Abstract. This study investigates the contribution of potential sources to the submicron (PM 1 ) organic aerosol (OA) simultaneously detected at an urban background (UB) and a road site (RS) in Barcelona during the 30 days of the intensive field campaign of SAPUSS (Solving Aerosol Problems by Using Synergistic Strategies, September-October 2010). A total of 103 filters at 12 h sampling time resolution were collected at both sites. Thirty-six neutral and polar organic compounds of known emission sources and photo-chemical transformation processes were analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The concentrations of the trace chemical compounds analyzed are herein presented and discussed.Additionally, OA source apportionment was performed by multivariate curve resolution-alternating least squares (MCR-ALS) and six OA components were identified at both sites: two were of primary anthropogenic OA origin and three of secondary OA origin, while a sixth one was not clearly defined. Primary organics from emissions of local anthropogenic activities (urban primary organic aerosol, or POA Urban), mainly traffic emissions but also cigarette smoke, contributed 43 % (1.5 µg OC m −3 ) and 18 % (0.4 µg OC m −3 ) to OA at RS and UB, respectively. A secondary primary source -biomass burning (BBOA) -was found in all the samples (average values 7 % RS; 12 % UB; 0.3 µg OC m −3 ), but this component was substantially contributing to OA only when the sampling sites were under influence of regional air mass circulation (REG.). Three secondary organic aerosol (SOA) components (describing overall 60 % of the variance) were observed in the urban ambient PM 1 . Products of isoprene oxidation (SOA ISO) -i.e.2-methylglyceric acid, C 5 alkene triols and 2-methyltetrols -showed the highest abundance at both sites when the city was under influence of inland air masses. The overall concentrations of SOA ISO were similar at both sites (0.4 and 0.3 µg m −3 , or 16 % and 7 %, at UB and RS, respectively). By contrast, a SOA biogenic component attributed to α-pinene oxidation (SOA BIO PIN) presented average concentrations of 0.5 µg m −3 at UB (24 % of OA) and 0.2 µg m −3 at RS (7 %), respectively, suggesting that this SOA component did not impact the two monitoring sites at the same level. A clear anti-correlation was observed between SOA ISO and SOA PIN during nucleation days, surprisingly suggesting that some of the growth of urban freshly nucleating particles may be driven by biogenic α-pinene oxidation products but inhibited by isoprene organic compounds. A third SOA component was formed by a mixture of aged anthropogenic and biogenic secondary organic compounds (SOA Aged) that accumulated under stagnant atmospheric conditions, contributing for 12 % to OA at RS (0.4 µg OC m −3 ) and for 18 % at UB (0.4 µg OC m −3 ).A sixth component, formed by C 7 -C 9 dicarboxylic acids and detected especially during daytime, was called "urban oxygenated organic aerosol" (OOA Urban) due to its high abundance at urban RS (23 %; 0.8 µg OCm −3 ) vs. ...
The tools used in learning processes are in a continuous state of flux. One of the most significant changes is the application of Information and Communications technologies (ICTs) to educational contexts. This provides new possible ways to carry out learning activities, new learning services, the possibility to use new kinds of contents and activities, etc. However, ICTs have not provided as many advantages as they were supposed to, so changes are necessary. In this context, a new set of tools, Web 2.0, offers a new way to understand the Web, in which the user is the centre. Further, users can cooperate in order to define contents. This concept is also applied in technology-mediated learning but there are important problems when one tries to integrate such tools and concepts with existing systems. This paper explores the integration of these tools in traditional learning environments, the various possibilities and their advantages and drawbacks. After that, an interoperability scenario is described and two experiences are presented to show how 2.0 tools can be integrated in learning activities, and its effect in educational process.
Abstract-M-learning has enhanced the e-learning by making the learning process learner-centered. However, enforcing exam security in open environments where each student has his/her own mobile/tablet device connected to a Wi-Fi network through which it is further connected to the Internet can be one of the most challenging tasks. In such environments, students can easily exchange information over the network during exam time. This paper aims to identify various vulnerabilities that may violate exam security in mlearning environments and to design the appropriate security services and countermeasures that can be put in place to ensure exam security. It also aims to integrate the resulting secure exam system with an existing, open-source, and widely accepted Learning Management System (LMS) and its service extension to the m-learning environment, namely "the Moodbile Project".
Abstract. This paper presents the summary of the key objectives, instrumentation and logistic details, goals, and initial scientific findings of the European Marie Curie Action SAPUSS project carried out in the western Mediterranean Basin (WMB) during September–October in autumn 2010. The key SAPUSS objective is to deduce aerosol source characteristics and to understand the atmospheric processes responsible for their generations and transformations – both horizontally and vertically in the Mediterranean urban environment. In order to achieve so, the unique approach of SAPUSS is the concurrent measurements of aerosols with multiple techniques occurring simultaneously in six monitoring sites around the city of Barcelona (NE Spain): a main road traffic site, two urban background sites, a regional background site and two urban tower sites (150 m and 545 m above sea level, 150 m and 80 m above ground, respectively). SAPUSS allows us to advance our knowledge sensibly of the atmospheric chemistry and physics of the urban Mediterranean environment. This is well achieved only because of both the three dimensional spatial scale and the high sampling time resolution used. During SAPUSS different meteorological regimes were encountered, including warm Saharan, cold Atlantic, wet European and stagnant regional ones. The different meteorology of such regimes is herein described. Additionally, we report the trends of the parameters regulated by air quality purposes (both gaseous and aerosol mass concentrations); and we also compare the six monitoring sites. High levels of traffic-related gaseous pollutants were measured at the urban ground level monitoring sites, whereas layers of tropospheric ozone were recorded at tower levels. Particularly, tower level night-time average ozone concentrations (80 ± 25 μg m−3) were up to double compared to ground level ones. The examination of the vertical profiles clearly shows the predominant influence of NOx on ozone concentrations, and a source of ozone aloft. Analysis of the particulate matter (PM) mass concentrations shows an enhancement of coarse particles (PM2.5–10) at the urban ground level (+64%, average 11.7 μg m−3) but of fine ones (PM1) at urban tower level (+28%, average 14.4 μg m−3). These results show complex dynamics of the size-resolved PM mass at both horizontal and vertical levels of the study area. Preliminary modelling findings reveal an underestimation of the fine accumulation aerosols. In summary, this paper lays the foundation of SAPUSS, an integrated study of relevance to many other similar urban Mediterranean coastal environment sites.
The construction of knowledge through computational practice requires to teachers a substantial amount of time and effort to evaluate programming skills, to understand and to glimpse the evolution of the students and finally to state a quantitative judgment in learning assessment. The field of learning analytics has been a common practice in research since last years due to their great possibilities in terms of learning improvement. Both, Big and Small data techniques support the analysis cycle of learning analytics and risk of students' failure prediction. Such possibilities can be a strong positive contribution to the field of computational practice such as programming. Our main objective was to help teachers in their assessments through to make those possibilities effective. Thus, we have developed a functional solution to categorize and understand students' behavior in programming activities based in Scratch. Through collection and analysis of data generated by students' clicks in Scratch, we proceed to execute both exploratory and predictive analytics to detect patterns in students' behavior when developing solutions for assignments. We concluded that resultant taxonomy could help teachers to better support their students by giving real-time quality feedback and act before students deliver incorrectly or at least incomplete tasks.
The privacy policies, terms, and conditions of use in any Learning Management System (LMS) are one-way contracts. The institution imposes clauses that the student can accept or decline. Students, once they accept conditions, should be able to exercise the rights granted by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, students cannot object to data processing and public profiling because it would be conceived as an impediment to teachers to execute their work with normality. Nonetheless, regarding GDPR and consulted legal advisors, a student could claim identity anonymization in the LMS, if adequate personal justifications are provided. Per contra, the current LMSs do not have any functionality that enables identity anonymization. This is a big problem that generates undesired situations which urgently requires a definitive solution. In this work, we surveyed students and teachers to validate the feasibility and acceptance of using aliases to anonymize their identity in LMSs as a sustainable solution to the problem. Considering the positive results, we developed a user-friendly plugin for Moodle that enables students’ identity anonymization by the use of aliases. This plugin, presented in this work and named Protected users, is publicly available online at GitHub and published under GNU General Public License.
Informal learning has been a global hot topic for the past several years. The growth of the internet and the pervasiveness of computers in everyday life means that a huge part of this informal learning is done through a computer. In the European Union, since the official recognition of informal learning in 1999 with the Bologna Treaty, a number of guidelines and proposals have been published providing techniques and recommendations for translating informal learning outcomes to formal competences. Most of these guidelines depend on an evaluator (internal or external) to oversee and certify the process. In our work, we propose the usage of a more social and dynamic framework for gathering, validating and promoting a learner´s digital informal learning. This framework is based primarily on peer interaction and peer assessment instead of employing experts and provides mechanisms for personalized recommendations in order to introduce further informal learning opportunities to the learners. We propose an approach where a learner´s evaluation happens organically while other learners adopt the same activities and evaluate them positively or negatively.
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