Search results for: María Teresa García-Álvarez

Authors: Maria Istvanova

Abstract:

The acquisition of the correct pronunciation in Chinese is closely linked to the initial phase of the study. Based on the contrastive analysis, we determine the differences in the pronunciation of stop consonants in Chinese and Slovak taking into consideration the place and manner of articulation to gain a better understanding of the students' main difficulties in the process of acquiring correct pronunciation of Chinese stop consonants. We employ the software Praat for the analysis of the recorded samples with an emphasis on the pronunciation of the students with a varying command of Chinese. The comparison of the voice onset time (VOT) length for the individual consonants in the students' pronunciation and the pronunciation of the native speaker exposes the differences between the correct pronunciation and the deviant pronunciation of the students.

Keywords: Chinese, contrastive analysis, Praat, pronunciation, Slovak.

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Authors: Maria Salama, Mohamed Kouta

Abstract:

Cloud Computing has recently emerged as a compelling paradigm for managing and delivering services over the internet. The rise of Cloud Computing is rapidly changing the landscape of information technology, and ultimately turning the longheld promise of utility computing into a reality. As the development of Cloud Computing paradigm is speedily progressing, concepts, and terminologies are becoming imprecise and ambiguous, as well as different technologies are interfering. Thus, it becomes crucial to clarify the key concepts and definitions. In this paper, we present the anatomy of Cloud Computing, covering its essential concepts, prominent characteristics, its affects, architectural design and key technologies. We differentiate various service and deployment models. Also, significant challenges and risks need are tackled in order to guarantee the long-term success of Cloud Computing. The aim of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the anatomy of Cloud Computing and pave the way for further research in this area.

Keywords: Anatomy, Aspects, Cloud Computing, Challenges.

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Authors: Maria Eliophotou Menon

Abstract:

School leadership is commonly considered to have a significant influence on school effectiveness and improvement. Effective school leaders are expected to successfully introduce and support change and innovation at the school unit. Despite an abundance of studies on educational leadership, very few studies have provided evidence on the link between leadership models, and specific educational and school outcomes. This is true of a popular contemporary approach to leadership, namely, distributed leadership. The paper provides an overview of research findings on the effect of distributed leadership on educational outcomes. The theoretical basis for this approach to leadership is presented, with reference to methodological and research limitations. The paper discusses research findings and draws their implications for educational research on school leadership.

Keywords: Distributed leadership, educational outcomes, leadership research.

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Authors: Carmiña L. Vargas-Zapata, María A. Conde-Sarmiento, Maria Consuelo Maestre-Vargas

Abstract:

Calcium is an essential element for good growth and development of the organism, and its requirement is increased at school age. Low socio-economic populations of developing countries such as Colombia may have food deficiency of this mineral in schoolchildren that could be reflected in calcium biochemical indicators, bone alterations and anthropometric indicators. The objective of this investigation was to evaluate some calcium biochemical indicators in a group of schoolchildren of low socioeconomic level from Barranquilla city and to correlate with body mass index. 60 schoolchildren aged 7 to 15 years were selected from Jesus’s Heart Educational Institution in Barranquilla-Atlántico, apparently healthy, without suffering from infectious or gastrointestinal diseases, without habits of drinking alcohol or smoking another hallucinogenic substance and without taking supplementation with calcium in the last six months or another substance that compromises bone metabolism. The research was approved by the ethics committee at Universidad del Atlántico. The selected children were invited to donate a blood and urine sample in a fasting time of 12 hours, the serum was separated by centrifugation and frozen at ˗20 ℃ until analyzed and the same was done with the urine sample. On the day of the biological collections, the weight and height of the students were measured to determine the nutritional status by BMI using the WHO tables. Calcium concentrations in serum and urine (SCa, UCa), alkaline phosphatase activity total and of bone origin (SAPT, SBAP) and urinary creatinine (UCr) were determined by spectrophotometric methods using commercial kits. Osteocalcin and Cross-linked N-telopeptides of type I collagen (NTx-1) in serum were measured with an enzyme-linked inmunosorbent assay. For statistical analysis the Statgraphics software Centurium XVII was used. 63% (n = 38) and 37% (n = 22) of the participants were male and female, respectively. 78% (n = 47), 5% (n = 3) and 17% (n = 10) had a normal, malnutrition and high nutritional status, respectively. The averages of evaluated indicators levels were (mean ± SD): 9.50 ± 1.06 mg/dL for SCa; 181.3 ± 64.3 U/L for SAPT, 143.8 ± 73.9 U/L for SBAP; 9.0 ± 3.48 ng/mL for osteocalcin and 101.3 ± 12.8 ng/mL for NTx-1. UCa level was 12.8 ± 7.7 mg/dL that adjusted with creatinine ranged from 0.005 to 0.395 mg/mg. Considering serum calcium values, approximately 7% of school children were hypocalcemic, 16% hypercalcemic and 77% normocalcemic. The indicators evaluated did not correlate with the BMI. Low values ​​were observed in calcium urinary excretion and high in NTx-1, suggesting that mechanisms such as increase in renal retention of calcium and in bone remodeling may be contributing to calcium homeostasis.

Keywords: Calcium, calcium biochemical, indicators, school children, low socioeconomic status.

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Authors: Sorina Adriana Mitrea, Silvia Maria Hodorogea, Anca Duta, Luminita Isac, Elena Purghel, Mihaela Voinea

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Solar energy is the most “available", ecological and clean energy. This energy can be used in active or passive mode. The active mode implies the transformation of solar energy into a useful energy. The solar energy can be transformed into thermal energy, using solar collectors. In these collectors, the active and the most important element is the absorber, material which performs the absorption of solar radiation and, in at the same time, limits its reflection. The paper presents some aspects regarding the IR absorbing material – a type of cermets, used as absorber in the solar collectors, by X Ray Diffraction Technique (XRD) characterization.

Keywords: Alumina films, solar energy, X-ray diffraction.

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Authors: Ivan Stanev, Maria Koleva

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Common Platform for Automated Programming (CPAP) is defined in details. Two versions of CPAP are described: Cloud based (including set of components for classic programming, and set of components for combined programming); and Knowledge Based Automated Software Engineering (KBASE) based (including set of components for automated programming, and set of components for ontology programming). Four KBASE products (Module for Automated Programming of Robots, Intelligent Product Manual, Intelligent Document Display, and Intelligent Form Generator) are analyzed and CPAP contributions to automated programming are presented.

Keywords: Automated Programming, Cloud Computing, Knowledge Based Software Engineering, Service Oriented Architecture.

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Authors: Maria P. Tzamtzi, Fotis N. Koumboulis

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We propose a control design scheme that aims to prevent undesirable liquid outpouring and suppress sloshing during the forward and backward tilting phases of the pouring process, for the case of liquid containers carried by manipulators. The proposed scheme combines a partial inverse dynamics controller with a PID controller, tuned with the use of a “metaheuristic" search algorithm. The “metaheuristic" search algorithm tunes the PID controller based on simulation results of the plant-s linearization around the operating point corresponding to the critical tilting angle, where outpouring initiates. Liquid motion is modeled using the well-known pendulumtype model. However, the proposed controller does not require measurements of the liquid-s motion within the tank.

Keywords: Robotic systems, Controller design, Sloshingsuppression, Metaheuristic optimization.

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Authors: Piroska Biró, Mária Csernoch, János Máth, Kálmán Abari

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Testing the first year students of Informatics at the University of Debrecen revealed that students start their tertiary studies in programming with a low level of programming knowledge and algorithmic skills. The possible reasons which lead the students to this very unfortunate result were examined. The results of the test were compared to the students’ results in the school leaving exams and to their self-assessment values. It was found that there is only a slight connection between the students’ results in the test and in the school leaving exams, especially at intermediate level. Beyond this, the school leaving exams do not seem to enable students to evaluate their own abilities.

Keywords: Deep and surface approaches, metacognitive abilities, programming and algorithmic skills, school leaving exams, tracking code.

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Authors: Maria E. Eggink

Abstract:

Innovation plays an important role in economic growth and development. Evolutionary economics has entrepreneurs at the centre of the innovation system, but includes all other participants as contributors to the performance of the innovation system. Education and training institutions, one of the participants in the innovation system, contributes in different ways to human capital. The gap in literature on the competence building as part of human capital in the analysis of innovation systems is addressed in this paper. The Mpumalanga Province of South Africa is used as a case study. It was found that the absence of a university, the level of education, the quality and performance in the education sector and the condition of the education infrastructure have not been conducive to learning.

Keywords: Education institutions, human capital, innovation systems, Mpumalanga Province.

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Authors: Cătălin Nicolae Albu, Nadia Albu, Maria Mădălina Gîrbină

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There is limited evidence from various countries about the possible impact of various criteria to be used to determine the scope of the IFRS for SMEs issued in 2009 and, research is needed in this area. We provide evidence from Romania, an emerging economy member of the European Union. The aim of this paper is to analyze in a local setting if size is a relevant factor for deciding between local and global standards for SMEs. Our results indicate that size is a moderate indicator of the existence of possible users interested in financial statements and that there is a difference between the scopes of the standard determined on various criteria.. Also, we suggest that the international exposure is quite reduced in the case of SMEs, but is sufficient to suggest that at least some SMEs would benefit from international comparability of financial statements

Keywords: SMEs, IFRS for SMEs, accounting regulation, entity's size.

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Authors: María I. Jiménez, Alberto Izquierdo, Juan J. Villacorta, Lara del Val, Mariano Raboso

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There are very complex communication systems, as the multifunction radar, MFAR (Multi-Function Array Radar), where functions are integrated all together, and simultaneously are performed the classic functions of tracking and surveillance, as all the functions related to the communication, countermeasures, and calibration. All these functions are divided into the tasks to execute. The task scheduler is a key element of the radar, since it does the planning and distribution of energy and time resources to be shared and used by all tasks. This paper presents schedulers based on the use of multiple queue. Several schedulers have been designed and studied, and it has been made a comparative analysis of different performed schedulers. The tests and experiments have been done by means of system software simulation. Finally a suitable set of radar characteristics has been selected to evaluate the behavior of the task scheduler working.

Keywords: Queue Theory, Radar, Scheduler, Task.

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Authors: Kleanthis Prekas, Maria Rangoussi, Savvas Vassiliadis, George Prekas

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Intelligent tutoring systems constitute an evolution of computer-aided educational software. We present here the modules of an intelligent tutoring system for Automatic Control, developed in our department. Through the software application developed,students can perform complete automatic control laboratory experiments, either over the departmental local area network or over the Internet. Monitoring of access to the system (local as well as international), along with student performance statistics, has yielded strongly encouraging results (as of fall 2004), despite the advanced technical content of the presented paradigm, thus showing the potential of the system developed for education and for training.

Keywords: Automatic control, tutoring system, Internet access, laboratory experiments.

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Authors: Maria Grazia Albanesi, Riccardo Amadeo

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This study presents a new model of the human image quality assessment process: the aim is to highlightthe foundations of the image quality metrics proposed in literature, by identifyingthe cognitive/physiological or mathematical principles of their development and the relation with the actual human quality assessment process. The model allows to createa novel categorization of objective and subjective image quality metrics. Our work includes an overview of the most used or effectiveobjective metrics in literature, and, for each of them, we underline its main characteristics, with reference to the rationale of the proposed model and categorization. From the results of this operation, we underline a problem that affects all the presented metrics: the fact that many aspects of human biasesare not taken in account at all. We then propose a possible methodology to address this issue.

Keywords: Eye-Tracking, image quality assessment metric, MOS, quality of user experience, visual perception.

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Authors: Maria Damian, Carmen G. Bonaci, Jiří Strouhal, Razvan V. Mustata, Dumitru Matis, Jiřina Bokšová

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In the current context of globalization, a large number of companies sought to develop as a group in order to reach to other markets or meet the necessary criteria for listing on a stock exchange. The issue of consolidated financial statements prepared by a parent, an investor or a venture and the financial reporting standards guiding them therefore becomes even more important. The aim of our paper is to expose this issue in a consistent manner, first by summarizing the international accounting and financial reporting standards applicable before the 1st of January 2013 and considering the role of the crisis in shaping the standard setting process, and secondly by analyzing the newly issued/modified standards and main changes being brought

Keywords: Consolidated financial statements, control, IFRS 10, financial crisis.

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Authors: Maria Paula Santos, Ana Lucas

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Organizations support their operations and decision making on the data they have at their disposal, so the quality of these data is remarkably important and Data Quality (DQ) is currently a relevant issue, the literature being unanimous in pointing out that poor DQ can result in large costs for organizations. The literature review identified and described 24 Critical Success Factors (CSF) for Data Quality Management (DQM) that were presented to a panel of experts, who ordered them according to their degree of importance, using the Delphi method with the Q-sort technique, based on an online questionnaire. The study shows that the five most important CSF for DQM are: definition of appropriate policies and standards, control of inputs, definition of a strategic plan for DQ, organizational culture focused on quality of the data and obtaining top management commitment and support.

Keywords: Critical success factors, data quality, data quality management, Delphi, Q-Sort.

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Authors: Maria Neagu

Abstract:

This paper presents the heat and mass driven natural convection succession in a Darcy thermally stratified porous medium that embeds a vertical semi-infinite impermeable wall of constant heat flux and concentration. The scale analysis of the system determines the two possible maps of the heat and mass driven natural convection sequence along the wall as a function of the process parameters. These results are verified using the finite differences method applied to the conservation equations.

Keywords: Finite difference method, natural convection, porous medium, scale analysis, thermal stratification.

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Authors: Fotis N. Koumboulis, Maria P. Tzamtzi

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A supervisory scheme is proposed that implements Stepwise Safe Switching Logic. The functionality of the supervisory scheme is organized in the following eight functional units: Step- Wise Safe Switching unit, Common controllers design unit, Experimentation unit, Simulation unit, Identification unit, Trajectory cruise unit, Operating points unit and Expert system unit. The supervisory scheme orchestrates both the off-line preparative actions, as well as the on-line actions that implement the Stepwise Safe Switching Logic. The proposed scheme is a generic tool, that may be easily applied for a variety of industrial control processes and may be implemented as an automation software system, with the use of a high level programming environment, like Matlab.

Keywords: Supervisory systems, safe switching, nonlinear systems.

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Authors: Serena Alvino, Paola Forcheri, Maria Grazia Ierardi, Luigi Sarti

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One of the main advantages of the LO paradigm is to allow the availability of good quality, shareable learning material through the Web. The effectiveness of the retrieval process requires a formal description of the resources (metadata) that closely fits the user-s search criteria; in spite of the huge international efforts in this field, educational metadata schemata often fail to fulfil this requirement. This work aims to improve the situation, by the definition of a metadata model capturing specific didactic features of shareable learning resources. It classifies LOs into “teacher-oriented" and “student-oriented" categories, in order to describe the role a LO is to play when it is integrated into the educational process. This article describes the model and a first experimental validation process that has been carried out in a controlled environment.

Keywords: Learning object, pedagogical metadata, experimental validation.

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Authors: Maria Kalinina, Aron Larsson, Leif Olsson

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In the multi objective optimization, in the case when generated set of Pareto optimal solutions is large, occurs the problem to select of the best solution from this set. In this paper, is suggested a method to order of Pareto set. Ordering the Pareto optimal set carried out in conformity with the introduced distance function between each solution and selected reference point, where the reference point may be adjusted to represent the preferences of a decision making agent. Preference information about objective weights from a decision maker may be expressed imprecisely. The developed elicitation procedure provides an opportunity to obtain surrogate numerical weights for the objectives, and thus, to manage impreciseness of preference. The proposed method is a scalable to many objectives and can be used independently or as complementary to the various visualization techniques in the multidimensional case.

Keywords: Imprecise weights, Multiple objectives, Pareto optimality, Visualization.

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Authors: Chiara Verbano, Maria Crema, Karen Venturini

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The company-s ability to draw on a range of external sources to meet their needs for innovation, has been termed 'open innovation' (OI). Very few empirical analyses have been conducted on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to the extent that they describe and understand the characteristics and implications of this new paradigm. The study's objective is to identify and characterize different modes of OI, (considering innovation process phases and the variety and breadth of the collaboration), determinants, barriers and motivations in SMEs. Therefore a survey was carried out among Italian manufacturing firms and a database of 105 companies was obtained. With regard to data elaboration, a factorial and cluster analysis has been conducted and three different OI modes have emerged: selective low open, unselective open upstream, and mid- partners integrated open. The different behaviours of the three clusters in terms of determinants factors, performance, firm-s technology intensity, barriers and motivations have been analyzed and discussed.

Keywords: Open innovation, R&D management, SMEs.

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Authors: María S. Avila-García, John N. Carter, Robert I. Damper

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An important problem in speech research is the automatic extraction of information about the shape and dimensions of the vocal tract during real-time speech production. We have previously developed Southampton dynamic magnetic resonance imaging (SDMRI) as an approach to the solution of this problem.However, the SDMRI images are very noisy so that shape extraction is a major challenge. In this paper, we address the problem of tongue shape extraction, which poses difficulties because this is a highly deforming non-parametric shape. We show that combining active shape models with the dynamic Hough transform allows the tongue shape to be reliably tracked in the image sequence.

Keywords: Vocal tract imaging, speech production, active shapemodels, dynamic Hough transform, object tracking.

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Authors: Hassan Noureddine, Maria Sokhn, Iman Jarkass, Elena Mugellini, Omar Abou Khaled

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From the importance of the conference and its constructive role in the studies discussion, there must be a strong organization that allows the exploitation of the discussions in opening new horizons. The vast amount of information scattered across the web, make it difficult to find experts, who can play a prominent role in organizing conferences. In this paper we proposed a new approach of extracting researchers- information from various Web resources and correlating them in order to confirm their correctness. As a validator of this approach, we propose a service that will be useful to set up a conference. Its main objective is to find appropriate experts, as well as the social events for a conference. For this application we us Semantic Web technologies like RDF and ontology to represent the confirmed information, which are linked to another ontology (skills ontology) that are used to present and compute the expertise.

Keywords: Expert finding, Information extraction, Ontologies, Semantic web, Social events.

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Authors: Juan C. Domínguez, Belén Del Saz-Orozco, María V. Alonso, Mercedes Oliet, Francisco Rodríguez

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In the present study, the kinetics of thermal degradation of a phenolic and lignin reinforced phenolic foams, and the lignin used as reinforcement were studied and the activation energies of their degradation processes were obtained by a DAEM model. The average values for five heating rates of the mean activation energies obtained were: 99.1, 128.2, and 144.0 kJ.mol-1 for the phenolic foam; 109.5, 113.3, and 153.0 kJ.mol-1 for the lignin reinforcement; and 82.1, 106.9, and 124.4 kJ.mol-1 for the lignin reinforced phenolic foam. The standard deviation ranges calculated for each sample were 1.27-8.85, 2.22-12.82, and 3.17-8.11 kJ.mol-1 for the phenolic foam, lignin and the reinforced foam, respectively. The DAEM model showed low mean square errors (<1x10-5), proving that is a suitable model to study the kinetics of thermal degradation of the foams and the reinforcement.

Keywords: Kinetics, lignin, phenolic foam, thermal degradation.

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Authors: Dimitrios J. Dimitriou, Maria F. Sartzetaki

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Air Transport links markets and individuals, making regions more competitive and promoting social and economic development. The assessment of social contribution is the key objective of this paper, focusing on the definition of the components of social dimension and welfare metrics in the national scale. According to a top-down approach, the key dimensions that affect the social welfare are presented. Conventional wisdom is to provide estimations on added value to social issues caused by the air transport development and present the methodology framework for measuring the contribution of transport development in social value chain. Greece is the case study of this paper, providing results from the contribution of air transport infrastructures in national welfare. The application key findings are essential for managers and decision makers to support actions and plans towards economic recovery of an economy presenting strong seasonal characteristics (because of tourism) and suffering from recession.

Keywords: Air transport, social dimension, social coherence, resilient business development, socioeconomic impact.

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Authors: Maria Visitacion N. Gumabay, Byron Joseph A. Hallar, Annjeannette Alain D. Galang

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This study was intended to provide a more efficient and convenient way for mobile users to enhance their knowledge about ASEAN countries. The researchers evaluated the utility of the developed crossword puzzle application and assessed the general usability of its user interface for its intended purpose and audience of users. The descriptive qualitative research method for the research design and the Mobile-D methodology was employed for the development of the software application output. With a generally favorable reception from its users, the researchers concluded that the iSEA Mobile Based Learning Application can be considered ready for general deployment and use. It was also concluded that additional studies can also be done to make a more complete assessment of the knowledge gained by its users before and after using the application.

Keywords: Mobile learning, e-learning, crossword, ASEAN, iSEA.

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Authors: Maria J. Garcia-Garcia, Concepcion Gonzalez-Garcia, Gabriel A. Dorado, Luis J. Fernandez

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The results obtained after incorporating the competence “creativity" to the subject Technical Drawing of the first course of the Degree in Forestry, Technical University of Madrid, are presented in this study.At first, learning activities which could serve two functions at the same time -developing students- creativity and developing other specific competences of the subject- were considered. Besides, changes in the assessment procedure were made and a method which analyzes two aspects of the assessment of the competence creativity was established. On the one hand, the products are evaluated by analyzing the outcomes obtained by students in the essays suggested and by establishing a parameter to assess the creativity expressed in those essays. On the other, an assessment of the student is directly carried out through a psychometric test which has been previously chosen by the team.Moreover, these results can be applied to similar or could be of general application.

Keywords: assessment competence, assessment creativity, creativity, generic competences

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Authors: María-Dolores Cubiles-de-la-Vega, Rafael Pino-Mejías, Esther-Lydia Silva-Ramírez

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A dissimilarity measure between the empiric characteristic functions of the subsamples associated to the different classes in a multivariate data set is proposed. This measure can be efficiently computed, and it depends on all the cases of each class. It may be used to find groups of similar classes, which could be joined for further analysis, or it could be employed to perform an agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis of the set of classes. The final tree can serve to build a family of binary classification models, offering an alternative approach to the multi-class SVM problem. We have tested this dendrogram based SVM approach with the oneagainst- one SVM approach over four publicly available data sets, three of them being microarray data. Both performances have been found equivalent, but the first solution requires a smaller number of binary SVM models.

Keywords: Cluster Analysis, Empiric Characteristic Function, Multi-class SVM, R.

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Authors: Maria Istvanova

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The purpose of the comparative study of the affricate consonants in Chinese and Slovak is to increase the awareness of the main distinguishing features between these two languages taking into consideration this particular group of consonants. We determine the main difficulties of the Slovak learners in the process of acquiring correct pronunciation of affricate initial consonants in Chinese based on the understanding of the distinguishing features of Chinese and Slovak affricates in combination with the experimental measuring of voice onset time (VOT) values. The software tool Praat is used for the analysis of the recorded language samples. The language samples contain recordings of a Chinese native speaker and Slovak students of Chinese with different language proficiency levels. Based on the results of the analysis in Praat, we identify erroneous pronunciation and provide clarification of its cause.

Keywords: Chinese, comparative study, initial consonants, pronunciation, Slovak

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Authors: Maria E. Eggink

Abstract:

It is the aim of this paper to place the role of innovation in economic development in its theoretical context through a literature review. The review compares classical economic theory and the neoclassical theories of “equilibrium in the markets” and “perfectly competitive markets” with the Schumpeterian theory. It was found that Schumpeter’s role in contributing towards economic development theories, and by creating awareness of the role of innovation in these theories is of immeasurable importance. His contribution led to a change in economic thinking, although this was only realized much later than when his theories were first published. The neo-Schumpeterian thinking expanded on the Schumpeterian theory by studying innovation within a system of interaction among different role players. Studies on innovation should be founded in the neo-Schumpeterian school of thought in order to accommodate the complexity of the innovation system concept.

Keywords: Economic development, evolutionary economics, innovation, Schumpeter.

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Authors: María Fernández-Ropero, Ricardo Pérez-Castillo, Ismael Caballero, Mario Piattini

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Appropriate description of business processes through standard notations has become one of the most important assets for organizations. Organizations must therefore deal with quality faults in business process models such as the lack of understandability and modifiability. These quality faults may be exacerbated if business process models are mined by reverse engineering, e.g., from existing information systems that support those business processes. Hence, business process refactoring is often used, which change the internal structure of business processes whilst its external behavior is preserved. This paper aims to choose the most appropriate set of refactoring operators through the quality assessment concerning understandability and modifiability. These quality features are assessed through well-proven measures proposed in the literature. Additionally, a set of measure thresholds are heuristically established for applying the most promising refactoring operators, i.e., those that achieve the highest quality improvement according to the selected measures in each case.

Keywords: business process model, modifiability, refactoring, understandability

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