Teachers’ teaching and professional competences assessment González-Fernández, Raúl; Ruiz-Cabezas, Adiela; Domínguez, María C. Medina ...
Evaluation and program planning,
April 2024, 2024-Apr, 2024-04-00, Letnik:
103
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This research is part of a project led by the Catholic University of Santiago de Guayaquil (Ecuador) and the National Distance Education University - UNED (Spain) aiming at designing a ...teaching/professional competences training model for teachers. The purpose of this study is to assess the meaning of professional competences and their significance within teachers’ teaching and training processes. Using the mixed methods approach, an ad hoc questionnaire was designed and given to discussion groups, achieving participation of more than a hundred teachers. Quantitative data analysis was carried out using the Logit model while Atlas ti 23 allowed analysis of the qualitative data. The results evidenced high scores in the competences evaluated, being leadership and research the lowest. In general, the teachers value, preferably, planning, communication, evaluation, methodology, digital, and tutoring competences, with a lower value among teachers ranging from 25 to 30 years old; those older than 55 stressed the importance of digital and innovation competences. Thus, it is recommended that training programs for teachers should focus on the set of related competences, especially on the digital competence, considering the challenges represented by investigation and pedagogical leadership.
•Improvement teacher' competences implies the assessment of their value, meaning and verification of their practical projection.•Assessment of teachers’ competences impact on the teaching and learning results.•It is necessary to strengthen the digital, tutoring and evaluation competences.•Planning competence is considered essential in the pos post-pandemic scenery.
•Humidity chamber and marine environment have been analysed.•Negative effect on durability due to the worst curing conditions.•Higher durability reduction for low w/c ratio than for the mechanical ...properties.•Temperatures and humidity affect more the durability than the mechanical properties.
This paper presents the results of a study of permeability and its influence on the durability of recycled concrete exposed to an aggressive environment. Recycled concretes with 20%, 50% and 100% in weight of recycled aggregate and 24 effective w/c ratios have been exposed directly to a marine environment. Control specimens cured in a humidity chamber have been also tested in order to compare the influence of the curing environment. The durability of recycled aggregate concretes exposed to aggressive conditions decreases in terms of permeability, as the results show. However, the influence of the environment on the recycled concrete also depends on the quality of the cement paste. The differences between the control and the exposed concrete are lower for low water/cement (w/c) ratios. The lower capillarity obtained in the new cement paste of the recycled concretes with low w/c ratios isolates the porosity of the recycled aggregate, increasing the durability but with a rise in the cement content.
Chronic inflammatory pain is a major health problem worldwide with high prevalence in women. Cerebrolysin is a multimodal neuropeptide preparation that crosses the blood brain barrier and displays ...neuroprotective properties in aging and disease. Previously, we showed that cerebrolysin reduced mechanical allodynia in a model of persistent inflammation and pain. We aim to build upon the findings of our previous study by investigating the response to acute administration of cerebrolysin in two models of peripheral inflammation and assessing sex differences. We utilized the complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA) that produces maximal oedema and mechanical allodynia within days and carrageenan that produces similar effects within hours. Cerebrolysin reversed the mechanical allodynia in both sexes in CFA‐treated rats. On the other hand, in rats treated with carrageenan, cerebrolysin was only effective in reducing mechanical allodynia in female rats. In conclusion, the present study shows that cerebrolysin effects may be sex‐specific depending on different mechanisms that are at play in these two models of peripheral inflammatory pain. Further investigations are required to determine the factors contributing to sex differences.
Despite the technological improvements introduced in the production of ornamental granite, sludge is inevitably generated in end product cutting and polishing. The present study constitutes the first ...attempt to scientifically analyse granite sludge, focusing in particular on its characterisation and pozzolanic activity and the morphological and microstructural changes taking place in both thermally activated waste and in the pozzolan/Ca(OH)2 system in the first 360days of reaction. The possible valorisation of this waste as a component of more eco-friendly cements is assessed with a view to furthering the circular economy. The findings show that thermal activation has no beneficial effect on sludge pozzolanicity, which at later ages was similar to the activity observed in other additions such as copper and manganese silicate slag but lower than in silica fume, fly ash and fired clay materials. The granite waste/Ca(OH)2 system microstructure, in turn, contains C-S-H gels characterised by a low (0.6–1.0) Ca/Si ratio.
•Granite waste exhibits pozzolanicity activity•Thermal activation does not improve granite waste pozzolanicity•Hydrotalcite, monocarboaluminate and C-S-H gel are the main hydrated products in the granite waste/Ca(OH)2 pozzolanic reaction•Granite waste is apt for use as an addition in eco-efficient cements
Abstract
This paper studies the direct and indirect effects of nudging, by means of a field experiment with a financial management platform in Brazil. Reminders for upcoming credit card payments ...reduced credit card late-payment fees by 14%, but increased overdraft fees in checking accounts by 9%. The unintended effect is concentrated in users with a history of overdraft use. These users experienced a net increase of 5% in total fees, while the rest experienced savings of 15%. The results provide clear insights for nudge design: like any policy action, nudges can have side effects, and one size may not fit all.
Biomass powders, in both raw and thermally treated (torrefied) form, are used in 100% biomass fired or in coal co-fired plants for power generation. They pose significant fire and explosion risks ...during storage, handling, processing and combustion, and therefore their explosibility characteristics need to be assessed for the design of safe systems and operations. Wood biomass powders are difficult to characterise for explosibility through standard methods because of their bulky and fibrous nature. This has resulted in the lack of reliable data on the explosibility of these materials. In this study we present a new methodology a with example measurements a for the determination of the minimum explosible concentrations (MECs) of raw and torrefied wood biomass powders, using a modified Hartmann tube. This equipment can also be used as a fast screening tool for the determination of other reactivity parameters, such as flame speeds and rates of pressure rise, through which the most reactive mixture can be identified for more detailed measurements in the larger ISO 1 m3 vessel. MEC measurements reported in this paper showed that both raw and torrefied pulverised wood biomass, were explosible at equivalence ratios as low as 0.2. This was one-third (1/3) the corresponding concentration for Kellingley coal (measured with the same method). Flame speeds 5a10 times higher than those of coal were measured for biomass. Flame speed differences will also have a direct effect on burner performance and flame stability for systems originally designed to burn coal and now firing biomass without modifications.
•The effect of power plant BBA as an SCM on new blended cement hydration is analysed.•29Si MAS NMR is used to detect structural changes in C-S-H in BBA-blended cement.•Degree of hydration is reported ...to be similar in OPC and BBA-bearing cement.•BBA-blended pastes exhibit slightly higher MCLs than OPC.
The identification of new supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) for use in blended cements is an area of major interest to the scientific community. The industry is equally keen for, given the vast amounts of raw materials and emission of large volumes of greenhouse gases involved in cement manufacture, it is under pressure to reduce its environmental footprint. This study explored hydration in blended cements bearing 20 wt% bottom ash (BBA) from three biomass-fired power plants. The results showed that the OPC-BBA blended and the neat OPC pastes exhibited similar degrees of hydration (~90%) and their C-S-H gels similar Al/Si ratios (0.08–0.09), while the mean chain length of the C-S-H gels was slightly higher in the former (5.15–5.30 for blended cement vs. 4.71 for OPC). The presence of pozzolanic activity in the BBA pastes, in turn, was confirmed by their lower CH and higher C-S-H gel content than would be expected on the grounds of the dilution of the amount of cement used.
Low doses of μ-opioid receptor (MOR) agonists rapidly ameliorate symptoms in treatment-resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients (10-50% of OCD patients). However, the utility of MOR ...agonists is limited by their safety liabilities. We developed a novel MOR partial agonist (EPD1540) that has an improved respiratory safety profile when compared to buprenorphine. Buprenorphine is a MOR partial agonist primarily used in the treatment of opiate-use disorder, which in investigator-led trials, has been shown to rapidly ameliorate symptoms in treatment-resistant OCD patients. In this study, we show that doses of EPD1504 and buprenorphine that occupy small fractions of MORs in the CNS (approximately 20%) are as effective as fluoxetine at ameliorating OCD-like behaviors in two different rat models (an operant probabilistic reversal task and marble burying). Importantly, effective doses of EPD1504 did not impair either locomotor activity, or respiration under normoxic or hypercapnic conditions. Additionally, EPD1504 had effects comparable to buprenorphine in the conditioned place preference assay. These results indicate that EPD1504 may provide a safer alternative to buprenorphine for the treatment of OCD patients.
•Cycloheximide induces protein synthesis inhibition followed by protein superproduction.•Memory consolidation is not related to degree of protein synthesis inhibition.•Memory consolidation of ...moderate training, but not of intense training is disrupted by protein superproduction.•Intense training protects against amnesia produced by cycloheximide.
The long-standing hypothesis that memory consolidation is dependent upon de novo protein synthesis is based primarily on the amnestic effects of systemic administration of protein synthesis inhibitors (PSIs). Early experiments on mice showed that PSIs produced interference with memory consolidation that was dependent on the doses of PSIs, on the interval between drug injection and training, and, importantly, on the degree and duration of protein synthesis inhibition in the brain. Surprisingly, there is a conspicuous lack of information regarding the relationship between the duration of protein synthesis inhibition produced by PSIs and memory consolidation in the rat, one of the species most widely used to study memory processes. We found that, in the male rat, a single injection of cycloheximide, a commonly used PSI, produced a significant imbalance in protein homeostasis: an early inhibition of protein synthesis that lasted for at least one hour, followed by hyperproduction of proteins that lasted three days. We evaluated memory consolidation of inhibitory avoidance trained with either low or high intensity of foot-shock at the peaks of protein synthesis inhibition and protein hyperproduction. We found that, independent of the moment of training, the low-foot-shock groups showed amnesia, while the high-foot-shock groups displayed optimal memory performance. These results indicate that memory consolidation of relatively weak training is impaired by the inhibition or hyperproduction of protein synthesis, and that intense training overcomes this dysregulation of protein homeostasis allowing for memory formation probably through non-genomic mechanisms.
Abstract
We study the dynamics of avalanche ionization of pure helium nanodroplets activated by a weak extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) pulse and driven by an intense near-infrared (NIR) pulse. In addition ...to a transient enhancement of ignition of a nanoplasma at short delay times
∼
200
fs, long-term activation of the nanodroplets lasting up to a few nanoseconds is observed. Molecular dynamics simulations suggest that the short-term activation is caused by the injection of seed electrons into the droplets by XUV photoemission. Long-term activation appears due to electrons remaining loosely bound to photoions which form stable ‘snowball’ structures in the droplets. Thus, we show that XUV irradiation can induce long-lasting changes of the strong-field optical properties of nanoparticles, potentially opening new routes to controlling avalanche-ionization phenomena in nanostructures and condensed-phase systems.
PDF
