Access to housing. Advantages and disadvantages of cohousing

[EN] Access to housing has become a problem for a large number of the population. This work is inspired by the search for new forms of access to housing beyond the traditional system of buying from a private developer. For the future resident, the cost of access between the alternatives is compared. For this, we work from the case method starting from a plot in the city of Valencia on which a comparative cost study is carried out. In the case of cohousing, a management model based on the cooperative is proposed. On the other hand for traditional development, the usual steps of feasibility studies applied to the real estate sector will be followed with the analysis of the profitability of the project. The results indicate that access through the cohousing system is a lower cost for families than access through the purchase from the developer. The analyses carried out indicate that access through cohousing represents a saving of almost 30%. The work also exposes the advantages and disadvantages for families of each of the access systems.Campillo Almajano, A.; Llorca Ponce, A. (2023). Access to housing. Advantages and disadvantages of cohousing. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 558-566. https://doi.org/10.4995/VIBRArch2022.2022.1527755856

Assistant Agents to Advice Users in Hybrid Structured 3D Virtual Environments

Hybrid structured 3D Virtual Environments model serious activities in immersive 3D spaces, where participants are human and software agents, and their interactions are regulated by an Organization Centered Multi-Agent System (OCMAS). In this context, both OCMAS social model and the tasks that users need to accomplish can be rather complex, and thus, users may benefit from having an assistance service. Hence, we propose personal assistant agents (PA), which, based on knowledge about the OCMAS specification and current system state, provide the user with an advice (a plan) to achieve her or his goal. Additionally, we implement this service with plan-ea, an extension of the A¿*¿ algorithm that generates plans for a user whose actions may depend on other users¿ actions. Thus, PAs provide plans that do not only include assisted user actions but also other users¿ ones. We illustrate our approach by means of v-mWater¿an online water market¿and make a comparative analysis, with and without assistance, where efficiency¿in terms of number of user actions¿shows an improvement (7 vs 10.8), efficacy¿percentage of completed tasks¿also improves (93% vs 77%), and assistance's overall satisfaction is positive. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Peer Reviewe

Assistive Awareness in Smart Grids

Peer Reviewe

Execution infrastructure for normative virtual environments

Virtual Institutions (VIs) have proven to be adequate to engineer applications where participants can be humans and software agents. VIs combine Electronic Institutions (EIs) and 3D Virtual Worlds (VWs). In this context, Electronic Institutions are used to establish the regulations that structure interactions and support software agent participation while Virtual Worlds facilitate human participation. In this paper we propose Virtual Institution eXEcution Environment (VIXEE) as an innovative communication infrastructure for VIs. Using VIXEE to connect Virtual Worlds and EI opens EI to humans, providing a fully operational and comprehensive environment. The main features of the infrastructure are (i) the causal connection between Virtual Worlds and Electronic Institutions, (ii) the automatic generation and update of the VIs' 3D visualization and (iii) the simultaneous participation of users from different virtual world platforms. We illustrate the execution of VIXEE system in a simple eAuction house example and use this example to evaluate the performance of our solution

Radical scavenging and antioxidant activity of anthyllis vulneraria leaves and flowers

The main targets of this work were to determine the phenolic content of Anthyllis vulneraria (A. vulneraria) leaves and flowers and to evaluate their antioxidant activity. Total polyphenols and flavonoid content (TPC and TFC, respectively) were determined. Antioxidant capacity was evaluated by the Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Power (FRAP), the Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC), the Trolox Equivalent Antioxidant Capacity (TEAC) and the diphenyl picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assays, and by the analysis of primary and secondary oxidation products in oil-in-water emulsions and in raw beef patties during storage. The results revealed that the flowers of the A. vulneraria contained the highest content of total polyphenols and flavonoids and extracts from these tissues exhibited the strongest antioxidant activity, as they were more effective at retarding lipid oxidation in oil-in-water emulsions and raw beef patties than extracts from the leaves which had a potent antioxidant effect only at the beginning of the oxidation process. The results of this study allowed us to obtain a deep knowledge about the properties of A. vulneraria and confirmed the possibility of using its biologically active extracts in the food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industriesPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A transcriptomic approach to study the effect of long-term starvation and diet composition on the expression of mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation genes in gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata)

© 2017 The Author(s). Background: The impact of nutritional status and diet composition on mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) in fish remains largely unknown. To identify biomarkers of interest in nutritional studies, herein we obtained a deep-coverage transcriptome by 454 pyrosequencing of liver and skeletal muscle cDNA normalised libraries from long-term starved gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata) and fish fed different diets. Results: After clean-up of high-throughput deep sequencing reads, 699,991 and 555,031 high-quality reads allowed de novo assembly of liver and skeletal muscle sequences, respectively (average length: 374 and 441 bp; total megabases: 262 and 245 Mbp). An additional incremental assembly was completed by integrating data from both tissues (hybrid assembly). Assembly of hybrid, liver and skeletal muscle transcriptomes yielded, respectively, 19,530, 11,545 and 10,599 isotigs (average length: 1330, 1208 and 1390 bp, respectively) that were grouped into 15,954, 10,033 and 9189 isogroups. Following annotation, hybrid transcriptomic data were used to construct an oligonucleotide microarray to analyse nutritional regulation of the expression of 129 genes involved in OXPHOS in S. aurata. Starvation upregulated cytochrome c oxidase components and other key OXPHOS genes in the liver, which exhibited higher sensitive to food deprivation than the skeletal muscle. However, diet composition affected OXPHOS in the skeletal muscle to a greater extent than in the liver: most of genes upregulated under starvation presented higher expression among fish fed a high carbohydrate/low protein diet. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that the expression of coenzyme Q-binding protein (COQ10), cytochrome c oxidase subunit 6A2 (COX6A2) and ADP/ATP translocase 3 (SLC25A6) in the liver, and cytochrome c oxidase subunit 5B isoform 1 (COX5B1) in the liver and the skeletal muscle, are sensitive markers of the nutritional condition that may be relevant to assess the effect of changes in the feeding regime and diet composition on fish farming.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Assistant Agents to Advice Users in Hybrid Structured 3D Virtual Environments

Hybrid structured 3D Virtual Environments model serious activities in immersive 3D spaces, where participants are human and SW agents, and their interactions are regulated by an OCMAS (Organization Centered Multi-Agent System). In this context, both OCMAS social model and the tasks that users need to accomplish can be rather complex, and thus, users may benefit from having an assistance service. Hence, we propose Personal Assistant agents (PA) which, based on knowledge about the OCMAS specification and current system state, provide the user with an advice (a plan) to achieve her goal. Additionally, we implement this service with PLAN-EA, an Extension of the $A^{\ast}$ algorithm that generates plans for a user whose actions may depend on other users' actions. Thus, PAs provide plans that do not only include assisted user actions but other users' ones. We illustrate our approach by means of v-mWater -an online water market- and make a comparative analysis, with and without assistance, where efficiency -in terms of number of user actions- shows an improvement (7 vs 10.8), efficacy -percentage of completed tasks- also improves (93% vs 77%), and assistance's overall satisfaction is positive

Characterization and application of gelatin films with pecan walnut and shell extract (Carya Illinoiensis)

Phenolic compounds that come from natural products are a good option for minimizing lipid oxidation. It should be noted that these are not only introduced directly into the food, but also incorporated into edible biofilms. In contact with food, they extend its useful life by avoiding contact with other surface and preventing deterioration air, one of the main objectives. In particular, gelatin is a biopolymer that has a great potential due to its abundance, low cost and good film-forming capacity. The aim of this study has been to design and analyse gelatin films that incorporate bioactive compounds that come from the walnut and a by-product, the walnut shell. The results showed that mechanical and water vapor barrier properties of the developed films varied depending on the concentration of the walnut, shell and synthetic antioxidant. With increasing walnut concentration (15%) the permeability to water vapor (0.414 g·mm/m2·day·Pascal, g·mm/m2·day·Pa) was significantly lower than the control (5.0368 g·mm/m2·day·Pa). Furthermore, in the new films the elongation at the break and Young’s modulus decrease by six times with respect to the control. Films with pure gelatin cannot act as an antioxidant shield to prevent food oxidation, but adding pecan walnut (15% concentration) presents 30% inhibition of the DPPH stable radical. Furthermore, in the DSC, the addition of walnut (15 and 9% concentrations), showed the formation of big crystals; which could improve the thermal stability of gelatin films. The use of new gelatin films has shown good protection against the oxidation of beef patties, increasing the useful lifetime up to nine days, compared to the control (3–4 days), which opens up a big field to the commercialization of meat products with lower quantities of synthetic products.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Marketing de influencia y en influencer engagement

Debido a los avances tecnológicos, la importancia de internet y las redes sociales se ha visto incrementada. Las empresas han utilizado este canal como medio de publicidad dejando un poco de lado los medios convencionales y ya no tan novedosos. Internet avanza, y también lo hace la manera en que las marcas dan a conocer sus productos, evolucionando hasta lo que conocemos como marketing de influencia o influencers. Los influencers no dejan de ser usuarios pero lo que les diferencia es que consiguen generar interés entre el público que los sigue. Suelen contar con miles de seguidores en sus redes sociales, y al ser vistos por las marcas como un altavoz de gran alcance para la promoción de sus productos o servicios, son el elemento principal y fundamental de ese tipo de campañas de marketing. Sin embargo, lo que realmente importa es el engagement que tiene ese influencer determinado: el número de interacciones (likes y comentarios) que tiene en sus posts en relación a la cantidad de seguidores que posea.Grado en Publicidad y Relaciones Pública

Design and evaluation of a chemistry subject in an engineering degree

The beginning of a new Degree at UPC was the opportunity to design a Chemistry subject from the start. It was designed under the criteria of focusing the process on student learning, following the indications of the last meeting of the European Higher Education Area in Rome, November 2020. The objective of the design was to comply with the regulatory requirements and incorporate the learning outcomes that were already defined in other engineering areas, as well as to facilitate the learning of students who had not studied chemistry in high school (between 20 and 30%). To this end, videos have been created with embedded questions, tests, summary preparation criteria, various cooperative work methodologies, ... to which part of the subject's grade (10%) has been assigned in order to facilitate student commitment to weekly completion. Each academic year (3 normal and one in confinement have been developed) an assessment has been made with the students, both of the methodology and the material. In all cases, they reflect that continuous work and immediate or very close feedback is one of the points that has helped them the most in their process. They have also commented (in each academic year) on possibilities for improvement in which they have been directly involved and have helped to bring it to completion. The material is currently ready to be made public on the University website and accessible to all students