Open University of Catalonia

About: Open University of Catalonia is a education organization based out in Barcelona, Spain. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Collaborative learning & Educational technology. The organization has 1943 authors who have published 4646 publications receiving 64200 citations. The organization is also known as: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya & UOC.

Disentangling ‘ecosystem services’ and ‘nature’s contributions to people’

Abstract: People depend on functioning ecosystems, which provide benefits that support human existence and wellbeing. The relationship between people and nature has been experienced and conceptualized in mul...

Updating the Mediterranean Diet Pyramid towards Sustainability: Focus on Environmental Concerns

Abstract: Background: Nowadays the food production, supply and consumption chain represent a major cause of ecological pressure on the natural environment, and diet links worldwide human health with environmental sustainability. Food policy, dietary guidelines and food security strategies need to evolve from the limited historical approach, mainly focused on nutrients and health, to a new one considering the environmental, socio-economic and cultural impact—and thus the sustainability—of diets. Objective: To present an updated version of the Mediterranean Diet Pyramid (MDP) to reflect multiple environmental concerns. Methods: We performed a revision and restructuring of the MDP to incorporate more recent findings on the sustainability and environmental impact of the Mediterranean Diet pattern, as well as its associations with nutrition and health. For each level of the MDP we provided a third dimension featuring the corresponding environmental aspects related to it. Conclusions: The new environmental dimension of the MDP enhances food intake recommendations addressing both health and environmental issues. Compared to the previous 2011 version, it emphasizes more strongly a lower consumption of red meat and bovine dairy products, and a higher consumption of legumes and locally grown eco-friendly plant foods as much as possible.

Ant colony optimization with horizontal and vertical crossover search: Fundamental visions for multi-threshold image segmentation

Abstract: The ant colony optimization (ACO) is the most exceptionally fundamental swarm-based solver for realizing discrete problems. In order to make it also suitable for solving continuous problems, a variant of ACO (ACOR) has been proposed already. The deep-rooted ACO always stands out in the eyes of well-educated researchers as one of the best-designed metaheuristic ways for realizing the solutions to real-world problems. However, ACOR has some stochastic components that need to be further improved in terms of solution quality and convergence speed. Therefore, to effectively improve these aspects, this in-depth research introduced horizontal crossover search (HCS) and vertical crossover search (VCS) into the ACOR and improved the selection mechanism of the original ACOR to form an improved algorithm (CCACO) for the first time. In CCACO, the HCS is mainly intended to increase the convergence rate. Meanwhile, the VCS and the developed selection mechanism are mainly aimed at effectively improving the ability to avoid dwindling into local optimal (LO) and the convergence accuracy. To reach next-level strong results for image segmentation and better illustrate its effectiveness, we conducted a series of comparative experiments with 30 benchmark functions from IEEE CEC 2014. In the experiment, we compared the developed CCACO with well-known conventional algorithms and advanced ones. All experimental results also show that its convergence speed and solution quality are superior to other algorithms, and its ability to avoid dropping into local optimum (LO) is more reliable than that of its peers. Furthermore, to further illustrate its enhanced performance, we applied it to image segmentation based on multi-threshold image segmentation (MTIS) method with a non-local means 2D histogram and Kapur's entropy. In the experiment, it was compared with existing competitive algorithms at low and high threshold levels. The experimental results show that the proposed CCACO achieves excellent segmentation results at both low and high threshold levels. For any help and guidance regarding this research, readers, and industry activists can refer to the background info at http://aliasgharheidari.com/ .

Expanding the Boundaries of Justice in Urban Greening Scholarship: Toward an Emancipatory, Antisubordination, Intersectional, and Relational Approach

Abstract: Supported by a large body of scholarship, it is increasingly orthodox practice for cities to deploy urban greening interventions to address diverse socioenvironmental challenges, from protecting ur...

Analysing feedback processes in an online teaching and learning environment: an exploratory study

Abstract: Within the constructivist framework of online distance education the feedback process is considered a key element in teachers’ roles because it can promote the regulation of learning. Therefore, faced with the need to guide and train teachers in the kind of feedback to provide and how to provide it, we establish three aims for this research: identify the presence of feedback according to the regulation of learning required; characterise this feedback according to content (i.e. the meaning of feedback); and, finally, to explore possible relationships between feedback and the results of the teaching and learning process (i.e. students’ satisfaction and final grades). The results for a sample of 186 students, taking nine courses at the Open University of Catalonia, are discussed in the light of feedback, which is considered a central element in university teaching practice in online environments. We conclude that, in general, the presence of feedback is associated with improved levels of performance and higher levels of satisfaction with the general running of the course.