Résumé: Cette étude se fonde sur l’analyse des réalisations didactiques du texte litéraire en cours de langue. Au sein de la didactique de la littérature il existe plusieurs théories qui replacent aujourd’hui le texte littéraire comme un terrain très fertile pour le développement des capacités autres que langagières chez les apprenants. Ainsi nous nous centrons sur la didactisation des textes littéraires dans deux manuels de FLE, notre objectif est de faire un état de lieux concernant le potentiel transculturel des textes et comment ce potentiel est exploité dans la didactisation à travers des tâches qui impliquent l’investissement du lecteur, surtout au niveau culturel. Abstract: This research is based on the uses of literary text in foreign or second language courses. Nowadays, the latest waves in didactics of literature have placed these texts as one of the richest sources of elements which can help students develop not only linguistic skills but also cultural ones; therefore they are named “fruitful land”. In our case, our biggest interest is to analyze the didactisation of texts in two of the latest books conceived for FFL (French as a foreign language) teaching. Our main objective is to know what the current situation of our research is. In other words, we aim to know how the literary texts are didactised and whether or not their transcultural potential is taken into account in the process. In order to analyze this, we also take a look at the tasks and the type of relationship between the reader and the reader, mostly when it comes to cultural topics.

During the last decades there has been an increase in the generation of solid wastes in the world, in developing countries the situation has been specifically critical since in many cases there is no adequate treatment for the solid waste due to the scarcity of the resources and to the poor conscience of the real situation and possible consequences. This document presents the composting method as a suitable alternative for the treatment of solid waste in developing countries considering that its costs are not so high and that the composition of the solid waste is mainly organic. The analysis was based on a current literature review and on the study of some cases of composting projects, according to the results an operational guideline for the development of composting projects in developing countries was proposed. The guideline is composed of two main cores: the planning system and the evaluation system. The planning system supports the development of a composting project and the evaluation system is a base for the comparison of performance between different future cases.

The political, economic and social implications of producing and sanctioning the so- called ‘intangible heritage’ through heritage listing is a widely researched topic in the field of Cultural Heritage Studies. In this study I examine the impacts of community-led intangible heritage designation at a local level through discussing the inscription of the “Wayuu Normative System Applied by the Pütchipü’üi (Palabrero)”, an indigenous system of justice, in UNESCO’s system of inventories and Colombia’s intangible heritage list.

Abstract: Human settlements have facilitated population growth and the accumulation of possessions, enabling their survival as a species. However, these positive effects have also brought along the generation of waste throughout history (Zapata&Hall, 2013). Local production of waste in urban centres has become a global issue, as an increasing population of 7 billion inhabitants (Worldometers, 2015) are daily discarding tonnes of objects and goods. By 2013, it was estimated that the generation of solid waste in the world had increased 10 times over the past century reaching 3.5 million tonnes per day (Jacquot, 2013). Two years later, this number is even higher. According with WasteAtlas (2015) we generate around 4.38 daily million tonnes of waste that usually end in dumpsites or landfills contrary to what happened in the nineteenth century, when practices of recycling and reusing were culturally and socially accepted. The culture of consumerism has come with a change on the perceptions of waste on the last decades by which we have adopted habits of throwing away, tied to constructed ideas about hygiene and the disposal of objects as a sign of prosperity and ease (Strasser, 2000). However, this new relation with waste has signified high social and environmental costs such as air and water pollution and emission of greenhouse gases (Hyman et al. 2013). Resumen: El concepto de basura responde a una clasificación definida por ideas construidas social y culturalmente. Así, prácticas como el reciclaje, anteriormente aceptadas, fueron, a través del tiempo, rechazadas por imaginarios sobre la higiene y por una sociedad de consumo. La cantidad de basura que se genera a diario en todas las ciudades del mundo, es sin duda uno de los mayores retos de nuestros tiempos. El manejo de residuos lleva consigo dinámicas ambientales y sociales que no pueden ser ignorados por la ciudadanía ni por el Estado. Esta investigación hace un análisis de algunas de las normas sobre el servicio público de aseo en Colombia y, en especial del caso de Bogotá desde el concepto de justicia ambiental, fundado en tres elementos: justa distribución de cargas y beneficios, reconocimiento y participación. Al encontrar que el modelo de aseo en Colombia ha estado basado principalmente en la generación de basuras y en la recolección y no en prácticas que contribuyan a la reducción, se presenta el caso de la Asociación de Recicladores de Bogotá y del manejo de residuos orgánicos para compostaje con el fin de conocer cómo la participación en estas dos alternativas puede contribuir a una ciudad ambientalmente más sostenible y sobretodo, más justa.

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is one of the latest mobile communication technologies being commercially deployed worldwide. It has emerged as a promising technology for new applications such as mobile video surveillance (IPVS) due to its higher data throughputs as well as the quality of the service management capabilities. This work focuses on the performance evaluation of a mobile and real-time IPVS system over a LTE network in both operation modes, namely FDD and TDD. The QoS Requirements for the IPVS were defined and two simulation analyses were performed in OPNET Modeler in order to compare them to the QoS Delivered. The first analysis studied the performance of the IPVS service from a capacity point of view in a single cell scenario while the second analysis looked at the performance of the IPVS service in a sample network configuration including several cells. In light of the analysed results it was evidenced the flexibility of TDD operation mode in terms of capacity as well as its higher delay and packet delay behaviours in comparison with FDD operation mode. Additionally it was shown that TDD index 6 does not comply with the QoS performance required for an IPVS service in a multi cell network. 

The Web, as a source of input, is an element that is being considered as an additional educational tool for second language learning. For an effective use of the Web for second language learning, Dodge (1988) and March (2005) suggested the use of WebQuests. WebQuests are based on the characteristics of scaffolding, socio-constructivist perspective, cooperative learning, and development of high-order skills. Previous studies have concluded that WebQuests promoted reading skills but not writing skills (Kocoglu, 2010). The present study is aimed to find out if the use of WebQuests enhances lexical richness in writing since vocabulary is an essential part of language learning skills. For that purpose, two different groups of 13 participants each were used: an experimental group which get involved in a WebQuest and a control group which performed an unguided web-searching task. Both groups took a writing pre-test and post-test. The compositions obtained were entered into the computer program VocabProfile found in www.lexutor.ca. This program is based on four word lists established in the measure Lexical Frequency Profile (Laufer and Nation, 1995). Statistical analysis showed that the experimental group used more high-frequency words at the pre-test stage, and that the control group evidenced significant progress from the pre-test to the post-test.

The purpose of this report is to investigate the performance, measured in terms of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of a UMTS radio network (UTRAN) under different traffic and mobility scenarios and develop general guidelines for dimensioning the UMTS network optimally. In this work, simulations are performed using Wines tool, which is a dynamic simulator that models all the radio-resource management functionality of the UTRAN. Two main series of experiments have been performed. In the first series, the distribution of the traffic is homogeneous and the main purpose is to find capacity figures when increasing the traffic density of one of the four possible defined services (WWW, FTP, voice and video-call) and also with a given traffic mix involving all services together. Two mobility profiles are used (pedestrian and vehicular). In the second series of experiments, a more realistic scenario, based on detailed geographical characteristics relevant for signal propagation, and traffic densities based on traffic maps (non homogeneous scenario), has been simulated. The purpose was to analyze the possible differences in capacity between the “ideal” model and the more “realistic” model. For the single-service scenario analysis, circuit-switched services (speech and video-call), it can be observed that the capacity is mainly uplink-limited. The corresponding results for the packet-switched services (FTP, WEB) have shown that capacity is mostly downlink-limited, as it was expected due to the more asymmetrical data rates in the downlink compared to the uplink for both services. For the service mix analysis in both scenarios (homogeneous and non homogeneous) it was found that the capacity is mostly downlink-limited (i.e. the downlink power target level is exceeded before the uplink load target level).

In this thesis I challenge the practice of imposing “victim” images to people that have endured through the crime of human trafficking. This imposition is led by the United Nations “Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children” of 2000, and is followed by different governments, institutions, laws, and societies around the world. The possibility that “victims? may use the assistance of a trafficker to migrate and to obtain a job outside their hometowns is completely dismissed by depicting them as solely “victims? of the crime. By conferring those images and considering irrelevant their consent to the crime, as stated by the protocol, their agency is denied. Making use of the stories of fifteen trafficked Filipinas whom I interviewed in the field, I examine the extent to which trafficked people are fully “victims? of this crime. Instead, I suggest that they responded to different situations before and during the process of being trafficked, showing clear indications of tactic agency, and collapsing the “victim? statuses often attributed to them. Nonetheless, the experience in the field showed me that those “victims? experience a variety of desperate situations with a very limited spectrum of choices. In those moments I call them desperadas. Most of the times, after “victims? reach that point of desperation, they make use of their tactic agency to escape. This twilight zone between victimhood and agency is revealed in heterogeneous ways and experienced differently by trafficked people. Therefore, the stories of these girls counter the status quo of “victims? of trafficking, and raises the argument that human trafficking may be used as a livelihood strategy not only by its perpetrators, but also by its “victims?.

This thesis comprises three essays on asset pricing on the stock and options markets. The …first essay …finds a positive relation between the slope of the volatility term structure and subsequent option returns. The second essay …finds a negative relation between realized skewness, extracted from high-frequency data, and stock returns. The third essay finds a negative relation between price jumps of intraday data and future stock returns.

Un estudio sobre Twitter y los cambios que ha provocado en la forma en que las noticias se propagan en la era digital. Enfocado principalmente en el periodismo deportivo, se le hizo un cuestionario a 25 periodistas basados en el Reino Unido sobre los impactos que las redes sociales y en especial Twitter ha tenido (si algunas) en su trabajo, en el día a día y se hizo una compilación de sus mas recientes tweets para comparar sus acciones con lo que decían. Los resultados varían pero en general el uso de Twitter entre los periodistas deportivos es muy común y bastante útil, les ha dado la opción de estar más cerca a sus seguidores, de darles una nueva audiencia, y de informar mucho más rápido.