Vocational Education and Training in Spain

 

The Spanish National System for Qualifications and Vocational Education and Training, known in Spanish as SNCFP, was established by Spanish Organic Act 5/2002, of 19 June 2002. It consists of instruments and actions which are necessary to promote and develop the integration of Vocational Education and Training, as well as to assess and accredit professional competencies. The SNCFP was created to respond to the demand for qualifications of people and enterprises in a society trying out a continuous process of change and innovation.

The SNCFP objectives are to adapt the professional training to the qualification demands of productive organizations, to facilitate the adaptation of supply and demand on the labour market, to extend lifelong learning beyond the traditional educational period, and to promote the freedom of movement for workers. For these reasons, it plays an essential role in the labour and education world. The Spanish National Catalogue of Professional Qualifications, known in Spanish as CNCP, is an instrument of the Spanish National System for Qualifications and Vocational Educational and Training (VET) which arranges the professoinal qualifications according to competences appropiate for an occupational performance.

The professional qualifications are identified in the productive system and they are susceptible of being recognized and accredited. Some of the main objectives of the CNCP are to integrate the existing programs on VET in order to adapt them to the characteristics and demands of the Spanish productive system and to be a referent to asses the professional competences. The CNCP comprises the most important professional qualifications of the Spanish productive system. It includes VET contents related to each professional qualification. The contents are organized in modules which are included in a Spanish Modular Catalogue of Vocational Education and Training. 

The Spanish National Institute of Qualifications, known in Spanish as INCUAL, is responsible for defining, drawing up and updating the CNCP and the corresponding Modular Catalogue of VET. The CNCP consists of professional qualifications arranged in professional families and levels of qualification taking into account UE criteria. the 26 professional families which make up the CNCP have been created according to professional competence affinity criteria. The 5 levels of professional qualification are based on the professional competence required for each productive activity taking into account different criteria like knowledge, initiative, autonomy, responsibility and complexity, among others, necessary for the accomplishment of every activity.

Level 1: competence in a reduced group of relatively simple working activities related to normalized processes, in which the theoretical knowledge and practical capacities involved are limited. 

Level 2: competence in a group of well-defined professional activities with the capacity to use particular instruments and techniques concerning, mainly, an execution activity which can be autonomous within the limits of the above-mentioned techniques. It requires knowledge on the technical and scientific fundamentals of the activity concerned and capacities for the comprehension and the application of the process.

Level 3: competence in a group of professional activities which require the command o different techniques and can be executed in an autonomous way. It involves responsibility on the coordination and supervision of technical and specialized work. It demands the understanding of the technical and scientific fundamentals of the activities concerned as well as the assessment of the factors in the process and the assessment of the economic repercussions. 

European Union Law

 

European Union Law is a system of rules operating within the member states of the European Union (EU). Since the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community following World War II, the EU has developed the aim to "promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples". The EU has political institutions, social and economic policies, which transcend nation states for the purpose of cooperation and human development. According to its Court of Justice (COJ) the EU represent "a new legal order of international law". 

The EU's legal foundations are the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, unanimously agreed by the governments of 27 member states. New members may join, if they agree to follow the rules of the union, and existing states may leave according to their "own constitutional requirements". Citizens are entitle to participate through the Parliament, and their respective state governments through the Council in shaping the legislation the EU makes. 

The Commission has the initiative for legislation, the Council of the European Union represents the elected member-state governments, the Parliament is elected by European citizens, and the Court of Justice is meant to uphold the rule of law and human rights. As the Court of Justice has said, the EU is "not merely an economic union" but is intended to "ensure social progress and seek the constant improvement of the living and working conditions of their peoples". 

Democratic ideals of integration for international and European nations are as old as the modern nation state. Ancient concepts of European unity were generally undemocratic, and founded on domination, like the Empire of Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, or the Catholic Church controlled by the Pope in Rome. In the Renaissance, medieval trade flourished in organisations like the Hanseatic League, stretching from English towns like Boston and London, to Frankfurt, Stockholm and Riga. 

These traders developed the lex mercatoria, spreading basic norms of good faith and fair dealing through their business. In 1517, the Protestant Reformation triggered a hundred years of crisis and instability. Martin Luther nailed a list of demands to the church door of Wittenberg, King Henry VIII declared a unilateral split from Rome with the Act of Supremacy 1534, and conflicts flared across the Holy Roman Empire until the Peace of Augsburg 1555 guaranteed each principality the right to its chosen religion (cuius regio, eius religio). 

This unstable settlement unravelled in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), killing around a quarter of the population in central Europe. The Treaty of Westphalia 1648, which brought peace according to a system of international law inspired by Hugo Grotius, is generally acknowledged as the beginning of the nation-state system. Even then, the English Civil War broke out and only ended with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, by Parliament inviting William and Mary from Hannover to the throne, and passing the Bill of Rights 1689. 

In 1693 William Penn, a Quaker from London who founded Pennsylvania in North America, argued that to prevent ongoing wars in Europe a "European dyet, or parliament" was needed. The French diplomat, Charles-Irénée Castel de Saint-Pierre, who worked negotiating the Treaty of Utrecht at the end of the War of Spanish Succession proposed, through "Perpetual Union", "an everlasting peace in Europe", a project taken up by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant after him.

After the Napoleonic Wars and the Revolutions of 1848 in the 19th century, Victor Hugo at the International Peace Congress in 1849 envisioned a day when there would be a "United States of America and the United States of Europe face to face, reaching out for each other across the seas". World War I devastated Europe's society and economy and the Versailles Treaty failed to establish a workable international system in the League of Nations, any European integration, and imposed punishing terms of reparations payments for the losing countries.

After another economic collapse and the rise of fascism led to a Second World War, European civil society was determined to create a lasting union to guarantee world peace through economic, social and political integration. To "save succeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice...brought untold sorrow to mankind", the United Nations Charter was passed in 1945, and the Bretton Woods Conference set up a new system of integrated World Banking, finance and trade. 

Also, the Council of Europe, formed by the Treaty of London 1949, adopted a European Convention on Human Rights, overseen by a new transnational court iin Strasbourg in 1950. Already in 1946 Winston Churchill, who had been recently defeated as UK Prime Minister in 1945 had called for a "United States of Europe", through this did not mean the UK would sever its ties to the Commonwealth. 

In 1950, the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman proposed that, beginning with integration of French and German coal and steel production, there should be "an organisation open to the participation of the other countries of Europe", where "solidarity in production" would make war "not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible". The Treaty of Paris 1951 created the first European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), signed by France, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Italy, with Jean Monnet as its president.

Chess is a sport

Why is chess considered a sport?, sometimes we have the tendency to consider sport only what destroys us physically. I have been a competitor in many sports: athletics, swimming, handball and I have done others such as full contact, basketball, etc...and, indeed, I was much more tired than playing chess. But that is not the criterion to determine whether an activity is sports or not, or at least it is not the only one. The International Olympic Committee and more than 100 countries recognize chess as a sport. In addition, he tried his foray into the Olympics in 2020 in Tokyo (and did not succeed), although he did participate as an exhibition sport in Sydney 2000.

Here are the reasons why chess is a sport:

1. IT IS COMPETITIVE: the goal is to win. Chess involves a relentless fight against an opponent. There is probably no sporting activity in which two people engage in a competitive fight of such intensity for such a sustained period of time. If in chess you lose concentration and make a mistake, you lose the game, something that does not happen in many other sports, which implies a permanent state of alert and great psychological and physical exhaustion.

2. IT HAS A STRUCTURE: the world championship has been organized since 1886 and continues to have a great tradition. Chess competitions are organized at all levels: schools, universities, cities, leagues, junior, senior, European, world, etc. In Spain, for example, there are about 30000 federated: a number close to that of people federated in Rugby.

3. PHYSICAL APTITUDE: maximum mental condition requires being in good physical condition. Players must concentrate fully for many hours and for many days in official tournaments. As stress increases, blood pressure, pulse, and respiration rates increase. Competitors for the worls championships have nutritionists and physical trainers. Anyone who has played and official 8 or 9 day tournament will know very well what it affects physically.

4. CODE OF BEHAVIOR PLAYER are penalized for lack of sportsmanship, for example, for refusing to shake their opponent's hand. Mobile phones are prohibited. There is an anti-doping policy. And the rules of chess are complex and rigorous.

5. OLYMPIC RECOGNITION: Chess has been recognized as a sport by the International Olympic Committee since 2000. It was one of the events at the Asian Games in 2006 in Doha and again in Guangzhou in 2010. It is also being considered for inclusion in the Pan American Games. Russia is trying to incorporate chess into the Winter Olympics.

6. EUROPEAN RECOGNITION: Chess is recognized as a sport in 24 of the 28 member states of the European Union. The exceptions are the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium and Sweden. In Sweden, chess is likely to be included soon. The support comes from the Swedish sports coaches organization that admires the metal discipline of chess.

7. GLOBAL PLAY CHESS is played all over the world regardless of age, race, gender, income or language. People with physical disabilities play chess. Blind people play chess. People with advanced psychological illnesses play chess: Professor Stephen Hawking played chess with his children.

8. MENTAL COMPONENT: all sports have a mental component. In short, competitive sports can be interpreted as strategy games that differ only in their physical manifestation.

9. PLAYER RANKING SYSTEM: the player classification system was developed for chess in 1960 (the ELO system) and has been adopted by many other sports, including American football, baseball, basketball, hockey, rugby and golf. It is a very reliable system to measure the level of the players.

In conclusion, chess is a sport that is accepted in many countries and whose practice seriously causes great physical and mental wear.

The Physician

 

The Physician is a novel by Noah Gordon. It is about the life of a Christian English boy in the 11th century who journeys across Europe in order to study medicine among the Persians. The book was initially published by Simon & Schuster on August 7, 1986. The book did not sell well in America, but in Europe it was many times a bestseller, particularly in Spain and Germany, selling millions of copies in translation. 

It European success caused its subsequent sequelization. The film rights to the book were purchased. While Gordon's novel was not a huge hit in the U.S., it topped best-seller lists across continental Europe and a motion picture was in development in Europe for UFA Cinema and Universal Pictures. The German film director Philipp Stölzl was positioned to direct the historic epic, which has secured €3.3 million ($4.6 million) in regional and federal German funding. 

The production was scheduled for summer 2012 on location in Quedlinburg, Morocco and Romania. The film premiered in German theaters on 25 December 2013. It was an immediate box-office hit and earned the producers two Bogey Awards, one for more than 1000 visitors per copy on its opening weekend, and a second Bogey for 1 million visitors within ten days. The film will also be released as two-part mini-series for the German public TV ARD.

About plot summary we must say that it is the year 1020. Rob Cole is the eldest of many children. His father is a Joiner in the Guild of Carpenters in London. His mother, Agnes Cole, is his father's wife. Robert has a particular Gift: he can sense when someone is going to die. When his mother and father both die, the Cole house hold is parceled out to various neighbors and friends...

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration

 

NASA is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency was to have a distinctly civilian orientation, encouraging peaceful applications in space science. Since its establishment, most US space exploration efforts have been led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station, and later the Space Shuttle.

NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion spacecraft, the Space Launch System, and Commercial Crew vehicles. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program, which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for uncrewed NASA launches. NASA science is focused on better understanding Earth through the Earth Observing System; advancing heliophysics through the efforts of the Science Mission Directorate's Heliophysics Research Program.

Exploring bodies throughout the Solar System with advanced robotic spacecraft such as New Horizons; and researching astrophysics topics, such as the Big Bang, through the Great Observatories and associated programs. Since 2017, NASA's crewed spaceflight program has been the Artemis program, which involves the help of U.S. commercial spaceflight companies and international partners such as ESA, JAXA, and CSA. The goal of this program is to land "the first woman and the next man" on the lunar south pole region by 2024.

The bat

 

Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera. With their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight. Bats are more manoeuvrable than birds, flying with their very long spread-out digits covered with a thin membrane or patagium. The smallest bat, and arguably the smallest extant mammal, is Kitti's hog-nosed bat, which is 29-34 millimetres (1 1/8-1 3/8 inches) in length, 150 mm (6 in) across the wings and 2-2.6 g (1/16-3/32 oz) in mazz. 

The largest bats are the flying foxes and the giant golden-crowned flying fox, Acerodon jubatus, which can weigh 1.6 kg (3 1/2 lb) and have a wingspan of 1.7 m (5 ft 7 in). The second largest order of mammals after rodents, bats comprise about 20% of all classified mammal species worldwide, with over 1400 species. These were traditionally divided into two suborders: the largely fruit-eating megabats, and the echolocating microbats. But more recen evidence has supported dividing the order into Yinpterochiroptera and yangochiroptera, with megabats as memebers of the former along with several species of microbats. 

Many bats are insectivores, and most of the rest are frugivores (fruit-eaters) or nectarivores (nectar-eaters). A few species feed on animals other than insects; for example, the vampire bats feed on blood. Most bats are nocturnal, and many roost in caves or other refuges; it is uncertain whether bats have these behaviours to escape predators. Bats are present throughout the worls, with the exception of extremely cold regions. They are important in their ecosystems for pollinating flowers and dispersing seeds; many tropical plants depend entirely on bats for these services. 

Bats provide humans with some direct benefits, at the cost of some disadvantages. On the befefits side, bat dung has been and in may places still is mined as guano from caves and used as fertiliser. Bats consume insect pests, reducing the need for pesticides and other insect management measures. They are sometimes numerous enough and close enough to human settlements to serve as tourist attractions, and they are used as food across Asia and the Pacific Rim. 

On the disadvantages side, fruit bats are frequently considered pests by fruit growers. Due to their physiology, bats are one type of animal that acts as a natural reservoir of many pathogens, such as rabies; and since they are highly mobile, social, and long-lived, they can readily spread disease among themselves. If humans interact with bats, these traits become potentially dangerous to humans. Depending on the culture, bats may be symbolically associated with positive traits, such as protection from certain diseases or risks, rebirth, or long life, but in the West, bats are popularly associated with darkness, malevolence, withcraft, vampires, and death...

The real Queen's Gambit

 

The Queen's Gambit is the chess opening that starts with the moves:

1. d4 d5

2. c4

It is one of the oldest opening and is still commonly played today. It is traditionally described as a gambit because White appears to sacrifice the c-pawn; however, this could be considered a misnomer as Black cannot retain the pawn without incurring a disadvantage. Also, this kind of opening is one of the oldest known in chess. It was mentioned in the Göttingen manuscript of 1490 and was later analyzed by Gioachino Greco in the 17th century. In the 18th century, it was recommended by Philipp Stamma and is sometimes known as the "Aleppo Gambit" on his honor. During the early period of modern chess, queen pawn openings were not in fashion, and the Queen's Gambit did not become commonplace until the 1873 tournament in Vienna. 

As Wilhelm Steinitz and Siegbert Tarrasch developed chess theory and increased the appreciation of positional play, the Queen's Gambit grew more popular, reaching its zenith in the 1920s and 1930s, and it was played in all but 2 of 34 games in the 1927 World Championship match between José Raúl Capablanca and Alexander Alekhine. After the resumption of international chess activity following World War II, it was less frequently seen, as many players moved away from summetrical openings, tending to use Indian Defences to combat queen  pawn openings; however, it is still frequently played. 

With 2. c4, White threatens to exchange a wing pawn (the c-pawn) for a center pawn (Black's d-pawn) in order to dominate the center with e2-e4. Note that Black cannot hold the pawn, for example: 1.d4 d5 2. c4 3. e3 b5? (Black tries to guard their pawn but should pursue development with 3...Nf6 or 3...e5) 4. a4 c6? 5. axb5 cxb5?? 6. Qf3! winning a piece. The Queen's Gambit is divided into two major categories based on Black's response: the Queen's Gambit Accepted (QGA) and Queen's Gambit Declined (QGD). In the QGA, Black plays 2...dxc4, temporarily giving up the center to obtain freer development. In the QGD, Black usually plays to hold d5. Frequently Black will be cramped, but Black aims to exchange pieces and use pawn breaks at c5 and e5 to free Black's game.

Technically, any Black response other than 2...dxc4 (or another line with an early ...dxc4 that transposes into the QGA) is a Queen's Gambit Declined, but the Slav, Albin countergambit, and Chigorin Defense are generally treated separately. There are so many QGD lines after 2...e6 that many of them are distinctive enough to warrant separate treatment. The Orthodox Defense and the Tarrasche Defense are two important examples. (See Queen's Gambit Declined for more).

After 1. d4 d5 2. c4:

2...e6 (Queen's Gambit Declined or QGD). This is the main line, with many variations.

2...dxc4 (Queen's Gambit Accepted or QGA). Less popular than the QGD, it nevertheless has a solid reputation. 

2...c6 (Slav Defense). This is a solid response, although many variations are very tactical. 

2...e5 (Albin Countergambit). A sharp attempt by Black to gain the initiative. 

2...Nc6 (Chigorin Defense). It takes the game away from the normal positional channels of the QGD and has been favored by Alexamder Morozevich at the top level; it appears to be playable for Black. 

2...Bf51!? (Baltic Defense). It is an offbeat but playable line.

2...c5 (Symmetrical Defense). This is rarely played; although it has not been definitely refuted, the play seems to favor White. 

2...Nf6?! (Marshall Defense). It named after Frankk Marshall, who first devised the move, he briefly played it in the 1920s before abandoning it. 

2...g6?! (Alekhine idea). White can gain the advantage by 3. cxd5 Qxd5 (3...Nf6 4. Qa4 +/-) 4. Nc3 Qa5 5. Nf3 Bg7 6. Bd2 c6 7. e4 Qb6 8. Bc4! Bxd4 9. Nxd4 Qxd4 10. Qb3 Qg7 11. 0-0 +/- (Minev).