Global and local challenges for best practices in assessment. The 9th Conference on the International Test Commission. Book of abstracts

The 9th International Test Commission Conference (ITC) took place at the Miramar Palace in San Sebastian, Spain, between the 2nd and 5th of July, 2014. The Conference was titled, “Global and Local Challenges for Best Practices in Assessment.” The International Test Commission, ITC (www.intestcom.org), is an association of national psychological associations, test commissions, publishers, and other organizations, as well as individuals who are committed to the promotion of effective testing and assessment policies and to the proper development, evaluation, and uses of educational and psychological instruments. The ITC facilitates the exchange of information among members and stimulates their cooperation on problems related to the construction, distribution, and uses of psychological and educational tests and other psychodiagnostic tools. This volume contains the abstracts of the contributions presented at the 9th International Test Commission Conference. The four themes of the Conference were closely linked to the goals of the ITC: - Challenges and Opportunities in International Assessment. - Application of New Technoloogies and New Psychometric Models in Testing. - Standards and Guidelines for Best Testing Practices. - Testing in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts.

Global movements, national grievances. Mobilizing for “real democracy” and social justice

In the ashes of political and socio-economic collapse, social movements sometimes rise like a phoenix. Little more than a year has passed since the Tunisian uprisings, the spark that ignited a series of “mobilizations of the indignant” that spread like wildfire around the world. Many observers have reported on these unprecedented global protests. They have portrayed citizens who declare feeling marginalized if not scapegoated, and who reject the increasing inequalities between rich and poor, the declining mobility of most, and the “disclassment” of many. They have shown, as well, massive protests against governments and politicians that are perceived as indifferent at best, duplicitous at worst, and in any event as blatantly closed to popular concerns. Many journalists have indeed asked what took so long for people to protest given this fatal combination. For the social scientist, however, the questions of who, why and how mobilizes are not so simple. There are specific problematics of mediation between structure, culture and individual or collective agency that need to be addressed.

Properties of convergence of a class of iterative processes generated by sequences of self-mappings with applications to switched dynamic systems

This article investigates the convergence properties of iterative processes involving sequences of self-mappings of metric or Banach spaces. Such sequences are built from a set of primary self-mappings which are either expansive or non-expansive self-mappings and some of the non-expansive ones can be contractive including the case of strict contractions. The sequences are built subject to switching laws which select each active self-mapping on a certain activation interval in such a way that essential properties of boundedness and convergence of distances and iterated sequences are guaranteed. Applications to the important problem of stability of dynamic switched systems are also given.

Eurasian integration as a way to respond to global challenges

510 p.

Effects of global change on the functioning of Mediterranean Rivers

138 p.

La idea de alteridad en el pensamiento filosófico de Enrique Dussel. Génesis, constitución crítica y problemática en un mundo global (1960-2000)

342 p.

Un análisis econométrico del calentamiento global

El análisis econométrico del calentamiento global no es una tarea sencilla, es necesario tener en cuenta el comportamiento de diversas variables a lo largo del tiempo y las relaciones que existen entre ellas.Teniendo en cuenta que se establecen dos teorías que explican el fenómeno del calentamiento global, los resultados de este análisis demuestran nuestro apoyo a la teoría del calentamiento global antropogenico, es decir causado por la actividad humana descartando un calentamiento de tipo natural.

Gizarte erantzukizun eta garapen jasangarriaren inguruko ekimenak: Global Compact

[EU]Gradu Amaierako lan honetan, enpresen gizarte erantzukizunak azkenaldian hartu duen garrantzia kontuan hartuta, kontzeptu hau jorratuko da eta eremu honetan burututako ekimen ezberdinen artean bat aukeratuko da, honen garapena eta inplementazioa aztertzeko. Hain zuzen ere, lan honetan erabiliko den ekimena, Munduko Hitzarmena edo Global Compact-a izango da. Hau, nazioarte mailako ekimen bat izanik, 10 printzipio proposatzen ditu, lau eremu ezberdinetan banatuz: Giza eskubideak, lan-arauak, ingurumena eta ustelkeriaren kontrako borroka. Bukatzeko, Global Compact-a aplikatzen duten sektore ezberdinetako hiru enpresa aukeratuko dira eta bakoitza dimentsio bat aztertzeko erabilia izango da, soziala, ekonomikoa eta ingurumenekoa hurrenez hurren. Azkenik, lanean zehar aztertutakoa kontuan hartuta zein ondoriotara iritsi garen adieraziko da.

Learning Multirobot Hose Transportation and Deployment by Distributed Round-Robin Q-Learning

Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) algorithms face two main difficulties: the curse of dimensionality, and environment non-stationarity due to the independent learning processes carried out by the agents concurrently. In this paper we formalize and prove the convergence of a Distributed Round Robin Q-learning (D-RR-QL) algorithm for cooperative systems. The computational complexity of this algorithm increases linearly with the number of agents. Moreover, it eliminates environment non sta tionarity by carrying a round-robin scheduling of the action selection and execution. That this learning scheme allows the implementation of Modular State-Action Vetoes (MSAV) in cooperative multi-agent systems, which speeds up learning convergence in over-constrained systems by vetoing state-action pairs which lead to undesired termination states (UTS) in the relevant state-action subspace. Each agent's local state-action value function learning is an independent process, including the MSAV policies. Coordination of locally optimal policies to obtain the global optimal joint policy is achieved by a greedy selection procedure using message passing. We show that D-RR-QL improves over state-of-the-art approaches, such as Distributed Q-Learning, Team Q-Learning and Coordinated Reinforcement Learning in a paradigmatic Linked Multi-Component Robotic System (L-MCRS) control problem: the hose transportation task. L-MCRS are over-constrained systems with many UTS induced by the interaction of the passive linking element and the active mobile robots.

The Environmental, Social, Governance, and Financial Performance Effects on Companies that Adopt the United Nations Global Compact

This paper aims to investigate companies' environmental, social, governance (ESG), and financial implications of their commitment to the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC). The focus is placed on companies operating in the three countries with the highest number of UNGC participants: Spain, France, and Japan. The results clearly reveal that adoption of the UNGC often requires an organizational change that fosters stakeholder engagement, ultimately resulting in improvements in companies' ESG performance. Additionally, the results reveal that ESG performance has a significant impact on financial performance for companies that adopted the principles of the UNGC. These findings provide both non-financial and financial incentives to companies to commit to this voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative, which will have important implications on companies' strategic management policies that aim to foster sustainable businesses and community development. Finally, the linkages between the UNGC-committed companies' ESG and financial performance may be influenced by geographical spread, mainly due to the appearance of differences in the institutional, societal, and cultural settings.