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In Spain, the percentage of population living in poverty or social exclusion has consistently increased since 2007. This trend makes it unlikely to reach the Spanish National Europe 2020 target, which is to reduce in 1.400.000 the people at risk of poverty or exclusion. At the same time, the Spanish Minimum Income Protection Schemes are complex, fragmented and inefficient. In the context of the Europe 2020 Strategy, reference budgets are regarded as a tool to improve poverty measurement and assess income adequacy. This paper describes the development of the Spanish Reference Budgets: priced baskets containing the minimum goods and services necessary for well-described types of families to have an adequate social participation. The study here presented combines various sources of information: national guidelines, expert opinion, scientific literature, survey data on cultural habits and focus group discussions using a cross-country comparable approach. Based on a needs-based perspective, we have estimated a minimum budget threshold that ranges from 427€ to 1569€/month depending on the type of family. Without considering housing and car costs, the healthy food budget is the one that represents a higher share of the total budget in all family types. The weight of the other baskets depends on the household composition, mainly on the presence of children. The aim of our approach is to assess family and children needs, as well as to orient policies designed to guarantee social rights and reduce children poverty and social exclusion.

Capsule The onset of incubation relative to clutch completion is highly variable in Great Tits Parus major, and has important consequences for the duration of the incubation and hatching periods.Aim To investigate when incubation starts relative to clutch completion, its effects on the length of the incubation and hatching periods, and which proximate factors affect all of these traits.Methods We used data from a Great Tit population in Eastern Spain collected over 15 years. Periodic visits to the nests (daily at some stages) allowed the determination of breeding parameters of interest. General linear models were used for analyses.Results On average, incubation started the day of laying of the last egg and lasted 13.2 days. The hatching period lasted 1.7 days. Incubation started earlier relative to clutch completion as temperatures during the laying period were higher and as clutch size increased. The incubation period was shorter if incubation started later relative to clutch completion. Hatching asynchr...

Uniparental incubation frequently means that eggs remain unattended for periods where the incubating bird is foraging out of the nest. The determination of incubation rhythms (i.e., the length and temporal pattern of incubation sessions) and the factors which affect them are therefore important to understand life-history trade-offs. We described the incubation rhythm and its temporal variation of a southern European great tit Parus major population, and review previous studies to check for latitudinal trends. In the studied population, females were active (from first exit in the morning to last entrance in the evening) 12.5 h per day, performing incubation sessions (on-bouts) of 26 min and recesses (off-bouts) of 12 min. Thus, they were incubating around 67% of their active day, or 83% of the whole day. Attentiveness (% of time incubating) increased throughout the incubation period, due to shorter off-bouts. The active day was longer as the number of daylight hours increased. We show for the first time in a bird species that attentiveness was constant along a latitudinal gradient ranging from Norway to Spain. Females spend a higher proportion of the daylight hours out of the nest as latitude decreases, compensating incubation time during the longer nights. Off-bouts were shorter in central European populations, increasing towards the north and the south, while on-bouts showed no latitudinal variation.

Survival of juveniles during the postfledging period can be markedly low, which may have major consequences on avian population dynamics. Knowing which factors operating during the nesting phase affect postfledging survival is crucial to understand avian breeding strategies. We aimed to obtain a robust set of predictors of postfledging local survival using the great tit (Parus major) as a model species. We used mark–recapture models to analyze the effect of hatching date, temperatures experienced during the nestling period, fledging size and body mass on first-year postfledging survival probability of great tit juveniles. We used data from 5192 nestlings of first clutches ringed between 1993 and 2010. Mean first-year postfledging survival probability was 15.2%, and it was lower for smaller individuals, as well as for those born in either very early or late broods. Our results stress the importance of choosing an optimum hatching period, and raising large chicks to increase first-year local survival probability in the studied population., Secretaría de Estado de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación (Grant/Award Number: ‘CGL2013-48001-C2-1-P’)

Birds' nests are special structures built with reproductive aims. Size and structure of the nest can arise from evolutionary trade-offs between benefits such as the insulation from unfavourable conditions, maintenance of eggs or chicks, or security against predation, and costs such as energy spent in construction of the nest and the risk of predation in more visible nests. Therefore, building a good nest is beneficial in terms of reproductive output but expensive in terms of time and energy, so probably only “good” parents would be able to build “good” nests. Our objective was to study possible relationships between the quality of the parents and the quality of the nest, and between the quality of the nest and breeding performance in a Great Tit Parus major population. We found positive relationships between different components of the nest quality and components of breeding performance. However, we did not find any significant relationship between quality of the parents and that of the nest. A ...

ObjectiveIt has been observed that diet quality and food choices vary depending on socio-economic status (SES), especially when measured through income and educational level. Although the reasons behind these differences are multiple, diet cost is a critical determinant in those groups that spend a higher proportion of their budget on food. Reference budgets are priced baskets containing the minimum goods and services necessary for well-described types of families to have an adequate social participation. In the current paper we describe the development and content of the Spanish Healthy Food Basket (SHFB).DesignNational dietary guidelines were translated into monthly food baskets. Next, these baskets were validated in terms of acceptability and feasibility through focus group discussions, and finally they were priced.SettingThe focus group discussions and the pricing were performed in Barcelona, Spain.SubjectsTwenty adults aged 30–50 years from different SES backgrounds and their children aged 2–22 years participated in three discussion groups.ResultsThe SHFB complies with the dietary recommendations for the Spanish population. The monthly cost of this basket ranges from 131·63 € to 573·80 € depending on the type of family.ConclusionsThe SHFB does not have the purpose of prescribing what people should eat, but of estimating a minimum budget threshold below which healthy eating is not possible for well-described types of families. Thus, the SHFB is an educative guide on how to plan a healthy food budget and orient policies designed to guarantee food access and reduce SES inequalities.

Web-based learning environments are extensively used nowadays. At the moment of designing, implementing and managing e-learning courses, there have to be defined guidelines that guarantee the quality and excellence of these processes as well as controls of evaluation that assure the above mentioned quality. In this respect, in the LMS (learning management systems) the teacher has not got tools for assessing and measuring the performance of the students in their virtual courses. Therefore, we have developed a monitoring and analysis tool for e-learning platforms (MATEP) in the University of Cantabria (Spain) which is described in this paper.

An important factor that contributes towards the effectiveness of the learning-teaching process is the ability of instructors to monitor and measure the activity performed by the learners and consequently, to act according to the observed facts and metrics. As a result, e-learning tools lack the indicators that can be configured by the instructors in order to measure the activity performed by their learners, this work proposes a novel method positively evaluated by the instructors involved in distance courses taught in the University of Cantabria. This method is based on a customisable formula which allows instructors to set up particular parameters according to their goals and resources used for developing the learning activities on the course. These indicators enable instructors to assess the activity performed by their students in comparison with their peers and to detect students at the risk of drop-out among others. Furthermore, they could be used as predictors of performance.

Social capital is defined as the resources available to individuals and groups through membership in social networks. However, multiple definitions, distinct dimensions and subtypes of social capital have been used to investigate and theorise about its relationship to health on different scales, creating a confusing picture. This heterogeneity makes it necessary to systematise social capital measures in order to build a stronger foundation in terms of how these associations between the different aspects of social capital and each specific health indicator develop. We aim to provide an overview of the measurement approaches used to measure social capital in its different dimensions and scales, as well as the mechanisms through which it is presumed to influence health. Understanding the mechanisms through which these relationships develop may help to refine the existing measures or to identify new, more appropriate ones.