Customer Orientation in Family Businesses

The purpose of this article is to investigate customer orientation of service employees (COSE) in family businesses. This study elaborates on the perception and importance of COSE in family-owned companies. The paper also proposes new consequences of COSE in the context of family business. The research is based on a qualitative study comprised of 13 interviews conducted on senior managers in family firms. The results are analysed using NVivo 11. This investigation confirms the relevance of the COSE construct in family businesses and the role of family influence over it. New consequences are elicited, including differentiation, customer experience, and customer well-being. The results show that practitioners consider COSE as a key element for success. This study sheds light on how COSE can be applied in a family business in order to enhance customer experience. This study expands on the potential of COSE with the use of family businesses for the first time and introduces new consequences from the original model

Els Darrers capítols del debat al voltant del mapa immutable de Galícia : qüestions actuals d'organització territorial gallega

Els canvis esdevinguts en l'estructura territorial de Galícia les darreres dècades afegeixen pressió al debat sobre l'organització del territori gallec. Es tracta d'una discussió que té el seu origen en el galleguisme històric, el qual es va oposar al model liberal basat en municipis i províncies, imposat al llarg del segle xix. L'article examina l'evolució del debat sobre l'organització territorial de Galícia durant la VII Legislatura (2005-2009), un període en què s'ha produït una efervescència política i acadèmica sobre la necessitat d'una nova organització territorial. Tanmateix, i com a balanç de la legislatura, es pot concloure que no s'ha assolit una traducció pràctica de totes aquestes polèmiques, en part per la impossibilitat de pactar un nou Estatut entre les tres forces polítiques presents a la cambra parlamentària. Per tant, l'organització territorial liberal roman inalterada, un model que dura ja fa gairebé dos segles.The changes which occurred in the spatial structure of Galicia in recent decades add extra pressure to the discussion about local and regional governments within the country. This is a discussion that finds its roots in historical Galicianism. Galicianism was opposed to the Spanish liberal framework based on municipalities and provinces that was imposed throughout the 19th century. The paper considers the development of the discussion about local and regional governments in Galicia during the 7th Galician Parliament Legislative Session (2005-2009). This period has been characterised by the academic and political turmoil triggered by the need for a new map and administration tiers within Galicia, both locally and regionally. However, if we were to appraise the Legislative Session, it could be concluded that practical attempts to address all these controversies have not been attained. This is partly because of the impossibility of reaching an agreement between the three political parties with representation in the Galician Parliament on a new Statute of Autonomy (Galicia Constitution). Therefore, the liberal map and administrations remain unchanged. This framework has remained in force for more than nearly two centuries.Los cambios sucedidos en la estructura territorial de Galicia en las últimas décadas añaden presión al debate sobre la organización del territorio gallego. Se trata de una discusión que tiene su origen en el galleguismo histórico, que se opuso al modelo liberal basado en municipios y provincias, impuesto a lo largo del siglo xix. El artículo examina la evolución del debate sobre la organización territorial de Galicia durante la VII Legislatura (2005-2009), un período en el que se ha producido una efervescencia política y académica sobre la necesidad de una nueva organización territorial. Sin embargo, y como balance de la legislatura, se puede concluir que no se ha alcanzado una traducción práctica de todas estas polémicas, en parte por la imposibilidad de pactar un nuevo Estatuto entre las tres fuerzas políticas presentes en la cámara parlamentaria. Por lo tanto, la organización territorial liberal permanece inalterada, un modelo que dura ya hace casi dos siglos

The First Year of an Undergraduate Service Learning Partnership to Enhance Engineering Education and Elementary Pre-Service Teacher Education

This IUSE project was designed to address three major challenges faced by undergraduate engineering students (UES) and pre-service teachers (PSTs): 1) retention for UESs after the first year, and continued engagement when they reach more difficult concepts, 2) to prepare PSTs to teach engineering, which is a requirement in the Next Generation Science Standards as well as many state level standards of learning, and 3) to prepare both groups of students to communicate and collaborate in a multi-disciplinary context, which is a necessary skill in their future places of work. This project was implemented in three pairs of classes: 1) an introductory mechanical engineering class, fulfilling a general education requirement for information literacy and a foundations class in education, 2) fluid mechanics in mechanical engineering technology and a science methods class in education, and 3) mechanical engineering courses requiring programming (e.g., computational methods and robotics) with an educational technology class. All collaborations taught elementary level students (4th or 5th grade). For collaborations 1 and 2, the elementary students came to campus for a field trip where they toured engineering labs and participated in a one-hour lesson taught by both the UESs and PSTs. In collaboration 3, the UESs and PSTs worked with the upper-elementary students in their school during an afterschool club. In collaborations 1 and 2, students were assigned to teams and worked remotely on some parts of the project. A collaboration tool, built in Google Sites and Google Drive, was used to facilitate the project completion. The collaboration tool includes a team repository for all the project documents and templates. Students in collaboration 3 worked together directly during class time on smaller assignments. In all three collaborations lesson plans were implemented using the BSCS 5E instructional model, which was aligned to the engineering design process. Instruments were developed to assess knowledge in collaborations 1 (engineering design process) and 3 (computational thinking), while in collaboration 2, knowledge was assessed with questions from the fundamentals of engineering exam and a science content assessment. Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME) was also used in all 3 collaborations to assess teamwork across the collaborations. Finally, each student wrote a reflection on their experiences, which was used to qualitatively assess the project impact. The results from the first full semester of implementation have led us to improvements in the implementation and instrument refinement for year 2

Análisis económico de la potencialidad del sector aeronáutico sevillano

Ante la elección de Sevilla como núcleo de desarrollo de determinados proyectos de la industria aeronáutica, como la construcción del superjumbo civil A380 o el establecimiento del centro de ensamblaje y entrega del avión de transporte militar A400M, se plantea el reto de convertir a su provincia en el tercer centro industrial del sector aeronáutico en Europa, junto a Toulouse y Hamburgo. Por ello, el objetivo principal de esta ponencia es mostrar la potencialidad de dichos proyectos aeronáuticos en la provincia de Sevilla, analizando sus posibilidades en cuanto a la generación de empleo se refiere. Partimos de la situación del sector aeronáutico a nivel mundial y, sobre todo, europeo, para descender después a la industria local, destacando la situación de oligopolio existente en cuanto a los fabricantes del producto final, así como la competencia presente en las empresas auxiliares. Por último, mediante la metodología input-output, se cuantifica en cifras el valor añadido que generaría en la provincia de Sevilla, el desarrollo de los proyectos aeronáuticos citados

Bionemo: molecular information on biodegradation metabolism

Bionemo (http://bionemo.bioinfo.cnio.es) stores manually curated information about proteins and genes directly implicated in the Biodegradation metabolism. When possible, the database includes information on sequence, domains and structures for proteins; and sequence, regulatory elements and transcription units for genes. Thus, Bionemo is a unique resource that complements other biodegradation databases such as the University of Minessota Biocatalysis/Biodegradation Database, or Metarouter, which focus more on the biochemical aspects of biodegradation than in the nature of the biomolecules carrying out the reactions. Bionemo has been built by manually associating sequences database entries to biodegradation reactions, using the information extracted from published articles. Information on transcription units and their regulation was also extracted from the literature for biodegradation genes, and linked to the underlying biochemical network. In its current version, Bionemo contains sequence information for 324 reactions and transcription regulation information for more than 100 promoters and 100 transcription factors. The information in the Bionemo database is available via a web server and the full database is also downloadable as a PostgresSQL dump. To facilitate the programmatic use of the information contained in the database, an object-oriented Perl API is also provided

COVID-19 as a Magnifying Glass: Exploring the Importance of Relationships as Education Students Learn and Teach Robotics via Zoom

Ed+gineering, an NSF-funded program, adapted hands-on robotics instruction for online delivery in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This qualitative multiple case study shares the experiences of participating education students in spring 2021 as they collaborated virtually with engineering students and fifth graders to engineer bioinspired robots in an afterschool technology club adapted to be virtual. The online context reduced the education students’ interactions with people other than the engineering students and fifth graders on their team and thus positioned COVID-19 as a metaphorical magnifying glass amplifying the critical role that these relationships played in influencing the project’s outcomes. Through analyzing short-answer reflections, the researchers observed patterns in the ways the education students’ interactions with their engineering and fifth-grade partners shaped their teaching self-efficacy and intention to integrate engineering and coding. Education students appeared to gain the most self-efficacy from feeling supported by, but not dependent upon, their engineering partners, and from adopting engineering-teaching roles. Satisfying interactions with fifth graders and successful production of functioning robots appeared to enhance education students’ intention to integrate engineering and coding into their future instruction. Education students reported gaining self-efficacy for both engineering and coding during the experience, but were more likely to report feeling confident about teaching engineering than teaching coding at the project’s end. Implications and lessons learned are shared, which may be particularly relevant for educators who prepare elementary education students to teach engineering in K-6 settings

Enhancing Teamwork Skills Through an Interdisciplinary Engineering Service Learning Collaboration

The purpose of this research paper is to explore whether participation in an interdisciplinary collaboration program partnering Preservice Teachers (PST) and Undergraduate Engineering Students (UES) results in an increase in teamwork effectiveness. The interdisciplinary collaboration was designed as a service-learning project within existing undergraduate programs that included the development and delivery of engineering content to a K-12 audience. The collaborations were integrated into existing courses in two colleges, engineering and education. The Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale (BARS) version of the Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME) was used midway and at the end of the project to evaluate teamwork effectiveness. Results of the analysis indicated that both PST and UES were rated significantly higher in team-member effectiveness at the end of the project across four of five factors: interacting with team members, keeping the team on track, expecting quality, and having relevant knowledge, skills and abilities. The gain in the teamwork effectiveness did not differ across majors, with both UES and PST showing similar gains. A noticeable positive increase in student attitudes towards the task was also observed between the midway and the end of the project. Findings from this study provide some preliminary evidence that an innovative interdisciplinary service learning experience partnering engineering and education students was conducive to the development of teamwork skills

Hybrid MSRM-Based Deep Learning and Multitemporal Sentinel 2-Based Machine Learning Algorithm Detects Near 10k Archaeological Tumuli in North-Western Iberia

This paper presents an algorithm for large-scale automatic detection of burial mounds, one of the most common types of archaeological sites globally, using LiDAR and multispectral satellite data. Although previous attempts were able to detect a good proportion of the known mounds in a given area, they still presented high numbers of false positives and low precision values. Our proposed approach combines random forest for soil classification using multitemporal multispectral Sentinel-2 data and a deep learning model using YOLOv3 on LiDAR data previously pre-processed using a multi–scale relief model. The resulting algorithm significantly improves previous attempts with a detection rate of 89.5%, an average precision of 66.75%, a recall value of 0.64 and a precision of 0.97, which allowed, with a small set of training data, the detection of 10,527 burial mounds over an area of near 30,000 km2, the largest in which such an approach has ever been applied. The open code and platforms employed to develop the algorithm allow this method to be applied anywhere LiDAR data or high-resolution digital terrain models are available

Partnering Undergraduate Engineering Students With Preservice Teachers to Design and Teach an Elementary Engineering Lesson Through Ed+gineering

Major challenges in engineering education include retention of undergraduate engineering students (UESs) and continued engagement after the first year when concepts increase in difficulty. Additionally, employers, as well as ABET, look for students to demonstrate non-technical skills, including the ability to work successfully in groups, the ability to communicate both within and outside their discipline, and the ability to find information that will help them solve problems and contribute to lifelong learning. Teacher education is also facing challenges given the recent incorporation of engineering practices and core ideas into the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and state level standards of learning. To help teachers meet these standards in their classrooms, education courses for preservice teachers (PSTs) must provide resources and opportunities to increase science and engineering knowledge, and the associated pedagogies. To address these challenges, Ed+gineering, an NSF-funded multidisciplinary collaborative service learning project, was implemented into two sets of paired-classes in engineering and education: a 100 level mechanical engineering class (n = 42) and a foundations class in education (n = 17), and a fluid mechanics class in mechanical engineering technology (n = 23) and a science methods class (n = 15). The paired classes collaborated in multidisciplinary teams of 5-8 undergraduate students to plan and teach engineering lessons to local elementary school students. Teams completed a series of previously tested, scaffolded activities to guide their collaboration. Designing and delivering lessons engaged university students in collaborative processes that promoted social learning, including researching and planning, peer mentoring, teaching and receiving feedback, and reflecting and revising their engineering lesson. The research questions examined in this pilot, mixed-methods research study include: (1) How did PSTs’ Ed+gineering experiences influence their engineering and science knowledge?; (2) How did PSTs’ and UESs’ Ed+gineering experiences influence their pedagogical understanding?; and (3) What were PSTs’ and UESs’ overall perceptions of their Ed+gineering experiences? Both quantitative (e.g., Engineering Design Process assessment, Science Content Knowledge assessment) and qualitative (student reflections) data were used to assess knowledge gains and project perceptions following the semester-long intervention. Findings suggest that the PSTs were more aware and comfortable with the engineering field following lesson development and delivery, and often better able to explain particular science/engineering concepts. Both PSTs and UESs, but especially the latter, came to realize the importance of planning and preparing lessons to be taught to an audience. UESs reported greater appreciation for the work of educators. PSTs and UESs expressed how they learned to work in groups with multidisciplinary members—this is a valuable lesson for their respective professional careers. Yearly, the Ed+gineering research team will also request and review student retention reports in their respective programs to assess project impact

The Influence of Participation in a Multi-Disciplinary Collaborative Service Learning Project on the Effectiveness of Team Members in a 100-level Mechanical Engineering Class

Engineers need to develop professional skills, including the ability to work successfully in teams and to communicate within and outside of their discipline, in addition to required technical skills. A collaborative multi-disciplinary service learning project referred to as Ed+gineering was implemented in a 100-level mechanical engineering course. In this collaboration, mechanical engineering students, primarily in the second semester of their freshman year or first semester of their second year, worked over the course of a semester with education students taking a foundations course to develop and deliver engineering lessons to fourth or fifth graders. Students in comparison engineering classes worked on a team project focused on experimental design for a small satellite system. The purpose of this study was to determine if participating in the Ed+gineering collaboration had a positive effect on teamwork effectiveness and satisfaction when compared to the comparison class. In both team projects, the five dimensions of the Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME) system were used as a quantitative assessment. The five dimensions of CATME Behaviorally Anchored Ratings Scale (BARS) (contribution to the team’s work, interacting with teammates, keeping the team on track, expecting quality, and having relevant Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities - KSAs) were measured. Additionally, within the CATME platform team satisfaction, team interdependence and team cohesiveness were measured. ANCOVA analysis was used to assess the quantitative data from CATME. Preliminary results suggest that students in the treatment classes had higher team member effectiveness and overall satisfaction scores than students in the comparison classes. Qualitative data from reflections written at the completion of the aforementioned projects were used to explore these results