Resum de la tasca realitzada al Center Biomedical Engineering (CBE) del Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT). Juliol-Agost 2005

Estudi elaborat a partir d’una estada al Center Biomedical Engineering (CBE) del Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT), durant els mesos de juliol i agost del 2005. S’investiga una metodologia amb l’objectiu d’obtenir biomaterials que puguin actuar de bastida en la interfície os/cartílag, afavorint la diferenciació i creixement cel·lular de cartílag ossificat que pugui actuar d’unió entre l’articulació i l’os. S’experimenta una metodologia per a establir quins són els péptids afavoridors de la formació de teixit ossi utilitzats en materials d’hidroxiapatita. Es conclou que la tecnologia desenvolupada permet disposar d’una plataforma per assajar l’estudi del signaling sobre cèl·lules embrionàries, que permeti desenvolupar materials amb més capacitat diferenciadora.

Thermal tests on the LISA pathfinder engineering model

Report for the scientific sojourn carried out at Albert Einstein Institut in Germany, from April to July 2006.

Family-based affirmative action? Subversion and resilience strategies of gay father families

The present doctoral dissertation is aimed at analyzing how and with what consequences gay father families and their children’s schools negotiate possible differences in the construction of family and gender at home and in the families’ social milieus. This objective fits in with the broader goal of researching how family-school interactons are influenced by the social context such as hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 2002). The thesis is based on qualitative fieldwork carried out with 18 nonheterosexual parent families in Spain, comprising 30 interviews with 44 people. The principal participant group were 14 de novo (adoptive and surrogacy) gay father families with resident preadolescent children. The findings revealed that all the de novo families assumed open communication strategies at school with inclusive consequences: apart from incidental questions and reactions of surprise, the children did not suffer homophobic bullying. The analisis showed that the necessary condition for inclusion was not the open communication but rather illocutionary orientation (Habermas, 1984; Soler & Flecha, 2010), understood as the parents’ sensitivity to the attitudes of their children and schools. The schools received the families in an inclusive manner, which, however, was only receptive and not proactive, therefore some of the families (reconstituted ones), coerced by the social context, got excluded. Gender relations at home were predominantly androgynous, and outside home predominantly traditional, yet the children negotiated this difference with inclusive consequences. They participated in hegemonic collective practices, thus confirming the thesis on the similarity between homo- and heterosexual-parent families (Golombok, 2006). Consistently, also the families’ identity politics was “assimilationist” and non-queer. Admittedly, the analisis showed that such a politics was increased by social expectations. Still, the findings suggest that educational and other family policies should draw on broad agendas of gender and family diversity rather than on the politics of difference and the unique status of LGB families.

Engineering the thermal emission of macroporous silicon

Todos los cuerpos emiten luz espontaneamente al ser calentados. El espectro de radiacion es una funcion de la temperatura y el material. Sin embargo, la mayoria de los materiales irradia, en general, en una banda espectral amplia. Algunas matereiales, por el contrario, son capaces de concentrar la radiacion termica en una banda espectral mucho mas estrecha. Estos materiales se conocen como emisores selectivos y su uso tiene un profundo impacto en la eficiencia de sistemas sistemas tales como iluminacion y conversion de energia termofotovoltaica. De los emisores selectivos se espera que sean capaces de operar a altas temperaturas y que emitan en una banda espectral muy concisa. Uno de los metodos mas prometedores para controlar y disenar el espectro de emision termico es la utilizacion de cristales fotonicos. Los cristales fotonicos son estructuras periodicas artificiales capaces de controlar y confinar la luz de formas sin precedentes. Sin embargo, la produccion de dichas estructuras con grandes superficies y capaces de soportar altas temperaturas sigue siendo una dificil tarea. Este trabajo esta dedicada al estudio de las propiedades de emision termica de estructuras 3D de silicio macroporoso en el rango espectral mid-IR (2-30 m). En particular, este trabajo se enfoca en reducir la elevada emisividad del silicio cristalino. Las muestras estudiadas en este trabajo tienen una periodicidad de 4 m, lo que limitan los resultados obtenidos a la banda del infrarrojo medio, aunque estructuras mucho mas pequenas son tecnologicamente realizables con el metodo de fabricacion utilizado. Hemos demostrado que el silicio macroporoso 3D puede inhibir completamente la emision termica en su superficie. Mas aun, esta banda se puede ajustar en un amplio margen mediante pequenos cambios durante la formacion de los macroporos. Tambien hemos demostrado que tanto el ancho como la frecuencia de la banda de inhibicion se puede doblar mediante la aplicacion de tecnicas de postprocesado adecuadas. Finalmente hemos mostrado que es posible crear bandas de baja emisividad arbitrariamente anchas mediante estructuras macroporosas aperiodicas.

Applying recommendations to aligncompetences, methodology and assessment in Telematics, Computing and Electronic Engineering courses

The alignment between competences, teaching-learning methodologies and assessment is a key element of the European Higher Education Area. This paper presents the efforts carried out by six Telematics, Computer Science and Electronic Engineering Education teachers towards achieving this alignment in their subjects. In a joint work with pedagogues, a set of recommended actions were identified. A selection of these actions were applied and evaluated in the six subjects. The cross-analysis of the results indicate that the actions allow students to better understand the methodologies and assessment planned for the subjects, facilitate (self-) regulation and increase students’ involvement in the subjects.

The role of the Teaching Quality and Innovation Support Unit in the ICT Engineering Studies at Universitat Pompeu Fabra

One of the strategies of Universitat Pompeu Fabra to support Quality Learning has been the creation of Units for the Support of Teaching Quality and Innovation within each faculty. In the seminar we will present the role and activities of the Polytechnic School Unit in charge or coordinating the efforts towards quality learning in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Engineering Studies. We will also discuss how these activities are informed to relevant academic stakeholders.

Survival and Sensemaking: Organizational Resilience in a Wall Street Trading Room After 9/11

How do organizations cope with extreme uncertainty? The existing literature is divided on this issue: some argue that organizations deal best with uncertainty in the environment by reproducing it in the organization, whereas others contend that the orga nization should be protected from the environment. In this paper we study the case of a Wall Street investment bank that lost its entire office and trading technology in the terrorist attack of September 11 th. The traders survived, but were forced to relocate to a makeshift trading room in New Jersey. During the six months the traders spent outside New York City, they had to deal with fears and insecurities inside the company as well as outside it: anxiety about additional attacks, questions of professional identity, doubts about the future of the firm, and ambiguities about the future re-location of the trading room. The firm overcame these uncertainties by protecting the traders' identities and their ability to engage in sensemaking. The organization held together through a leadership style that managed ambiguities and created the conditions for new solutions to emerge.

Theimpact of industry collaboration on research: Evidence from engineering academics in the UK

We study the impact of university-industry research collaborations on academicoutput, in terms of productivity and direction of research. We report findings froma longitudinal dataset on all the researchers from the engineering departments inthe UK in the last 20 years. We control for the endogeneity caused by the dynamicnature of research and the existence of reverse causality. Our results indicate thatresearchers with industrial links publish significantly more. Productivity, though,is higher for low levels of industry involvement. Moreover, growing ties with theindustry skew research towards a more applied approach.

Journal and country rankings in instrumentation and ocean engineering

The purpose of this paper is to highlight scientific information resources that list journal and country rankings. These databases usually focus on the use of citation counts and number of publications to evaluate the interest, visibility and impact of research performance. The exposed resources are platforms that provide added value to authors improving their knowledge about research trends and also where to submit their papers.

A Model for Improving the Quality of Student Internship Placements in Engineering Degrees

Work Internship Placements (WIP) is a new and transversal enterprise internships programme, which is focused on quality improvement, academic control and satisfaction of collaborating enterprises. This programme is addressed to the engineering students of the PolytechnicSchool at the University of Girona (UdG) in Spain. The fundamental WIP infrastructure combines a web-based intranet platform, that provides a complete set of WIP tools, with a protocol of procedures and tasks that are observed and followed at all internship stages by every participating agent, i.e. enterprises, students, coaching professors and administrative staff. Our new programme is centered on a broader, more holistic internship placement procedure than the traditional “career and academic goals” approach. The WIP programme has been found to be a valuable asset in addressing enterprise and student needs in the experiential project

Application of metabolic engineering to the production of scopolamine

Scopolamine is an alkaloid widely used in medicine for its anticholinergic activity. The aim of this review is to show that metabolic engineering techniques constitute a suitable tool to improve the production of tropane alkaloids, focusing in particular on scopolamine. We present an overview of results obtained by various research groups, including our own, who have studied the overexpression of genes involved in the biosynthesis of scopolamine in different plant species that produce tropane alkaloids. Experiments carried out to improve production in hairy root cultures will also be described, as well as those attempting to biotransform hyoscyamine into scopolamine in roots and transgenic tobacco cells.

Crystal engineering studies: polymorphs and co-crystals

We review the key topics of one of the areas with the biggest impact of the last years in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry that is Crystal Engineering. The relevance of polymorphs and co-crystals from different points of view is been highlighted and broadly illustrated by means of several recent examples of studies carried out in this field. In addition, the most suitableinstrumental techniques and the intellectual property implications are reviewed.

Three-step pathway engineering results in more incidence rate and higher emission of nerolidol and improved attraction of Diadegma semiclausum

The concentration and ratio of terpenoids in the headspace volatile blend of plants have a fundamental role in the communication of plants and insects. The sesquiterpene (E)-nerolidol is one of the important volatiles with effect on beneficial carnivores for biologic pest management in the field. To optimize de novo biosynthesis and reliable and uniform emission of (E)-nerolidol, we engineered different steps of the (E)-nerolidol biosynthesis pathway in Arabidopsis thaliana. Introduction of a mitochondrial nerolidol synthase gene mediates de novo emission of (E)-nerolidol and linalool. Co-expression of the mitochondrial FPS1 and cytosolic HMGR1 increased the number of emitting transgenic plants (incidence rate) and the emission rate of both volatiles. No association between the emission rate of transgenic volatiles and their growth inhibitory effect could be established. (E)-Nerolidol was to a large extent metabolized to non-volatile conjugates.