8. Validating the alliance "Agrostio-Stipion giganteae"

The alliance Agrostio-Stipion giganteae has remained invalid till now, because the various conditions for valid publication have not been simultaneously fulfilled across a relatively long number of works concerning the syntaxon and their subordinate associations.

Consequences of heat stress on reproduction of cattle

Heat stress represents one of the major environmental factors that adversely affect the reproductive performance of cattle. In this paper the behavioral adjustments, physical mechanisms and physiological responses to heat loss are described; bos indicus adaptive advantages with respect to bos Taurus, pathophysiology of heat stress and heat stress effects in animal reproduction, both the male and the female.

Analysis of the footprint in school age of 8-10 years old

Biomechanical problems in children, is an important subject currently, existing controversy in different areas, for example, the majority of children have a flattened footprint, or the hypermobility joint is linked to a musculoskeletal pain. The objective of the study was to determine what kind of footprint is most frequent in school-age children (8-10 years) in the area of Plasencia. This was taken as a sign 50 children, of whom 28 were males and 22 females. All the subjects in the study underwent an assessment of footprint planted in static as well as an exploration of different parameters through inspection in a standing position (formula digital, rearfoot). The results show that excavated footprint is present in a 72% cases of the population, 16% was belonging to an excavated footprint in which we find a higher percentage of weight related.For the digital formula we find that the most common is the Egyptian foot by 40% of the cases and that the prevalence in the rearfoot, is a normal hindfoot. In relation with the hypermobility joint, we check that it is more common in girls and that none of them presents an association to musculoskeletal pain. As a future line we could establish a more comprehensive study with new techniques and valuingchild’s statics and dynamics, to have a more accurate study of the different variables in the sample population studied.

Social networks and cooperative learning in a MOOC

MOOCs are changing the educational landscape and gaining a lot of attention in scientific literature. However, the pedagogical design of these proposals has been called into question. It is precisely MOOCs’ social aspect, i.e. the interaction between course participants and the support for learning processes that has become one of the main topics of interest. This article presents the results of a research project carried out at the University of the Basque Country, which focused in cooperative learning and the intensive use of social networks in a MOOC. Significant data was compiled through Likert-type surveys, revealing that the use of both external and internal social networks in a massive open online course is a factor that is evaluated positively by students. We argue that the use of social networks as a learning strategy in a MOOC has an influence on academic performance and on the students' success rate. Furthermore, the participants’ age also has a bearing on the social networks they use, and we have found that the younger members tend to work with external networks such as Twitter or personal blogs, whereas the older students are more inclined to use forums from the Chamilo or Ning platforms.