Search

In a context of permanent electoral campaign, an increasing number of political communication specialists are trying to unravel the resources with which government officials and their parties seek to influence TikTok users. From a broad perspective, the theme is more current than novel, however, in the specific case of this research, an academic void is identified by combining the identification of idiosyncratic traits of the feminization of political discourse in TikTok with the study of reactions (text and emojis) that audiovisual content imbued with this trend provokes in users. The intention is to find out whether the inclusive tone of the feminized rhetorical style can be extrapolated to the Chinese-origin social network and, if so, whether its particular characteristics mitigate forms of incivility. To carry out the checks, the first seven months of activity on TikTok by the political platform Sumar with its leader, Yolanda Díaz, as the protagonist of most of the videos, are selected. The mixed methodology of analysis on audiovisual content and comments allows to verify that, although the new Spanish party does not apply a strategy perfectly adapted to the social network under study, the anti-polarization rhetoric and the storytelling techniques manage to neutralize extreme forms of flaming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Purpose: Participants and settings: Research design: Results: Conclusions: The interactions between behavior, environment and personal factors are the basis of the Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, A. 1986. Social Foundations of Thought and Action. NJ: Prentice Halls). Within this theory, students’ behavior and motivation toward an activity is dependent on their feelings, thoughts and beliefs (Lodewyck and Pybus 2013. “Investigating Factors in the Retention of Students in High School Physical Education.” Journal of Teaching in Physical Education 32 (1): 61–77). Physical education can provide attractive contexts to promote students’ learning, but this depends on the teachers’ ability to offer them relevant educational experiences (Bailey, R. 2018. “Sport, Physical Education and Educational Worth.” Educational Review 70 (1): 51–66). Meaningful physical education is a pedagogical approach whose aim is to help teachers design significant experiences for all students (Beni, S., T. Fletcher, and D. Ní Chróinín. 2022. “‘It’s not a Linear Thing; There are a Lot of Intersecting Circles’: Factors Influencing Teachers’ Implementation of Meaningful Physical Education.” Teaching and Teacher Education 117: 103806). Physical education is a compulsory subject in Spain, but it is not included in the final year of high school. In 2018, one autonomous community decided to offer it as an elective subject in this course. Scholars and institutions claim for more hours of physical education. But, what about the students? Do they really want more?The goal of the present study was to uncover the reasons why students selected, or not, physical education when it was included as an elective subject in their final year of high school.A total of 795 year-13 students (17–18 years), enrolled in 13 different high schools participated. 444 (55.8%) had not selected physical education (61.71% females), while 351 (44.2%) did selected it (44.44% females). Convenience sampling was used to include participants, considering the possibilities of the researchers to access them.The study followed an ex post facto, transversal, prospective research design to gather data in a single time point (Cohen, L., K. Manion, and K. Morrison. 2011. Research Methods in Education. Routledge). Within this framework, a qualitative research design was selected to obtain rich, detailed, and heavily contextualized information from the source (Creswell, J. W. 2013. Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among Five Approaches. Sage). The participants responded to an open-ended question 3–4 weeks after the beginning of the school year to ‘fully explain the reason(s) for (not) selecting physical education in the final year of high school’. The qualitative software package MAXQDA 11 was used to help with data administration.The deep analysis of the participants’ responses produced five themes for not selecting physical education (from strong to weak): academic stress, negative experiences, out-of-school physical activity, timetable, and importance, and four themes for selecting it: grade point average, importance, sport, and positive experiences.Results indicate that many students would eliminate physical education from their timetables if they had the chance. In many cases, it does not provide meaningful experiences, which produces low domain value. If physical education wants to survive as an academic subject in the schools, it must listen to its students, and attend their demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is the notion that dysregulation of executive function (EF), which disrupts behavior and cognitive processes, may explain the emotional impairment which leads to increasing sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs) intake. We aimed to test whether anxiety and depression mediate the association between self-reported problems in EF and sugar sweetened beverage intake in Mexican adults between 18-40 years. An open survey advertised as a 'mental health and sugar sweetened beverages study' was conducted, participants were recruited through Facebook ads. Males and females, between 18-40 years, able to read and write, and currently residing in Mexico were included. We analyzed data using causal mediation analysis with latent variables using a structural equation modelling framework. Significant indirect effects were found for somatic symptoms of depression (ß = 6.601, SE = 2.657, p < .05) and anxiety (ß = .679, SE =.334, p < .05). In depression model no significant direct effects of EF were found in the depression model, however they were found in the anxiety model (ß = 1.335 SE =.566, p < .05). Somatic symptoms of depression were a total mediator, and anxiety a partial mediator. The results suggest that EF increased the probability of emotional symptoms, which led to a higher consumption of SBBs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge of the value generated within higher education institutions is of great interest for various agents, particularly managers, as well as governments and society. University mission statements and their scope complicate any comparable measurement of the effects each university may have within a particular region. Perhaps the most adequate term for it and one that includes simple economic impact is value. This study is centered on the estimation of the short-term economic impact of the University of Granada (UGR). Using a method based on the input–output framework and multipliers, the total (direct, indirect, and induced) effects of UGR on production, income, and employment are quantified, differentiating between economic sectors. The total economic impact of UGR is 3.2 times the expenditure of the agents linked to the activities of the university, which implies that each Euro that the government invested was converted into 7.1 Euros. Its effect on total production surpassed two-thousand million Euros, with an income of one-thousand million Euros and over 25,000 equivalent jobs. Quantification of the impact is a measure of the importance of UGR within the province of Granada and the performance of public-sector investment in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study proposes an approximation to the theopoetics of Saint John of the Cross---to a poetry that is theological and to a theology that is poetic---from four points of view: 1) the meaning of the “substantial word” as an internal link that unites mysticism and poetry; 2) the prologue to the Spiritual Canticle which contains a true poetics of mystical literature, encompassing such fundamental aspects as experience, inspiration, the Biblical model and communicative efficacy; 3) the theopathic state which the author already describes in his first poem; and 4) the theological system of his poetry through some examples of thematic continuity taken from Romance, Pastorcico, Noche and Llama. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the process carried out by Spain's state radio station -Radio Nacional de España- to devise the figure of Francisco Franco, first as a war hero, supreme chief of the rebel side of Spanish Civil War and, after the conflict ended, as a statesman and rebuilder of the Spanish nation, in his roles as head of state and Caudillo de España (leader of Spain). Through the examination of materials from newspapers, magazines, sound archives, censored scripts and administrative documentation, this research focuses on the capacity of state radio to adapt its discourse to convey the figure of a 'charismatic' ruler that satisfies the needs of the Francoist regime to survive and legitimize itself. The article shows how state radio constructs a discourse around Franco arranged to the different speeds of the national and international political context that shook Spain, Europe and the occidental world from 1937 to 1961. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late incorporation of Spain into the international circuit for the publication of results of scientific research in Communication has not proved to be an obstacle to reaching a level similar to international research in this discipline recently. However, this development is still subject to some obstacles. In this study, we carried out co-word and cocitation analyses of the intellectual and thematic structure of articles published by researchers affiliated with Spanish centers in journals indexed in the Communication category in Scopus and published between 1980 and 2020 (n = 7,422). This enables an analysis of the intellectual and thematic structure of Communication studies between 1980 and 2020 and its evolution. The aim is to contextualize this process, in a broad sense, thus establishing the similarities to and differences from European (n = 33,615) and Latin American (n = 5,160) Communication research during the same period. The results reveal a homogenization of the research interests between Spanish academics and their European counterparts during the last decade, with an emphasis on digital technologies and social networks. The first prominent studies in Spanish research have also appeared, albeit not yet becoming established as such on the international stage during the last decade. It is concluded that Spanish Communication research has developed around Journalism while the other classic disciplines (Audiovisual Communication, and Advertising and Public Relations) have not managed to consolidate a coherent and cohesive thematic and intellectual community to date, mainly due to their greater heterogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new model based on Fuzzy k -Nearest Neighbors for classification with monotonic constraints, Monotonic Fuzzy k -NN (MonF k NN). Real-life data-sets often do not comply with monotonic constraints due to class noise. MonF k NN incorporates a new calculation of fuzzy memberships, which increases robustness against monotonic noise without the need for relabeling. Our proposal has been designed to be adaptable to the different needs of the problem being tackled. In several experimental studies, we show significant improvements in accuracy while matching the best degree of monotonicity obtained by comparable methods. We also show that MonF k NN empirically achieves improved performance compared with Monotonic k -NN in the presence of large amounts of class noise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the online politainment context, the use of political memes as a humorous and creative formula to configure the political image has become an increasingly common practice in electoral campaigns. Especially on the occasion of electoral debates, dissemination of political memes on social networks has captured the interest of scholars. This study takes into account the established political memes taxonomies and analyzes their persuasive capacity. Specifically, the research includes a quantitative analysis of the main memes spread on Twitter during the two electoral debates that took place in the 2019 electoral campaign in Spain: 4N and 7N. The study uses the perspective of integrated framing (textual-visual) and is based on the persuasive power of memes in relation to the importance of each of the elements of rhetoric (pathos, ethos and logos), with the aim of analyzing as well the consequences on its virality and repercussion on the social audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The refugee crisis has been a fertile ground for hate speech that has portrayed migrants as a dangerous threat and has been spread through social networks. While the media have unconsciously contributed to the proliferation of these racist messages, some have reacted by extending their traditional journalistic activity to the creation of newsgames to find new ways of addressing the situation. This study examines the use of five newsgames developed by leading media outlets using a methodology based on a multimodal qualitative analysis (informative and ludonarrative). The results showed that newsgames players have access to truthful information, as is the case for other journalistic genres, and draw on other types of personal and emotional information (circumstances, feelings, family ties). These data did not appear in isolation but integrated into the gaming experience. The study concludes by identifying the interaction between the levels of information and immersion of the newsgames that make up the sample, as well as their different gradation: giving the player the opportunity to make more significant decisions within the story allows for the introduction of nuances that promote empathy towards refugees; however, greater freedom in the gaming experience in newsgames distances them from the classic informational model and may involve a greater risk of distortion of the ideas that they seek to promote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distance metric learning is a branch of machine learning that aims to learn distances from the data, which enhances the performance of similarity-based algorithms. This tutorial provides a theoretical background and foundations on this topic and a comprehensive experimental analysis of the most-known algorithms. We start by describing the distance metric learning problem and its main mathematical foundations, divided into three main blocks: convex analysis, matrix analysis and information theory. Then, we will describe a representative set of the most popular distance metric learning methods used in classification. All the algorithms studied in this paper will be evaluated with exhaustive testing in order to analyze their capabilities in standard classification problems, particularly considering dimensionality reduction and kernelization. The results, verified by Bayesian statistical tests, highlight a set of outstanding algorithms. Finally, we will discuss several potential future prospects and challenges in this field. This tutorial will serve as a starting point in the domain of distance metric learning from both a theoretical and practical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ensembles, especially ensembles of decision trees, are one of the most popular and successful techniques in machine learning. Recently, the number of ensemble-based proposals has grown steadily. Therefore, it is necessary to identify which are the appropriate algorithms for a certain problem. In this paper, we aim to help practitioners to choose the best ensemble technique according to their problem characteristics and their workflow. To do so, we revise the most renowned bagging and boosting algorithms and their software tools. These ensembles are described in detail within their variants and improvements available in the literature. Their online-available software tools are reviewed attending to the implemented versions and features. They are categorized according to their supported programming languages and computing paradigms. The performance of 14 different bagging and boosting based ensembles, including XGBoost, LightGBM and Random Forest, is empirically analyzed in terms of predictive capability and efficiency. This comparison is done under the same software environment with 76 different classification tasks. Their predictive capabilities are evaluated with a wide variety of scenarios, such as standard multi-class problems, scenarios with categorical features and big size data. The efficiency of these methods is analyzed with considerably large data-sets. Several practical perspectives and opportunities are also exposed for ensemble learning. • We present an overview of recent and iconic bagging and boosting based algorithms. • We list their software tools available online and features. • We perform a performance study, extracting some lessons learned. • Some perspectives on ensemble learning are discussed. • Some opportunities and future fields are examined for ensembles in machine learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Framing processes are one of the preferred objects of study in the area of Communication, despite the frequent criticism regarding their theoretical and methodological strength. This study follows the proposal of Matthes and Kohring (2008) of the detection of frames through statistical analysis of clusters that operationalize the components as defined by Entman (2003) using framing elements. This is applied to the study of the electoral campaign on Facebook of the main Spanish political parties in the election of 28 April 2019. All messages published on this social network during the 15 days of the electoral campaign were captured automatically. The use of four large frames by the parties was detected, corresponding to events and political questions, request for vote, the rival party, and media treatment. The parties used these frames to different degrees: from the institutional and positive campaign of the PSOE, to the campaign aimed at criticizing the ruling party of the main opposition party, the PP, through the inclination towards media treatment of Unidas Podemos, or a focus on their own events and proposals by Ciudadanos and Vox. A negative correlation was detected between the frames most used by the political formations as a whole and the level of user engagement on Facebook, although the use of frames by PSOE and Unidas Podemos showed a greater parallelism with the levels of interaction in this social network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise in the spread of fake news and its viralization have become one of the significant communication challenges of the 21st century in the face of the difficulty of establishing effective formulas to stop its spread. From this context, this research aims to analyze the critical-discursive capacity of newsgames that have addressed the phenomenon of disinformation and fake news: Bad News (DROG, 2017), Fake it to make it (Amanda Warner, 2017), iReporter (BBC, 2018) and Factitious (Augame Studio, 2017-20). To this end, a qualitative analysis methodology is used to explain its narrative structure, informative purpose and playful-interactive proposal. The results reflect a primary discursive strategy oriented to the role-playing of the players as creators, verifiers or disseminators of false news that responds to a wide range of topics (from political issues to those related to COVID-19). In this way, these games teach the dissemination strategies of this type of hoaxes and identify the motivation for their production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

pyDML is an open-source python library that provides a wide range of distance metric learning algorithms. Distance metric learning can be useful to improve similarity learning algorithms, such as the nearest neighbors classifier, and also has other applications, like dimensionality reduction. The pyDML package currently provides more than 20 algorithms, which can be categorized, according to their purpose, in: dimensionality reduction algorithms, algorithms to improve nearest neighbors or nearest centroids classifiers, information theory based algorithms or kernel based algorithms, among others. In addition, the library also provides some utilities for the visualization of classifier regions, parameter tuning and a stats website with the performance of the implemented algorithms. The package relies on the scipy ecosystem, it is fully compatible with scikit-learn, and is distributed under GPLv3 license. Source code and documentation can be found at https://github.com/jlsuarezdiaz/pyDML. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the roman catholic mendicant religious order for men founded, probably in the 12th century, on Mount Carmel in Palestine in the crusader states known as carmelites. Topics include spiritual life and the charism of mother saint teresa, monasteries of his bishops and participation of nuns.

This paper explores the creation and content of apps about Donald Trump (n=412) published in Google Play between June 2015 and January 2018. The relevance of the study stems from both its objectives and its methodology. On the one hand, the aim was to characterise the profile, motivations and purposes of the developers of Donald Trump apps; and on the other, to identify the main features of the discourses in the most downloaded apps. The study relied on two resources: a qualitative questionnaire of open questions for developers (n=376), and a quantitative analysis of the content of apps that exceeded 5,000 downloads (n=117). The questionnaire identified the influence of political current affairs in the developers' ideological and economic motivations, while the content analysis revealed the trends found over time, as well as the themes, discourses and ideological positioning of the most popular apps about Donald Trump. The findings provide an empirical basis for how the content of these apps was articulated with the news; the influence of content that went viral; hegemonic discourses; and the role played by developers of new expressive, commercial, informative and persuasive proposals in the intersection between mobile apps and political campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Addressing imbalanced datasets in classification tasks is a relevant topic in research studies. The main reason is that for standard classification algorithms, the success rate when identifying minority class instances may be adversely affected. Among different solutions to cope with this problem, data level techniques have shown a robust behavior. In this paper, the novel imbalance package is introduced. Written in R and C++, and available at CRAN repository, this library includes recent relevant oversampling algorithms to improve the quality of data in imbalanced datasets, prior to performing a learning task. The main features of the package, as well as some illustrative examples of its use are detailed throughout this manuscript. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spirituality is of constant concern to Pope Francis and constitutes an internal structural theme of his exhortations. From this perspective, our intention is to address the first and most important of these documents, Evangelii gaudium, because in addition to setting out the program for Francis's pontificate, it can also be regarded as a spiritual guide for our time, with very practical guidelines which lead to the experience of encounter and the discovery of the joy of the Gospel. These guidelines also offer stimulus and motivation for both the mission and the reform of the Church, as well as a response to difficulties by means of criteria for discernment of a practical and pastoral nature. They can therefore be summarized in three lines of action and in three fundamental concepts: experience, mission and discernment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a widely-used strategy among firms wishing to launch new products, brand extension has been the focus of numerous studies in recent years. However, very few works have focused on analysing brand extensions in the cultural context – that is, the use of a brand linked to cultural heritage as the parent brand from which to grow the extension. The present investigation is designed to shed light on this issue, taking the Monumental Complex of the Alhambra and Generalife (MCAG) as the parent brand for analysis. The work examines the effect of two factors, brand extension fit and brand extension authenticity, on attitudes toward the brand extension. A between-subjects experimental design was used: 2 (high vs. low degree of brand extension fit) × 3 (high, moderate, and low degree of brand extension authenticity). The results demonstrate that there is a transfer of positive effect from the MCAG parent brand to the brand extension, and that the greater the degree of the extension's authenticity relative to the Monumental Complex, the stronger this transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, size control of carbon-encapsulated nickel nanoparticles (CENiNPs) synthesized by direct thermal decomposition of Ni(CH 3 COO) 2 . 4H 2 O (NiAc) was possible by varying systematically the initial amount of the precursor during its pyrolysis. The reaction was conducted inside a thermogravimetric analyzer coupled to a quadrupole mass spectrometer for evolved gas analysis. By heating non-isothermally different initial amounts of NiAc (100–400 mg) in an argon flow at 10 °C/min from room temperature to 500 °C, CENiNPs were readily obtained, in which a thin layer of carbon resulting from the breakdown of the anion protects their metallic core from spontaneous oxidation. High resolution transmission electron microscopy and methane catalytic decomposition tests revealed that this encapsulating layer can also exert a significant role in the control of the size distribution (40–140 nm) and catalytic activity of the resultant CENiNPs. Temperature programmed oxidation of the CENiNPs identified preliminary some surface carbon species responsible for the packing of the catalytically-active metallic core. This simple and cost-effective method emerges as a competitive way to manufacture and conserve highly active CENiNPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism is undoubtedly among the industries that better reflect the effects of globalization, technological advances (i.e. the Internet) being one of the most relevant drivers. Given the current market saturation of this sector, a better understanding of how tourists from different cultures process online information and forge their attitudes and behavioral intentions is called for. Nevertheless, national culture may have a major influence on the effectiveness of online tourist marketing activities. This study contributes to the extant body of knowledge via the analysis of the influence of perceived risk on how tourists process the information while browsing a tourist destination website, form their attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the destination. The effect of national culture on such antecedents is examined via a cross-cultural research to compare Spanish and British cultures. A theoretical model is proposed to integrate the effect of perceived risk and variables regarding technology acceptance on tourist responses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hatred is distinguished from the expression of democratic opinion by its harmful intent. Dissemination of hate speech on social media is characterised by its virulence (Zamora-Medina et al., 2021), especially when directed towards the political class, and particularly at women, who are challenged in a different way to their male counterparts (Soriano, 2019). This violence triggers an anti-feminist reaction (Wilhelm & Joeckel, 2018) characterised by extreme misogyny, reaction, and a tendency towards personal attacks. Thus, the aggression exerted by haters against this vulnerable group contaminates the public sphere and negatively affects the quality of democracies. On the basis of this state of affairs, this research seeks, through content analysis, to identify and analyse expressions of hatred directed towards the five female candidates for the presidency of the Community of Madrid (Isabel Díaz of the Partido Popular, Mónica García of Más Madrid, Rocío Monasterio of Vox, Alejandra Jacinto of Podemos, Izquierda Unida, and Alianza Verde, and Aruca Gómez of Ciudadanos) in the comments made on their official Instagram accounts during the May 2023 election campaign. In addition, it aims to examine hate discourses that may be related to both a female gender bias and other vulnerable groups through issues such as aporophobia or xenophobia, among others. The results show that hatred is directed towards female politicians with great intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between political polarization and the media in contemporary society. Polarization has become a prevalent phenomenon in many countries, characterized by the increasing division of opinions and extreme attitudes among different political groups. Media, as key actors in disseminating information and shaping public opinion, play a crucial role in perpetuating or mitigating this process. This work presents a conceptualization of the phenomenon and examines its connection with the media landscape, establishing its origins as well as its consequences: audience segmentation, sensationalism, and media bias. Additionally, an exploration is conducted on artificial intelligence, data analysis, message personalization, chatbots, or algorithms as influential agents in the growth of political polarization. The effects of polarization impact society's media consumption and the functioning of democracy itself. Informational fragmentation, growing distrust towards media, and political disengagement are some of the most significant consequences. Therefore, this article addresses possible solutions and strategies to promote a more constructive and less polarized public discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The imbalanced data classification has been deeply studied by the machine learning practitioners over the years and it is one of the most challenging problems in the field. In many real-life situations, the under representation of a class in contrary to the rest commonly produces the tendency to ignore the minority class, this being normally the target of the problem. Consequently, many different techniques have been proposed. Among those, the ensemble approaches have resulted to be very reliable. New ways of generating ensembles have also been studied for standard classification. In particular, Class Switching, as a mechanism to produce training perturbed sets, has been proved to perform well in slightly imbalanced scenarios. In this paper, we analyze its potential to deal with highly imbalanced problems, fighting against its major limitations. We introduce a novel ensemble approach based on Switching with a new technique to select the switched examples based on Nearest Enemy Distance. We compare the resulting SwitchingNED with five distinctive ensemble-based approaches, with different combinations of sampling techniques. With a better performance, SwitchingNED is settled as one of best approaches on the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Blue Division, Spain’s most notable military contribution to the Second World War, has been examined from many different perspectives, though the role of communication has not featured among them. This study aims to analyse the role played by Spanish state radio in the creation and maintenance of Spain’s war effort in that period. In order to achieve this, we used documentary sources, and more specifically, reconstructed the radio programming schedules, mainly using the press, due to the lack of audio recordings from the era. Finally, this work explores the role of radio from the Blue Division’s inception through to its official disbandment; or, put another way, the transition from commitment to the Axis powers to gradual estrangement from them. A dual transition process occurred on Radio Nacional de España: firstly, from zealous glorification to the silencing of the divisionaries by official order. The second transition was from a radio station that, since the Civil War, had lost its persuasive power, to a new perception of propaganda based on the familiar and the emotional. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Video games have become a valid methodological teaching tool that is highly valued by experts and teachers due to their interactive ability and proximity to young generations. But what do students think about video games? What is the relationship between students and video games? What educational capacities do video games have?. This article examines the main academic arguments on the educational capacities of video games and assumes that higher education students use video games for fun and pleasure rather than for educational purposes. A qualitative methodology based on indepth interviews of a sample of undergraduate students of audiovisual communication, media studies and journalism was used to collect and analyse the discourse models of students regarding their extracurricular relationship with video games. The data obtained permitted the analysis of items such as "the value of video games as a learning resource at university," "the utility of video games for developing manual and intellectual abilities," or "the role of video games in educational motivation," focusing particularly to the gender of the interviewees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work analyzes whether the cultural values of a language influence when processing information from a website and its effect on the perceived risk online, on the development of positive attitudes toward a Web site and loyalties on the service offered therein. We propose an information-processing model based on TAM in which perceived risk online is an antecedent and consumer loyalty towards the service is the ultimate outcome In order to achieve this objective and test the proposed hypotheses, a between-subjects experimental design was chosen, using one independent variable namely with two level: processing language (Spanish vs. English). The final sample comprised 264 Spanish users. Half the sample browsed in Spanish, and the other half in English. The results demonstrated that the cultural dimension 'uncertainty avoidance' moderates the effect of perceived risk on perceived ease of use and usefulness. Perceived ease of use or perceived usefulness influenced to attitude towards the website, depending on whether the language used to process the information on the site conveys cultural values with a shorter or longer-term orientation. Languages, as a cultural framework, didn't moderate the relationship between attitude towards the website and loyalty towards the tourist destination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In vitro embryo production (IVEP) has the potential to generate a large number of domestic animal embryos, as well as the implementation of other technologies from IVEP, such as transgenesis and cloning. The embryos produced in vitro are evaluated through morphological characteristics, but it is of great importance to determine if this evaluation corresponds to the viability of the embryos. The objective of the present study was to determine the relationship between the morphological evaluation and morula viability obtained in a single culture medium (SCM) or sequential medium (QCM) at 120 hours. The percentage of embryo division was 85 % in both culture media and morula percentage of 49 and 45 % for SCM and QCM, respectively (p>0.05). A higher number of quality one and two morulae was obtained in SCM compared to QCM (31 % and 44 % versus 13 % and 27 %, respectively) (p<0.05). It was not the same in quality 3 morulae, where SCM was higher than QCM (50 % and 18 %, respectively) (p<0.05). The total percentage of transferable morulae in SCM and QCM was 93 % and 90 %, respectively. The percentage of viable morulae was 98 % in both media, based on the number of viable blastomeres per morula, which were similar in SCM and QCM (14 ± 2 and 13 ± 2, respectively, p> 0.05). A positive correlation between the morphological quality and the viability of their blastomeres in morulae cultured with SCM and QCM (0.7415 and 0.7408, respectively) was determined. It is concluded that there is no difference between morulae obtained from SCM and QCM, but based on costs and embryons manipulation, SCM may be the best choice. The morphological evaluation of the embryos produced in vitro is a reliable method and the presence of vesicles in the blastomers did not affect the embryonic viability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University rankings have become popular tools to evaluate the results of academic institutions. The existing proposals of rankings of universities in Spain, based on social networking sites, show some limitations related to their lack of coverage, their specificity, and their lack of transparency in the ranking definition. The goal of this work is to introduce a general design framework for coherent classifications to analyze the impact of all Spanish universities, both public and private, in four social networking sites: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. The proposed framework is based on the definition of a criteria taxonomy, the selection of those criteria available in the four social networking sites, and the proposal of various kinds of indicators using them. To illustrate our framework, two case studies are developed evaluating the presence and influence of Spanish universities in Twitter and LinkedIn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data preprocessing is a major and essential stage whose main goal is to obtain final data sets that can be considered correct and useful for further data mining algorithms. This paper summarizes the most influential data preprocessing algorithms according to their usage, popularity and extensions proposed in the specialized literature. For each algorithm, we provide a description, a discussion on its impact, and a review of current and further research on it. These most influential algorithms cover missing values imputation, noise filtering, dimensionality reduction (including feature selection and space transformations), instance reduction (including selection and generation), discretization and treatment of data for imbalanced preprocessing. They constitute all among the most important topics in data preprocessing research and development. This paper emphasizes on the most well-known preprocessing methods and their practical study, selected after a recent, generic book on data preprocessing that does not deepen on them. This manuscript also presents an illustrative study in two sections with different data sets that provide useful tips for the use of preprocessing algorithms. In the first place, we graphically present the effects on two benchmark data sets for the preprocessing methods. The reader may find useful insights on the different characteristics and outcomes generated by them. Secondly, we use a real world problem presented in the ECDBL’2014 Big Data competition to provide a thorough analysis on the application of some preprocessing techniques, their combination and their performance. As a result, five different cases are analyzed, providing tips that may be useful for readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discretization of numerical data is one of the most influential data preprocessing tasks in knowledge discovery and data mining. The purpose of attribute discretization is to find concise data representations as categories which are adequate for the learning task retaining as much information in the original continuous attribute as possible. In this article, we present an updated overview of discretization techniques in conjunction with a complete taxonomy of the leading discretizers. Despite the great impact of discretization as data preprocessing technique, few elementary approaches have been developed in the literature for Big Data. The purpose of this article is twofold: a comprehensive taxonomy of discretization techniques to help the practitioners in the use of the algorithms is presented; the article aims is to demonstrate that standard discretization methods can be parallelized in Big Data platforms such as Apache Spark, boosting both performance and accuracy. We thus propose a distributed implementation of one of the most well-known discretizers based on Information Theory, obtaining better results than the one produced by: the entropy minimization discretizer proposed by Fayyad and Irani. Our scheme goes beyond a simple parallelization and it is intended to be the first to face the Big Data challenge. WIREs Data Mining Knowl Discov 2016, 6:5-21. doi: 10.1002/widm.1173 For further resources related to this article, please visit the . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As long as students use Web 2.0 tools extensively for social purposes, there is an opportunity to improve students' engagement in Higher Education by using these tools for academic purposes under a Personal Learning Environment approach (PLE 2.0). The success of these attempts depends upon the reactions and acceptance of users towards e-learning using Web 2.0. This paper aims to analyse the factors (e-learning satisfaction and students' perceptions, among others) that determine the intention of use of a PLE 2.0 initiative. The study in addition analyses the moderating role of the Need for Cognition (NFC) in the model. The results indicate that the model proposed has a high explanatory power of the intention to use a PLE 2.0 and gives support to the moderating role of NFC. The study discusses how this analysis can help to improve course designs by teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital humanities (DH) have adopted various institutional forms in academia (centres, networks, projects, etc.). This study addresses the current state of the discipline through an analysis of DH centres, as reported by CenterNet. We analysed websites, missions, and the social media presence of the centres in order to provide an overall picture. Results show a remarkable heterogeneity in DH organisation. Finally, some of the most debated issues are discussed, such as the borders of the field, inclusion and exclusion issues, or a new cultural colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research is focused on two fiction representations of the coup d'état in 1981, February 23rd in Spain. Specifically two series broadcasted in February 2009, namely: February 23rd: King's hardest day and February 23rd: the history of a betrayal. In this way, we assume not only the proposal that fiction is a useful instrument to rebuild historical memory, but also the concern that it is able to renew the perception of some social institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an analysis of the sound construction of the figure of Francisco Franco through the discourse broadcast by Radio Nacional de España (the National Radio of Spain) during the Civil War and the first twenty years of the Franco regime in Spain. The purpose of the study is to determine the characteristics and evolution of the propaganda used to build the mythical figure of Franco adjusted to the political interests of the regime's propaganda apparatus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research presents a review of the theoricdevelopment that have received newsgames as informative practice and particularize, briefly, which were aimed at spanish context. We analyzed these products from their objectives and usability after establishing the characteristics of the medium from the point of view of communication. As advances in the conclusions, this is a genre that an unqualified international contexts, begins to acquire a significant presence in the Spanish area but is still in an embryonic state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper investigates whether perceived risk online is affected by the language in which a user browses a given website. In order to achieve this objective and test the proposed hypotheses, a 2×2 between-subjects experimental design was chosen, using two independent variables with two levels each, namely: culture (Spanish vs. British) and processing language (Spanish vs. English). The final sample comprised 491 individuals (264 Spanish and 227 British). Half the sample browsed in their mother tongue, and the other half in a second language. The results showed that Spanish users perceive less risk when browsing in English than in Spanish, while for the British there was no difference, in terms of perceived risk, between browsing in Spanish or English. Another interesting finding is the moderating effect of message involvement on the processing of information from the website, and thus its effect on the user’s perception of risk. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This investigation analyzes radio audiences during the first Francoist period (1939-1959) and values the efficacy of official propaganda broadcast through the Radio Nacional de España (RNE: National Radio of Spain). The investigation uses various statistics and newspaper sources as well as the image of radio given by movies and comics at the time. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis we demonstrate that the drive to have doctrinal programming in news and entertainment in public radio led large audience groups -urban and rural, center and periphery- to find refuge in the evasion offered by private radio stations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discretization is an essential preprocessing technique used in many knowledge discovery and data mining tasks. Its main goal is to transform a set of continuous attributes into discrete ones, by associating categorical values to intervals and thus transforming quantitative data into qualitative data. In this manner, symbolic data mining algorithms can be applied over continuous data and the representation of information is simplified, making it more concise and specific. The literature provides numerous proposals of discretization and some attempts to categorize them into a taxonomy can be found. However, in previous papers, there is a lack of consensus in the definition of the properties and no formal categorization has been established yet, which may be confusing for practitioners. Furthermore, only a small set of discretizers have been widely considered, while many other methods have gone unnoticed. With the intention of alleviating these problems, this paper provides a survey of discretization methods proposed in the literature from a theoretical and empirical perspective. From the theoretical perspective, we develop a taxonomy based on the main properties pointed out in previous research, unifying the notation and including all the known methods up to date. Empirically, we conduct an experimental study in supervised classification involving the most representative and newest discretizers, different types of classifiers, and a large number of data sets. The results of their performances measured in terms of accuracy, number of intervals, and inconsistency have been verified by means of nonparametric statistical tests. Additionally, a set of discretizers are highlighted as the best performing ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, MOOCs have become firmly established as valid e-learning environments and, as such, have been developed by many universities using different types of platform. Given the voluntary nature of MOOC enrollment, motivation is crucial to our understanding of why students register for and complete these courses. The present study explores the motivations that characterize MOOC participants and how they relate to technology acceptance variables (data collected via questionnaires) and participation variables (observational data collected via the platform). Our results indicate that students show exceptionally high levels of intrinsic motivation. However, extrinsic motivation also plays a relevant role, suggesting that the two are not mutually exclusive. Although only intrinsic motivation appears to be systematically associated with differences in technology acceptance, both are associated with differences in participation, but in contrasting ways. Our results provide insights that will enable us to improve MOOC design in order to enhance participant satisfaction, particularly when different sources of motivation are involved. Future research based on the modeling of technology acceptance and participation will also benefit from this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bipolar disorder coexists with other psychiatric diagnoses and medical comorbidities. The objective of this case report and selective review of the literature is to divulge the comorbidity in bipolar disorder manic episode with psychotic features with a chronic hyperprolactinemic state. We report a female patient 30 years of age with galactorrhea of 6 years of evolution before the onset of any psychiatric treatment. During the study period had two manic episodes with psychotic features, requiring hospitalization on both occasions. Her symptoms subsided in 9 days with treatment with haloperidol and magnesium valproate. We discuss the treatment used and the indication of a second-generation antipsychotic effective in bipolar disorder profile and more appropriate to the circumstances of the case, including the finding of chronic hyperprolactinemia, which after ruled out as causes pituitary adenoma and hypothyroidism, was associated with other findings: polycystic ovaries. Finally, we analyze the probable participation of hyperprolactinemia as a trigger a manic episode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-1990's, the concept of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) has come to the fore and attracted considerable attention in the literature. The main purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to explore IMC by delimitating its conceptual boundaries and identifying its main dimensions and (2) to develop a whole theoretical model of its antecedents and consequences. To achieve this goal, this study analyzes the conceptual framework around IMC and its dimensions and it presents an extensive literature review. Moreover, a new definition is presented and the main dimensions of the concept are highlighted. A systematic literature review is carried out to identify IMC antecedents and consequences and the research hypotheses are formulated. Following the obtained results, a conceptual model has been developed and the most relevant findings are discussed. Finally, the main academic and managerial implications are described. This model will help academics and marketers to better understand the role that this new marketing paradigm plays within modern management, in identifying the key variables that promote or hinder IMC and the benefits derived from its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers -from different types of sources- the guidelines Radio Nacional de España followed in its emissions to a children and youth audience during the Spanish Civil War and the First Francoism. This research provides goals of their leaders, the problems they had to state to carry out the broadcasts, and -will be pointed- the possible influence of these emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]