Aportaciones de las nuevas tecnologías combinadas con monitorización fisiológica en el campo de la regulación emocional

Tesis por compendio[EN] Emotional regulation strategies determine the way in which people feel, express and regulate their emotions. These regulation strategies affect all aspects of life. Currently, numerous scientific studies indicate the role that these regulation strategies play in the development and maintenance of adaptive and healthy behavior. On the other hand, deficiencies or deficits in emotional regulation are considered to be relevant factors in the origin and maintenance of numerous behavioral and emotional disorders. There are different instruments that have been traditionally used to train and evaluate emotional regulation capabilities. They are usually based on subjective questionnaires. Although these questionnaires have proven to be useful, they present some limitations that make them little suitable for certain groups who are especially reluctant to be assessed, such as adolescents. Currently, new systems based on man-machine interfaces, such as virtual reality and physiological sensors, are starting to be used for training emotional regulation strategies. The purpose of the research reported in this thesis is to address the issues related to the instruments used to train and evaluate the emotional regulation strategies. Specifically, the aim of this work is to study the combined use of virtual reality and serious games with non-invasive physiological monitoring in the emotional regulation field in adolescent population. For this reason, this document shows the results obtained from three studies, with three different virtual environments where participant were able to train different emotional regulation strategies while their cardiac signal or brain activation were recorded. The aim of this thesis is to make a contribution to the emotional regulation field providing a new research framework through the use of new technologies, such as virtual reality, and through more objective assessment instruments such as physiological signals.[ES] Las estrategias de regulación emocional determinan la forma en que las personas sienten, expresan y regulan sus emociones. Estas estrategias influyen prácticamente en todos los aspectos de la vida. En la actualidad existen numerosas investigaciones que destacan el papel que juegan estas estrategias de regulación emocional en el desarrollo y el mantenimiento de una conducta sana y adaptativa. Por el contrario, carencias o déficits en dichas estrategias de regulación pueden ser consideradas como un factor relevante en el origen y mantenimiento de numerosos trastornos emocionales y de comportamiento. Existen diversos instrumentos que se han utilizado tradicionalmente para evaluar las capacidades de regulación emocional y que están basados en cuestionarios subjetivos. Estos cuestionarios, aunque son muy útiles y prácticos, presentan algunas limitaciones que los hacen poco apropiados, sobre todo para ciertos colectivos que son especialmente reacios a ser evaluados, como podrían ser los adolescentes. Actualmente están empezando a usarse nuevos sistemas basados en tecnologías hombre-máquina, como pueden ser la realidad virtual y los sensores fisiológicos, para el entrenamiento de las estrategias de regulación emocional. La investigación presentada en esta tesis tiene como propósito abordar los aspectos relacionados con los instrumentos utilizados en el entrenamiento y en la evaluación de las estrategias de regulación emocional. Concretamente, el objetivo del presente trabajo es estudiar el uso combinado de la realidad virtual y los juegos serios con la monitorización fisiológica no invasiva en el campo de la regulación emocional en población adolescente. Para ello se presentan y se detallan los resultados obtenidos de tres estudios realizados, con tres entornos virtuales diferentes, donde los participantes pudieron entrenar diferentes estrategias de regulación emocional mientras se les registraban la señal cardíaca o la activación cerebral. Con la presente Tesis Doctoral se pretende hacer una contribución al campo de la regulación emocional, proporcionando un nuevo marco de investigación a través del uso de nuevas tecnologías como la realidad virtual y a través de instrumentos de evaluación más objetivos, como son las señales fisiológicas.[CA] Les estratègies de regulació emocional determinen la manera en què les persones senten, expressen i regulen les seves emocions. Aquestes estratègies influeixen pràcticament en tots els aspectes de la vida. En l'actualitat existeixen nombroses recerques que destaquen el paper que juguen aquestes estratègies de regulació emocional en el desenvolupament i el manteniment d'una conducta sana i adaptativa. Per contra, mancances o dèficits en aquestes estratègies de regulació poden ser considerats com un factor rellevant en l'origen i manteniment de nombrosos trastorns emocionals i de comportament. Existeixen diversos instruments que s'han utilitzat tradicionalment per avaluar les capacitats de regulació emocional i que estan basats en qüestionaris subjectius. Aquests qüestionaris, encara que són molt útils i pràctics, presenten algunes limitacions que els fan poc apropiats, sobretot per a certs col¿lectius que són especialment poc inclinats a ser avaluats, com podrien ser els adolescents. Actualment, estan començant a usar-se nous sistemes basats en tecnologies home-màquina, com pot ser la realitat virtual i els sensors fisiològics, per a l'entrenament de les estratègies de regulació emocional. La investigació presentada en aquesta tesi té com a propòsit abordar els aspectes relacionats amb els instruments utilitzats en l'entrenament i en l'avaluació de les estratègies de regulació emocional. Concretament, l'objectiu del present treball és estudiar l'ús combinat de la realitat virtual i els jocs seriosos amb el monitoratge fisiològic no invasiu en el camp de la regulació emocional en població adolescent. Per a això, es presenten i es detallen els resultats obtinguts de tres estudis realitzats, amb tres entorns virtuals diferents, on els participants van poder entrenar diferents estratègies de regulació emocional mentre se'ls registraven el senyal cardíac o l'activació cerebral. Amb la present Tesi Doctoral es pretén fer una contribució al camp de la regulació emocional, proporcionant un nou marc de investigació a través de l'ús de noves tecnologies com la realitat virtual i a través d'instruments d'avaluació més objectius, com són els senyals fisiològics.Rodríguez Ortega, A. (2015). Aportaciones de las nuevas tecnologías combinadas con monitorización fisiológica en el campo de la regulación emocional [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/51588TESISCompendi

Changing the tax structure to reduce income inequality in Colombia : a microsimulation model

This Document simulates a change in the structure of the Colombian tax system (changes in income pension tax thresholds and marginal earner income tax rates, as well as in social contribution rates), and measures the impact of these possible reforms on disposable income inequality. Using a microsimulation model of taxes and transfers built for Colombia, called COLMOD and based on the methodology used in EUROMOD for the European Union, the study shows that large-scale changes are needed to achieve a significant reduction in inequality in Colombia. This is because the country has a large heterogeneity in income distribution and an underground (untaxed) economy that represents 49.2% of GDP (DANE). The article concludes with a discussion of the feasibility of such major tax reforms, highlighting the link between popular support for the tax system and structure of the proposed tax. Ce document simule un changement de la structure du système fiscal colombien (modification des seuils d'imposition des pensions de retraite et des taux marginaux d'imposition des revenus des salariés, ainsi que des taux de cotisation sociale), et mesure l'impact de ces éventuelles réformes sur l'inégalité des revenus disponibles. En utilisant un modèle de microsimulation des impôts et des transferts construit pour la Colombie, appelé COLMOD et basé sur la méthodologie utilisée dans EUROMOD pour l'Union européenne, l'étude montre que des changements à grande échelle sont nécessaires pour parvenir à une réduction significative des inégalités en Colombie. En effet, le pays présente une grande hétérogénéité dans la distribution des revenus et une économie souterraine (non taxée) qui représente 49,2% du PIB (DANE). L'article se termine par une discussion sur la faisabilité de ces grandes réformes fiscales, en soulignant le lien entre le soutien populaire au système fiscal et la structure de l'impôt proposé.This Document simulates a change in the structure of the Colombian tax system (changes in income pension tax thresholds and marginal earner income tax rates, as well as in social contribution rates), and measures the impact of these possible reforms on disposable income inequality. Using a microsimulation model of taxes and transfers built for Colombia, called COLMOD and based on the methodology used in EUROMOD for the European Union, the study shows that large-scale changes are needed to achieve a significant reduction in inequality in Colombia. This is because the country has a large heterogeneity in income distribution and an underground (untaxed) economy that represents 49.2% of GDP (DANE). The article concludes with a discussion of the feasibility of such major tax reforms, highlighting the link between popular support for the tax system and structure of the proposed tax.Magíster en EconomíaMaestríahttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-3420-184

Using Portable EEG Devices to Evaluate Emotional Regulation Strategies during Virtual Reality Exposure

[EN] As Virtual Reality (VR) is starting to be used to train emotional regulation strategies, it would be interesting to propose objective techniques to monitor the emotional reactions of participants during the virtual experience. In this work, the main goal is to analyze if portable EEG systems are adequate to monitor brain activity changes caused by the emotional regulation strategies applied by the participants. The EEG signals captured from subjects that navigate through a virtual environment designed to induce a negative mood will be compared between three experimental groups that will receive different instructions about the emotional regulation strategies to apply. The study will allow us to validate the possibilities of portable EEG devices to monitor emotional regulation strategies during VR exposure.This study was funded by Vicerrectorado de Investigación de la Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain, PAID-06-2011, R.N. 1984; by Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, Spain, Project Game Teen (TIN2010-20187) and partially by projects Consolider-C (SEJ2006-14301/PSIC), “CIBER of Physiopathology of Obesity and Nutrition, an initiative of ISCIII” and Excellence Research Program PROMETEO (Generalitat Valenciana. Consellería de Educación, 2008-157). The work of A. Rodríguez was supported by the Spanish MEC under an FPI Grant BES-2011-043316.Rey, B.; Rodríguez Ortega, A.; Alcañiz Raya, ML. (2012). Using Portable EEG Devices to Evaluate Emotional Regulation Strategies during Virtual Reality Exposure. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics. 181:223-227. https://doi.org/10.3233/978-1-61499-121-2-223S22322718

INFLACIÓN Y CRECIMIENTO DEL PRODUCTO INTERNO BRUTO EN 35 AÑOS DE POLÍTICAS NEOLIBERALES EN MÉXICO

México ha experimentado durante más de tres décadas el constante efecto de una serie de políticas a las que se les ha identificado como de corte Neoliberal; de este modo, lo que se ha dado por denominar como neoliberalismo ha devenido en una serie de políticas que han afectado el desempeño de dos variables en particular: el crecimiento del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) y el comportamiento de la inflación, al mismo tiempo que se han visto afectadas otras variables económicas y sociales, tales como el empleo, desempleo, autoempleo, salario promedio y la migración, principalmente. Por todo lo anterior, la hipótesis a probar en la presente investigación radica en demostrar que las políticas económicas neoliberales han logrado mantener una baja tasa de inflación a costa de un bajo nivel de crecimiento de la producción, es decir, del PIB, y por ende de variables tales como el empleo y el nivel de ingreso. Se analiza el periodo comprendido entre 1982 y 2014, debido a la disponibilidad de fuentes estadísticas confiables, en este caso de la Organización para el Desarrollo y la Cooperación Económica. Se recurrió a un análisis de correlaciones y análisis de regresión

Reliability and Validity of TIPS Wireless ECG Prototypes

[EN] The aims of the present study are to examine the reliability and validity of the Heart Rate signal registered using two self-made wireless ECG systems, R-Tips and TipsShirt, and to compare them with another commercial ECG device typically used in psychophysiology studies. An ECG simulator was used to artificially generate signals corresponding to different cardiac frequencies. Results of the reliability study showed that the signal acquisition, signal processing and signal transmission were reliable and valid for R-Tips and TipsShirt. Consequently, these wireless ECG prototypes could be used for studies where the freedom of movements of the participants is fundamental without any loss of quality in the registered signals.This study was funded by Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia Spain, Project Game Teen (TIN2010-20187) and partially by projects Consolider-C (SEJ2006-14301/PSIC), “CIBER of Physiopathology of Obesity and Nutrition, an initiative of ISCIII” and Excellence Research Program PROMETEO (Generalitat Valenciana. Consellería de Educación, 2008-157). The work of A. Rodríguez was supported by the Spanish MEC under an FPI Grant BES-2011-043316.Rodríguez Ortega, A.; Guixeres Provinciale, J.; Rey, B.; Alcañiz Raya, ML. (2012). Reliability and Validity of TIPS Wireless ECG Prototypes. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics. 181:83-87. https://doi.org/10.3233/978-1-61499-121-2-83S838718

Active detection of age groups based on touch interaction

This paper studies user classification into children and adults according to their interaction with touchscreen devices. We analyse the performance of two sets of features derived from the Sigma-Lognormal theory of rapid human movements and global characterization of touchscreen interaction. We propose an active detection approach aimed to continuously monitorize the user patterns. The experimentation is conducted on a publicly available database with samples obtained from 89 children between 3 and 6 years old and 30 adults. We have used Support Vector Machines algorithm to classify the resulting features into age groups. The sets of features are fused at score level using data from smartphones and tablets. The results, with correct classification rates over 96%, show the discriminative ability of the proposed neuromotorinspired features to classify age groups according to the interaction with touch devices. In active detection setup, our method is able to identify a child using only 4 gestures in averageThis work was funded by the project CogniMetrics (TEC2015-70627-R) and Bio-Guard (Ayudas Fundación BBVA a Equipos de Investigación Científica 2017

Linking Chronic Otitis Media and Nasal Obstruction: A CFD Approach

Objectives To investigate a possible relationship between altered nasal flow and chronic otitis media (COM) using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Study Design Retrospective case series. Methods Retrospective cohort sample of CT scans from patients with COM and controls without COM to compare the results of various nasal airflow parameters determined by CFD between a group of patients with COM (N = 60) and a control group of subjects without any evidence of ear disease (N = 81). The CT were subjected to various procedures to carry out CFD studies, determining the resistance to nasal flow, the proportion of flow through the right and left nasal cavity, and two nondimensional estimators. The results of CFD studies between patients with COM and controls were compared. Results Whereas only 12.3% of the controls had CFD alteration (10 out of 81), 43.3% of the patients suffering COM displayed alterations of our nondimensional parameters urn:x-wiley:0023852X:media:lary29882:lary29882-math-0001 (26 out of 60). Conclusions According to our results, the incidence of alterations in nasal airflow by studying with CFD is significantly higher in patients with COM than in controls. To our knowledge, this is the first article linking nasal cavity and COM using a CFD approach. Our results support the hypothesis that nasal flow alterations could be implicated in the etiopathogenesis of the COM

DISCERNER: Dynamic selection of resource manager in hyper-scale cloud-computing data centres

Data centres constitute the engine of the Internet, and run a major portion of large web and mobile applications, content delivery and sharing platforms, and Cloud-computing business models. The high performance of such infrastructures is therefore critical for their correct functioning. This work focuses on the improvement of data-centre performance by dynamically switching the main data-centre governance software system: the resource manager. Instead of focusing on the development of new resource-managing models as soon as new workloads and patterns appear, we propose DISCERNER, a decision-theory model that can learn from numerous data-centre execution logs to determine which existing resource-managing model may optimise the overall performance for a given time period. Such a decision-theory system employs a classic machine-learning classifier to make real-time decisions based on past execution logs and on the current data-centre operational situation. A set of extensive and industry-guided experiments has been simulated by a validated data-centre simulation tool. The results obtained show that the values of key performance indicators may be improved by at least 20% in realistic scenarios.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación RTI2018-098062-A-I0

e-BioSign Tool: Towards Scientific Assessment of Dynamic Signatures under Forensic Conditions

Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. R. Vera-Rodriguez, J. Fierrez, J. Ortega-Garcia, A. Acien and R. Tolosana, "e-BioSign tool: Towards scientific assessment of dynamic signatures under forensic conditions," 2015 IEEE 7th International Conference on Biometrics Theory, Applications and Systems (BTAS), Arlington, VA, 2015, pp. 1-6. doi: 10.1109/BTAS.2015.7358756This paper presents a new tool specifically designed to carry out dynamic signature forensic analysis and give sci- entific support to forensic handwriting examiners (FHEs). Traditionally FHEs have performed forensic analysis of paper-based signatures for court cases, but with the rapid evolution of the technology, nowadays they are being asked to carry out analysis based on signatures acquired by digi- tizing tablets more and more often. In some cases, an option followed has been to obtain a paper impression of these sig- natures and carry out a traditional analysis, but there are many deficiencies in this approach regarding the low spa- tial resolution of some devices compared to original off-line signatures and also the fact that the dynamic information, which has been proved to be very discriminative by the bio- metric community, is lost and not taken into account at all. The tool we present in this paper allows the FHEs to carry out a forensic analysis taking into account both the tra- ditional off-line information normally used in paper-based signature analysis, and also the dynamic information of the signatures. Additionally, the tool incorporates two impor- tant functionalities, the first is the provision of statistical support to the analysis by including population statistics for genuine and forged signatures for some selected features, and the second is the incorporation of an automatic dy- namic signature matcher, from which a likelihood ratio (LR) can be obtained from the matching comparison between the known and questioned signatures under analysis.This work was supported in part by the Project Bio-Shield (TEC2012-34881), in part by Cecabank e-BioFirma Contract, in part by the BEAT Project (FP7-SEC-284989) and in part by Catedra UAM-Telefonica

Caracterizacion hidraulica de cuatro marcas de emisores para riego localizado comercializados en Chile.

Resumen (Spanish, English)61 p.Esta memoria de título, se desarrolla en torno a la evaluación hidráulica de tres marcas de goteros y dos modelos de cinta utilizados en sistemas de riego localizado, realizada en el laboratorio del Centro de Investigación y de Transferencia Tecnológica en Riego y Agroclimatología (CITRA) perteneciente a la Facultad de Ciencia Agrarias de la Universidad de Talca. Para dicha evaluación se aplicó la norma internacional ISO 9260 sobre procedimientos para obtener el coeficiente de variación de fabricación, la relación caudal - presión y el efecto que ejerce la temperatura sobre la descarga del emisor. Los resultados señalan para el coeficiente de variación de fabricación (CVF) que los goteros marca NGE y O-Tiff pertenecen a la Categoría A (CVF: 4,5% y 2,37% respectivamente) y el gotero marca Microflapper es catalogado como B (CVF: 6,28). Las cintas de riego Aqua Traxx cumplen con la Categoría A para sus modelos compensado y no compensado, con CVF 4,46% y 1,02% respectivamente. En la curva caudal – presión de cada emisor, se calcularon las siguientes ecuaciones que reflejan su comportamiento: para el emisor Microflapper, q=2,3209h0,1133; O-Tiff, q=0,6844h0,3872; la ecuación para el gotero NGE que obtuvo un mayor ajuste no fue del tipo exponencial como en los otros casos, sino del tipo lineal y fue de q=4,0532-0,0072h. En el caso de la cinta Aqua Traxx, modelo compensado, la ecuación de la curva caudal presión fue de q=0,3479h0,2342 y para el modelo no compensado, q=0,2232h0,3691. Además en lo que a desviación del caudal respecto al caudal nominal se refiere, las marcas de goteros Microflapper y O-Tiff son consideradas como Categoría A por la norma internacional ISO 9260 al igual que la cinta de riego Aqua Traxx modelo no compensado. Por su parte, el gotero NGE es considerado Categoría B y la cinta Aqua Traxx modelo compensado no obtiene ninguna categoría. Por último, en relación a la variación que presentaban las descargas, al variar la temperatura del agua en la línea de prueba, las tres marcas de goteros (Microflapper, NGE y O-Tiff) como también los dos modelos de la cinta de riego Aqua Traxx (compensado y no compensado), se registró ecuaciones del tipo lineal las cuales son: Microflapper: q=3,8504+0,0164Tº; NGE: q=3,8112+0,0028Tº; O-Tiff: q=3,876+0,0044Tº; Aqua Traxx : q=0,9827+0,0064Tº y Aqua Traxx PC: 1,1378+0,0016T