 30 percent of the power dissipated by a processor. Furthermore, processor design trends lead to increasing clock frequencies by lengthening the pipeline, which puts more pressure on the branch prediction engine since branches take longer to be resolved. As next-generation high-performance processors become deeply pipelined, the amount of wasted energy due to misspeculated instructions will go up. The aim of this work is to reduce the energy consumption of misspeculated instructions. We propose selective throttling, which triggers different power-aware techniques (fetch throttling, decode throttling, or disabling the selection logic) depending on the branch prediction confidence level. Results show that combining fetch-bandwidth reduction along with select-logic disabling provides the best performance in terms of overall energy reduction and energy-delay product improvement (14 percent and 10 percent, respectively, for a processor with a 22-stage pipeline and 16 percent and 13 percent, respectively, for a processor with a 42-stage pipeline).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

The Emergence of Native Podcasts in Journalism: Editorial Strategies and Business Opportunities in Latin America

This article analyses the state of the art of podcasting in the new digital landscape as well as the structures, editorial strategies, and business models of native podcasts launched in Latin America over the last few years. To this end, a multiple case study has been made to examine the way new digital outlets are using audio content. This qualitative research is made up of a variety of approaches, such as interviews, online surveys of podcasters, as well as the collection and analysis of secondary data. A specific aim of this comparative study was to include a sample of podcasts produced by thirteen emerging media platforms from eight countries registered in the directory of digital natives conducted by SembraMedia (https://www.sembramedia.org). This is a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing the diversity and quality of Spanish language content by helping digital media entrepreneurs become more sustainable and successful. Results of this exploratory study reveal that native podcasting in Spanish is still expanding and that where the new media are small in scale, they are more oriented to the full exploitation of the narrative and innovative possibilities of this audio format and do not have responding to their target audiences’ needs as their main priority. These new media are finding different ways to become monetised (mainly content production for clients, sponsored content, sponsorship, consulting services, and advertising) and to make a profit

A new gorgonian genus from deep-sea Antarctic waters (Octocorallia, Alcyonacea, Plexauridae)

Mesogligorgia scotiae gen. nov., sp. nov. is described and illustrated from a colony collected in the Scotia Sea, 2,201–2,213 m in depth, on the ANDEEP-I cruise. The new taxon is placed in the family Plexauridae because of: 1) the presence of a horny axis with a crosschambered central core and numerous loculi, 2) retractile polyps in calyces with distinct spicular components, and 3) armed polyps with large sclerites with a poorlydeveloped collaret and eight well-developed points. The irregularly distributed sclerites running along the axis, into a thick mesogloeal coenenchyme, and the elongated spindles with irregular ends are the most distinctive characters of the newly proposed genus

The Enemy Within’: Liminality, Otherness and Neo-Victorian Gypsies

Gypsies, or Romanies, are a collective against whom, for centuries, white Europeans have posited a series of racial prejudices and stereotypes. Qualified alternatively as criminals, child kidnappers, or tricksters, gypsies have long been portrayed in British literature as liminal individuals, positively perceived as linked to nature and the pastoral ancestry of European populations, on the one hand, but contrary to the values of modernity, on the other (Nord 3-4), as well as often linked to Eastern mysticism in their usual representation as fortune-tellers or palm-readers. Nineteenth-century literature exhibited such preoccupations with the figure of the gypsy and its liminality and otherness, as it is illustrated in works such as Jane Austen’s Emma (1816), George Elliot's Silas Marner (1861), Arthur Conan Doyle's “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” (1891), or Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). This paper aims at analysing the renewed presence of the gypsy in neo-Victorianism, focusing in part on Guy Ritchie's film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) but especially on Sara Stockbridge's neo-Victorian novel Cross my Palm (2011), in which the central character Rose, a gypsy fortune-teller who entertains high-class Victorian ladies in palm-reading soirées, gets entangled in a plot of murder, treason and deceit evocative of Victorian sensation novels in the 1860s and 1870s. Setting off from the idea that neo-Victorian fiction rearticulates repressed voices from “silenced other Victorians” (Voigts-Virchow 115), this paper will trace how gypsy characters, whose presence in Victorian fiction was peripheral, spectral and at times invisible, are brought to the very centre of the narration in neo-Victorian fiction. Stockbridge’s Cross my Palm (2011) provides a spatialising perspective on gypsiness in Victorian London, using the tension between the Victorian imperial centre and its suburban periphery to illustrate gypsies’ persistent dislocated status, especially applied to Romanies’ stereotypical image as nomadic people and the ensuing difficulty to pinpoint their identity. Additionally, Stockbridge’s novel provides a revision of the usual trope of gypsies associated to child kidnapping, or in Jodie Matthews’ words, “the ‘Gypsy’ child-stealing myth” (Matthews 137) and its relation to (neo)Victorian conceptions of the family. Through a close analysis of the above mentioned texts, and paying particular attention to the topography of Victorian London as well nineteenth-century Europe, I will provide a reading of gypsiness in contemporary neo-Victorian literature using as a backdrop racialised representations of the gypsy collective and their enduring representation as alien figures which keep permeating contemporary European culture and society, as it is attested by events such as the harsh dismantlement of Romani camps in 2010 in France or the pervading accusations of child-kidnapping to gypsies in different legal or criminal cases.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech