Teaching-learning process of historical heritage: a Journey as a beginning, path and end

The implantation of new university degrees within the European Higher Education Area implies the need of innovative methodologies in teaching and learning to improve the skills and competencies of students and to answer the growing needs that society continuously demands to heritage management experts. The present work shows an application of the teaching methodology proposed during the international workshop entitled “I International Planning Preservation Workshop. Learning from Al Andalus”, which included the participation of the University of Alicante and Granada, Università Politecnico di Milano and Hunter College City University of New York; where we tried to dissolve traditional boundaries derived of interuniversity cooperation programs. The main objective of the workshop was to discuss and debate the role of urban Historical Centers within the Global Heritage by the integrated work through multidisciplinary teams and the creation of a permanent international working group between these universities to both teach and research. The methodology of this workshop was very participatory and considered the idea of a new learning process generated by "a journey experience." A trip from global to local (from the big city to the small village) but also a trip from the local (historical) part of a big city to the global dimension of contemporary historical villages identified by the students through a system of exhibition panels in affinity groups, specific projects proposed by lecturers and teachers or the generation of publications in various areas (texts, photographs, videos, etc.). So, the participation of the students in this multidisciplinary meeting has enhanced their capacity for self-criticism in several disciplines and has promoted their ability to perform learning and research strategies in an autonomous way. As a result, it has been established a permanent international work structure for the development of projects of the Historical City. This relationship has generated the publication of several books whose contents have reflected the conclusions developed in the workshop and several teaching proposals shared between those institutions. All these aspects have generated a new way of understanding the teaching process through a journey, in order to study the representative role of university in the historical heritage and to make students (from planning, heritage management, architecture, geography, sociology, history or engineering areas) be compromised on searching strategies for sustainable development in the Contemporary City.

Use of Tablet Pcs in Higher Education: A new Strategy for Training Engineers in European Bachelors and Masters Programmes

The use of technology in classrooms in Spanish universities has been following an upward path, and in many cases technological devices are substituting other materials that until now have been used, such as books, notebooks and so on. Step by step in higher education, more of these latest generationdevices are being used, and are providing significant improvements in training. Nowadays, there are Spanish universities that use tablets, a device with multiple applications for teaching as well as for students to study differently. They are definitely a notable innovation that will gradually become incorporated into university life. Tablet PCs make teaching more dynamic and available to students through the use of up to date digital materials, something which is key in training engineers. This paper presents their different functions employed in three Spanish universities to support teachingin engineering degrees and masters using the tablet PC, and their impact on the training process. Possible uses in specific programs like the Erasmus Masters Programmes are also assessed. The main objective of using tabletsis to improve the academic performance of students through the use of technology.

Factores determinantes de los resultados derivados de las actividades de patrocinio y mecenazgo

El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en analizar los resultados empresariales derivados de las acciones de patrocinio y mecenazgo, así como sus factores determinantes. La metodología aplicada utiliza el event study para estimar los excesos de rentabilidad de las acciones generadas en Bolsa por una muestra de 21 noticias de patrocinio y 37 noticias de mecenazgo, correspondientes a 26 empresas españolas. Adicionalmente se realiza un análisis de regresión para determinar la influencia de ciertas dimensiones (el origen del evento, así como el vínculo entre el evento y la actividad de la empresa) sobre dichas rentabilidades anormales. La aplicación empírica efectuada ha permitido detectar que sólo las acciones de patrocinio generan rentabilidad, siendo sus principales determinantes el tamaño y el vínculo entre el evento financiado y la actividad de la empresa.

La identidad como producto del aprendizaje en la práctica de enseñar matemáticas en profesores de primaria

Esta investigación estudia la identidad como producto del aprendizaje en la práctica situada de enseñar matemáticas de cuatro profesores de primaria en México. Las características de la identidad de “ser profesor de matemáticas” se infieren desde la trayectoria de formación y la práctica de los profesores. Los resultados indican que los profesores construyen y reconstruyen su identidad a partir de su práctica cotidiana lo que supone la negociación de maneras de realizar una práctica en un contexto a partir de tres aspectos: (i) El significado y sentido que los profesores atribuyen a las experiencias que acumulan en su trayectoria de formación, (ii) a la acción mediada con las tareas y los instrumentos que utilizan, y (iii) a la interacción entre el significado y sentido y la acción mediada al gestionar la clase de matemáticas.

Visual perception for the 3D recognition of geometric pieces in robotic manipulation

During grasping and intelligent robotic manipulation tasks, the camera position relative to the scene changes dramatically because the robot is moving to adapt its path and correctly grasp objects. This is because the camera is mounted at the robot effector. For this reason, in this type of environment, a visual recognition system must be implemented to recognize and “automatically and autonomously” obtain the positions of objects in the scene. Furthermore, in industrial environments, all objects that are manipulated by robots are made of the same material and cannot be differentiated by features such as texture or color. In this work, first, a study and analysis of 3D recognition descriptors has been completed for application in these environments. Second, a visual recognition system designed from specific distributed client-server architecture has been proposed to be applied in the recognition process of industrial objects without these appearance features. Our system has been implemented to overcome problems of recognition when the objects can only be recognized by geometric shape and the simplicity of shapes could create ambiguity. Finally, some real tests are performed and illustrated to verify the satisfactory performance of the proposed system.

Energy Loss Function of Solids Assessed by Ion Beam Energy-Loss Measurements: Practical Application to Ta2O5

We present a study where the energy loss function of Ta2O5, initially derived in the optical limit for a limited region of excitation energies from reflection electron energy loss spectroscopy (REELS) measurements, was improved and extended to the whole momentum and energy excitation region through a suitable theoretical analysis using the Mermin dielectric function and requiring the fulfillment of physically motivated restrictions, such as the f- and KK-sum rules. The material stopping cross section (SCS) and energy-loss straggling measured for 300–2000 keV proton and 200–6000 keV helium ion beams by means of Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS) were compared to the same quantities calculated in the dielectric framework, showing an excellent agreement, which is used to judge the reliability of the Ta2O5 energy loss function. Based on this assessment, we have also predicted the inelastic mean free path and the SCS of energetic electrons in Ta2O5.

Efficient tool path computation using multi-core GPUs

Tool path generation is one of the most complex problems in Computer Aided Manufacturing. Although some efficient strategies have been developed, most of them are only useful for standard machining. However, the algorithms used for tool path computation demand a higher computation performance, which makes the implementation on many existing systems very slow or even impractical. Hardware acceleration is an incremental solution that can be cleanly added to these systems while keeping everything else intact. It is completely transparent to the user. The cost is much lower and the development time is much shorter than replacing the computers by faster ones. This paper presents an optimisation that uses a specific graphic hardware approach using the power of multi-core Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) in order to improve the tool path computation. This improvement is applied on a highly accurate and robust tool path generation algorithm. The paper presents, as a case of study, a fully implemented algorithm used for turning lathe machining of shoe lasts. A comparative study will show the gain achieved in terms of total computing time. The execution time is almost two orders of magnitude faster than modern PCs.