Foro de Alumnos de Derecho.

Las actividades del Foro de Alumnos de Derecho (FAD) se han desarrollado en la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de Valladolid. Aunque promovidas en un principio por catorce profesores de distintas áreas de conocimiento, progresivamente se han implicado un mayor número de docentes de la Facultad citada así como eminentes juristas de la provincia. Se han celebrado diversos seminarios y un cine-club jurídico, en los que los alumnos inscritos -veintiocho de distintos cursos de la licenciatura- y otros muchos que han asistido a los mismos, han podido acercarse a la utilización de la lógica argumentativa, básica para el futuro jurista. Se ha logrado así que se produzca un acercamiento dentro de los cuerpos docente y discente de la Facultad de Derecho, y entre ellos. La experiencia ha servido para que los estudiantes comprendan la dimensión axiológica que rodea la ciencia del derecho, con el asesoramiento de reconocidos especialistas en relación con cada una de las materias tratadas: nacionalismo, deontología jurídica, etcétera. Aunque este trabajo no se proyecta en un material tangible, muestra su utilidad como una relevante técnica pedagógica.

La educación lo es todo.

Se expone el modelo educativo que propone, en el ámbito de la prevención, la Fundación de Ayuda contra la Drogadicción (FAD) para trabajar con padres y niños desde edades tempranas. Incluye dos cuadros, uno con los materiales didácticos publicados por la FAD con el fin de prevenir y otro con los programas escolares y sus ámbitos de actuación.

Aquel verano del 92 en el INEFC.

Resumen tomado de la publicación

Guía didáctica.

Esta guía pretende orientar y facilitar el uso de los dossieres informativos que la FAD ha elaborado para el ámbito de prevención del consumo de drogas para la realización de un concurso nacional. Para ello se divide en varios apartados: resumen de los dossieres informativos, recomendaciones didácticas, técnicas y ejercicios, características específicas de la información, concurso final y bibliografía.

PIPES : Plan Integral de Prevención Escolar.

Este libro es la presentación de un programa de la FAD: el PIPES o Plan Integral de Prevención Escolar. Se trata de un plan general de intervención educativo-escolar para la prevención del consumo de drogas que intenta, a través de la implicación y el compromiso de la comunidad escolar, poner en marcha programas preventivos dirigidos a los alumn@s, con la finalidad de que consigan estilos de vida más saludables y sean capaces de manejar mejor las presiones hacia los consumos. Es un programa integral, abierto y flexible que expone numerosas estrategias debido al amplio abanico de destinatarios: toda la comunidad escolar.

Banco de herramientas audiovisuales para la prevención : primaria.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

Mismas drogas, distintos riesgos : un ensayo de tipología de jóvenes consumidores

Investigación diseñada para buscar una tipología de consumidores de riesgo entre jóvenes de 18 a 25 años. Se lleva a cabo a partir de una selección intencional de una muestra de consumidores habituales de drogas y a dicha muestra se le pasa una batería de preguntas sobre valores, opiniones, comportamientos y niveles de consumo. El objetivo es definir constructos de consumos de especial peligrosidad.

Evaluaci??n psicol??gica del proyecto VyVE

Diferentes investigaciones internacionales han demostrado en los ??ltimos a??os que la educaci??n emocional y social mejora el rendimiento acad??mico y el bienestar del alumnado. Durante tres a??os la Universidad de Cantabria ha evaluado de forma externa la aplicaci??n intensiva de Educaci??n Responsable en tres de los cien centros participantes mediante una evaluaci??n pedag??gica y otra psicol??gica. Aqu?? se presenta el informe de la evaluaci??n psicol??gica. Se eval??an dos proyectos. PPV (Prevenir Para Vivir), dise??ado por la Fundaci??n de Ayuda contra la Drogadicci??n (FAD, 2004), est?? dirigido al desarrollo integral de los ni??os y j??venes con el objeto de prevenir problemas de conducta y comportamientos de riesgo para la salud. VyVE (Vida y Valores en la Educaci??n) es una ampliaci??n de PPV para profundizar en la comprensi??n y expresi??n emocional e incluir dos campos m??s: valores y creatividad.

Preliminary X-ray diffraction analysis of YqjH from Escherichia coli: a putative cytoplasmic ferri-siderophore reductase

YqjH is a cytoplasmic FAD-containing protein from Escherichia coli; based on homology to ViuB of Vibrio cholerae, it potentially acts as a ferri-siderophore reductase. This work describes its overexpression, purification, crystallization and structure solution at 3.0 A resolution. YqjH shares high sequence similarity with a number of known siderophore-interacting proteins and its structure was solved by molecular replacement using the siderophore-interacting protein from Shewanella putrefaciens as the search model. The YqjH structure resembles those of other members of the NAD(P)H:flavin oxidoreductase superfamily.

A concept of approximated densities for efficient nonlinear estimation

This paper presents the theoretical development of a nonlinear adaptive filter based on a concept of filtering by approximated densities (FAD). The most common procedures for nonlinear estimation apply the extended Kalman filter. As opposed to conventional techniques, the proposed recursive algorithm does not require any linearisation. The prediction uses a maximum entropy principle subject to constraints. Thus, the densities created are of an exponential type and depend on a finite number of parameters. The filtering yields recursive equations involving these parameters. The update applies the Bayes theorem. Through simulation on a generic exponential model, the proposed nonlinear filter is implemented and the results prove to be superior to that of the extended Kalman filter and a class of nonlinear filters based on partitioning algorithms.

Motion estimation through approximated densities

Many techniques are currently used for motion estimation. In the block-based approaches the most common procedure applied is the block-matching based on various algorithms. To refine the motion estimates resulting from the full search or any coarse search algorithm, one can find few applications of Kalman filtering, mainly in the intraframe scheme. The Kalman filtering technique applicability for block-based motion estimation is rather limited due to discontinuities in the dynamic behaviour of the motion vectors. Therefore, we propose an application of the concept of the filtering by approximated densities (FAD). The FAD, originally introduced to alleviate limitations due to conventional Kalman modelling, is applied to interframe block-motion estimation. This application uses a simple form of FAD involving statistical characteristics of multi-modal distributions up to second order.

Conspicuous redemption? Reflections on the promises and perils of the 'celebritization' of climate change

With rising public awareness of climate change, celebrities have become an increasingly important community of non nation-state ‘actors’ influencing discourse and action, thereby comprising an emergent climate science–policy–celebrity complex. Some feel that these amplified and prominent voices contribute to greater public understanding of climate change science, as well as potentially catalyze climate policy cooperation. However, critics posit that increased involvement from the entertainment industry has not served to influence substantive long-term advancements in these arenas; rather, it has instead reduced the politics of climate change to the domain of fashion and fad, devoid of political and public saliency. Through tracking media coverage in Australia, Canada, the United States, and United Kingdom, we map out the terrain of a ‘Politicized Celebrity System’ in attempts to cut through dualistic characterizations of celebrity involvement in politics. We develop a classification system of the various types of climate change celebrity activities, and situate movements in contemporary consumer- and spectacle-driven carbon-based society. Through these analyses, we place dynamic and contested interactions in a spatially and temporally-sensitive ‘Cultural Circuits of Climate Change Celebrities’ model. In so doing, first we explore how these newly ‘authorized’ speakers and ‘experts’ might open up spaces in the public sphere and the science/policy nexus through ‘celebritization’ effects. Second, we examine how the celebrity as the ‘heroic individual’ seeking ‘conspicuous redemption’ may focus climate change actions through individualist frames. Overall, this paper explores potential promises, pitfalls and contradictions of this increasingly entrenched set of ‘agents’ in the cultural politics of climate change. Thus, as a form of climate change action, we consider whether it is more effective to ‘plant’ celebrities instead of trees.

Insights into the Specificity of Thioredoxin Reductase-Thioredoxin Interactions. A Structural and Functional Investigation of the Yeast Thioredoxin System

The enzymatic activity of thioredoxin reductase enzymes is endowed by at least two redox centers: a flavin and a dithiol/disulfide CXXC motif. The interaction between thioredoxin reductase and thioredoxin is generally species-specific, but the molecular aspects related to this phenomenon remain elusive. Here, we investigated the yeast cytosolic thioredoxin system, which is composed of NADPH, thioredoxin reductase (ScTrxR1), and thioredoxin 1 (ScTrx1) or thioredoxin 2 (ScTrx2). We showed that ScTrxR1 was able to efficiently reduce yeast thioredoxins (mitochondrial and cytosolic) but failed to reduce the human and Escherichia coli thioredoxin counterparts. To gain insights into this specificity, the crystallographic structure of oxidized ScTrxR1 was solved at 2.4 angstrom resolution. The protein topology of the redox centers indicated the necessity of a large structural rearrangement for FAD and thioredoxin reduction using NADPH. Therefore, we modeled a large structural rotation between the two ScTrxR1 domains (based on the previously described crystal structure, PDB code 1F6M). Employing diverse approaches including enzymatic assays, site-directed mutagenesis, amino acid sequence alignment, and structure comparisons, insights were obtained about the features involved in the species-specificity phenomenon, such as complementary electronic parameters between the surfaces of ScTrxR1 and yeast thioredoxin enzymes and loops and residues (such as Ser(72) in ScTrx2). Finally, structural comparisons and amino acid alignments led us to propose a new classification that includes a larger number of enzymes with thioredoxin reductase activity, neglected in the low/high molecular weight classification.

alpha-Hydroxynitrile lyase protein from Xylella fastidiosa: Cloning, expression, and characterization

Xylella fastidiosa is a xylem-restricted plant pathogen that causes a range of diseases in several and important crops. Through comparative genomic sequence analysis many genes were identified and, among them, several potentially involved in plant-pathogen interaction. The experimental determination of the primary sequence of some markedly expressed proteins for X fastidiosa and the comparison with the nucleic acids sequence of genome identified one of them as being SCJ21.16 (XFa0032) gene product. The comparative analysis of this protein against SWISSPROT database, in special, resulted in similarity with a-hydroxynitrile lyase enzyme (HNL) from Arabidopsis thaliana, causing interest for being one of the most abundant proteins both in the whole cell extract as well as in the extracellular protein fraction. It is known that HNL enzyme are involved in a process termed ""cyanogenesis"", which catalyzes the dissociation of alpha-hydroxinitrile into carbonyle and HCN when plant tissue is damaged. Although the complete genome sequences of X.fastidiosa are available and the cyanogenesis process is well known, the biological role of this protein in this organism is not yet functionally characterized. In this study we presented the cloning, expression, characterization of recombinant HNL from X fastidiosa, and its probable function in the cellular metabolism. The successful cloning and heterologous expression in Escherichia coli resulted in a satisfactory amount of the recombinant HNL expressed in a soluble, and active form giving convenient access to pure enzyme for biochemical and structural studies. Finally, our results confirmed that the product of the gene XFa0032 can be positively assigned as FAD-independent HNLs. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

How Do You Like Your Librarianship: Straight-up or Blended?

Is blended librarianship another fad in a long list of them, or is it a new trick for old dogs?