Elasticity and melting of vortex crystals in anisotropic superconductors: Beyond the continuum regime.

The elastic moduli of vortex crystals in anisotropic superconductors are frequently involved in the investigation of their phase diagram and transport properties. We provide a detailed analysis of the harmonic eigenvalues (normal modes) of the vortex lattice for general values of the magnetic field strength, going beyond the elastic continuum regime. The detailed behavior of these wave-vector-dependent eigenvalues within the Brillouin zone (BZ), is compared with several frequently used approximations that we also recalculate. Throughout the BZ, transverse modes are less costly than their longitudinal counterparts, and there is an angular dependence which becomes more marked close to the zone boundary. Based on these results, we propose an analytic correction to the nonlocal continuum formulas which fits quite well the numerical behavior of the eigenvalues in the London regime. We use this approximate expression to calculate thermal fluctuations and the full melting line (according to Lindeman's criterion) for various values of the anisotropy parameter.

Improving Information Problem Solving skills in Secondary Education through embedded instruction

This empirical study consists in an investigation of the effects, on the development of Information Problem Solving (IPS) skills, of a long-term embedded, structured and supported instruction in Secondary Education. Forty secondary students of 7th and 8th grades (13–15 years old) participated in the 2-year IPS instruction designed in this study. Twenty of them participated in the IPS instruction, and the remaining twenty were the control group. All the students were pre- and post-tested in their regular classrooms, and their IPS process and performance were logged by means of screen capture software, to warrant their ecological validity. The IPS constituent skills, the web search sub-skills and the answers given by each participant were analyzed. The main findings of our study suggested that experimental students showed a more expert pattern than the control students regarding the constituent skill ‘defining the problem’ and the following two web search sub-skills: ‘search terms’ typed in a search engine, and ‘selected results’ from a SERP. In addition, scores of task performance were statistically better in experimental students than in control group students. The paper contributes to the discussion of how well-designed and well-embedded scaffolds could be designed in instructional programs in order to guarantee the development and efficiency of the students’ IPS skills by using net information better and participating fully in the global knowledge society.

Loss of intestinal epithelial barrier function in Salmonella Enteritidis infection

Intestinal infection with Salmonella enterica serotype Enteritidis, a food-borne infection spread to humans especially through contaminated eggs and egg-products as well as undercooked contaminated fresh meat, is the most common cause of intestinal inflammation in the European Union. Enteritis caused by Salmonella Enteritidis is characterized by fever, diarrhoea and abdominal pain. The disruption of the intestinal epithelial barrier function contributes to diarrhoea and is responsible for the perpetuation of the inflammatory process. In this sense, oxidative stress and the proinflammatory cytokines TNF-α, IFN-γ and IL-1β are described to induce the disorganization of the tight junctions (TJ), the most apical epithelial intercellular junctions and responsible for the paracellular permeability. The interest of this chapter relies not only in the investigation dealing with the mechanisms of TJ regulation but also in the contribution to the development of new tools for the prevention of epithelial barrier disruption in enteritis caused by Salmonella Enteritidis.

The ‘Global Dimension’ of Contemporary Politics. An Argument for Taking ‘Global’ Seriously

Recent years have seen a striking proliferation of the term ‘global’ in public and political discourse. The popularity of the term is a manifestation of the fact that there is a widespread notion that contemporary social reality is ‘global’. The acknowledgment of this notion has important political implications and raises questions about the role played by the idea of the ‘global’ in policy making. These questions, in turn, expose even more fundamental issues about whether the term ‘global’ indicates a difference in kind, even an ontological shift, and, if so, how to approach it. This paper argues that the notion of ‘global’, in other words the ‘global dimension’, is a significant aspect of contemporary politics that needs to be investigated. The paper argues that in the globalization discourse of International Studies ‘global’ is ‘naturalized’, which means that it is taken for granted and assumed to be self-evident. The term ‘global’ is used mainly in a descriptive way and subsumed under the rubric of ‘globalization’. ‘Global’ tends to be equated with transnational and/or world-wide; hence, it addresses quantitative differences in degree but not (alleged) differences in kind. In order to advance our understanding of contemporary politics, ‘global’ needs to be taken seriously. This means, firstly, to understand and to conceptualize ‘global’ as a social category; and, secondly, to uncover ‘global’ as a ‘naturalized’ concept in the Political and International Studies strand of the globalization discourse in order to rescue it for innovative new approaches in the investigation of contemporary politics. In order to do so, the paper suggests adopting a strong linguistic approach starting with the analysis of the word ‘global’. Based on insights from post-structuralism as well as cognitive and general constructivist perspectives it argues that a frame-based corpus linguistic analysis offers the possibility of investigating the collective/social meaning(s) of global in order to operationalize them for the analysis of the ‘global dimension’ of contemporary politics.

Organizational configurations of strategic choices and strategic management accounting

This is the first study to adopt a configurational paradigm in an investigation of strategic management accounting (SMA) adoption. The study examines the alignment and effectiveness of strategic choice and strategic management accounting (SMA) system design configurations. Six configurations were derived empirically by deploying a cluster analysis of data collected from a sample of 193 large Slovenian companies. The first four clusters appear to provide some support for the central configurational proposition that higher levels of vertical and horizontal configurational alignments are associated with higher levels of performance. Evidence that contradicts the theory is also apparent, however, as the remaining two clusters exhibit high degrees of SMA vertical and horizontal alignment, but low performance levels. A particular contribution of the paper concerns its demonstration of the way that the configurational paradigm can be operationalised to examine management accounting phenomena and the nature of management accounting insights that can derive from applying the approach.

Gestión sostenible de clústers de recursos virtuales

Este proyecto tiene como finalidad ofrecer un servicio de computación en forma de máquina virtual, utilizando los recursos internos de Atos Research & Innovation. Además, se pretende implementar este servicio sobre os excendentes de máquinas del propio departamento. La prestación de este servicio se realiza mediante un gestor de la infraestructura de forma centralizada. Para la implantación de este entorno se ha definido la adopción en fases y profundizado en dos de los gestores más activos en la investigación del modelo Cloud Computing (Open Nebula, Eucalyptus).

Paraphrasing : scope and typology : a computational approach

This PhD project aims to study paraphrasing, initially understood as the different ways in which the same content is expressed linguistically. We will go into that concept in depth trying to define and delimit its scope more accurately. In that sense, we also aim to discover which kind of structures and phenomena it covers. Although there exist some paraphrasing typologies, the great majority of them only apply to English, and focus on lexical and syntactic transformations. Our intention is to go further into this subject and propose a paraphrasing typology for Spanish and Catalan combining lexical, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic knowledge. We apply a bottom-up methodology trying to collect evidence of this phenomenon from the data. For this purpose, we are initially using the Spanish Wikipedia as our corpus. The internal structure of this encyclopedia makes it a good resource for extracting paraphrasing examples for our investigation. This empirical approach will be complemented with the use of linguistic knowledge, and by comparing and contrasting our results to previously proposed paraphrasing typologies in order to enlarge the possible paraphrasing forms found in our corpus. The fact that the same content can be expressed in many different ways presents a major challenge for Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications. Thus, research on paraphrasing has recently been attracting increasing attention in the fields of NLP and Computational Linguistics. The results obtained in this investigation would be of great interest in many of these applications.

El procés de desistiment de les persones empresonades. Obstacles i suports

La recerca aborda els mecanismes de transició entre la presó i la vida en llibertat i, particularment, el paper que aquests juguen en els processos de desistiment del delicte. Centrant-se en població masculina condemnada a presó per delictes patrimonials i/o contra la salut pública, la recerca vol identificar les narratives de desistiment i persistència en l’activitat delictiva, i conèixer com determinats factors externs contribueixen a la construcció d’aquestes narratives. Aquests factors externs són concebuts com a punts d’inflexió que poden propiciar el canvi, i estan relacionats tant amb allò tractat i viscut dins la presó com amb els suports i vincles existents en la comunitat on es desemboca. Així mateix, aquests processos de transició es contextualitzen tant en el marc d’una trajectòria passada (familiar, formativa-laboral, delictiva i penitenciària) com també en la fase del cicle vital en què hom se situa, en tant que aquests dos eixos delimiten, en bona mesura, l’estructura d’oportunitats i els marcs de referència de la persona al sortir de la presó. Amb aquest objectiu s’ha plantejat un disseny prospectiu en dues onades: la primera onada contempla la realització d’entrevistes personals narratives durant les setmanes prèvies a la finalització de la condemna de presó per conèixer la biografia, la darrera etapa a la presó i les narratives sobre la transició; la segona onada està previst fer-la un any després de la finalització de la condemna i estarà centrada en l’anàlisi del procés de transició. Aquest informe presenta els resultats de la primera onada.

El proceso de desistir en el delito de las personas encarceladas. Obstáculos y soportes

La investigación analiza las narrativas de desistir/persistencia en la actividad delictiva en población masculina condenada a prisión por delitos patrimoniales y/o contra la salud pública. Con este objetivo se realizan entrevistas a internos semanas previas a la finalización de la condena.

Interferència dels trastorns de personalitat en la capacitat parental. Comparació entre població normal i diagnosticada

En aquesta investigació, hem comparat tres mostres (amb diagnòstic de transtorn de la personalitat, amb trets disfuncionals de la personalitat i sans) per tal de valorar quina disposa d’un funcionament parental més acurat. Dels resultats obtinguts, malgrat el petit tamany de la mostra, podem afirmar que els progenitors sans obtenen millors resultats que els altres dos, i que els que disposen de trets disfuncionals tenen un funcionament més adequats que els que tenen un diagnòstic.

L'ambient urbà i la criminalitat. Robatoris contra el patrimoni a la ciutat de Girona

L’estudi de la criminalitat és multifactorial, cal destriar en la mesura del possible els factorsambientals, d’entorn urbà, que poden jugar el paper de facilitadors de la delinqüència. Lestipologies delictives són diverses i amb motivacions "mòbils" diferenciats, el que confereixdificultats a l’estudi de la criminalitat, és per aquesta raó que es trien dues tipologies derobatoris contra el patrimoni per ser analitzats: robatoris amb força a interior de domicili(vivenda) i els furts, en un marc de ciutat petita-mitjana, com és el cas de Girona. Elconeixement per part de l’autor del marc urbà n’és un part essencial per desenvolupar l’estudi.Un dels objectius finalistes és aconseguir avançar en estudis de diagnosi criminal de les ciutats;així com en el coneixement dels patrons espaials que tenen les tipologies delictives i lainfluència de les característiques del disseny urbà sobre la criminalitat. La metodologia ques’implementarà serà: recerca bibliogràfica, estadística descriptiva i inferencial, sistemesd’informació geogràfica, així com la deducció a partir de la visualització de la cartografiagenerada i un treball de camp de les zones d’alta ocurrència delictiva dels delictes esmentats.Pel que fa a les hipòtesis principals: els robatoris contra el patrimoni no es concentren en àreesdegradades urbanísticament sinó ans el contrari en ambients urbans cuidats. Aquesta hipòtesies contraposa a la teoria criminal de la "Broken Windows", que esmenta que els espais urbansdegradats és on hi ha menys ocupació d’espai públic i més delinqüència. Una altra hipòtesiimportant és que els espais percebuts com a segurs, respecte les tipologies delictivesesmentades, són els més insegurs

La cascarilla cerámica y su uso innovador

The ceramic shell is a material mainly used for making foundry molds. This research demonstrates that ceramic shell can be used for making sculptures with exceptional definition in its finish. The research has identified a number of advantages of the material to meet the challenges of an artist during the making of a sculpture. The research has been developed in six stages: In the first stage data were collected from the chaff as the process material. This was the starting point for research. In the second stage, we have set the appropriate composition of the slurry, both in percentage and type of binder, and firing curve. To this end, we evaluated the application characteristics, thickness, drying, mechanical strength, the reduction coefficient and porosity. In the third stage it was observed that the husk is suitable for all types of materials acting as support. It was also found that the slurry can be used with various sculptural processes: modeling, molding using silicone or plaster mold, shuttering, with internal metal frame, and so on. In addition, we have established methods to repair and modify the husk by hand and power tools. In the fourth stage we have found ways to modify the surface of the husk with other minerals that affect the structure: introduction of filing of copper, bronze and iron in the slurry ceramics, different staining procedure in hot or cold, by enamel slip, and so on. In the fifth stage sculptures were made using the methods established in the previous stages, to verify this hypothesis. The sixth stage, which is annexed, contains a new method to process the ceramic shell as a mold in casting that emerged from the proven methods in the investigation.

Análisis de la dimensión social y económica de la relación de la comunidad de Cumbe con el manglar y los impactos de la industria camaronera

En los últimos años la industria camaronera ha adquirido mucha importancia en Brasil y genera presiones sobre ecosistemas y comunidades tradicionales que viven en equilibrio con su entorno. En Cumbe, una comunidad tradicional del municipio de Aracati, Ceará, Brasil, el ecosistema que rodea a su población es el manglar. Debido a esta fuerte presión, tanto el manglar como los servicios ambientales que la población local se beneficia, están transformándose. En este trabajo, la población local de Cumbe identifica, valora y caracteriza los servicios ambientales que les proporciona el manglar dándole así una vital importancia, que puede servir de precedente para una posible protección. Por otra parte, se hace una aproximación en términos económicos de la pesca artesanal y las granjas de camarón para discutir a corto y a largo plazo cuál es el modelo más sostenible a seguir.

Ab initio study of MF2 (M=Mn, Fe, Co, Ni) rutile-type compounds using the periodic unrestricted Hartree-Fock approach

The ab initio periodic unrestricted Hartree-Fock method has been applied in the investigation of the ground-state structural, electronic, and magnetic properties of the rutile-type compounds MF2 (M=Mn, Fe, Co, and Ni). All electron Gaussian basis sets have been used. The systems turn out to be large band-gap antiferromagnetic insulators; the optimized geometrical parameters are in good agreement with experiment. The calculated most stable electronic state shows an antiferromagnetic order in agreement with that resulting from neutron scattering experiments. The magnetic coupling constants between nearest-neighbor magnetic ions along the [001], [111], and [100] (or [010]) directions have been calculated using several supercells. The resulting ab initio magnetic coupling constants are reasonably satisfactory when compared with available experimental data. The importance of the Jahn-Teller effect in FeF2 and CoF2 is also discussed.

Historias de vida en educación: sujeto, diálogo, experiencia

[spa] En este libro presentamos los trabajos que compartieron en las II Jornadas de Historias de Vida en Educación: Sujeto, Diálogo y Experiencia, (Málaga 9 y 10 de junio, 2011). La diversidad caracteriza el conjunto de los textos, y a veces la contraposición de posiciones ideológicas y conceptuales, lo cual sirve para enriquecer el debate y la reflexión.Los textos se distribuyen en cuatro capítulos: El primero, sobre el sujeto, o relaciones entre sujetos en la investigación. El segundo entorno a cómo las narrativas y las historias de vida pueden convertirse en herramientas para el cambio. El tercero se centra en la entrevista como el espacio de encuentro y de diálogo que tiene lugar en el proceso de investigación. El cuarto y más complejo reúne los textos que hablan de la experiencia como uno de los focos necesarios en los estudios con historias de vida.