Barriers and Motivators for Using Open Educational Resources in Schools

In an explorative study, we investigated on German schoolteachers how they use, reuse, produce and manage Open Educational Resources. The main questions in this research have been, what their motivators and barriers are in their use of Open Educational Resources, what others can learn from their Open Educational Practices, and what we can do to raise the dissemination level of OER in schools.

Do Schools Discriminate Against Homosexual Parents? Evidence from an Internet Field Experiment

The recognition of homosexual rights is a controversial issue in many countries. Spain was the third country in the world (after Netherlands and Belgium) to introduce a law recognizing homosexual marriage and adoption of children. In this paper, we examine for the first time whether schools are more hesitant to give feedback to homosexual parents during children's pre-registration period in Spain. In order to do that, we designed an internet field experiment to be conducted in schools. We created three types of fictitious couples; one heterosexual, one male homosexual and one female homosexual, and send emails to schools making sexual orientation explicit. Our results show that men homosexual couples had a significant lower probability to receive and answer than heterosexual couples (22.5 percentage points less). No statistically significant differences in the response rate were found between female homosexual and heterosexual couples. This result suggests that male homosexual couples might be penalized because of the lack of a maternal figure. Keywords: Discrimination, field experiment, schools, homosexual rights. JEL codes: H41, I20, K36

Understanding Flood Regime Changes in Europe: a state-of-the-art assessment

There is growing concern that flooding is becoming more frequent and severe in Europe. A better understanding of flood regime changes and their drivers is therefore needed. The paper reviews the current knowledge on flood regime changes in European rivers that has traditionally been obtained through two alternative research approaches. The first approach is the data-based detection of changes in observed flood events. Current methods are reviewed together with their challenges and opportunities. For example, observation biases, the merging of different data sources and accounting for nonlinear drivers and responses. The second approach consists of modelled scenarios of future floods. Challenges and opportunities associated with flood change scenarios are discussed such as fully accounting for uncertainties in the modelling cascade and feedbacks. To make progress in flood change research, we suggest that a synthesis of these two approaches is needed. This can be achieved by focusing on long duration records and flood-rich and flood-poor periods rather than on short duration flood trends only, by formally attributing causes of observed flood changes, by validating scenarios against observed flood regime dynamics, and by developing low-dimensional models of flood changes and feedbacks. The paper finishes with a call for a joint European flood change research network.

El patronatge de les noves oligarquies urbanes a l'art català dels segles XVI i XVII

Al llarg del segle XVI es produí de manera lenta i heterogènia la progressiva introducció al Principat de les formes artístiques del Renaixement italià. Tradicionalment, a Catalunya, igual que a la resta del territori europeu, havia estat la noblesa, com a estament més proper al poder reial, la principal protagonista en el procés de comitència de les obres de més envergadura, moltes d"elles plantejades amb un sentit àulic que pretenia manifestar el predomini polític i econòmic de què havia gaudit d"antuvi aquest segment de la societat. Tanmateix, amb l"arribada a casa nostra dels nous corrents artístics renaixentistes es produí una certa inflexió en aquesta tendència, i hom pot observar com, a la fi del segle XVI i, sobretot, al llarg del segle XVII, aparegueren en l"escena del mercat artístic alts funcionaris reials, magistrats i juristes que, adherits al modern corrent de pensament humanista, dugueren a terme un important exercici de promoció i finançament d"empreses arquitectòniques, escultòriques i pictòriques seguidores dels preceptes renaixentistes. El present estudi analitza en quins termes es produí aquest relleu de patrocini artístic i repassa alguns casos ben emblemàtics.

Fontcuberta i Famadas, Cristina. 'Imatges d'atac. Art i conflicte als segles XVI i XVII'

Durant els darrers anys hem assistit a una ampliació de la perspectiva a través de la qual han estat observades les imatges. Entre els historiadors de l'art, les preguntes tradicionals, centrades en l'autoria o en la seva dimensió estètica, han passat a compartir l'interès amb altres qüestions com ara la del comitent i el seu entorn, la circulació, el mercat o els múltiples usos i significats que aquelles podien adquirir.

Les Històries de Tobies d'Andrea Vaccaro: de Nàpols al Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya

[cat] Aquest article intenta reconstruir la història de quatre pintures de l'artista napolità Andrea Vaccaro, actualment al Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, i originàriament part d'una sèrie de 12 peces dedicada a les històries bíbliques de Tobies, propietat del virrei de Nàpols Pedro Antonio de Aragón. L'anàlisi de les obres i del context de la seva comissió a la llum d'estudis recents permet corregir-ne la datació i comprendre la importància de les quatre peces de Vaccaro del MNAC, en el marc de la circulació d'obres d'art entre el Regne de Nàpols i la península Ibèrica al llarg del segle XVII.

Comentari a la setència sobre l'Estatut. Competència en matèria de consultes populars (art. 122)

L'article 122 de l'Estatut d'autonomia de Catalunya (EAC) reconeix a la Generalitat la competència exclusiva per a establir el règim jurídic, les modalitats, el procediment, l'acompliment i la convocatòria per la mateixa Generalitat o pels ens locals, en l'àmbit de llurs competències, d'enquestes, audiències públiques,formes de participació i qualsevol altre instrument de consultes populars, salvant el que disposa l'article 149.1.32 de la Constitució espanyola (CE). La STC 31/2010, de 20 de juny, avala al seu fonament jurídic 69, la constitucionalitat del precepte estatutari, però amb una interpretació marcadament restrictiva.

L'aplicació de l'art teràpia amb nens hospitalitzats amb càncer, per tal de millorar el seu estat d'ànim, disminuir l'ansietat i l'estrès

Amb aquest projecte d'intervenció ens agradaria poder posar sobre la taula que l'art teràpia és una disciplina, una tècnica dins de la psicologia, que aporta beneficis psico-emocionals als usuaris que la reben; en el cas d'aquest projecte amb nens i adolescents amb càncer a l'Hospital Sant Joan de Déu.

Organic chicken product authentication: state-of-the-art and future perspectives

Organic food products are highly susceptible to fraud. Currently, administrative controls are conducted to detect fraud, but having an analytical tool able to verify the organic identity of food would be very supportive. The state-of-the-art in food authentication relies on fingerprinting approaches that find characteristic analytical patterns to unequivocally identify authentic products. While wide research on authentication has been conducted for other commodities, the authentication of organic chicken products is still in its infancy. Challenges include finding fingerprints to discriminate organic from conventional products, and recruiting sample sets that cover natural variability. Future research might be oriented towards developing new authentication models for organic feed, eggs and chicken meat, keeping models updated and implementing them into regulations. Meanwhile, these models might be very supportive to the administrative controls directing inspections towards suspicious fraudulent samples.

Efficiency and Equity in Learning Communities and schools

Traditionally, school efficiency has been measured as a function of educational production. In the last two decades, however, studies in the economics of education have indicated that more is required to improve school efficiency: researchers must explore how significant changes in school organization affect the performance of at-risk students. In this paper we introduce Henry Levin’s adoption of the X-efficiency approach to education and we describe the efficient and cost-effective characteristics of one Learning Communities Project School that significantly improved its student outcomes and enrollment numbersand reduced its absenteeism rate to zero. The organizational change that facilitatedthese improvements defined specific issues to address. Students’ school success became the focus of the school project, which also offered specific incentives, selected teachers, involved parents and community members in decisions, and used the most efficient technologies and methods. This case analysis reveals new two elements—family training and community involvement—that were not explicit parts of Levin’s adaptation. The case of the Antonio Machado Public School should attract the attention of both social scientists and policy makers

Gp120/CD4 blocking antibodies are frequently elicited in ART-naïve chronically HIV-1 infected individuals

Antibodies with the ability to block the interaction of HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein (Env) gp120 with CD4, including those overlapping the CD4 binding site (CD4bs antibodies), can protect from infection by HIV-1, and their elicitation may be an interesting goal for any vaccination strategy. To identify gp120/CD4 blocking antibodies in plasma samples from HIV-1 infected individuals we have developed a competitive flow cytometry-based functional assay. In a cohort of treatment-naïve chronically infected patients, we showed that gp120/ CD4 blocking antibodies were frequently elicited (detected in 97% plasma samples) and correlated with binding to trimeric HIV-1 envelope glycoproteins. However, no correlation was observed between functional CD4 binding blockade data and titer of CD4bs antibodies determined by ELISA using resurfaced gp120 proteins. Consistently, plasma samples lacking CD4bs antibodies were able to block the interaction between gp120 and its receptor, indicating that antibodies recognizing other epitopes, such as PGT126 and PG16, can also play the same role. Antibodies blocking CD4 binding increased over time and correlated positively with the capacity of plasma samples to neutralize the laboratory-adapted NL4.3 and BaL virus isolates, suggesting their potential contribution to the neutralizing workforce of plasma in vivo. Determining whether this response can be boosted to achieve broadly neutralizing antibodies may provide valuable information for the design of new strategies aimed to improve the anti-HIV-1 humoral response and to develop a successful HIV- 1 vaccine.

Enseñar a aprender a pensar en los centros educativos, incluso en las actividades de evaluación.= Teaching to learn how to think at schools, even within assessment activities

El auténtico protagonismo de los centros educativostiene que dirigirse a ayudar a pensar a sus alumnos y aenseñarlos a aprender, es decir, el docente tiene queenseñar estrategias de aprendizaje y debe promover elesfuerzo del estudiante para facilitar la construcción deesquemas y el aprendizaje permanente.El profesor debe utilizar cualquier situación deaprendizaje para enseñar dichas estrategias deaprendizaje, incluso en las situaciones de evaluación;por lo tanto, en este trabajo se sugiere que en lasevaluaciones de los alumnos y alumnas se tenga encuenta la metacognición como factor fundamental en elaprendizaje y la enseñanza

epiCentre!: rehabilitació de Ca n'Oliver com a centre d'art

Award-winning