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In the last decades, various policies have been implemented to reduce air pollution exposure and improve public health outcomes. Among these, low emission zones (LEZs) have been shown to effectively enhance air quality and health outcomes. However, their potential positive externalities on other outcomes, such as academic performance, remain largely unexplored. This study examines the LEZ introduced in the city of Madrid in late 2018 and investigates its impact on the academic performance of students schooled in the designated area. Using a difference-in-differences design, we demonstrate the policy’s effectiveness in improving air quality during its first 4 years. Subsequently, we find a significant increase of 0.20 standard deviations in the average EvAU scores (a high-stakes examination for university admission) among high schools located within the LEZ, a critical advantage for students seeking entry into the most competitive university programmes. Notably, our findings reveal positive spillover effects in the surroundings of the LEZ area and a greater improvement with longer and earlier exposure to cleaner air. Overall, this study offers compelling evidence of the educational benefits resulting from the implementation of a low emission zone that successfully improves air quality.

In this paper, we investigate the implementation of the finite difference method on arbitrary meshes in conjunction with a fixed-point algorithm for the lubrication problem of a journal bearing with cavitation, considering the Elrod-Adams model. We establish numerical properties of the generalized finite difference scheme and provide several illustrative examples.

Some contagious diseases, such as COVID-19, spread through the transmission of aerosols and droplets. Aerosol and droplet formation occurs inside and outside of the respiratory tract, the latter being observed during speaking and sneezing. Upon sneezing, saliva is expelled as a flat sheet, which destabilizes into filaments that subsequently break up into droplets. The presence of macromolecules (such as mucins) in saliva influences the dynamics of aerosol generation, since elasticity is expected to stabilize both fluid sheets and filaments, hence deterring droplet formation. In this study, the process of aerosol formation outside the respiratory tract is systematically replicated using an impinging jet setup, where two liquid jets collide and form a thin fluid sheet that can fragment into ligaments and droplets. The experimental setup enables us to investigate a range of dynamic conditions, quantified by the relevant non-dimensional numbers, which encompass those experienced during sneezing. Experiments are conducted with human saliva provided by different donors, revealing significant variations in their stability and breakup. We quantify the effect of viscoelasticity via shear and extensional rheology experiments, concluding that the extensional relaxation time is the most adequate measure of a saliva's elasticity. We summarize our results in terms of the dimensionless Weber, Reynolds, and Deborah numbers and construct universal state diagrams that directly compare our data to human sneezing, concluding that the aerosolization propensity is correlated with diminished saliva elasticities, higher emission velocities, and larger ejecta volumes. This could entail variations in disease transmission between individuals which hitherto have not been recognized.

Epigenome is susceptible to modulation by environmental pressures—namely, through alterations in global DNA methylation, impacting the organism condition and, ultimately, reverberating on the phenotype of the subsequent generations. Hence, an intergenerational study was conducted, aiming to clarify the influence of genotoxicants on global DNA methylation of the crayfish Procambarus clarkii. Two subsequent generations were exposed to the herbicide penoxsulam (Px; 23 µg·L−1) and to the genotoxicant model ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS; 5 mg·L−1). Px did not induce changes in DNA methylation of adult crayfish (F0). However, the hypomethylation occurring in unexposed F1 juveniles demonstrated that the history of exposure per se can modulate epigenome. In F1 descendants of the Px-exposed group, methylome (hypermethylated) was more affected in males than in females. EMS-induced hypomethylation in adult females (F0), also showed gender specificity. In addition, hypomethylation was also observed in the unexposed F1 crayfish, indicating an intergenerational epigenetic effect. The modulatory role of past exposure to penoxsulam or to EMS also showed a dependency on the crayfish developmental stage. Overall, this research revealed that indirect experiences (events occurring in a predecessor generation) can have an impact even greater than direct experiences (present events) on the epigenetic dynamics.

The employment of modern technologies is widespread in our society, so the inclusion of practical activities for education has become essential and useful at the same time. These activities are more noticeable in Engineering, in areas such as cybersecurity, data science, artificial intelligence, etc. Additionally, these activities acquire even more relevance with a distance education methodology, as our case is. The inclusion of these practical activities has clear advantages , such as (1) promoting critical thinking and (2) improving students’ abilities and skills for their professional careers. There are several options, such as the use of remote and virtual laboratories, virtual reality and gamebased platforms, among others. This work addresses the development of a new cloud game-based educational platform, which defines a modular and flexible architecture (using light containers). This architecture provides interactive and monitoring services and data storage in a transparent way. The platform uses gamification to integrate the game as part of the instructional process. The CyberScratch project is a particular implementation of this architecture focused on cybersecurity game-based activities. The data privacy management is a critical issue for these kinds of platforms, so the architecture is designed with this feature integrated in the platform components. To achieve this goal, we first focus on all the privacy aspects for the data generated by our cloud game-based platform, by considering the European legal context for data privacy following GDPR and ISO/IEC TR 20748-1:2016 recommendations for Learning Analytics (LA). Our second objective is to provide implementation guidelines for efficient data privacy management for our cloud game-based educative platform. All these contributions are not found in current related works. The CyberScratch project, which was approved by UNED for the year 2020, considers using the xAPI standard for data handling and services for the game editor, game engine and game monitor modules of CyberScratch. Therefore, apart from considering GDPR privacy and LA recommendations, our cloud game-based architecture covers all phases from game creation to the final users’ interactions with the game.

Educational robotics has proven its positive impact on the performances and attitudes of students. However, the educational environments that employ them rarely provide teachers with relevant information that can be used to make an effective monitoring of the student learning progress. To overcome these limitations, in this paper we present IDEE (Integrated Didactic Educational Environment), an educational environment for physics, that uses EV3 LEGO Mindstorms R© educational kit as robotic component. To provide support to teachers, IDEE includes a dashboard that provides them with information about the students’ learning process. This analysis is done by means of an Additive Factor Model (AFM). That is a well-known technique in the educational data mining research area. However, it has been usually employed to carry out analysis about students’ performance data outside the system. This can be a burden for the teacher who, in most cases, is not an expert in data analysis. Our goal in this paper is to show how the coefficients of AFM provide valuable information to the teacher without requiring any deep expertise in data analysis. In addition, we show an improved version of the AFM that provides a deeper understanding about the students’ learning process.

Pocas veces nos planteamos la moralidad de nuestras actuaciones investigadoras, salvo que afecten a investigaciones polémicas y muy específicas (investigación sobre seres humanos, investigación con embriones, etc.), para analizar si realmente el mero investigar es una actividad buena moralmente hablando o no lo es. Y este análisis es el que se intenta realizar en el presente estudio. La investigación como una acción humana no puede quedar fuera de un análisis desde la Ética. Deberemos plantearnos por qué hay que investigar, cómo realizarlo, qué responsabilidades tenemos, si es necesario aunar o compaginar docencia e investigación, para quién investigar, qué condiciones debe de reunir la acción de investigar para ser considerada moralmente buena, etc.

El presente trabajo pretende realizar una primera aproximación a una temática
que consideramos deficitaria en nuestra historiografía, como es el estudio de la
predicación de cruzada y yihad, tanto en sus aspectos formales como de conte nido. Además tiene la intención de presentar una visión comparativa, desde los
campos musulmán y cristiano, a dicha problemática. Se presentan una serie de
líneas de investigación, bases y principios que puedan ser tenidos en cuenta para
nuevos y necesarios estudios.

The 𝐸⁢2/𝑀⁢1 ratio (EMR) of the Δ(1232) is extracted from the world data in pion photoproduction by means of an effective Lagrangian approach (ELA). This quantity has been derived within a crossing symmetric, gauge invariant, and chiral symmetric Lagrangian model which also contains a consistent modern treatment of the Δ(1232) resonance. The bare 𝑠-channel Δ(1232) contribution is well isolated and final state interactions (FSI) are effectively taken into account fulfilling Watson's theorem. The obtained EMR value, EMR =(−1.30±0.52)%, is in good agreement with the latest lattice QCD calculations [Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 021601 (2005)] and disagrees with results of current quark model calculations.