Eliciting consumers preferences using stated preference discrete choice models: Contingent ranking versus choice experiment

The aim of this paper is twofold: firstly, to carry out a theoreticalreview of the most recent stated preference techniques used foreliciting consumers preferences and, secondly, to compare the empiricalresults of two dierent stated preference discrete choice approaches.They dier in the measurement scale for the dependent variable and,therefore, in the estimation method, despite both using a multinomiallogit. One of the approaches uses a complete ranking of full-profiles(contingent ranking), that is, individuals must rank a set ofalternatives from the most to the least preferred, and the other usesa first-choice rule in which individuals must select the most preferredoption from a choice set (choice experiment). From the results werealize how important the measurement scale for the dependent variablebecomes and, to what extent, procedure invariance is satisfied.

Application of a support system to the design of wastewater treatment plants

This paper presents a case study that explores the advantages that can be derived from the use of a design support system during the design of wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). With this objective in mind a simplified but plausible WWTP design case study has been generated with KBDS, a computer-based support system that maintains a historical record of the design process. The study shows how, by employing such a historical record, it is possible to: (1) rank different design proposals responding to a design problem; (2) study the influence of changing the weight of the arguments used in the selection of the most adequate proposal; (3) take advantage of keywords to assist the designer in the search of specific items within the historical records; (4) evaluate automatically thecompliance of alternative design proposals with respect to the design objectives; (5) verify the validity of previous decisions after the modification of the current constraints or specifications; (6) re-use the design records when upgrading an existing WWTP or when designing similar facilities; (7) generate documentation of the decision making process; and (8) associate a variety of documents as annotations to any component in the design history. The paper also shows one possible future role of design support systems as they outgrow their current reactive role as repositories of historical information and start to proactively support the generation of new knowledge during the design process

Lengua familiar y conocimiento de la lengua escolar en Cataluña al finalizar la Educación Infantil = Home Language and Knowledge of the School Language in Catalonia at the end of Nursery School

La infancia extranjera se escolariza en Cataluña en un programa de cambio de lengua del hogar a la escuela. Las investigaciones afirman que este alumnado tarda un mínimo de seis años en equiparar sus habilidades lingüístico-cognitivas con sus pares autóctonos, no así las habilidades conversacionales, las cuales se adquieren antes de los dos años de residencia. Sin embargo, no existen estudios sobre los efectos de la escolarización en el parvulario del alumnado alófono, así como de su lengua familiar, en relación con la adquisición de la lengua escolar. El artículo es un estudio comparativo de la adquisición del catalán de 567 autóctonos y 434 alófonos, al final del parvulario, en 50 escuelas de Cataluña que escolarizan a alumnado de origen extranjero. Las lenguas del alumnado autóctono son el catalán, el castellano y el bilingüismo catalán-castellano y las lenguas del alumnado alófono son el árabe, el soninké y el castellano. Los factores utilizados más relevantes han sido el nivel socioprofesional y educativo de las familias, el tiempo de residencia y el momento de escolarización del alumnado, el porcentaje de alumnado catalanohablante y de alumnado alófono en el aula y el contexto sociolingüístico del centro escolar. Los resultados muestran que el alumnado autóctono sabe más catalán que el alumnado alófono, pero las diferencias desaparecen respecto a algunos factores, de los cuales los más relevantes son los relacionados con las características del alumnado de las aulas. La lengua familiar del alumnado alófono no incide en sus resultados

Empirical study about the effects of the application of IAS 32 in Cooperatives

Objecte: L'aplicació de la NIC 32 en les cooperatives ha generat una important controvèrsia en els últims anys. Fins al moment, s'han realitzat diversos treballs que intenten preveure els possibles efectes de la seva aplicació. Aquest treball pretén analitzar l'impacte de la primera aplicació de la NIC 32 en el sector cooperatiu. Disseny/metodologia/enfocament: S'ha seleccionat una mostra de 98 cooperatives, i s'ha realitzat una anàlisi comparativa de la seva informació financera presentada abans i després de l'aplicació de la NIC 32, per a determinar les diferències existents. S’ha utilitzat la prova de la suma de rangs de Wilcoxon per comprovar si aquestes diferències són significatives. També s’ha utilitzat la prova de la U de Mann Whitney per comprovar si existeixen diferències significatives en l’impacte relatiu de l’aplicació de la NIC 32 entre diversos grups de cooperatives. Finalment, s'ha realitzat una anàlisi dels efectes de l'aplicació de la NIC 32 en la situació patrimonial i econòmica de les cooperatives, i en l'evolució dels seus actius intangibles, mitjançant l’ús de tècniques d’anàlisi econòmico-financera. Aportacions i resultats: Els resultats obtinguts confirmen que l'aplicació de la NIC 32 provoca diferències significatives en algunes partides del balanç de situació i el compte de pèrdues i guanys, així com en les ràtios analitzades. Les principals diferències es concreten en una reducció del nivell de capitalització i un augment de l'endeutament de les cooperatives, així com un empitjorament general dels ràtios de solvència i autonomia financera. Limitacions: Cal tenir en compte que el treball s'ha realitzat amb una mostra de cooperatives que estan obligades a auditar els seus comptes anuals. Per tant, els resultats obtinguts han d'interpretar-se en un context de cooperatives de tamany elevat. També cal tenir en compte que hem realitzat una anàlisi comparativa dels comptes anuals de 2011 i 2010. Això ens ha permès conèixer les diferències en la informació financera de les cooperatives abans i després d'aplicar la NIC 32. Encara que algunes d’aquestes diferències també podrien estar causades per altres factors com la situació econòmica, els canvis en l'aplicació de les normes comptables, etc. Originalitat/valor afegit: Creiem que és el moment idoni per a realitzar aquest treball d'investigació, ja que des de 2011 totes les cooperatives espanyoles han d'aplicar les normes comptables adaptades a la NIC 32. A més, fins on coneixem, no existeixen altres treballs similars realitzats amb comptes anuals de cooperatives que ja han aplicat les normes comptables adaptades a la NIC 32 . Creiem que els resultats d'aquest treball d'investigació poden ser útils per a diferents grups d'interès. En primer lloc, perquè els organismes emissors de normes comptables puguin conèixer l'abast de la NIC 32 en les cooperatives i, puguin plantejar millores en el contingut de la norma. En segon lloc, perquè les pròpies cooperatives, federacions, confederacions i altres organismes cooperatius disposin d'informació sobre l'impacte econòmic de la primera aplicació de la NIC 32, i puguin realitzar les valoracions que creguin convenients. I en tercer lloc, perquè les entitats financeres, auditors i assessors de cooperatives i altres grups d'interès disposin d'informació sobre els canvis en els comptes anuals de les cooperatives, i puguin tenir-los en compte a l'hora de prendre decisions. Paraules clau: Cooperatives, patrimoni net, capital social, NIC 32, solvència, efectes de la normativa comptable, informació financera, ràtios.

An Empirical Study on Faculty Perceptions and Teaching Practices of Wikipedia

Some faculty members from different universities around the world have begun to use Wikipedia as a teaching tool in recent years. These experiences show, in most cases, very satisfactory results and a substantial improvement in various basic skills, as well as a positive influence on the students' motivation. Nevertheless and despite the growing importance of e-learning methodologies based on the use of the Internet for higher education, the use of Wikipedia as a teaching resource remains scarce among university faculty.Our investigation tries to identify which are the main factors that determine acceptance or resistance to that use. We approach the decision to use Wikipedia as a teaching tool by analyzing both the individual attributes of faculty members and the characteristics of the environment where they develop their teaching activity. From a specific survey sent to all faculty of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), pioneer and leader in online education in Spain, we have tried to infer the influence of these internal and external elements. The questionnaire was designed to measure different constructs: perceived quality of Wikipedia, teaching practices involving Wikipedia, use experience, perceived usefulness and use of 2.0 tools. Control items were also included for gathering information on gender, age, teaching experience, academic rank, and area of expertise.Our results reveal that academic rank, teaching experience, age or gender, are not decisive factors in explaining the educational use of Wikipedia. Instead, the decision to use it is closely linked to the perception of Wikipedia's quality, the use of other collaborative learning tools, an active attitude towards web 2.0 applications, and connections with the professional non-academic world. Situational context is also very important, since the use is higher when faculty members have got reference models in their close environment and when they perceive it is positively valued by their colleagues. As far as these attitudes, practices and cultural norms diverge in different scientific disciplines, we have also detected clear differences in the use of Wikipedia among areas of academic expertise. As a consequence, a greater application of Wikipedia both as a teaching resource and as a driver for teaching innovation would require much more active institutional policies and some changes in the dominant academic culture among faculty members.

High-impact open access journals

Poster presented in the LIBER 43rd Annual Conference. It is shown the tool "High-impact open access journals¿" created by the Library of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. The tool gives access to open access journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) with impact factor in the Journal Citation Reports 2011 or SCImago Journal Rank.

Presencia en Valencia de Rhizoecus cacticans (Hambl.) (Homoptera, pseudococcidae)

En el presente artículo se advierte de la presencia del pseudococcino Rhizoecus cacticans (HAMBLETON) en la zona de Valencia, atacando a raíces de cactáceas. Se dan algunas características del género y se describe la especie, así como algunos datos sobre los daños que causa. Se indican procedimientos posibles de control.

Les tortugues de Darwin tornen a les Galápagos

Es reintrodueix a l'arxipèlag una nova tortuga per ocupar el lloc d'una 'cosina extingida': s'adapta bé gràcies a la forma de la seva closca, que li permet sobreviure entre els cactus

One more lie: the Monday effect in Spain’s retail petrol market

Empirical evidence drawn from the economic literature points to a low level of competition in the retail petrol market. Similar evidence can be found for the Spanish market. In fact, both Spain’s antitrust authority -Comisión Nacional de la Competencia- and its energy regulator -Comisión Nacional de la Energía- have recently initiated disciplinary proceedings against the majors on the grounds of suspected price manipulation in the retail petrol market. They are accused of cutting retail prices on Mondays so as to distort the rank position of Spain in European Union statistics in a practice that has received the name of the Monday effect. Here, we analyze this effect by constructing a database that includes daily retail prices for all petrol stations in Spain in the period 2009-2012, and a more detailed database for the city of Barcelona in 2013. Our estimations confirm that: 1- in 2011 and 2012 prices fell on Mondays at retailers branded by majors; 2- prices were unchanged at stations in our two control groups; 3- prices were also seen to fall when a more detailed analysis was conducted, and this price cut was also found in 2013. In short, one more indicator of collusion in this sector and … one more lie.

The Dialogic Turn in Educational Psychology

The increasing presence of and claim for dialogue in today"s society has already had an impact on the theory and practice of learning. Whereas in the past individual and cognitive elements were seen as crucial to learning, since about two decades ago, scientific literature indicates that culture, interaction and dialogue are the key factors. In addition, the research project of highest scientific rank and with most resources dedicated to the study of school education in the Framework Program of the European Union: INCLUD-ED shows that the practices of successful schools around Europe are in line with the dialogic approach to learning. This article presents the dialogic turn in educational psychology, consisting of moving from symbolic conceptions of mind and internalist perspectives that focus on mental schemata of previous knowledge, to theories that see intersubjectivity and communication as the primary factors in learning. The paper deepens on the second approach.

Agonistic strategies and spatial distribution in captive sooty mangabeys (Cercocebus atys lunulatus)

The aim of this article is to study the relationship between the dominance hierarchy and the spatial distribution of a group of captive sooty mangabeys (Cercocebus atys). The analysis of the spatial distribution of individuals in relation to their rank in the dominance hierarchy showed a clear linear hierarchy in which the dominant individual was located in central positions with regard to the rest of the group members. The large open enclosure where the group was living allowed them to adopt a high-risk agonistic strategy in which individuals attacked other individuals whose rank was significantly different from their own. The comparison of the results with a previous study of mangabeys showed that, although the dominance ranks of both groups were similar, the fact that they lived in facilities with different layouts caused different agonistic strategies to emerge and allowed the dominant individual to assume different spatial locations.

rDock: A Fast, Versatile and Open Source Program for Docking Ligands to Proteins and Nucleic Acids

Identification of chemical compounds with specific biological activities is an important step in both chemical biology and drug discovery. When the structure of the intended target is available, one approach is to use molecular docking programs to assess the chemical complementarity of small molecules with the target; such calculations provide a qualitative measure of affinity that can be used in virtual screening (VS) to rank order a list of compounds according to their potential to be active. rDock is a molecular docking program developed at Vernalis for high-throughput VS (HTVS) applications. Evolved from RiboDock, the program can be used against proteins and nucleic acids, is designed to be computationally very efficient and allows the user to incorporate additional constraints and information as a bias to guide docking. This article provides an overview of the program structure and features and compares rDock to two reference programs, AutoDock Vina (open source) and Schrodinger's Glide (commercial). In terms of computational speed for VS, rDock is faster than Vina and comparable to Glide. For binding mode prediction, rDock and Vina are superior to Glide. The VS performance of rDock is significantly better than Vina, but inferior to Glide for most systems unless pharmacophore constraints are used; in that case rDock and Glide are of equal performance. The program is released under the Lesser General Public License and is freely available for download, together with the manuals, example files and the complete test sets, at http://rdock.sourceforge.net/

Mentoring in the acquisition of professional skills through practices in companies by degree students

Abstract This work has had as objective to analyze the skills acquired through internships in business companies by students of the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University Pompeu Fabra. The internship is a basic item in order to obtain a hard connection between the University and social-economic world where University and Enterprises develop their activity. In this study we want to know about two aspects. The first one, we want to know the profit that is obtained from the Student as a consequence of internship and mentoring. Also, we want to study about the importance of mentoring as a principal element that establishes the relationship between the Student and the Company. Moreover, it has sought to analyze if certain factors such as the size of the company where the practices has been performed, the study rank level that was achieved or the fact of being a man or a woman, were among the determining factors at the time of acquiring the skills. The results presented here indicate that the size of the company that have been making the practices and the gender of the student are related to the acquisition of certain skills. There was not a statistically significant relationship related to the rank level have by the students in the practice. In the future we are going to study if the labor market Integration is easier if the Student has performed work placement. Keywords Skills; employability; internship; meatoring.

Detection of severe obstructive sleep apnea through voice analysis

tThis paper deals with the potential and limitations of using voice and speech processing to detect Obstruc-tive Sleep Apnea (OSA). An extensive body of voice features has been extracted from patients whopresent various degrees of OSA as well as healthy controls. We analyse the utility of a reduced set offeatures for detecting OSA. We apply various feature selection and reduction schemes (statistical rank-ing, Genetic Algorithms, PCA, LDA) and compare various classifiers (Bayesian Classifiers, kNN, SupportVector Machines, neural networks, Adaboost). S-fold crossvalidation performed on 248 subjects showsthat in the extreme cases (that is, 127 controls and 121 patients with severe OSA) voice alone is able todiscriminate quite well between the presence and absence of OSA. However, this is not the case withmild OSA and healthy snoring patients where voice seems to play a secondary role. We found that thebest classification schemes are achieved using a Genetic Algorithm for feature selection/reduction.

Niche Differentiation and Fine-Scale Projections for Argentine Ants Based on Remotely Sensed Data

Modeling ecological niches of species is a promising approach for predicting the geographic potential of invasive species in new environments. Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) rank among the most successful invasive species: native to South America, they have invaded broad areas worldwide. Despite their widespread success, little is known about what makes an area susceptible - or not - to invasion. Here, we use a genetic algorithm approach to ecological niche modeling based on high-resolution remote-sensing data to examine the roles of niche similarity and difference in predicting invasions by this species. Our comparisons support a picture of general conservatism of the species' ecological characteristics, in spite of distinct geographic and community contexts