Leadership and project management competences in executive women: different styles from the agents' perceptions

The exercise of management and leadership are key aspects to achieve objectives, goals and relationships in the current knowledge society marked by increasingly competitive environments in which cognitive factors, creativity, knowledge and information determine the success of organizations. Both concepts have been historically associated with the male domain because of the underrepresentation of women in managerial positions. However, the increasing participation of women in the workplace has led to the development of an extensive literature on the possible existence of differences between the styles of male and female leadership, although it has not been addressed from the analysis of competences associated with each sex. Through a participatory process the abilities and skills related to women managers are analyzed and the differences in leadership styles. The results indicate that women particularly value the skills associated with human relationships, and that female leadership style tends to be transformational.

Analysis of spontaneous MEG activity in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease using spectral entropies and statistical complexity measures

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia. Over the last few years, a considerable effort has been devoted to exploring new biomarkers. Nevertheless, a better understanding of brain dynamics is still required to optimize therapeutic strategies. In this regard, the characterization of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is crucial, due to the high conversion rate from MCI to AD. However, only a few studies have focused on the analysis of magnetoencephalographic (MEG) rhythms to characterize AD and MCI. In this study, we assess the ability of several parameters derived from information theory to describe spontaneous MEG activity from 36 AD patients, 18 MCI subjects and 26 controls. Three entropies (Shannon, Tsallis and Rényi entropies), one disequilibrium measure (based on Euclidean distance ED) and three statistical complexities (based on Lopez Ruiz–Mancini–Calbet complexity LMC) were used to estimate the irregularity and statistical complexity of MEG activity. Statistically significant differences between AD patients and controls were obtained with all parameters (p < 0.01). In addition, statistically significant differences between MCI subjects and controls were achieved by ED and LMC (p < 0.05). In order to assess the diagnostic ability of the parameters, a linear discriminant analysis with a leave-one-out cross-validation procedure was applied. The accuracies reached 83.9% and 65.9% to discriminate AD and MCI subjects from controls, respectively. Our findings suggest that MCI subjects exhibit an intermediate pattern of abnormalities between normal aging and AD. Furthermore, the proposed parameters provide a new description of brain dynamics in AD and MCI.

HERMES: Towards an Integrated Toolbox to Characterize Functional and Effective Brain Connectivity

The analysis of the interdependence between time series has become an important field of research in the last years, mainly as a result of advances in the characterization of dynamical systems from the signals they produce, the introduction of concepts such as generalized and phase synchronization and the application of information theory to time series analysis. In neurophysiology, different analytical tools stemming from these concepts have added to the ‘traditional’ set of linear methods, which includes the cross-correlation and the coherency function in the time and frequency domain, respectively, or more elaborated tools such as Granger Causality. This increase in the number of approaches to tackle the existence of functional (FC) or effective connectivity (EC) between two (or among many) neural networks, along with the mathematical complexity of the corresponding time series analysis tools, makes it desirable to arrange them into a unified-easy-to-use software package. The goal is to allow neuroscientists, neurophysiologists and researchers from related fields to easily access and make use of these analysis methods from a single integrated toolbox. Here we present HERMES (http://hermes.ctb.upm.es), a toolbox for the Matlab® environment (The Mathworks, Inc), which is designed to study functional and effective brain connectivity from neurophysiological data such as multivariate EEG and/or MEG records. It includes also visualization tools and statistical methods to address the problem of multiple comparisons. We believe that this toolbox will be very helpful to all the researchers working in the emerging field of brain connectivity analysis.

HERMES: towards an integrated toolbox to characterize functional and effective brain connectivity

The analysis of the interdependence between time series has become an important field of research in the last years, mainly as a result of advances in the characterization of dynamical systems from the signals they produce, the introduction of concepts such as generalized and phase synchronization and the application of information theory to time series analysis. In neurophysiology, different analytical tools stemming from these concepts have added to the ?traditional? set of linear methods, which includes the cross-correlation and the coherency function in the time and frequency domain, respectively, or more elaborated tools such as Granger Causality. This increase in the number of approaches to tackle the existence of functional (FC) or effective connectivity (EC) between two (or among many) neural networks, along with the mathematical complexity of the corresponding time series analysis tools, makes it desirable to arrange them into a unified, easy-to-use software package. The goal is to allow neuroscientists, neurophysiologists and researchers from related fields to easily access and make use of these analysis methods from a single integrated toolbox. Here we present HERMES (http://hermes.ctb.upm.es), a toolbox for the Matlab® environment (The Mathworks, Inc), which is designed to study functional and effective brain connectivity from neurophysiological data such as multivariate EEG and/or MEG records. It includes also visualization tools and statistical methods to address the problem of multiple comparisons. We believe that this toolbox will be very helpful to all the researchers working in the emerging field of brain connectivity analysis.

A formalism and method for representing and reasoning with process models authored by subject matter experts

Enabling Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to formulate knowledge without the intervention of Knowledge Engineers (KEs) requires providing SMEs with methods and tools that abstract the underlying knowledge representation and allow them to focus on modeling activities. Bridging the gap between SME-authored models and their representation is challenging, especially in the case of complex knowledge types like processes, where aspects like frame management, data, and control flow need to be addressed. In this paper, we describe how SME-authored process models can be provided with an operational semantics and grounded in a knowledge representation language like F-logic in order to support process-related reasoning. The main results of this work include a formalism for process representation and a mechanism for automatically translating process diagrams into executable code following such formalism. From all the process models authored by SMEs during evaluation 82% were well-formed, all of which executed correctly. Additionally, the two optimizations applied to the code generation mechanism produced a performance improvement at reasoning time of 25% and 30% with respect to the base case, respectively.

Una contribución a la programación cognitiva: arquitecturas de segunda generación para representación del conocimiento

La tesis propone el concepto y diseño de una arquitectura cognitiva para representación de conocimiento profesional especializado en clases de dominios relacionados con el mundo físico. Constituye una extensión de los trabajos de B.Chandrasekaran, potenciando el concepto de arquitectura basada en tareas genéricas propuesta por dicho autor. En base a la arquitectura propuesta, se ha desarrollado un entorno como herramienta de construcción de sistemas expertos de segunda generación, así como un lenguaje para programación cognitiva (DECON)- Dicho entorno, programado en lenguaje C sobre UNIX, ha sido utilizado para el desarrollo de un sistema para predicción de avenidas en la Cuenca Hidrográfica del Jucar, en el marco del proyecto SAIH. Primeramente, la tesis plantea el problema de la modelización del comportamiento de los sistemas físicos, reflejando las limitaciones de las formas clásicas de representación del conocimiento para abordar dicho problema, así como los principales enfoques más recientes basados en el concepto de arquitectura cognitiva y en las técnicas de simulación cualitativa. Se realiza después una síntesis de la arquitectura propuesta, a nivel del conocimiento, para detallar posteriormente su desarrollo a nivel simbólico y de implementación, así como el método general para la construcción de modelos sobre la arquitectura. Se muestra también un resumen de los principales aspectos del desarrollo de software. Finalmente, en forma de anejos, se presenta un caso de estudio, el sistema SIRAH (Sistema Inteligente de Razonamiento Hidrológico), junto con la gramática formal del lenguaje de soporte para la definición de modelos.---ABSTRACT---The thesis proposes the concept and design of a cognitive architecture for professional knowledge representation, specialized in domain classes related to the physical world. It is an extensión of the Chandrasekaran's work, improving the concept of Generic Task based architecture introduced by this author. Based on the proposed architecture, an environment has been developed, as a case of second generation building expert systems tool, as well as a language for cognitive programming (DECON). The environment, programmed in C lenguage on UNIX operating system, has been used to develop a system for flood prediction in the Jucar watershed, inside of the SAIH project. Firstly, the behavior modeling problem of physical systems is discussed, showing the limitations of the classical representations to tackle it, beside the most recent approaches based on cognitive architecture concepts and qualitative simulation technique. An overview of the architecture at the knowledge level is then made, being followed by its symbolic and implementation level description, as well as a general guideline for building models on top of the architecture. The main aspects of software development are also introduced. Finaly, as annexes, a case of study -the SIRAH system (Sistema Inteligente de RAzonamiento Hidrológico)- is introduced, along with the formal grammar of the support language for model definition.

Strong Connectivity in Directed Hypergraphs and its Application to the Atomic Decomposition of Ontologies

Los hipergrafos dirigidos se han empleado en problemas relacionados con lógica proposicional, bases de datos relacionales, linguística computacional y aprendizaje automático. Los hipergrafos dirigidos han sido también utilizados como alternativa a los grafos (bipartitos) dirigidos para facilitar el estudio de las interacciones entre componentes de sistemas complejos que no pueden ser fácilmente modelados usando exclusivamente relaciones binarias. En este contexto, este tipo de representación es conocida como hiper-redes. Un hipergrafo dirigido es una generalización de un grafo dirigido especialmente adecuado para la representación de relaciones de muchos a muchos. Mientras que una arista en un grafo dirigido define una relación entre dos de sus nodos, una hiperarista en un hipergrafo dirigido define una relación entre dos conjuntos de sus nodos. La conexión fuerte es una relación de equivalencia que divide el conjunto de nodos de un hipergrafo dirigido en particiones y cada partición define una clase de equivalencia conocida como componente fuertemente conexo. El estudio de los componentes fuertemente conexos de un hipergrafo dirigido puede ayudar a conseguir una mejor comprensión de la estructura de este tipo de hipergrafos cuando su tamaño es considerable. En el caso de grafo dirigidos, existen algoritmos muy eficientes para el cálculo de los componentes fuertemente conexos en grafos de gran tamaño. Gracias a estos algoritmos, se ha podido averiguar que la estructura de la WWW tiene forma de “pajarita”, donde más del 70% del los nodos están distribuidos en tres grandes conjuntos y uno de ellos es un componente fuertemente conexo. Este tipo de estructura ha sido también observada en redes complejas en otras áreas como la biología. Estudios de naturaleza similar no han podido ser realizados en hipergrafos dirigidos porque no existe algoritmos capaces de calcular los componentes fuertemente conexos de este tipo de hipergrafos. En esta tesis doctoral, hemos investigado como calcular los componentes fuertemente conexos de un hipergrafo dirigido. En concreto, hemos desarrollado dos algoritmos para este problema y hemos determinado que son correctos y cuál es su complejidad computacional. Ambos algoritmos han sido evaluados empíricamente para comparar sus tiempos de ejecución. Para la evaluación, hemos producido una selección de hipergrafos dirigidos generados de forma aleatoria inspirados en modelos muy conocidos de grafos aleatorios como Erdos-Renyi, Newman-Watts-Strogatz and Barabasi-Albert. Varias optimizaciones para ambos algoritmos han sido implementadas y analizadas en la tesis. En concreto, colapsar los componentes fuertemente conexos del grafo dirigido que se puede construir eliminando ciertas hiperaristas complejas del hipergrafo dirigido original, mejora notablemente los tiempos de ejecucion de los algoritmos para varios de los hipergrafos utilizados en la evaluación. Aparte de los ejemplos de aplicación mencionados anteriormente, los hipergrafos dirigidos han sido también empleados en el área de representación de conocimiento. En concreto, este tipo de hipergrafos se han usado para el cálculo de módulos de ontologías. Una ontología puede ser definida como un conjunto de axiomas que especifican formalmente un conjunto de símbolos y sus relaciones, mientras que un modulo puede ser entendido como un subconjunto de axiomas de la ontología que recoge todo el conocimiento que almacena la ontología sobre un conjunto especifico de símbolos y sus relaciones. En la tesis nos hemos centrado solamente en módulos que han sido calculados usando la técnica de localidad sintáctica. Debido a que las ontologías pueden ser muy grandes, el cálculo de módulos puede facilitar las tareas de re-utilización y mantenimiento de dichas ontologías. Sin embargo, analizar todos los posibles módulos de una ontología es, en general, muy costoso porque el numero de módulos crece de forma exponencial con respecto al número de símbolos y de axiomas de la ontología. Afortunadamente, los axiomas de una ontología pueden ser divididos en particiones conocidas como átomos. Cada átomo representa un conjunto máximo de axiomas que siempre aparecen juntos en un modulo. La decomposición atómica de una ontología es definida como un grafo dirigido de tal forma que cada nodo del grafo corresponde con un átomo y cada arista define una dependencia entre una pareja de átomos. En esta tesis introducimos el concepto de“axiom dependency hypergraph” que generaliza el concepto de descomposición atómica de una ontología. Un modulo en una ontología correspondería con un componente conexo en este tipo de hipergrafos y un átomo de una ontología con un componente fuertemente conexo. Hemos adaptado la implementación de nuestros algoritmos para que funcionen también con axiom dependency hypergraphs y poder de esa forma calcular los átomos de una ontología. Para demostrar la viabilidad de esta idea, hemos incorporado nuestros algoritmos en una aplicación que hemos desarrollado para la extracción de módulos y la descomposición atómica de ontologías. A la aplicación la hemos llamado HyS y hemos estudiado sus tiempos de ejecución usando una selección de ontologías muy conocidas del área biomédica, la mayoría disponibles en el portal de Internet NCBO. Los resultados de la evaluación muestran que los tiempos de ejecución de HyS son mucho mejores que las aplicaciones más rápidas conocidas. ABSTRACT Directed hypergraphs are an intuitive modelling formalism that have been used in problems related to propositional logic, relational databases, computational linguistic and machine learning. Directed hypergraphs are also presented as an alternative to directed (bipartite) graphs to facilitate the study of the interactions between components of complex systems that cannot naturally be modelled as binary relations. In this context, they are known as hyper-networks. A directed hypergraph is a generalization of a directed graph suitable for representing many-to-many relationships. While an edge in a directed graph defines a relation between two nodes of the graph, a hyperedge in a directed hypergraph defines a relation between two sets of nodes. Strong-connectivity is an equivalence relation that induces a partition of the set of nodes of a directed hypergraph into strongly-connected components. These components can be collapsed into single nodes. As result, the size of the original hypergraph can significantly be reduced if the strongly-connected components have many nodes. This approach might contribute to better understand how the nodes of a hypergraph are connected, in particular when the hypergraphs are large. In the case of directed graphs, there are efficient algorithms that can be used to compute the strongly-connected components of large graphs. For instance, it has been shown that the macroscopic structure of the World Wide Web can be represented as a “bow-tie” diagram where more than 70% of the nodes are distributed into three large sets and one of these sets is a large strongly-connected component. This particular structure has been also observed in complex networks in other fields such as, e.g., biology. Similar studies cannot be conducted in a directed hypergraph because there does not exist any algorithm for computing the strongly-connected components of the hypergraph. In this thesis, we investigate ways to compute the strongly-connected components of directed hypergraphs. We present two new algorithms and we show their correctness and computational complexity. One of these algorithms is inspired by Tarjan’s algorithm for directed graphs. The second algorithm follows a simple approach to compute the stronglyconnected components. This approach is based on the fact that two nodes of a graph that are strongly-connected can also reach the same nodes. In other words, the connected component of each node is the same. Both algorithms are empirically evaluated to compare their performances. To this end, we have produced a selection of random directed hypergraphs inspired by existent and well-known random graphs models like Erd˝os-Renyi and Newman-Watts-Strogatz. Besides the application examples that we mentioned earlier, directed hypergraphs have also been employed in the field of knowledge representation. In particular, they have been used to compute the modules of an ontology. An ontology is defined as a collection of axioms that provides a formal specification of a set of terms and their relationships; and a module is a subset of an ontology that completely captures the meaning of certain terms as defined in the ontology. In particular, we focus on the modules computed using the notion of syntactic locality. As ontologies can be very large, the computation of modules facilitates the reuse and maintenance of these ontologies. Analysing all modules of an ontology, however, is in general not feasible as the number of modules grows exponentially in the number of terms and axioms of the ontology. Nevertheless, the modules can succinctly be represented using the Atomic Decomposition of an ontology. Using this representation, an ontology can be partitioned into atoms, which are maximal sets of axioms that co-occur in every module. The Atomic Decomposition is then defined as a directed graph such that each node correspond to an atom and each edge represents a dependency relation between two atoms. In this thesis, we introduce the notion of an axiom dependency hypergraph which is a generalization of the atomic decomposition of an ontology. A module in the ontology corresponds to a connected component in the hypergraph, and the atoms of the ontology to the strongly-connected components. We apply our algorithms for directed hypergraphs to axiom dependency hypergraphs and in this manner, we compute the atoms of an ontology. To demonstrate the viability of this approach, we have implemented the algorithms in the application HyS which computes the modules of ontologies and calculate their atomic decomposition. In the thesis, we provide an experimental evaluation of HyS with a selection of large and prominent biomedical ontologies, most of which are available in the NCBO Bioportal. HyS outperforms state-of-the-art implementations in the tasks of extracting modules and computing the atomic decomposition of these ontologies.

CONHECIMENTOS E PREVENÇÃO DE DST/AIDS EM ADOLESCENTES

A Psicologia da Saúde vem se desdobrando para atender a demanda da saúde pública, principalmente sobre prevenção de doenças e promoção da saúde. No que se refere a epidemia da AIDS e outras doenças sexualmente transmissíveis, o adolescente tem sido o público mais vulnerável. A adolescência é considerada uma fase perturbada e perturbadora. Nesse período da vida o adolescente está mais sujeito à contaminação das DST/AIDS em razão da instabilidade emocional e sua postura frente a valores e padrões de conduta. Este estudo tem por objetivo descrever conhecimentos e comportamentos de proteção e risco de práticas sexuais de adolescentes; descrever dados sócio-econômicos e demográficos desses adolescentes, descrever o conhecimento dos adolescentes em relação as DST/AIDS e descrever os comportamentos de proteção e riscos a respeito das DST/AIDS. A população deste estudo foi constituída por 95 adolescentes de ambos os gêneros, com um predomínio do gênero masculino, faixa etária entre 14 e 21 anos e com renda familiar média de 4 (quatro) salários mínimos. Trata-se de pesquisa descritiva, para o qual utilizou-se um questionário de autopreenchimento composto por questões norteadas ao tema. A coleta de dados ocorreu em sala de aula no período noturno, de uma escola estadual do município de Guarulhos. Após o término do preenchimento do questionário, os adolescentes assistiram uma palestra de prevenção e orientação sobre DST/AIDS, onde elucidaram dúvidas. Os resultados demonstram 67,4% dos adolescentes, tanto o gênero feminino quanto o gênero masculino, tem dificuldades de definir o conceito de sexualidade e 84,2% sabem corretamente a definição de doenças sexualmente transmissíveis. A maioria dos adolescentes (67,4%) respondeu conhecer algum tipo de doença sexualmente transmissível, destacando-se aqui a AIDS e a gonorréia. O gênero masculino teve início da vida sexual aos 10 anos e o gênero feminino aos 13 anos, representando 53,7% com vida sexual ativa. Neste estudo 58,9% informam saber quais são os comportamentos de proteção, porém entre estes, apenas 55,8% utilizam o preservativo masculino (camisinha). Não há diferenças significativas quanto à modalidade de relacionamento e o uso constante do preservativo masculino. Verificou-se que 63,1% dos adolescentes obtém informações e conhecimentos sobre as DST/AIDS através dos profissionais da educação e da saúde. Portanto, a sala de aula passa a ser um fator de proteção. Esse estudo confirma que parte dos adolescentes tem conhecimento e informações sobre conceitos relativos as DST/AIDS, porém quanto às práticas para um comportamento de proteção frente às mesmas apresentam conhecimentos frágeis, gerando assim comportamentos de risco. Estas situações comprometem a tomada de comportamentos de proteção. Portanto, um programa contínuo da área da saúde e da educação dentro da escola que desenvolva atividades interativas a fim de transformar o comportamento do adolescente sobre informações e conhecimentos em consciência de comportamentos de proteção efetivas poderá melhorar essa relação entre ter o conhecimento e utilizá-lo na prática.(AU)

CONHECIMENTOS E PREVENÇÃO DE DST/AIDS EM ADOLESCENTES

A Psicologia da Saúde vem se desdobrando para atender a demanda da saúde pública, principalmente sobre prevenção de doenças e promoção da saúde. No que se refere a epidemia da AIDS e outras doenças sexualmente transmissíveis, o adolescente tem sido o público mais vulnerável. A adolescência é considerada uma fase perturbada e perturbadora. Nesse período da vida o adolescente está mais sujeito à contaminação das DST/AIDS em razão da instabilidade emocional e sua postura frente a valores e padrões de conduta. Este estudo tem por objetivo descrever conhecimentos e comportamentos de proteção e risco de práticas sexuais de adolescentes; descrever dados sócio-econômicos e demográficos desses adolescentes, descrever o conhecimento dos adolescentes em relação as DST/AIDS e descrever os comportamentos de proteção e riscos a respeito das DST/AIDS. A população deste estudo foi constituída por 95 adolescentes de ambos os gêneros, com um predomínio do gênero masculino, faixa etária entre 14 e 21 anos e com renda familiar média de 4 (quatro) salários mínimos. Trata-se de pesquisa descritiva, para o qual utilizou-se um questionário de autopreenchimento composto por questões norteadas ao tema. A coleta de dados ocorreu em sala de aula no período noturno, de uma escola estadual do município de Guarulhos. Após o término do preenchimento do questionário, os adolescentes assistiram uma palestra de prevenção e orientação sobre DST/AIDS, onde elucidaram dúvidas. Os resultados demonstram 67,4% dos adolescentes, tanto o gênero feminino quanto o gênero masculino, tem dificuldades de definir o conceito de sexualidade e 84,2% sabem corretamente a definição de doenças sexualmente transmissíveis. A maioria dos adolescentes (67,4%) respondeu conhecer algum tipo de doença sexualmente transmissível, destacando-se aqui a AIDS e a gonorréia. O gênero masculino teve início da vida sexual aos 10 anos e o gênero feminino aos 13 anos, representando 53,7% com vida sexual ativa. Neste estudo 58,9% informam saber quais são os comportamentos de proteção, porém entre estes, apenas 55,8% utilizam o preservativo masculino (camisinha). Não há diferenças significativas quanto à modalidade de relacionamento e o uso constante do preservativo masculino. Verificou-se que 63,1% dos adolescentes obtém informações e conhecimentos sobre as DST/AIDS através dos profissionais da educação e da saúde. Portanto, a sala de aula passa a ser um fator de proteção. Esse estudo confirma que parte dos adolescentes tem conhecimento e informações sobre conceitos relativos as DST/AIDS, porém quanto às práticas para um comportamento de proteção frente às mesmas apresentam conhecimentos frágeis, gerando assim comportamentos de risco. Estas situações comprometem a tomada de comportamentos de proteção. Portanto, um programa contínuo da área da saúde e da educação dentro da escola que desenvolva atividades interativas a fim de transformar o comportamento do adolescente sobre informações e conhecimentos em consciência de comportamentos de proteção efetivas poderá melhorar essa relação entre ter o conhecimento e utilizá-lo na prática.(AU)

Blind separation of auditory event-related brain responses into independent components

Averaged event-related potential (ERP) data recorded from the human scalp reveal electroencephalographic (EEG) activity that is reliably time-locked and phase-locked to experimental events. We report here the application of a method based on information theory that decomposes one or more ERPs recorded at multiple scalp sensors into a sum of components with fixed scalp distributions and sparsely activated, maximally independent time courses. Independent component analysis (ICA) decomposes ERP data into a number of components equal to the number of sensors. The derived components have distinct but not necessarily orthogonal scalp projections. Unlike dipole-fitting methods, the algorithm does not model the locations of their generators in the head. Unlike methods that remove second-order correlations, such as principal component analysis (PCA), ICA also minimizes higher-order dependencies. Applied to detected—and undetected—target ERPs from an auditory vigilance experiment, the algorithm derived ten components that decomposed each of the major response peaks into one or more ICA components with relatively simple scalp distributions. Three of these components were active only when the subject detected the targets, three other components only when the target went undetected, and one in both cases. Three additional components accounted for the steady-state brain response to a 39-Hz background click train. Major features of the decomposition proved robust across sessions and changes in sensor number and placement. This method of ERP analysis can be used to compare responses from multiple stimuli, task conditions, and subject states.

Noise in neurons is message dependent

Neuronal responses are conspicuously variable. We focus on one particular aspect of that variability: the precision of action potential timing. We show that for common models of noisy spike generation, elementary considerations imply that such variability is a function of the input, and can be made arbitrarily large or small by a suitable choice of inputs. Our considerations are expected to extend to virtually any mechanism of spike generation, and we illustrate them with data from the visual pathway. Thus, a simplification usually made in the application of information theory to neural processing is violated: noise is not independent of the message. However, we also show the existence of error-correcting topologies, which can achieve better timing reliability than their components.

A general procedure for locating and analyzing protein-binding sequence motifs in nucleic acids

In the last decade, two tools, one drawn from information theory and the other from artificial neural networks, have proven particularly useful in many different areas of sequence analysis. The work presented herein indicates that these two approaches can be joined in a general fashion to produce a very powerful search engine that is capable of locating members of a given nucleic acid sequence family in either local or global sequence searches. This program can, in turn, be queried for its definition of the motif under investigation, ranking each base in context for its contribution to membership in the motif family. In principle, the method used can be applied to any binding motif, including both DNA and RNA sequence families, given sufficient family size.

The human XPG gene: gene architecture, alternative splicing and single nucleotide polymorphisms

Defects in the XPG DNA repair endonuclease gene can result in the cancer-prone disorders xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) or the XP–Cockayne syndrome complex. While the XPG cDNA sequence was known, determination of the genomic sequence was required to understand its different functions. In cells from normal donors, we found that the genomic sequence of the human XPG gene spans 30 kb, contains 15 exons that range from 61 to 1074 bp and 14 introns that range from 250 to 5763 bp. Analysis of the splice donor and acceptor sites using an information theory-based approach revealed three splice sites with low information content, which are components of the minor (U12) spliceosome. We identified six alternatively spliced XPG mRNA isoforms in cells from normal donors and from XPG patients: partial deletion of exon 8, partial retention of intron 8, two with alternative exons (in introns 1 and 6) and two that retained complete introns (introns 3 and 9). The amount of alternatively spliced XPG mRNA isoforms varied in different tissues. Most alternative splice donor and acceptor sites had a relatively high information content, but one has the U12 spliceosome sequence. A single nucleotide polymorphism has allele frequencies of 0.74 for 3507G and 0.26 for 3507C in 91 donors. The human XPG gene contains multiple splice sites with low information content in association with multiple alternatively spliced isoforms of XPG mRNA.

Land Reform in South Africa in Light of Emerging Urbanization, Industrialization, and Globalization Trends

Black South Africans experienced centuries of mistreatment and land dispossessions, leaving their population in dire poverty and dependence. The 1994 democratization of South Africa birthed a three-fold land reform program dedicated to land restitution, land redistribution, and tenure reform. The first decade of implementation left government goals unmet. The relevance of land reform is examined given modern-day urbanization, industrialization, and globalization. This paper affirms land reform is still relevant socially and is therefore relevant politically and economically. Improvements to program implementation are suggested in the following areas: implementing agency support; rural representation; information management; land market stimulation; beneficiary support; and agrarian reform. Land reform limitations are discussed, and industrialization is briefly explored as the more likely solution to poverty issues.

Construction of Structures I in Moodle: a new teaching methodology in the Degree of Building Engineer

The subject of Construction of Structures I studies, from a constructive point of view and taking into account current legislation, reinforced concrete structures used in buildings, through the acquisition of knowledge and construction criteria required in the profession of a Technical Architect. The contents acquired in this course are essential for further professional development of technicians and are closely related to many of the subjects taught in the same or other courses of the Degree in Technical Architecture at the University of Alicante. The aim of this paper is to present, analyze and discuss the development of a new methodology proposed in the mentioned subject, as it supposed an important change in the traditional way of teaching Construction and Structures I. In order to incorporate new teaching tools in 2013-2014, the course has been implemented by using a Moodle software tool to promote blended learning with online exercises. Our Moodle community allows collaborative work within an open-source platform where teachers and students share a new and personalized learning environment. Students are easily used to the interface and the platform, value the constant connection with teachers or other fellows and completely agree with the possibility of making questions or share documents 24 hours a day. The proposed methodology consists of lectures and practical classes. In the lectures, the basics of each topic are discussed; class attendance, daily study and conducting scheduled exercises are indispensable. Practical classes allow to consolidate the knowledge gained in theory classes by solving professional exercises and actual construction problems related to structures, that shall be compulsorily delivered online. So, after the correction of the teacher and the subsequent feedback of students, practical exercises ensure lifelong learning of the student, who can download any kind of material at any time (constructive details, practical exercises and even corrected exams). Regarding the general evaluation system, goals achievement is assessed on an ongoing basis (65% of the final mark) along the course through written and graphic evidences in person and online, as well as a individual development of a workbook. In all cases, the acquisition of skills, the ability to synthesize, the capacity of logical and critical thinking are assessed. The other 35 % of the mark is evaluated by a complementary graphic exam. Participation in the computing platform is essential and the student is required to do and present, at least 90% of the practices proposed. Those who do not comply with the practices in each specific date could not be assessed continuously and may only choose the final exam. In conclusion, the subject of Construction of Structures I is essential in the development of the regulated profession of Technical Architect as they are considered, among other professional profiles, as specialists in construction of building structures. The use of a new communication platform and online teaching allows the acquisition of knowledge and constructive approaches in a continuous way, with a more direct and personal monitoring by the teacher that has been highly appreciated by almost 100% of the students. Ultimately, it is important to say that the use of Moodle in this subject is a very interesting tool, which was really well welcome by students in one of the densest and important subjects of the Degree of Technical Architecture.