Universidad Nacional del Sur

Program in General Education Harvard has long required that students take a set of courses outside of their concentration in order to ensure that their undergraduate education encompasses a broad range of topics and approaches. The new Program in General Education seeks to connect in an explicit way what students learn in Harvard classrooms to life outside the ivied walls and beyond the college years. The material taught in general education courses is continuous with the material taught in the rest of the curriculum, but the approach is different. These courses aim not to draw students into a discipline, but to bring the disciplines into students' lives. The Program in General Education introduces students to subject matter and skills from across the University, and ______ in ways that link the arts and sciences with the 21st century world that students will face and the lives they will lead after college. General education prepares students to respond critically and constructively to change. Students need to know about the forces that generate change and transformation in modern life, not only in order to make informed decisions as civic agents, but in order to have some degree of control over their own lives. Perhaps no area of endeavor today exerts more powerful transformative effects than science and technology. General education is one of the means by which all students can become familiar with important concepts and issues in these areas, and wrestle with their social, personal, and ethical implications. Rapid change is also a feature of contemporary political, economic, and cultural life. Our world is not a stable ______, and students are ill-served by a curriculum that assumes that the shape of things today is all they need to understand in order to engage with the political, socio-economic, and technological landscape of tomorrow. Students need to leave Harvard with skills to match the worlds speed. General education develops students understanding of the ethical dimensions of what they say and do. Liberal education is about more than the acquisition of information, skills, and techniques. It is also about the capacity to grasp the ethical consequences of the ways in which those acquirements are put to use. Ethical awareness is achieved in part by helping students reflect critically on their own beliefs and values, and learn how to defend them with reasoned arguments. It is also achieved by exposing students to beliefs and values that have shaped others lives, historically and internationally, so that they are put in a position from which they can choose for themselves what principles will guide them. Students may well reaffirm the principles they came to Harvard with, but they should be able to ______ self-consciously and deliberately. In addition, they should gain a deeper understanding of other belief systems, even when they do not share them. They should see that conflicts about values arise from a variety of sources, including cultural differences, religious differences, socioeconomic differences, and the impact of developments in science and technology. Fuente: http://www.generaleducation.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do

Constanza Arriaga

6 de noviembre de 2012

Universidad Nacional del Sur

Getting started
Until a time when all content flows effortlessly from one context to another, users will continue to frequent whichever experience makes sense to them at that time. Some will prefer your desktop site as it offers familiarity. Others may not find what they need on your mobile site. Some may be redirected to the desktop asironically the mobile site doesn't work on their device. Others may access your desktop experience from a tablet-sized device, and choose to do so because (despite poor usability) it still feels better than a scaled-up mobile site. And many will simply dip in and out, accessing one site or the other depending on which device they have on hand, or which URL someone sends them in a tweet or an email.

The important thing to remember is thatfor the foreseeable futurethese behaviors are the new normal (except the bit about your mobile site not working on their phoneyou need to do something about that). So why not begin right now, by looking at your desktop site? If youre already in the midst of a mobile redesign, these tips will be useful, as they illustrate the many ways that designing for multiple screens, manipulation models, and capabilities should challenge your assumptions about the way you design for the web.

Lighten up
Each kilobyte on your site should add value. Period. And if this logic is good for small portable screens, theres no reason it shouldnt be good for larger ones (or any other context where users have to wait while things download). Users assess value in many ways, so this doesnt mean serving a lowest common denominator experience to all who visit. It merely reminds us that we can no longer presume to know how much time or bandwidth a user will have. Texto completo: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/the-best-browser-is-theone-you-have-with-you/

Constanza Arriaga

6 de noviembre de 2012

Universidad Nacional del Sur

Comparative evaluation of the potential impact of rotavirus versus hpv vaccination in GAVI-eligible countries: A preliminary analysis focused on the relative disease burden
In addition to efficiency issues and uncertainties in disease burden and program costs, there are ethical as well as political considerations that may be relevant in prioritizing new vaccine introduction in resource-poor settings. In terms of potential ethical considerations, in addition to distributional equity, our comparison of the age-distribution of the health outcomes between rotavirus and HPV vaccines suggests that, at a local level, a country's decision to place priority on one vaccine over the other under limited resources may cause public concerns of intergenerational equity. Further, at the global level, given the regional distribution of the health outcomes is different between the two vaccines (i.e., rotavirus vaccines would avert a majority of deaths in African settings while HPV vaccines would do so in South Asian settings), prioritization of one vaccine over the other may raise some inter-regional equity concerns. Finally, since rotavirus vaccination provides direct benefits to girls and boys, and right now HPV vaccination would provide direct benefit to girls only (boys would only benefit indirectly), there could be concerns about gender equity that might be relevant to decision-making. One purposeful goal of an exercise such as this is to generate information that will stimulate a deliberative dialogue among both decision makers and stakeholders about just these very issues. Texto completo: http://chds.hsph.harvard.edu/News?pageid=1432

Concerns and Optimism

The symposiums discussion was the right conversation at the right time, said JD Schramm, director of the Mastery in Communication Initiative and lecturer in organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in California. We cant deploy all of the things that were hearing about here, but we can take back what will work within our institutions. Even so, during question-and-answer periods, some attendees expressed concerns that many of the changes might be unrealistic, particularly for smaller schools. They wondered not only how to find the resources, but also how to motivate faculty to increase their workloads. We have to create different ways to engage faculty intellectually, and also connect these approaches to research, said Shantanu Dutta, vice dean of the University of Southern Californias Marshall School of Business in Los Angeles. He noted that more journals are publishing articles about research related to pedagogy and practice, which could provide a greater incentive to faculty to participate in new curricular innovations. He added that schools could also encourage faculty members to travel along with colleagues who

Constanza Arriaga

6 de noviembre de 2012

Universidad Nacional del Sur

are leading students in global trips or observe them in experiential classrooms. Such exposure could help inspire their interest. The symposiums call to action to reinvent the business curriculum was comprehensive, but even so, the moderators expressed optimism that business schools were headed in the right direction. But they also noted that the right direction today is likely to be different than the right one tomorrow, as the worlds business environment continues to shift on its axis. Thats one of the reasons AACSB will offer a series of four seminars on curriculum development, all to be held at its head- quarters in Tampa. Beginning this October, the seminars will provide a more intense and ongoing review of the topics discussed at the MBA symposium, including managing in a global context; experiential learning; critical thinking; and innovation, creativity, and design management. All subjects will be covered from the perspective of both MBA and undergraduate curricula. Texto completo: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/issue/42073

Drought-Resistant Argentine Soy Raises Hopes, Concerns

SANTA FE, Argentina (April 28, 2012): Researchers in Argentina have isolated a drought-resistant sunflower gene and spliced it into soy, bolstering hopes for improved yields as the South American agricultural powerhouse grapples with global warming. Raquel Chan's team identified the HAHB4 gene that makes sunflowers resist dry conditions and implanted it in rockcress flowering plants known as arabidopsis, whose resistance to drought increased considerably. Her team has signed an agreement with Argentine firm Bioceres, which is co-owned by over 230 agricultural producers, to use and exploit the gene. The firm has conducted tests on soy, wheat and corn crops. The seeds do need some water, but only about 500 millimeters (20 inches) per year. The most productive areas receive an average 950 millimeters (37 inches) of rain per year.

Revolutionary for agriculture

Bioceres formed a joint venture named Verdeca with the US-based agricultural technology company Arcadia Biosciences to invest as much as $30 million to further develop the technology. The deal, announced with great fanfare in February by President Cristina Kirchner, promises to increase productivity and profit in Argentina. But the government has not yet licensed the seeds, setting a 2015 target date to do so. Over the next three years, officials will first have to prove that the seeds are at least as nutritious as conventional ones, that they are neither toxic for animals or humans and that they do not have a negative impact on the environment and other crops.

Constanza Arriaga

6 de noviembre de 2012

Universidad Nacional del Sur

"Biotechnology can provide answers, help produce more food, but hunger is solved by political decisions," said Chan, who studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and lived in Israel during Argentina's 1976-1983 dictatorship. "The idea is not to reduce the amount of arable land. Rather, (biotech advances) allow producers to have the same return using less land." Her findings have encouraged farmers, but Greenpeace coordinator Hernan Giardini warned that the transgenic seed could "spell the end of native forests in the Gran Chaco." Texto completo: http://phys.org/news/2012-04-drought-resistant-argentinesoy.html

Constanza Arriaga

6 de noviembre de 2012