Productivity growth in electric energy retail in Colombia. A bootstrapped malmquist indices approach

This paper offers a productivity growth estimate for electric energy commercialization firms in Colombia, using a non-parametric Malmquist bootstrap methodology. The estimation and methodology serve two main purposes. First, in Colombia commercialization firms are subject to a price-cap regulation scheme, a non-common arrangement in the international experience for this part of the industry. Therefore the paper’s result suggest an estimate of the productivity factor to be used by the regulator, not only in Colombia but in other countries where commercialization is a growing part of the industry (renewable energy, for instance). Second, because of poor data collection from regulators and firms themselves, regulation based on a single estimation of productivity seems inappropriate and error-prone. The nonparametric Malmquist bootstrap estimation allows an assessment of the result in contrast to a single one estimation. This would open an opportunity for the regulator to adopt a narrower and more accurate productivity estimation or override an implausible result and impose a productivity factor in the price-cap to foster the development of the industry.DEA, Malmquist, Productivity growth, Bootstrap, Electricity commercialization,Colombia

BicOverlapper: a tool for bicluster visualization

BicOverlapper is a tool to visualize biclusters from gene-expression matrices in a way that helps to compare biclustering methods, to unravel trends and to highlight relevant genes and conditions. A visual approach can complement biological and statistical analysis and reduce the time spent by specialists interpreting the results of biclustering algorithms. The technique is based on a force-directed graph where biclusters are represented as flexible overlapped groups of genes and conditions. AVAILABILITY: The BicOverlapper software and supplementary material are available at http://vis.usal.es/bicoverlappe

Wikipedia como herramienta de aprendizaje en Sistemas Distribuidos (Ingenieria en Informática)

Memoria ID12-0060. Ayudas de la Universidad de Salamanca para la innovación docente, curso 2012-2013

Fast simulations of extragalactic microlensing

We present a new and very fast method for producing microlensing magnification maps at high optical depths. It is based on the combination of two approaches: (a) the two-dimensional Poisson solver for a deflection potential and (b) inverse polygon mapping. With our method we extremely reduce the computing time for the generation of magnification patterns and avoid the use of highly demanding computer resources. For example, the generation of a magnification map of size 2000?×?2000 pixels, covering a region of 20 Einstein radii, takes a few seconds on a state-of-the-art laptop. The method presented here will facilitate the massive production of magnification maps for extragalactic microlensing studies within the forthcoming surveys without the need for large computer clusters. The modest demand of computer power and a fast execution time allow the code developed here to be placed on a standard server and thus provide the public online access through a web-based interface.We thank Evencio Mediavilla for providing us with the IPM code for comparison purposes. We thank to the company “Datacom Soluciones Internet Burgos S.L.” (Burgos, Spain) for helping us in making the web server secure and running. We also thank an anonymous referee for his/her comments and questions that improved this paper. This research has been supported by the MINECO/AEI/FEDER-UE grant AYA2017-89815-P and University of Cantabria funds. RGM was also supported by TAILOR Grant #952215, H2020-ICT-2019-3 and DataPol UMA-CEIATECH-07 funds at the University of Málag

Quality Assessment for E-learning: a Benchmarking Approach (Third edition)

The primary purpose of this manual is to provide a set of benchmarks, quality criteria and notes for guidance against which e-learning programmes and their support systems may be judged. The manual should therefore be seen primarily as a reference tool for the assessment or review of e-learning programmes and the systems which support them. However, the manual should also prove to be useful to staff in institutions concerned with the design, development, teaching, assessment and support of e-learning programmes. It is hoped that course developers, teachers and other stakeholders will see the manual as a useful development and/or improvement tool for incorporation in their own institutional systems of monitoring, evaluation and enhancement

Evaluación de una metodología novel basada en cuadernos interactivos para el aprendizaje de la programación en Python

La enseñanza de la programación a alumnos de nivel preuniversitario sin experiencia en pensamiento computacional supone un reto que necesita de métodos didácticos noveles especialmente concebidos para un público que en los últimos años ha modificado radicalmente la forma en la que recibe información. Esta contribución describe la experiencia de adaptar y evaluar, en el contexto de una clase de alumnos de primer curso del Grado en Estadística (N=43), una metodología y un ecosistema de herramientas interactivas orientadas al aprendizaje de la programación y la ciencia de datos. Bajo este enfoque, la metodología experimental concebida implementa técnicas como la programación por pares y TDD (Test-Driven Development), lo cual, como se pudo comprobar a través de las evaluaciones realizadas, tuvo un efecto positivo en el aprovechamiento del tiempo dedicado a la asignatura y en la satisfacción general percibida por el alumnado sobre la impartición de los contenidos de la guía docente. En línea con otras investigaciones actuales, los materiales didácticos fueron puestos a disposición de la comunidad docente de manera abierta y gratuita, lo cual se espera contribuya a mejorar la metodología en futuras experiencias.Teaching programming to undergrad students without previous experience in computational thinking poses a challenge that calls for novel didactic methods oriented explicitly towards this kind of audience. In our contribution, we describe the experience of adapting and evaluating a novel methodology and its associated ecosystem of tools in a classroom of 43 first-year students (N=43) of statistics. Following recommendations found in the literature, the experimental methodology implements pair-programming and TDD (Test-Driven Development) techniques intending to improve both the teaching and learning experiences. From the evaluation, we could learn that this had a positive impact on the students’ performance and their general satisfaction with the course. Finally, the educational materials of this research were collected and put online under a Creative Commons license so that other scientific peers can replicate our work in other future didactic experiences.Los autores quieren agradecer el apoyo recibido por parte del Vicerrectorado de Docencia y el Instituto de Biología Funcional y Genómica de la USAL para la realización de este proyecto de investigación

Towards an Uncertainty-Aware Visualization in the Digital Humanities

[EN]As visualization becomes widespread in a broad range of cross-disciplinary academic domains, such as the digital humanities (DH), critical voices have been raised on the perils of neglecting the uncertain character of data in the visualization design process. Visualizations that, purposely or not, obscure or remove uncertainty in its different forms from the scholars’ vision may negatively affect the manner in which humanities scholars regard computational methods as useful tools in their daily work. In this paper, we address the issue of uncertainty representation in the context of the humanities from a theoretical perspective, in an attempt to provide the foundations of a framework that allows for the construction of ecological interface designs which are able to expose the computational power of the algorithms at play while, at the same time, respecting the particularities and needs of humanistic research. To this end, we review past uncertainty taxonomies in other domains typically related to the humanities and visualization, such as cartography and GIScience. From this review, we select an uncertainty taxonomy related to the humanities that we link to recent research in visualization for the DH. Finally, we bring a novel analytics method developed by other authors (Progressive Visual Analytics) into question, which we argue can be a good candidate to resolve the aforementioned difficulties in DH practic

Sistema de información y la gestión de servicios de inventario en la Empresa Emporio Taurus S.A.C. – Huacho – 2022

Objetivo: el título de la investigación: Sistema de información y la gestión de servicios de inventario en la empresa Emporio Taurus S.A.C. en el 2022, Autor: Bach. Gustavo Barrenechea Santamaría y Bach. Rodrigo Alexander Cruz Villanueva. Objetivo: Determinar la relación existente entre el sistema de información y la gestión de servicios de inventario en la empresa Emporio Taurus S.A.C. en el 2022. Metodología: Aplicamos el método Deductivo, debido a que partimos de aspectos genéricos para poder llegar a situaciones particulares. Es una investigación Aplicada que está orientada a resolver problemas actuales y concretos que identificamos. Es de diseño no Experimental, tipo transversal porque los datos fueron tomados sólo una vez en el tiempo. El nivel de la investigación es correlacional, debido a que los investigadores medimos el nivel de asociación entre las variables. Población y muestra: La población estuvo constituida por 8 trabajadores que manejan el sistema de información de la gestión de servicios de inventario en la empresa Emporio Taurus S.A.C., la muestra es censal, porque se tomó a los 8 trabajadores de la población. Técnica e instrumento: La técnica que se empleó fue la encuesta y como instrumento utilizamos el cuestionario el cual contaba con 20 items, cuyos datos se procesaron con el software estadístico SPSS25.0 para poder analizar los datos estadísticamente. Resultados: El modelo de correlación de Coeficiente de Pearson devuelve un coeficiente de 0,768 y una significancia de 0,026 por lo que se puede comprobar, con un 95% de probabilidad, la existencia de una correlación positiva alta entre el sistema de información y la gestión de servicios de inventario de la empresa Emporio Taurus S.A.C. en el 2022 (R= 0,768; p=0.026 < 0,05

Asymmetrical nucleosomal DNA signatures regulate transcriptional directionality.

[EN]Despite the symmetrical structure of nucleosomes, in vitro studies have shown that transcription proceeds with different efficiency depending on the orientation of the DNA sequence around them. However, it is unclear whether this functional asymmetry is present in vivo and whether it could regulate transcriptional directionality. Here, we report that the proximal and distal halves of nucleosomal DNA contribute differentially to nucleosome stability in the genome. In +1 nucleosomes, this asymmetry facilitates or hinders transcription depending on the orientation of its underlying DNA, and this difference is associated with an asymmetrical interaction between DNA and histones. These properties are encoded in the DNA signature of +1 nucleosomes, since its incorporation in the two orientations into downstream nucleosomes renders them asymmetrically accessible to MNase and inverts the balance between sense and antisense transcription. Altogether, our results show that nucleosomal DNA endows nucleosomes with asymmetrical properties that modulate the directionality of transcription