Analyzing hidden semantics in social bookmarking of open educational resources

Web 2.0 services such as social bookmarking allow users to manage and share the links they find interesting, adding their own tags for describingthem. This is especially interesting in the field of open educational resources, asdelicious is a simple way to bridge the institutional point of view (i.e. learningobject repositories) with the individual one (i.e. personal collections), thuspromoting the discovering and sharing of such resources by other users. In this paper we propose a methodology for analyzing such tags in order to discover hidden semantics (i.e. taxonomies and vocabularies) that can be used toimprove descriptions of learning objects and make learning object repositories more visible and discoverable. We propose the use of a simple statistical analysis tool such as principal component analysis to discover which tags createclusters that can be semantically interpreted. We will compare the obtained results with a collection of resources related to open educational resources, in order to better understand the real needs of people searching for open educational resources.

Important role of ventromedial hypothalamic carnitine palmitoyltransferase-1a in the control of food intake

Carnitine palmitoyltransferase-1 (CPT-1) liver isoform or CPT-1a is implicated in CNS control of food intake. However, the exact brain nucleus site(s) in mediating this action of CPT-1a has not been identified. In this report, we assess the role of CPT-1a in hypothalamic ventromedial nucleus (VMN). We stereotaxically injected an adenoviral vector containing CPT-1a coding sequence into the VMN of rats to induce overexpression and activation of CPT-1a. The VMN-selective activation of CPT-1a induced orexigenic effect, suggesting CPT-1a in the VMN is involved in the central control of feeding. Intracerebroventricular administration of etomoxir, a CPT-1 inhibitor, decreases food intake. Importantly, in the animals with VMN-overexpression of a CPT-1a mutant that antagonizes the CPT-1 inhibition by etomoxir, the anorectic response to etomoxir was attenuated. This suggests that VMN is involved in mediating the anorectic effect of central inhibition of CPT-1a. In contrast, Arc overexpression of the mutant did not alter etomoxir-induced inhibition of food intake, suggesting that Arc CPT-1a does not play significant roles in this anorectic action. Furthermore, in the VMN, CPT-1a appears to act downstream of hypothalamic malonyl-CoA action of feeding. Finally, we show that in the VMN, CPT-1 activity altered in concert with fasting and refeeding states, supporting a physiological role of CPT-1a in mediating the control of feeding. Taking together, CPT-1a in the hypothalamic VMN appears to play an important role in the central control of food intake. VMN-selective modulation of CPT-1a activity may therefore be a promising strategy in controlling food intake and maintaining normal body weight.

Improving Social Understanding of Preschool Children: Evaluation of a Training Program

This study tested the effects of a training program intending to foster social understanding or the capacity which enables them to understand themselves and others in terms of intentions, beliefs, desires, and emotions in children at preschool age. A number of studies have shown that in the context of shared narratives, children are particularly likely to engage in talk about inner states

Cultural control of herbicide-resistant Lolium rigidum Gaud. populations in winter cereal in Northeastern Spain

Lolium rigidum Gaud. is one of the most common weed species in winter cereals in Northeastern Spain. Herbicide resistance has been growing since the mid 90's and exclusive herbicide use is not enough in many cases, so that it is necessary to combine as many control tools as possible. Six field trials have been conducted during the cropping seasons 2001-02, 2002-03 and 2003-04 on winter cereal infested with herbicide resistant L. rigidum in Northeastern Spain testing different cultural control strategies. Sowing delay was conducted at five fields, mouldboard ploughing at four fields, the combination of sowing delay and ploughing at two fields, increasing the cereal sowing density and combined with sowing delay at one field. Sowing delay was confirmed to have an irregular efficacy depending on the L. rigidum emergence during the delay period. In the trials, weed emergence was reduced up to 88% in the best case but there was no effect in two cases. Ploughing had a more constant efficacy and reduced weed emergence between 50 and 80% although stoniness impeded in one occasion a correct soil inversion causing a very low efficacy. Increasing the cereal sowing rate did not reduce the weed population. The combination of the different methods did not increase significantly the individual efficacy, and one method was clearly more effective than the other, depending on the trial. In fields with high L. rigidum density, these methods are not effective enough and need to be combined with other methods, which are discussed in the text.

Control of doped layers in p-i-n microcrystalline solar cells fully deposited with HWCVD

In this paper, the influence of the deposition conditions on the performance of p-i-n microcrystalline silicon solar cells completely deposited by hot-wire chemical vapor deposition is studied. With this aim, the role of the doping concentration, the substrate temperature of the p-type layer and of amorphous silicon buffer layers between the p/i and i/n microcrystalline layers is investigated. Best results are found when the p-type layer is deposited at a substrate temperature of 125 °C. The dependence seen of the cell performance on the thickness of the i layer evidenced that the efficiency of our devices is still limited by the recombination within this layer, which is probably due to the charge of donor centers most likely related to oxygen.

Control of hair cell excitability by vestibular primary sensory neurons.

In the rat utricle, synaptic contacts between hair cells and the nerve fibers arising from the vestibular primary neurons form during the first week after birth. During that period, the sodium-based excitability that characterizes neonate utricle sensory cells is switched off. To investigate whether the establishment of synaptic contacts was responsible for the modulation of the hair cell excitability, we used an organotypic culture of rat utricle in which the setting of synapses was prevented. Under this condition, the voltage-gated sodium current and the underlying action potentials persisted in a large proportion of nonafferented hair cells. We then studied whether impairment of nerve terminals in the utricle of adult rats may also affect hair cell excitability. We induced selective and transient damages of afferent terminals using glutamate excitotoxicity in vivo. The efficiency of the excitotoxic injury was attested by selective swellings of the terminals and underlying altered vestibular behavior. Under this condition, the sodium-based excitability transiently recovered in hair cells. These results indicate that the modulation of hair cell excitability depends on the state of the afferent terminals. In adult utricle hair cells, this property may be essential to set the conditions required for restoration of the sensory network after damage. This is achieved via re-expression of a biological process that occurs during synaptogenesis.

Evaluation of a revision of the BSPcast decision support system for control of brown spot of pear

Control of brown spot of pear requires fungicide treatments of pear trees during the growing season. Scheduling fungicide sprays with the Brown spot of pear forecasting system (BSPcast) provides significantfungicide savings but does not increase the efficacy of disease control. Modifications in BSPcast wereintroduced in order to increase system performance. The changes consisted of: (1) the use of a daily infectionrisk (Rm≥0.2) instead of the 3-day cumulative risk (CR≥0.4) to guide the fungicide scheduling, and (2) theinclusion of the effect of relative humidity during interrupted wetness periods. Trials were performed during2 years in an experimental pear orchard in Spain. The modifications introduced did not result in increaseddisease control efficacy, compared with the original BSPcast system. In one year, no reduction in the numberof fungicide applications was obtained using the modified BSPcast system in comparison to the original system, but in the second year the number of treatments was reduced from 15 to 13. The original BSPcast model overestimated the daily infection risk in 6.5% of days with wetness periods with low relative humidity during the wetness interruption, and in these cases the modified version was more adequate

The Institutional, Economic and Social Determinants of Local Government Transparency

Interest in public accountability and government transparency is increasing worldwide. The literature on the determinants of transparency is evolving but is still in its early stages. So far, it has typically focused on national or regional governments while neglecting the local government level. This paper builds on the scarce knowledge available in order to examine the economic, social, and institutional determinants of local government transparency in Spain. We draw on a 2010 survey and the transparency indexes constructed by the NGO Transparency International (Spain) in order to move beyond the fiscal transparency addressed in previous work. In so doing, we broaden the analysis of transparency to the corporate, social, fiscal, contracting, and planning activities of governments. Our results on overall transparency indicate that large municipalities and left-wing local government leaders are associated with better transparency indexes; while the worst results are presented by provincial capitals, cities where tourist activity is particularly important and local governments that enjoy an absolute majority. The analysis of other transparency categories generally shows the consistent impact of these determinants and the need to consider a wider set of variables to capture their effect.

Multilevel control of arabidopsis 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase by protein phosphatase 2A

Plants synthesize a myriad of isoprenoid products that are required both for essential constitutive processes and for adaptive responses to the environment. The enzyme 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA reductase (HMGR) catalyzes a key regulatory step of the mevalonate pathway for isoprenoid biosynthesis and is modulated by many endogenous and external stimuli. In spite of that, no protein factor interacting with and regulating plant HMGR in vivo has been described so far. Here, we report the identification of two B99 regulatory subunits of protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A), designated B99a and B99b, that interact with HMGR1S and HMGR1L, the major isoforms of Arabidopsis thaliana HMGR. B99a and B99b are Ca2+ binding proteins of the EF-hand type. We show that HMGR transcript, protein, and activity levels are modulated by PP2A in Arabidopsis. When seedlings are transferred to salt-containing medium, B99a and PP2A mediate the decrease and subsequent increase of HMGR activity, which results from a steady rise of HMGR1-encoding transcript levels and an initial sharper reduction of HMGR protein level. In unchallenged plants, PP2A is a posttranslational negative regulator of HMGR activity with the participation of B99b. Our data indicate that PP2A exerts multilevel control on HMGR through the fivemember B99 protein family during normal development and in response to a variety of stress conditions.

Developmental and tissue-specific involvement of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-alpha in the control of mouse uncoupling protein-3 gene expression.

Uncoupling protein-3 (UCP3) is a member of the mitochondrial carrier family expressed preferentially in skeletal muscle and heart. It appears to be involved in metabolic handling of fatty acids in a way that minimizes excessive production of reactive oxygen species. Fatty acids are powerful regulators of UCP3 gene transcription. We have found that the role of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-α (PPARα) on the control of UCP3 gene expression depends on the tissue and developmental stage. In adults, UCP3 mRNA expression is unaltered in skeletal muscle from PPARα-null mice both in basal conditions and under the stimulus of starvation. In contrast, UCP3 mRNA is down-regulated in adult heart both in fed and fasted PPARα-null mice. This occurs despite the increased levels of free fatty acids caused by fasting in PPARα-null mice. In neonates, PPARα-null mice show impaired UCP3 mRNA expression in skeletal muscle in response to milk intake, and this is not a result of reduced free fatty acid levels. The murine UCP3 promoter is activated by fatty acids through either PPARα or PPARδ but not by PPARγ or retinoid X receptor alone. PPARδ-dependent activation could be a potential compensatory mechanism to ensure appropriate expression of UCP3 gene in adult skeletal muscle in the absence of PPARα. However, among transcripts from other PPARα and PPARδ target genes, only those acutely induced by milk intake in wild-type neonates were altered in muscle or heart from PPARα-null neonates. Thus, PPARα-dependent regulation is required for appropriate gene regulation of UCP3 as part of the subset of fatty-acid-responsive genes in neonatal muscle and heart.

La inclusión laboral y social de los jóvenes con discapacidad intelectual : el papel de la escuela = Work and social inclusion of young people with intellectual disabilities : the role of the school

The transition to adult life from the standpoint of inclusion is a complex process, especially for young people with intellectual disabilities. This article analyzes the context of transition processes showing the main relationships and differences of the different scenarios where young people with disabilities develop personal pathways that lead to adulthood. Among these scenarios, the school -the period of compulsory secondary education- plays a key role. Therefore, a specific section is devoted to developing an approach to the role of the school in the construction of bridges that facilitate social and work inclusion. Finally, it presents some major challenges that need to be faced to improve the processes of transition from an inclusive perspective

Individual differences in control of language interference in late bilinguals are mainly related to general executive abilities

Background: Recent research based on comparisons between bilinguals and monolinguals postulates that bilingualism enhances cognitive control functions, because the parallel activation of languages necessitates control of interference. In a novel approach we investigated two groups of bilinguals, distinguished by their susceptibility to cross-language interference, asking whether bilinguals with strong language control abilities ('non-switchers") have an advantage in executive functions (inhibition of irrelevant information, problem solving, planning efficiency, generative fluency and self-monitoring) compared to those bilinguals showing weaker language control abilities ('switchers"). Methods: 29 late bilinguals (21 women) were evaluated using various cognitive control neuropsychological tests [e.g., Tower of Hanoi, Ruff Figural Fluency Task, Divided Attention, Go/noGo] tapping executive functions as well as four subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. The analysis involved t-tests (two independent samples). Non-switchers (n = 16) were distinguished from switchers (n = 13) by their performance observed in a bilingual picture-naming task. Results: The non-switcher group demonstrated a better performance on the Tower of Hanoi and Ruff Figural Fluency task, faster reaction time in a Go/noGo and Divided Attention task, and produced significantly fewer errors in the Tower of Hanoi, Go/noGo, and Divided Attention tasks when compared to the switchers. Non-switchers performed significantly better on two verbal subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Information and Similarity), but not on the Performance subtests (Picture Completion, Block Design). Conclusions: The present results suggest that bilinguals with stronger language control have indeed a cognitive advantage in the administered tests involving executive functions, in particular inhibition, self-monitoring, problem solving, and generative fluency, and in two of the intelligence tests. What remains unclear is the direction of the relationship between executive functions and language control abilities.

The Social Politics of Fatherhood in Spain and France: a Comparative Analysis of Parental Leave and Shared Residence

The Social Politics of Fatherhood in Spain and France: A Comparative Analysis of Parental Leave and Shared Residence The article provides a comparative analysis of policy developments on leaves for fathers and joint custody in Spain and France in the last decade. These two types of measures have been selected because they are both widely recognised as main instruments to promote new fathering styles and consequently more gender equality in the European Union. While the rhetoric of choice has been developed in both countries in relation to maternal employment and childcare, with better results in France than in Spain, it remains to be seen to what extent choice will also be extended to fathers. Keywords: Fatherhood. Family. Comparative social policy. Parental leave. Joint custody.