A lecturer profile categorization for evaluating education practice quality

© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.This research-to-practice work in progress paper is focused on creating a categorization of lecturers in order to define quality in their education practice. The reason for this work is that we found that our faculty perceived the time devoted to teaching as something that had no real impact on the progress of their academic careers, whereas the real impact consists of papers published and grants obtained. Our lecturers require from the university an institutional policy that defines strategies and guidelines to favour a quality education, which in turn requires the definition of a teaching evaluation system. However, a single evaluation system cannot be implemented for all teachers. Different teaching profiles must be defined and the lecturers must be evaluated in accordance with the profiles to which they belong. In this paper, a categorization of four lecturer profiles is presented.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Capacidad portante de una técnica histórica: la bóveda tabicada: estudio por medio de experimentación y análisis estructural

Aunque el interés en la bóveda tabicada está creciendo en todo el mundo, tanto en el ámbito académico como en el profesional, quedan muchas incógnitas por resolver en cuanto a su comportamiento estructural. A pesar de la gran cantidad de publicaciones escritas sobre este tema, sigue abierto hoy un debate académico sobre el método de análisis de estas construcciones para su evaluación estructural. La investigación que se presenta a continuación, plantea el análisis de seis bóvedas de ladrillo hueco simple. Cada bóveda tiene una variable incorporada en su altura (de 20 a 30 cm), en el número de capas (2 o 3) y en la existencia o no de lengüetas rigidizadoras. Las bóvedas serán evaluadas por métodos de equilibrio (análisis gráfico y cinemático) y por el Método de los Elementos Finitos (análisis lineal y no lineal y con macro- y micro-elementos), utilizando cargas uniformes y asimétricas. Al mismo tiempo, las seis bóvedas se construirán para llevar a cabo pruebas de carga sobre ellas. El material empleado se estudiará en el Laboratorio de Materiales para recoger los datos de sus características físicas y mecánicas, e introducirlo así en los modelos de cálculo. La construcción de las bóvedas, con el conocimiento exacto de su geometría, las condiciones de contorno y el material, permite que los modelos virtuales sean muy fieles a la realidad, lo que rara vez ocurre cuando nos enfrentamos a la restauración de bóvedas. La comparación de los resultados se ha hecho con dos objetivos: 1- Evaluar la idoneidad de los métodos analíticos utilizados. Para comprobar su precisión en la predicción del comportamiento real de las bóvedas y revelar la información que cada uno ofrece. 2- Evaluar la contribución de las variables seleccionadas para la estabilidad de la bóveda.Although the interest in tile vaulting is growing worldwide both in the academic and professional field, there are not few unknowns that remain unresolved regarding their structural behavior. Despite the publications concerning this issue, there is still an open debate in the academic domain about the treatment of these vaults in their structural assessment and the decision of the structural analysis method. My research presents the analysis of six tile barrel vaults. Each vault has a variable incorporated -height (20-30 cm), number of layers (2-3) or existence of buttressing walls- or a combination of variables, which make it different. The vaults are assessed by equilibrium methods and finite element method, using uniform and asymmetric loads. At the same time, the six vaults are built to perform load tests on them and the material is studied in the laboratory to collect the data of its physical and mechanical features to be introduced in the calculation models. The construction of the vaults with the exact knowledge of its geometry, boundary conditions and material allows virtual models to be remarkably true to life, which rarely happens when we face the restoration of these vaults. The comparison of the results is made with two objectives: 1- To assess the suitability of the analytical methods used. To check its accuracy in predicting the real behavior of the vaults and to reveal the information that each provides. 2- To evaluate the contribution of the selected variables to the stability of the vault. The introduction of these variables keeping the other parameters constant, allows the comparison of results with the corresponding knowledge of the contribution of the parameter that has been varied

Holographic interference in atomic photoionization from a semiclassical standpoint

A theoretical study of the interference pattern imprinted on the doubly differential momentum distribution of the photoelectron due to atomic ionization induced by a short laser pulse is developed from a semiclassical standpoint. We use the semiclassical two-step model of Shvetsov-Shilovski et al. [Phys. Rev. A 94, 013415 (2016)2469-992610.1103/PhysRevA.94.013415] to elucidate the nature of the holographic structure. Three different types of trajectories are characterized during the ionization process by a single-cycle pulse with three different types of interferences. We show that the holographic interference arises from the ionization yield only during the first half cycle of the pulse, whereas the coherent superposition of electron trajectories during the first half cycle and the second half cycle gives rise to two other kinds of intracycle interference. Although the picture of interference of a reference beam and a signal beam is adequate, we show that our results for the formation of the holographic pattern agree with the glory rescattering theory of Xia et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 143201 (2018)10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.143201]. We probe the two-step semiclassical model by comparing it to the numerical results of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation.Fil: López, Sebastián David. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciónes Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio. - Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio; ArgentinaFil: Arbo, Diego. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciónes Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio. - Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio; Argentin

Do differences exist between how Engineering and non-Engineering lecturers perceive the importance of teaching competences?

A survey we conducted a few years ago concluded that higher education teachers should have the following competences: interpersonal, methodological, communicative, planning and management, teamwork and innovation. The authors of this work belong to the Institute in charge of the lecturer-training program at our university, which is basically a technical one. In order to improve our training program, we pose the following research questions: What are the competences that lecturers perceive as less important. Do our university teachers (engineering teachers) have a different perception of the importance of the different lecturer competences compared to that of other teachers? The results we present in this paper come from a survey that was sent to a total of 15,209 teachers belonging to public universities in our community, and we received a total of 2,347 valid answers. As a result of this study, we found which competences are those with a significantly bad rating by lecturers in general, and our lecturers in particular. We analyze what measures should be introduce into our teacher training program.Postprint (author's final draft

Scattering theory of nonlinear thermoelectric transport

We investigate nonlinear transport properties of quantum conductors in response to both electrical and thermal driving forces. Within scattering approach, we determine the nonequilibrium screening potential of a generic mesoscopic system and find that its response is dictated by particle and entropic injectivities which describe the charge and entropy transfer during transport. We illustrate our model analyzing the voltage and thermal rectification of a resonant tunneling barrier. Importantly, we discuss interaction induced contributions to the thermopower in the presence of large temperature differences.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; slightly shortened version to fulfill the journal's requirement

Empowering citizens' cognition and decision making in smart sustainable cities

© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Advances in Internet technologies have made it possible to gather, store, and process large quantities of data, often in real time. When considering smart and sustainable cities, this big data generates useful information and insights to citizens, service providers, and policy makers. Transforming this data into knowledge allows for empowering citizens' cognition as well as supporting decision-making routines. However, several operational and computing issues need to be taken into account: 1) efficient data description and visualization, 2) forecasting citizens behavior, and 3) supporting decision making with intelligent algorithms. This paper identifies several challenges associated with the use of data analytics in smart sustainable cities and proposes the use of hybrid simulation-optimization and machine learning algorithms as an effective approach to empower citizens' cognition and decision making in such ecosystemsPeer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Inflation persistence and optimal monetary policy in the euro area

In this paper we present supporting evidence of the existence of heterogeneity in inflation dynamics across euro area countries. Based on the estimation of New Phillips Curves for five major countries of the euro area, we find that there is significant inertial (backward looking) behavior in inflation in four of them, while inflation in Germany has a dominat forward looking component. We then present an optimizing agent model for the area emphasizing the hetergeneity in inflation persistence across regions. Allowing for such a backward looking component will affect the evaluation of the degree of nominal rigidities relevant for the monetary policy design. We explore the welfare implications of this circumstance by comparing the adjustment of the economies and the area as a whole in response to terms-of-trade shocks under four monetary policy rules: fully optimal, optimal inflation targeting, HICP targeting and output gap stabilization. JEL Classification: E52, E58currency areas, Inflation Dynamics, optimal monetary policy

The value of coskewness in mutual fund performance evaluation.

Recent asset pricing studies demonstrate the relevance of incorporating coskewness in asset pricing models, and illustrate how this component helps to explain the time variation of ex-ante market risk premiums. This paper analyzes the role of coskewness in mutual fund performance evaluation and finds evidence that adding a coskewness factor is economically and statistically significant. It documents that coskewness is sometimes managed and shows persistence of the coskewness policy over time. One of the most striking results is that many negative (positive) alpha funds, measured relative to the CAPM risk adjustments, would be reclassified as positive (negative) alpha funds using a model with coskewness. Therefore, performance ranking based on risk-adjusted returns without considering coskewness could generate an erroneous classification. Moreover, some fund characteristics, such as turnover ratio or category, are related to the likelihood of managing coskewness.Coskewness; Mutual funds; Performance measures;