Creation and Validation of the Spanish Durum Wheat Core Collection.

Spanish wheat (Triticum spp.) landraces have a considerable polymorphism, containing many unique alleles, relative to other collections. The existence of a core collection is a favored approach for breeders to efficiently explore novel variation and enhance the use of germplasm. In this study, the Spanish durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L.) core collection (CC) was created using a population structure–based method, grouping accessions by subspecies and allocating the number of genotypes among populations according to the diversity of simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. The CC of 94 genotypes was established, which accounted for 17% of the accessions in the entire collection. An alternative core collection (CH), with the same number of genotypes per subspecies and maximizing the coverage of SSR alleles, was assembled with the Core Hunter software. The quality of both core collections was compared with a random core collection and evaluated using geographic, agromorphological, and molecular marker data not previously used in the selection of genotypes. Both core collections had a high genetic representativeness, which validated their sampling strategies. Geographic and agromorphological variation, phenotypic correlations, and gliadin alleles of the original collection were more accurately depicted by the CC. Diversity arrays technology (DArT) markers revealed that the CC included genotypes less similar than the CH. Although more SSR alleles were retained by the CH (94%) than by the CC (91%), the results showed that the CC was better than CH for breeding purposes.

Using Electronic Documents for Knowledge Acquisition and Model Maintenance

Knowledge acquisition and model maintenance are key problems in knowledge engineering to improve the productivity in the development of intelligent systems. Although historically a number of technical solutions have been proposed in this area, the recent experience shows that there is still an important gap between the way end-users describe their expertise and the way intelligent systems represent knowledge. In this paper we propose an original way to cope with this problem based on electronic documents. We propose the concept of intelligent document processor as a tool that allows the end-user to read/write a document explaining how an intelligent system operates in such a way that, if the user changes the content of the document, the intelligent system will react to these changes. The paper presents the structure of such a document based on knowledge categories derived from the modern knowledge modeling methodologies together with a number of requirements to be understandable by end-users and problem solvers.

Influence of Religious Institutions in the Creation and Implementation of Public Policy: The Case of Roman Catholic Argentina and Secular Uruguay

The strong presence of religious institutions in Latin America, especially the Roman Catholic Church, and their participation in the creation and implementation of public policy within a sovereign state can be counter-productive for the social development and progress of that specific country. Argentina and Uruguay and the social controversy of social issues of abortion and same-sex marriage are used as examples to establish the accuracy of the above statement. Historical, statistical, and legislative information about both topics in both countries show that the political power that the Roman Catholic Church has in the region is more an outdated influence than a reality, and the principle of secularization appears to be the most stabilizing philosophy for modern nations.

Considering Efficacy of an Outdoor Environmental Education Program: Facilitating Elementary Students’ Environmental Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviours

Various sources have sought to consider the educational interventions that foster changes in perception of and attitudes toward nature, with the ultimate intent of understanding how education can be used to encourage environmentally responsible behaviours. With these in mind, the current study identified an outdoor environmental education program incorporating these empirically supported interventions, and assessed its ability to influence environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours. Specifically, this study considered the following research questions: 1) To what degree can participation in this outdoor education program foster environmental knowledge and encourage pro-environmental attitudes and self-reported pro-environmental behaviours? 2) How is this effect different among students of different genders, and those who have different prior experiences in nature? Two motivational frameworks guided inquiry in the current study: the Value-Belief-Norm Model of Environmentalism (VBN) and the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). The study employed a quantitative survey methodology, combining contemporary data measuring knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours with archived data collected by program staff, reflecting frequency of environmentally responsible behaviour. Further, a single qualitative item was included for which students provided “the first three words that [came] to mind when [they] think of the word nature.” Terms provided before and after the program were compared for differences in theme to detect subtle or underlying changes. Quantitative results indicated no significant change in student knowledge or attitudes through the outdoor environmental education program. However, a significant change in self-reported behaviour was identified from both the contemporary and archived data. This agreement in positive findings across the two data sets, collected using different measures and different participants, lends evidence of the program’s ability to encourage self-reported pro-environmental behaviour. Further, qualitative results showed some change in students’ perceptions of nature through the program, providing direction for future research. These findings suggest that this particular outdoor education program was successful in encouraging students’ self-reported environmentally responsible behaviour. This change was achieved without significant change in knowledge or environmental attitudes, suggesting that external factors not measured in this study might have played a role in affecting behaviour.