Towards trust-aware recommendations in social networks

Recommender systems have been strongly researched within the last decade. With the emergence and popularization of social networks a new fi eld has been opened for social recommendations. Introducing new concepts such as trust and considering the network topology are some of the new strategies that recommender systems have to take into account in order to adapt their techniques to these new scenarios. In this thesis a simple model for recommendations on twitter is developed to apply some of the known techniques and explore how well the state of the art does in a real scenario. The thesis can serve as a basis for further social recommender system research

Applying trust metrics based on user interactions to recommendation in social networks

Recommender systems have been strongly researched within the last decade. With the arising and popularization of digital social networks a new field has been opened for social recommendations. Considering the network topology, users interactions, or estimating trust between users are some of the new strategies that recommender systems can take into account in order to adapt their techniques to these new scenarios. We introduce MarkovTrust, a way to infer trust from Twitter interactions and to compute trust between distant users. MarkovTrust is based on Markov chains, which makes it simple to be implemented and computationally efficient. We study the properties of this trust metric and study its application in a recommender system of tweets.Postprint (published version

El reparto de la riqueza en el mundo. Países ricos y países pobres

Este Trabajo de Fin de Grado tiene como objetivo analizar cuáles son las principales causas de la desigual distribución de la riqueza entre los países que, a día de hoy, nos permite distinguir entre países pobres y países ricos. Asimismo, se efectúa en él un sencillo estudio estadístico sobre la hipótesis basada en la influencia que la posición geográfica y la latitud ejercen sobre el desarrollo económico de las naciones.Grado en Administración y Dirección de Empresa

Emoción y aprendizaje: desde la neuroeducación hasta la educación emocional

En este trabajo de fin de grado se habla de emoción y aprendizaje. De la importancia que tiene el cerebro en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje (Neuroeducación) y de la educación emocional en Educación Infantil. En primer lugar se realiza una conceptualización teórica del término Neuroeducación y la importancia que tiene su estudio, posteriormente un breve recorrido sobre el concepto de emoción, y el desarrollo de ciertas emociones del individuo en el periodo de Educación Infantil. Consecutivamente se habla de lo que desencadena lo anteriormente nombrado, la educación emocional. Se refleja también el papel fundamental que ejercen los diferentes agentes educativos, como el profesorado y la familia en los niños. Además se presentan las razones por las que la educación emocional es necesaria desde edades tempranas, dentro de las aulas de infantil. Asimismo se presentan una serie de actividades con las que se pretende desarrollar las competencias emocionales en los alumnos y así aumentar su autoestima, avivar la cohesión del grupo, resolver conflictos y mejorar la convivencia. Y finalmente tras toda la revisión teórica se concluye con una reflexión final en la que se plantea una mejora del desarrollo infantil

Methodology to quantify the effect of policies and measures in emission reductions from road transport

Atmospheric emissions from road transport have increased all around the world since 1990 more rapidly than from other pollution sources. Moreover, they contribute in more than 25% to total emissions, in the majority of European countries. This situation confirms the importance of road transport when complying with emission ceilings (e.g. Kyoto Protocol and National Emissions Ceilings Directive). The developed methodology illustrates the effect on transport emissions of the most influential variables and their relationships. Therefore, it would be a policy instrument to design emission reduction measures. Firstly, the influence of the main variables was studied: mileage or mobility (passengers or tonnes) per vehicle type (cars, buses, light duty vehicles, heavy duty vehicles, mopeds, and motorcycles); fuel used (diesel, petrol, biofuels, natural gas, and LPG); driving mode (urban, rural, and highway) and vehicle speed; technology used (Euro types, hybrid vehicles, and electric vehicles by power); vehicle characteristics (power, load factor, age, operational life, etc.). The second step consisted of defining several scenarios, changing the variables in order to analyze both the individual and combined effect of these on emissions (sensitivity analysis). These scenarios evaluate the effect of changes in the previous factors, according to realistic policies and measures (e.g. penetration of Euro 5 and 6, increase of biofuel use, scrapping systems, etc.) The third step included the development of an holistic model to estimate emissions which allows the quantification of the effect of both technical and non technical measures. The model is called EmiTRANS and it estimates the emissions in a flexible and coherent way. It contributes to incorporate scientific data on decision making process. Finally, this methodology has been successfully proven for the calculation of emission projections from road transport in Spain, up to 2020 under several scenarios

Quantification of the effect of both technical and non-technical measures from road transport on Spain's emissions projections

Atmospheric emissions from road transport have increased all around the world since 1990 more rapidly than from other pollution sources. Moreover, they contribute to more than 25% of total emissions in the majority of the European Countries. This situation confirms the importance of road transport when complying with emission ceilings (e.g. Kyoto Protocol and National Emissions Ceilings Directive). A methodology has been developed to evaluate the effect of transport measures on atmospheric emissions (EmiTRANS). Its application to Spain in the horizon of 2020 allows the quantification of the effect of several measures on emission reductions. This quantification was done through scenario development. Several scenarios were calculated considering technical measures (e.g. vehicle scrapping systems, higher penetration of hybrid and electric vehicles, fuel substitution, etc.) and non-technical measures (mileage reduction, implementation of Low Emission Zones and/or Congestion Charges in main cities, reduction of average speeds, logistical improvements that affects heavy duty vehicle load factors, etc.). The scenarios show the effect of each measure on NOx, SO2, CO, PM10, PM2.5, VOC, CO2 and CH4 emissions. The main conclusion is the necessity to combine both technical and non-technical measures to increase global effectiveness. In the analysis of specific pollutants, there is a great dispersion on reductions effect: technical measures are more effective to reduce air pollutants while non-technical measures are better options to reduce greenhouse effect gases (even though they also reduce air pollutants in a less efficient way)

Les plantes utilitzades en les ensalades campestres valencianes

Aquest treball reuneix informació sobre plantes silvestres d’ús alimentari que formen part de les amanides tradicionals a la Comunitat Valenciana, les anomenades ensalades campestres. S’han trobat dades sobre 160 tàxons -gèneres i espècies- de plantes silvestres usades com verdures, d’almenys 39 famílies botàniques, sent la família que més aporta la de les Asteràcies o Compostes. Tot i que la majoria són espècies pròpies de la vegetació nitròfila, hi ha d’altres que es localitzen formant part de la vegetació d’entorns naturals i seminaturals.This paper shows information about wild edible plants used to prepare traditional salads in the Valencian Community, forming a part of the so-called ‘ensalades campestres’ (rural, traditional salads). We have found data on 160 wild plant taxa -genus and species-, belonging to not less than 39 botanical families; the family contributing more to this use is Asteraceae or Compositae. Although they are mostly species typical of nitrophilous vegetation, others are located among the vegetation of natural and semi-natural environments

Quantification of the effect of both technical and non-technical measures from road transport on Spain's emissions projections

Abstract Atmospheric emissions from road transport have increased all around the world since 1990 more rapidly than from other pollution sources. Moreover, they contribute to more than 25% of total emissions in the majority of the European Countries. This situation confirms the importance of road transport when complying with emission ceilings (e.g. Kyoto Protocol and National Emissions Ceilings Directive). A methodology has been developed to evaluate the effect of transport measures on atmospheric emissions (EmiTRANS). Its application to Spain in the horizon of 2020 allows the quantification of the effect of several measures on emission reductions. This quantification was done through scenario development. Several scenarios were calculated considering technical measures (e.g. vehicle scrapping systems, higher penetration of hybrid and electric vehicles, fuel substitution, etc.) and non-technical measures (mileage reduction, implementation of Low Emission Zones and/or Congestion Charges in main cities, reduction of average speeds, logistical improvements that affects heavy duty vehicle load factors, etc.). The scenarios show the effect of each measure on NO x , SO 2 , CO, PM 10 , PM 2.5 , VOC, CO 2 and CH 4 emissions. The main conclusion is the necessity to combine both technical and non-technical measures to increase global effectiveness. In the analysis of specific pollutants, there is a great dispersion on reductions effect: technical measures are more effective to reduce air pollutants while non-technical measures are better options to reduce greenhouse effect gases (even though they also reduce air pollutants in a less efficient way)

A methodology to compute emission projections from road transport (EmiTRANS)

Atmospheric emissions from road transport have increased all around the world during the last decades more rapidly than from other pollution sources. For instance, they contribute to more than 25% of total CO, CO2, NOx, and fine particle emissions in most of the European countries. This situation shows the importance of road transport when complying with emission ceilings and air quality standards applied to these pollutants. This paper presents a modelling system to perform atmospheric emission projections (simultaneously both air quality pollutants and greenhouse gases) from road transport including the development of a tailored software tool (EmiTRANS) as a planning tool. The methodology has been developed with two purposes: 1) to obtain outputs used as inputs to the COPERT4 software to calculate emission projections and 2) to summarize outputs for policy making evaluating the effect of emission abatement measures for a vehicle fleet. This methodology has been applied to the calculation of emission projections in Spain up to 2020 under several scenarios, including a sensitivity analysis useful for a better interpretation and confidence building on the results. This case study demonstrates the EmiTRANS applicability to a country, and points out the need for combining both technical and non-technical measures (such as behavioural changes or demand management) to reduce emissions, indirectly improving air quality and contributing to mitigate climate change