Dual Degrees: Double Diploma between Paris and Madrid

This is the history of four years of common work between two of the oldest educational institutions in civil engineering in Europe. This collaboration has concluded in the first Double Diploma in Engineering created in Europe which will be attained by some French and Spanish students in the near future. Ecole des Fonts et Ckausees of Paris and the Escuela de Ingenieros de Caminos of Madrid have a long history of cooperation which has assisted conclusion of this agreement. The text traces some details about the agreement and finishes with some considerations about the way to allow the free movement of engineers in Europe, and the general attempts to get a Directive for Engineers.     

HUNGARIAN WOMEN RESEARCHERS IN UNIVERSITIES AND RESEARCH INSTITUTES DURING THE INTERWAR PERIOD

The article examines the question of female employment in the domain of research in Hungary during the inter‐war period. Generalizations about the situation of women are interspersed with case examples of successful women researchers. In technical and scientific fields, women ran into more opposition to their being employed than in the more literary fields, but there were notable exceptions to this rule. Women who were trained in the various areas of chemistry had a variety of opportunities. Women who came from families in which other family members were involved in scientific and academic careers fared better than women who did not come from this type of background.     

Technological Training Requirements in Catalonia

The topic of Training Requirements in Industry is relatively new. This article identifies the needs of training and the possible problems that can otherwise occur, with the primary objective being to provide guidelines for the planning of postgraduate courses.     

Humidity as an aversive stimulus in learning inDrosophila melanogaster

The learned suppression of photopositive tendencies was studied at the individual level in young flies of both sexes. In a T-maze, flies had to choose between an arm leading to a lighted vial associated with an aversive stimulus (i.e., a solution of quinine chlorhydrate deposited on a filter paper in the vial) and another arm leading to a darkened vial free of quinine. The present experiments were carried out to determine the roles of quinine and relative humidity in the maze. The flies avoided the lighted vial containing quinine even if they had no tarsal contact with quinine, and this result was not due to any odor of quinine. Subsequent experiments showed that relative humidity in the lighted vial, and probably in the arm leading to it, was an aversive stimulus, which partly explains why the flies avoided the lighted vial. However, in conditions in which the flies had tarsal contact with water or quinine it was confirmed that flies trained with quinine have higher avoidance scores than those trained with water only. Moreover, individual aversion to humidity was not correlated with the individual avoidance score: At similar levels of motivation (i.e., similar levels of aversion to humidity), some flies learn to avoid the lighted vial containing quinine whereas others do not. All these results show that, in addition to quinine, humidity is an unconditioned aversive stimulus in our paradigm and thus needs to be tightly controlled in experiments of conditioned avoidance.     

Expectations of higher education students: a comparison between the perception of student and teachers

Higher education institutions are ever more interested in the development of tools that enable them to evaluate and manage the expectations of their students with the purpose of attracting and keeping them satisfied. This research compares what the faculty believes the students expect from a higher education institution with the expectations of students entering higher education. A quantitative study was performed with students from a higher education institution through the application of a questionnaire covering 32 different expectations. The perceptions of the faculty were also collected through the same questionnaire, suitably adapted. The results of the investigation demonstrated differences in thinking between students and professors, with 19 variables representing student expectations that showed statistically significant mean differences. In 13 variables the students had greater expectations than the faculty believed, while for six variables the faculty indicated higher expectations than the students declared. Identifying the existence of this gap in knowledge will allow the higher education institution to adjust its services to the expectations of students, leading them to greater satisfaction.     

Evaluation of the University Teaching/Learning Process for the Improvement of Quality in Higher Education

This paper presents a proposal for the evaluation of the university teaching/ learning process, using indicators which are appropriate for activities developed in this process and aimed at its improvement and optimization. This analysis is carried out using the Instructional Model of the Educational Situation (MISE) developed by Rivas (1993, 1997). The data obtained from the application of questionnaires (MISE-teacher and MISE-student) in a specific instructional university process enables a contrast to be made between teacher and students' perception of the process being followed, as well as to capture the various students' perceptions and motivations throughout the course. The teacher can also obtain information on the strong and weak points of the process being developed and therefore propose improvements for future teaching/learning processes. In this way, the MISE becomes a useful tool for the formative evaluation of university teachers.     

Associations between physical activity and health-related fitness – volume versus pattern

Approximately 3.2 million people die of non-communicable diseases (NCD) each year due to insufficient physical activity. Physical activity guidelines are possibly perceived as too demanding and might thus pose a barrier. We addressed the question if a more stable physical activity pattern is associated with higher levels of health-related fitness than one with high and low intensities, regardless of the physical activity level (PAL). Physical activity was objectively measured in 296 men and women (53.7 ± 8.94 years) with the SenseWear Pro Armband^®. Using this data, the PAL and a Gini index were calculated to report the physical activity pattern. Health-related fitness was expressed as a fitness index. PAL was weakly correlated to health-related fitness (r = 0.38, P < .0001). The Gini index was also weakly correlated to the fitness index (r = 0.23, P < .0001). Results of the ANCOVA showed that participants in the first quartile of PAL always scored significantly lower for health-related fitness than participants in quartile four, after adjustment for the Gini index. These results suggest that as long as the volume of physical activity is high, health-related fitness will be high as well, independent of the physical activity pattern or variability in intensities throughout the day.     

Computer-aided Engineering Education and Technical Management

The computer-aided engineering (CAE) system gives an engineer a set of powerful new tools for proper realization of his/her design tasks. Therefore, it is also necessary to accept this methodological development adequately within the engineering curriculum of technical universities in the successful education of the new generation of engineers. CAE methodology influences all areas of an engineer's work and should be accompanied by principal changes in the traditionally used methods of engineering education. But the student's use of computer tools within many engineering disciplines hides the danger of gaining practical skills by means of the computer instead of traditional educational goals concerning the proper understanding of the solution principles of technical problems. Sometimes the students are not able to recognize the significance of, for example, software development problems or engineer workstation organization problems, in view of the main goal of engineering design—to develop a new technical system. To avoid this danger it is necessary to present methods of technical management as an integral part of CAE education. Such orientation has an important role within an engineer's education in the twentieth century.