Aprendizaje de conceptos complejos en Oceanografía a través del diseño de aplicaciones en Matlab: Una estrategia para motivar al alumnado e introducirlo en la programación

Este trabajo pretende resolver un problema detectado en el alumnado de la asignatura Oceanografía Física del Grado en Ciencias del Mar. Dicho problema está relacionado con la dificultad del alumnado actual para sentirse motivado ante el aprendizaje de conceptos complejos en Física, Química y Matemáticas así como adquirir las competencias y capacidades asociadas a dicho concepto. Se ha escogido un concepto complejo: la obtención del flujo geostrófico en el océano. El trabajo presenta un cuestionario inicial de evaluación previa tras la explicación del concepto en una clase magistral, el posterior desarrollo de una sesión de aprendizaje utilizando simulaciones virtuales y programación en Matlab así como un cuestionario final para evaluar el grado de satisfacción así como de adquisición de conocimientos y competencias tras realizar la actividad para así poder extraer conclusiones de su actividad. Aunque los cuestionarios y la sesión no se podrán aplicar hasta el curso académico 2016-17, esperamos que mejore significativamente el aprendizaje en clase, cree un ambiente favorable entre el alumnado para utilizar las nuevas tecnologías y la programación y pueda aplicarse posteriormente a otros conceptos de esta u otras asignaturas.Universidad de Alicant

Bright Room-Temperature Single Photon Emission from Defects in Gallium Nitride

Single photon emitters play a central role in many photonic quantum technologies. A promising class of single photon emitters consists of atomic color centers in wide-bandgap crystals, such as diamond silicon carbide and hexagonal boron nitride. However, it is currently not possible to grow these materials as sub-micron thick films on low-refractive index substrates, which is necessary for mature photonic integrated circuit technologies. Hence, there is great interest in identifying quantum emitters in technologically mature semiconductors that are compatible with suitable heteroepitaxies. Here, we demonstrate robust single photon emitters based on defects in gallium nitride (GaN), the most established and well understood semiconductor that can emit light over the entire visible spectrum. We show that the emitters have excellent photophysical properties including a brightness in excess of 500x10^3 counts/s. We further show that the emitters can be found in a variety of GaN wafers, thus offering reliable and scalable platform for further technological development. We propose a theoretical model to explain the origin of these emitters based on cubic inclusions in hexagonal gallium nitride. Our results constitute a feasible path to scalable, integrated on-chip quantum technologies based on GaN

Letter: Central nodes in the reform of the Spanish Universities Law

The recent presentation of the definitive Bill for the Organic Law of the Spanish University System was preceded by a long process of consultation and negotiation with the university community, and its starting point can be found in a qualitative study carried out by the authors of this letter. That research work aimed to reveal the positions of the different sectors involved in the universities in terms of the three nodes which had been defined by the Ministry for Universities as strategic: finance, governance, and professional advancement. This letter aims to compare these positions with the definitive articles of the Bill, in addition to situating the final governance design within the European regulatory framework. It highlights the uniqueness of the Spanish model in a context of reform that is strongly influenced by the ideals of New Public Management

Perceptions, Uses, and Interpretations of Uncertainty in Current Weather Forecasts by Spanish Undergraduate Students

This quantitative study evaluates how 71 Spanish undergraduate students perceive and interpret the uncertainty inherent to deterministic forecasts. It is based on several questions that asked participants what they expect given a forecast presented under the deterministic paradigm for a specific lead time and a particular weather parameter. In this regard, both normal and extreme weather conditions were studied. Students’ responses to the temperature forecast as it is usually presented in the media expect an uncertainty range of ±1°–2°C. For wind speed, uncertainty shows a deviation of ±5–10 km h−1, and the uncertainty range assigned to the precipitation amount shows a deviation of ±30 mm from the specific value provided in a deterministic format. Participants perceive the minimum night temperatures as the least-biased parameter from the deterministic forecast, while the amount of rain is perceived as the most-biased one. In addition, participants were then asked about their probabilistic threshold for taking appropriate precautionary action under distinct decision-making scenarios of temperature, wind speed, and rain. Results indicate that participants have different probabilistic thresholds for taking protective action and that context and presentation influence forecast use. Participants were also asked about the meaning of the probability-of-precipitation (PoP) forecast. Around 40% of responses reformulated the default options, and around 20% selected the correct answer, following previous studies related to this research topic. As a general result, it has been found that participants infer uncertainty into deterministic forecasts, and they are mostly used to take action in the presence of decision-making scenarios. In contrast, more difficulties were found when interpreting probabilistic forecasts.This work has been funded by the Assistance Programme of University of Alicante “Programa de Redes-I3CE de calidad, innovación e investigación en docencia universitaria. Convocatoria 2019-20. Alicante: Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación (ICE) de la Universidad de Alicante. Ref: [4669].

Platypnea-Orthodeoxia Syndrome in Two Previously Healthy Adults: A Case-based Review

We describe here the clinical manifestations of platypnea-orthodeoxia in two patients with interatrial shunting. In both cases, the patients were asymptomatic prior to developing additional cardiopulmonary issues that apparently enhanced right-to-left intracardiac shunting. The patients were both treated with percutaneously deployed occlusion devices, with excellent results. Symptoms and positional oxygen desaturation resolved after device placement in both cases. In addition, these patients remain symptom-free 30 months after device implantation

On the calculation of smoothing kernels for seismic parameter spatial mapping: methodology and examples

Spatial mapping is one of the most useful methods to display information about the seismic parameters of a certain area. As in b-value time series, there is a certain arbitrariness regarding the function selected as smoothing kernel (which plays the same role as the window size in time series). We propose a new method for the calculation of the smoothing kernel as well as its parameters. Instead of using the spatial cell-event distance we study the distance between events (event-event distance) in order to calculate the smoothing function, as this distance distribution gives information about the event distribution and the seismic sources. We examine three different scenarios: two shallow seismicity settings and one deep seismicity catalog. The first one, Italy, allows calibration and showcasing of the method. The other two catalogs: the Lorca region (Spain) and Vrancea County (Romania) are examples of different function fits and data treatment. For these two scenarios, the prior to earthquake and after earthquake b-value maps depict tectonic stress changes related to the seismic settings (stress relief in Lorca and stress build-up zone shifting in Vrancea). This technique could enable operational earthquake forecasting (OEF) and tectonic source profiling given enough data in the time span considered.This research has been supported by the Horizon 2020 (TURNkey (grant no. 821046)) and the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (grant no. PID2021-123135OB-C21)

Impact of Noah-LSM Parameterizations on WRF Mesoscale Simulations: Case Study of Prevailing Summer Atmospheric Conditions over a Typical Semi-Arid Region in Eastern Spain

The current study evaluates the ability of the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) to forecast surface energy fluxes over a region in Eastern Spain. Focusing on the sensitivity of the model to Land Surface Model (LSM) parameterizations, we compare the simulations provided by the original Noah LSM and the Noah LSM with multiple physics options (Noah-MP). Furthermore, we assess the WRF sensitivity to different Noah-MP physics schemes, namely the calculation of canopy stomatal resistance (OPT_CRS), the soil moisture factor for stomatal resistance (OPT_BTR), and the surface layer drag coefficient (OPT_SFC). It has been found that these physics options strongly affect the energy partitioning at the land surface in short-time scale simulations. Aside from in situ observations, we use the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) sensor to assess the Land Surface Temperature (LST) field simulated by WRF. Regarding multiple options in Noah-MP, WRF has been configured using three distinct soil moisture factors to control stomatal resistance (β factor) available in Noah-MP (Noah, CLM, and SSiB-types), two canopy stomatal resistance (Ball–Berry and Jarvis), and two options for surface layer drag coefficients (Monin–Obukhov and Chen97 scheme). Considering the β factor schemes, CLM and SSiB-type β factors simulate very low values of the latent heat flux while increasing the sensible heat flux. This result has been obtained independently of the canopy stomatal resistance scheme used. Additionally, the surface skin temperature simulated by Noah-MP is colder than that obtained by the original Noah LSM. This result is also highlighted when the simulated surface skin temperature is compared to the MSG-SEVIRI LST product. The largest differences between the satellite data and the mesoscale simulations are produced using the Noah-MP configurations run with the Monin–Obukhov parameterization for surface layer drag coefficients. In contrast, the Chen97 scheme shows larger surface skin temperatures than Monin–Obukhov, but at the expense of a decrease in the simulated sensible heat fluxes. In this regard, the ground heat flux and the net radiation play a key role in the simulation results.This research was funded by the Assistance Programmes of the University of Alicante “Programa de Redes-I3CE de calidad, innovación e investigación en docencia universitaria. Convocatoria 2018–2019. Alicante: Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación (ICE) de la Universidad de Alicante. Ref: [4334].” and “Programa de Redes-I3CE de calidad, innovación e investigación en docencia universitaria. Convocatoria 2020-21. Alicante: Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación (ICE) de la Universidad de Alicante. Ref: [5150].” as well as by Research Group VIGROB-116 (University of Alicante) and by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación through the project PID2020-118797RB-I00/AEI

Berdinen arteko tutoretza planaren hastapenak Gasteizko Irakasleen Unibertsitate Eskolan

El presente trabajo presenta una experiencia novedosa en el marco de actividades de orientación desarrollado por la Universidad del País Vasco!Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU): la puesta en marcha de un plan de tutoría entre iguales. Se trata de una iniciativa impulsada por el Vicerrectorado de Alumnado y llevada a la práctica de forma experimental únicamente en cuatro centros de la UPV/EHU durante el curso 2012-20/3. Si bien la orientación ha sido durante los últimos años una de las asignaturas pendientes en las universidades españolas, el proceso de convergencia europea está revalorizando la necesidad de incidir en la misma, reconociendo su contribución a la mejora de la calidad del proceso educativo. En este sentido, la pretensión principal del plan es facilitar el proceso de adaptación social y personal del alumnado de nuevo ingreso, posibilitando que vayan conociendo progresivamente los servicios universitarios y los aspectos de funcionamiento del centro e impulsando así una participación más activa en la vida universitaria. La experiencia de compañeros y compañeras de cursos superiores representa un factor que facilita en gran medida la consecución de dicha pretensión. En este contexto, se analiza la experiencia de puesta en marcha del plan en la E. U. de Magisterio de Vitoria-Gasteiz, así como su contribución a la mejora del proceso de orientación del alumnado de la Escuela

Berdinen arteko tutoretza planaren hastapenak Gasteizko Irakasleen Unibertsitate Eskolan

El presente trabajo presenta una experiencia novedosa en el marco de actividades de orientación desarrollado por la Universidad del País Vasco!Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU): la puesta en marcha de un plan de tutoría entre iguales. Se trata de una iniciativa impulsada por el Vicerrectorado de Alumnado y llevada a la práctica de forma experimental únicamente en cuatro centros de la UPV/EHU durante el curso 2012-20/3. Si bien la orientación ha sido durante los últimos años una de las asignaturas pendientes en las universidades españolas, el proceso de convergencia europea está revalorizando la necesidad de incidir en la misma, reconociendo su contribución a la mejora de la calidad del proceso educativo. En este sentido, la pretensión principal del plan es facilitar el proceso de adaptación social y personal del alumnado de nuevo ingreso, posibilitando que vayan conociendo progresivamente los servicios universitarios y los aspectos de funcionamiento del centro e impulsando así una participación más activa en la vida universitaria. La experiencia de compañeros y compañeras de cursos superiores representa un factor que facilita en gran medida la consecución de dicha pretensión. En este contexto, se analiza la experiencia de puesta en marcha del plan en la E. U. de Magisterio de Vitoria-Gasteiz, así como su contribución a la mejora del proceso de orientación del alumnado de la Escuela

Analysis of Radon Measurements in Relation to Daily Seismic Activity Rates in the Vrancea Region, Romania

Many previous research studies have shown how local and even regional earthquakes can significantly affect the release of radon in the soil. The aim of this work is to investigate the relationship between radon measurements and the daily seismic activity rate and develop a methodology that allows estimating the seismic activity rate using only radon measurements. To carry out this study, the earthquake catalogue of the Vrancea region (Romania) has been used to estimate the daily seismic activity rate during a given time period, in which radon measurements were also recorded, from January 2016 to September 2020. The Vrancea zone represents the most active seismic zone in Europe and is located on the eastern edge of the strongly bent Carpathian arc. In the case of the radon measurements, seasonal behaviours and linear trends due to non-seismic factors have been identified and subsequently removed. The discrete wavelet transform has been used to analyse the radon signal at two different scales: long and short periods. From the analysis carried out on a long-period scale, an approximate linear relationship has been obtained between the radon series and the daily seismic activity rate, which provides insights into the behaviour of the seismic activity in the study region with only the radon information. In addition, the study reveals certain characteristics that could be used as precursors of earthquakes at different scales: weeks in the case of the estimated daily seismic activity rate, and days in the case of the short-period signal obtained by the wavelet analysis. The results obtained for this region allow us to hope that the analysis of the radon time series can become an effective complement to the conventional seismic analysis used in operational earthquake forecasting.This study was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 821046, the Spanish Government through research projects CGL2016-77688-R and RTI2018-099052-B-I00, and Research Group VIGROB-116 (University of Alicante)