Pathways to identity: using visualization to aid law enforcement in identification tasks

The nature of identity has changed dramatically in recent years and has grown in complexity. Identities are defined in multiple domains: biological and psychological elements strongly contribute, but biographical and cyber elements also are necessary to complete the picture. Law enforcement is beginning to adjust to these changes, recognizing identity’s importance in criminal justice. The SuperIdentity project seeks to aid law enforcement officials in their identification tasks through research of techniques for discovering identity traits, generation of statistical models of identity and analysis of identity traits through visualization. We present use cases compiled through user interviews in multiple fields, including law enforcement, and describe the modeling and visualization tools design to aid in those use cases

Design of a Controlled Language for Critical Infrastructures Protection

We describe a project for the construction of controlled language for critical infrastructures protection (CIP). This project originates from the need to coordinate and categorize the communications on CIP at the European level. These communications can be physically represented by official documents, reports on incidents, informal communications and plain e-mail. We explore the application of traditional library science tools for the construction of controlled languages in order to achieve our goal. Our starting point is an analogous work done during the sixties in the field of nuclear science known as the Euratom Thesaurus.JRC.G.6-Security technology assessmen

Social Media Monitoring and Analysis: Multi-domain Perspectives

Social Media Platforms, such as Facebook or Twitter, are part of everyday life as powerful communication tools. They let users communicate anywhere-anytime, improve their own public image and readily share information. For this reason, a growing number of individuals such as professionals as well as companies have opened an account in one or more Social Media platforms. Due to the widespread use and growing numbers of users, a huge amount of data is generated every day. This information may play a crucial role in various decision-making processes. In this setting, research topics connected to monitoring and analysis of Social Media data are becoming increasingly important. The present work stems from data collection methodologies from different Social Media sources. It introduces the problems involved in storing semi-structured data, and in possible information gaps due to privacy policies. These facets are described according to the application domain as well as the Social Media platform. Subsequently, a theoretical generic architecture for handling data from Social Media sources is presented. We present three simplified versions of this architecture in three different domains: Online Reputation, Social Media Intelligence, and Opinion Mining in tourism. In the last part of the work, we introduce Social Media Analysis in these three domains. For the first, we present the project SocialTrends, a web application able to monitor “public” people on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. In the second, we introduce an innovative approach for measuring the interactions between users in public spaces such as Facebook (public-by-design). Finally, we present Tour-pedia, a web application that displays a sentiment map of tourist locations in several cities according to different categories (accommodation, restaurants, points of interest and attractions)

Tecnología para Tiendas Inteligentes

Trabajo de Fin de Grado en Doble Grado en Ingeniería Informática y Matemáticas, Facultad de Informática UCM, Departamento de Ingeniería del Software e Inteligencia Artificial, Curso 2020/2021Smart stores technologies exemplify how Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things can effectively join forces to shape the future of retailing. With an increasing number of companies proposing and implementing their own smart store concepts, such as Amazon Go or Tao Cafe, a new field is clearly emerging. Since the technologies used to build their infrastructure offer significant competitive advantages, companies are not publicly sharing their own designs. For this reason, this work presents a new smart store model named Mercury, which aims to take the edge off of the lack of public and accessible information and research documents in this field. We do not only introduce a comprehensive smart store model, but also work-through a feasible detailed implementation so that anyone can build their own system upon it.Las tecnologías utilizadas en las tiendas inteligentes ejemplifican cómo la Inteligencia Artificial y el Internet de las Cosas pueden unir, de manera efectiva, fuerzas para transformar el futuro de la venta al por menor. Con un creciente número de empresas proponiendo e implementando sus propios conceptos de tiendas inteligentes, como Amazon Go o Tao Cafe, un nuevo campo está claramente emergiendo. Debido a que las tecnologías utilizadas para construir sus infraestructuras ofrecen una importante ventaja competitiva, las empresas no están compartiendo públicamente sus diseños. Por esta razón, este trabajo presenta un nuevo modelo de tienda inteligente llamado Mercury, que tiene como objetivo mitigar la falta de información pública y accesible en este campo. No solo introduciremos un modelo general y completo de tienda inteligente, sino que también proponemos una implementación detallada y concreta para que cualquier persona pueda construir su propia tienda inteligente siguiendo nuestro modelo.Depto. de Ingeniería de Software e Inteligencia Artificial (ISIA)Fac. de InformáticaTRUEunpu

The Sixth Annual Workshop on Space Operations Applications and Research (SOAR 1992)

This document contains papers presented at the Space Operations, Applications, and Research Symposium (SOAR) hosted by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) on 4-6 Aug. 1992 and held at the JSC Gilruth Recreation Center. The symposium was cosponsored by the Air Force Material Command and by NASA/JSC. Key technical areas covered during the symposium were robotic and telepresence, automation and intelligent systems, human factors, life sciences, and space maintenance and servicing. The SOAR differed from most other conferences in that it was concerned with Government-sponsored research and development relevant to aerospace operations. The symposium's proceedings include papers covering various disciplines presented by experts from NASA, the USAF, universities, and industry

Learning processes in growth-oriented SMEs: the Portuguese case

The learning processes that take place within small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) have attracted increasing attention among academics and managers. Growth-oriented SMEs in particular have been a focus of academic attention given their importance to processes of economic growth, although understanding of the learning processes within these enterprises remains limited, especially with regard to their interplay with intermediate and peripheral economic contexts. This qualitative study, based on nine case studies of growth-oriented SMEs, provides important insights into the learning process which underlies their entrepreneurial capability and ‘openness’ to innovation across different sectors operating within the intermediate economic context of Portugal. The study analyses two different groups of SMEs, five from high tech industries and four from traditional manufacturing industries, to enable comparative analysis of how sectoral context can trigger different responses, learning processes and organisational outcomes. Primary data collection within the selected case study firms was undertaken through combining documentary sources with semi-structured interviews with owner-managers and other key actors. Qualitative analysis centred on gaining insights into processes of entrepreneurial learning and comprised both within-case and cross-case analysis. The findings of this research contribute to knowledge on the learning processes within growth-orientated SMEs in intermediate economic contexts in three main ways. First, due to the constraints of the domestic economy, all companies internationalized whilst relying heavily on their in-house capabilities. In this internationalisation process, high-tech companies were characterised by more formal, decentralised and cooperative learning arrangements than traditional companies, which tended to be more ‘closed’ and showed simpler and more informal learning. Second, high-tech companies demonstrated a larger and more varying combination of learning processes compared to their traditional counterparts. In the high tech companies, learning was not only more systematic and more frequent, but also operated at a wider inter-organisational scope, with more radical change and a greater openness in terms of innovation. Third, the owner-managers were the principal knowledge gatekeepers of the learning processes through absorbing and disseminating external complementary knowledge and via varied learning modes. Owner-managers were therefore critical for integrating their entrepreneurial capabilities within the organisation and in moderating the firm’s propensity to engage in ‘open innovation’. This moderating role was accomplished by external interactive learning, internal planning and experiential learning. This augmented the firms’ absorptive capacity – their ability to access and apply external sources of knowledge within their innovation processes – and entrepreneurial capability – their ability to identify, select, shape, and coordinate internal and external conditions and resources to explore opportunities. These findings are of significance to owner-managers with regard to better addressing SME needs in terms of expanding their international business knowledge and stimulating greater regional cooperation

Patterns of visual adaptation in tropical mimetic butterflies

Species diversity within an ecosystem can be supported by favouring microhabitat specialisation. In complex habitats, like tropical rainforests, spatial and temporal segregation across microhabitats can expose species to distinct sensory realms. For many animals, visual systems serve as the primary conduit for perceiving biologically relevant sensory information, and the structural and functional variety of eyes and sensory brain regions reflects their critical role in diverse animal behaviours. However, little is known of their role in mediating niche segregation across subtle ecological scales, particularly in terrestrial environments. I explore the role of microhabitat partitioning in driving predictable patterns of adaptive visual system evolution within two diverse radiations of mimetic Neotropical butterfly, the Heliconius and Ithomiini. By taking a comparative approach, I investigate whether dual patterns of habitat divergence and convergence is manifested in the visual system at the perceptual, processing, and molecular level. I find extensive evidence of heritable, habitat-associated visual system variation, particularly for neural processing structures, hinting at the evolutionary lability of these systems to rapidly accommodate local adaptations to visual ecologies. My research also empirically demonstrates, for the first time, how variation in forest structure can give rise to distinct photic environments, highlighting the role of spectral variation as a major driver of adaptive community assemblage within a terrestrial forest radiation. In addition, evidence of visual morphological convergence offers a mechanistic insight into the evolvability of visual adaptations when confronted with similar ecological challenges, shedding light on their significance in promoting ecological diversification and speciation