A Comparative Study of the Impact of Regimes in Latin America’s Education Systems: The Cases of Mercosur, Alba-Tcp, and Pa

This thesis presents a comparative study of the regional education policies and programs in three Latin American (LA) regional entities (hereafter ‘regimes’ and ‘regionalisms’): The Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – People’s Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP), and Pacific Alliance (PA). Each of these represents different regionalisms coexisting in LA (hegemonic, post-hegemonic, and counter-hegemonic regionalisms), which makes them ideal for comparative analysis. This project aims to compare these very diverse regimes to interrogate the similarities and dissimilarities, as well as discover who (the regional or the global) is shaping education systems in this area of the world. These objectives are articulated in the research questions: How do different types of regimes define the education policies implemented at the regional level? And, how is the regional shaping the regional educational ideologies, or is the region following global education governance and standards?The study begins with the content and thematic analysis of 68 regional documents (30 from MERCOSUR, 21 from PA, and 17 from ALBA). A comparative analysis of these documents follows, using education programs as common categories. Finally, it compares regional policies and programs against global educational standards (from MDGs, EFA, and SDGs), looking for the presence and impact of global goals in regional documents. The comparative analysis concludes that it is possible to see characteristics of the type of regionalism in all the regional educational programs in which each of them was developed. Therefore, despite the similarities, regional educational programs and policies are not isomorphic in this world region. However, some similarities also led to the conclusion that global governance remains a strong force in LA regionalisms. The conclusion section raises some concerns and hypotheses regarding the coexistence of both regional and global policy governance and the apparent lack of isomorphism across LA regimes. The study contributes to the understanding of regionalism in LA by presenting a novel comparison within the field of comparative regionalism that looks at LA regions without using Europe as a benchmark. In addition, it employs and merges different categorizations of regionalism traditionally used for separate regions of the world

Providing effective visualizations over big linked data

The number and the size of Linked Data sources are constantly increasing. In some lucky case, the data source is equipped with a tool that guides and helps the user during the exploration of the data, but in most cases, the data are published as an RDF dump through a SPARQL endpoint that can be accessed only through SPARQL queries. Although the RDF format was designed to be processed by machines, there is a strong need for visualization and exploration tools. Data visualizations make big and small linked data easier for the human brain to understand, and visualization also makes it easier to detect patterns, trends, and outliers in groups of data. For this reason, we developed a tool called H-BOLD (Highlevel Visualization over Big Linked Open Data). H-BOLD aims to help the user exploring the content of a Linked Data by providing a high-level view of the structure of the dataset and an interactive exploration that allows users to focus on the connections and attributes of one or more classes. Moreover, it provides a visual interface for querying the endpoint that automatically generates SPARQL queries

Uncertainy of measurement and conformity assessment : a review

The uncertainty of measurement is the key indicator of the quality of any experimental result. A proper consideration of this parameter is imperative when testing a sample against legal/compositional limits. This task can be quite challenging when the entity measured in the investigated sample is so close to the limit that its uncertainty, anyhow estimated, critically affects decision-making. This explains the many literature contributions aimed to discuss the problem. Even if some of the most authoritative organisations issued specific guidelines aimed to assist the staff involved in such a kind of measurements, several aspects of conformity testing are still debated in the literature. In this review, after a short outline of the existing information, a somewhat more detailed insight is given to the guidelines of ASME, ISO and Eurachem/CITAC, since they represent the most useful tools for operators of testing and calibration laboratories. Some aspects of the Council Directive 96/23/EC are also commented. An insight into the contents of the mentioned documents allows highlighting analogies and discrepancies

Visual analytics for spatio-temporal air quality data

Air pollution is the second biggest environmental concern for Europeans after climate change and the major risk to public health. It is imperative to monitor the spatio-temporal patterns of urban air pollution. The TRAFAIR air quality dashboard is an effective web application to empower decision-makers to be aware of the urban air quality conditions, define new policies, and keep monitoring their effects. The architecture copes with the multidimensionality of data and the real-time visualization challenge of big data streams coming from a network of low-cost sensors. Moreover, it handles the visualization and management of predictive air quality maps series that is produced by an air pollution dispersion model. Air quality data are not only visualized at a limited set of locations at different times but in the continuous space-time domain, thanks to interpolated maps that estimate the pollution at un-sampled locations

Real-Time Visual Analytics for Air Quality

Raise collective awareness about the daily levels of humans exposure to toxic chemicals in the air is of great significance in motivating citizen to act and embrace a more sustainable life style. For this reason, Public Administrations are involved in effectively monitoring urban air quality with high-resolution and provide understandable visualization of the air quality conditions in their cities. Moreover, collecting data for a long period can help to estimate the impact of the policies adopted to reduce air pollutant concentration in the air. The easiest and most cost-effective way to monitor air quality is by employing low-cost sensors distributed in urban areas. These sensors generate a real-time data stream that needs elaboration to generate adequate visualizations. The TRAFAIR Air Quality dashboard proposed in this paper is a web application to inform citizens and decision-makers on the current, past, and future air quality conditions of three European cities: Modena, Santiago de Compostela, and Zaragoza. Air quality data are multidimensional observations update in real-time. Moreover, each observation has both space and a time reference. Interpolation techniques are employed to generate space-continuous visualizations that estimate the concentration of the pollutants where sensors are not available. The TRAFAIR project consists of a chain of simulation models that estimates the levels of NO and NO2 for up to 2 days. Furthermore, new future air quality scenarios evaluating the impact on air quality according to changes in urban traffic can be explored. All these processes generate heterogeneous data: coming from different sources, some continuous and others discrete in the space-time domain, some historical and others in real-time. The dashboard provides a unique environment where all these data and the derived statistics can be observed and understood

Using real sensors data to calibrate a traffic model for the city of Modena

In Italy, road vehicles are the preferred mean of transport. Over the last years, in almost all the EU Member States, the passenger car fleet increased. The high number of vehicles complicates urban planning and often results in traffic congestion and areas of increased air pollution. Overall, efficient traffic control is profitable in individual, societal, financial, and environmental terms. Traffic management solutions typically require the use of simulators able to capture in detail all the characteristics and dependencies associated with real-life traffic. Therefore, the realization of a traffic model can help to discover and control traffic bottlenecks in the urban context. In this paper, we analyze how to better simulate vehicle flows measured by traffic sensors in the streets. A dynamic traffic model was set up starting from traffic sensors data collected every minute in about 300 locations in the city of Modena. The reliability of the model is discussed and proved with a comparison between simulated values and real values from traffic sensors. This analysis pointed out some critical issues. Therefore, to better understand the origin of fake jams and incoherence with real data, we approached different configurations of the model as possible solutions

A comparative study of state-of-the-art linked data visualization tools

Data visualization tools are of great importance for the exploration and the analysis of Linked Data (LD) datasets. Such tools allow users to get an overview, understand content, and discover interesting insights of a dataset. Visualization approaches vary according to the domain, the type of data, the task that the user is trying to perform, as well as the skills of the user. Thus, the study of the capabilities that each approach offers is crucial in supporting users to select the proper tool/technique based on their need. In this paper we present a comparative study of the state-of-the-art LD visualization tools over a list of fundamental use cases. First, we define 16 use cases that are representative in the setting of LD visual exploration, examining several tool's aspects; e.g., functionality capabilities, feature richness. Then, we evaluate these use cases over 10 LD visualization tools, examining: (1) if the tools have the required functionality for the tasks; and (2) if they allow the successful completion of the tasks over the DBpedia dataset. Finally, we discuss the insights derived from the evaluation, and we point out possible future directions

Austempering Transformation Kinetics of Compacted Graphite Cast Irons Obtained by Mössbauer Spectroscopy

Mossbauer spectroscopy has been applied systematically to study the processes occurring during the Stage I of the austempering transformation of compacted graphite cast irons at temperatures from 573 to 673 K for two Mn concentrations. The kinetics of transformation (γ→αFe+γhc) was followed determining the dependence of the high-carbon austenite percentage on austempering time for different austempering temperatures and Mn contents. The evolution of the C concentration and the total amount of C incorporated into high-carbon austenite were also monitored. The results are compared with those of other morphologies and discussed in the frame of Johnson-Mehl's and diffusion models.Departamento de Físic