Readability of Non-text Images on the World Wide Web (WWW)

The World Wide Web associated the world in a manner that was unrealistic previously and made it a lot more straightforward for users to get data, share and impart. But, irrelevant non-text images on the web pages equally specify poor readability, disrupting the people from the emphasis of the reading. The main goal of this paper is to evaluate the impact of irrelevant or low-quality non-text images on the readability of the webpage. An automatic methodology has been proposed to compute the relevancy of the non-text images. This methodology merges different approaches to extract information from non-text images and read text from websites in order to find relevancy between them. This technique was used to analyze fifty different educational websites to automatically find the relevancy of their non-text images. A user study has been carried out to evaluate the proposed methodology with different types of questions. The results agree with the fact that the relevant non-text images enhance the readability of the web page. This research work will help web designers to improve readability by considering only the relevant content of a web page, without relying on expert judgment.This work was supported in part by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness under Grant CSO2017-86747-R, in part by the Andalusia Regional Projects under Grant AT17-5509-UMA ``ROSI'' and Grant UMA18-FEDERJA-074 ``ITERA,'' and in part by the European art83 under Contract 8.06/5.58.5900 DIH-HERO ``SUSTAIN.'

Automated Readability Assessment for Spanish e-Government Information

This paper automatically evaluates the readability of Spanish e-government websites. Specifically, the websites collected explain e-government administrative procedures. The evaluation is carried out through the analysis of different linguistic characteristics that are presumably associated with a better understanding of these resources. To this end, texts from websites outside the government websites have been collected. These texts clarify the procedures published on the Spanish Government"s websites. These websites constitute the part of the corpus considered as the set of easy documents. The rest of the corpus has been completed with counterpart documents from government websites. The text of the documents has been processed, and the difficulty is evaluated through different classic readability metrics. At a later stage, automatic learning methods are used to apply algorithms to predict the difficulty of the text. The results of the study show that government web pages show high values for comprehension difficulty. This work proposes a new Spanish-language corpus of official e-government websites. In addition, a large number of combined linguistic attributes are applied, which improve the identification of the level of comprehensibility of a text with respect to classic metrics.Work supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, (CSO2017-86747-R)

O DIREITO E A ECONOMIA NO CONTEXTO DOS CONFLITOS DA TERRA: O PARADOXO PROBLEMÁTICO DO PAGAMENTO POR SERVIÇOS AMBIENTAIS APLICADO NA AGROECOLOGIA

O modelo agrícola dominante acarreta em muitos prejuízos ambientais, evidenciados pela degradação do solo e desvalorização das comunidades tradicionais. Nesse contexto, o presente trabalho objetiva examinar se o pagamento por serviços ambientais é capaz de fomentar satisfatoriamente um sistema agrícola sustentável, a agroecologia. A hipótese verificada é de que o referido estímulo é viável, desde que entenda os conflitos da terra existentes e, mais, assegure a participação de todos os grupos afetados. Este trabalho utilizará a metodologia monográfica combinada com técnica de pesquisa bibliográfica e método indutivo. O resultado preliminar é que a agroecologia mantém a natureza de forma harmônica como quer o pagamento por serviços ambientais, entretanto, o atual sistema implantado é problemático e insuficiente.Palavras-chave: pagamento por serviços ambientais, agroecologia, conflitos, participação, economia

Evaluación de programas de formación en TIC: debates y enfoques prevalentes en la investigación educativa

This article is part of the Research Results of the Digital Republic (RD) Program - Digital Education. Evaluation of ICT programs carried out to identify the results of the policy implemented in the Republica Dominicana education system. For the above, a mixed methodology was designed, based on the Context, Inputs, Process & Product (CIPP) model, from the variables: digital competencies, improvement of learning, teaching, learning communities and management of the centers. In this context, this article emphasizes the state of the art of research, focusing on the theoretical categories of digital competencies and evaluative research and its contribution to educational policies in the region. It can be highlighted as a key conclusion of the study the tendency in Latin-American to articulate these digital competencies in contemporary educational processes, focusing its exercise on the improvement of the conditions of access to resources, information, and communication, linked to all actors that integrate the system, but with important limitations in terms of training and accompaniment of them.Este artículo hace parte de la Investigación Resultados del programa República Digital (RD)-Educación Digital. Evaluación de programas TIC, realizada con el objetivo de identifcar los resultados de la política en referencia, implementada en el sistema educativo de República Dominicana. Para lo anterior, se diseñó una metodología mixta, basada en el modelo Context, Inputs, Process & Product (CIPP), desde las siguientes variables, competencias digitales, mejoramiento de los aprendizajes, enseñanza, comunidades de aprendizaje y gestión de los centros. En este contexto, este artículo hace énfasis en el estado del arte de la investigación, enfocando las categorías teóricas, competencias digitales e investigación evaluativa, y su aporte a las políticas educativas en América Latina. Se puede destacar como conclusión clave del estudio la tendencia en Latinoamérica por articular estas competencias digitales en los procesos educativos contemporáneos, centrando su ejercicio en el mejoramiento de las condiciones de acceso a los recursos, la información y la comunicación, con vínculo de todos los actores que integran el sistema, pero con limitaciones importantes en materia de formación y acompañamiento a los mismos

Sustainable technologies for older adults

: The exponential evolution of technology and the growth of the elderly population are two phenomena that will inevitably interact with increasing frequency in the future. This paper analyses scientific literature as a means of furthering progress in sustainable technology for senior living. We carried out a bibliometric analysis of papers published in this area and compiled by the Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus, examining the main participants and advances in the field from 2000 to the first quarter of 2021. The study describes some interesting research projects addressing three different aspects of older adults’ daily lives—health, daily activities and wellbeing—and policies to promote healthy aging and improve the sustainability of the healthcare system. It also looks at lines of research into transversal characteristics of technology. Our analysis showed that publications mentioning sustainability technologies for older adults have been growing progressively since the 2000s, but that the big increase in the number of research works in this area took place during the period 2016–2021. These more recent works show a tendency to study those factors that improve healthy aging, ensure the social inclusion of the elderly through technology and prolong the time in which they can live independent lives thanks to smart environments. Current research gaps in the literature are also discussed.: This work was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, (CSO2017-86747-R) and supported in part by the FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades-Agencia Estatal de Investigación, through the Smartlet and H2O Learn Projects under Grants TIN2017-85179-C3-1-R and PID2020-112584RB-C31, and in part by the Madrid Regional Government through the e-Madrid-CM Project under Grant S2018/TCS-4307

Identification of new targets of S-nitrosylation in neural stem cells by thiol redox proteomics

Nitric oxide (NO) is well established as a regulator of neurogenesis. NO increases the proliferation of neural stem cells (NSC), and is essential for hippocampal injury-induced neurogenesis following an excitotoxic lesion. One of the mechanisms underlying non-classical NO cell signaling is protein S-nitrosylation. This post-translational modification consists in the formation of a nitrosothiol group (R-SNO) in cysteine residues, which can promote formation of other oxidative modifications in those cysteine residues. S-nitrosylation can regulate many physiological processes, including neuronal plasticity and neurogenesis. In this work, we aimed to identify S-nitrosylation targets of NO that could participate in neurogenesis. In NSC, we identified a group of proteins oxidatively modified using complementary techniques of thiol redox proteomics. S-nitrosylation of some of these proteins was confirmed and validated in a seizure mouse model of hippocampal injury and in cultured hippocampal stem cells. The identified S-nitrosylated proteins are involved in the ERK/MAPK pathway and may be important targets of NO to enhance the proliferation of NSC.PTDC/QUI-QFI/29319/2017; UID/BIM/04773/2019info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Familiarity Processing through Faces and Names: Insights from Multivoxel Pattern Analysis

The way our brain processes personal familiarity is still debatable. We used searchlight multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) to identify areas where local fMRI patterns could contribute to familiarity detection for both faces and name categories. Significantly, we identified cortical areas in frontal, temporal, cingulate, and insular areas, where it is possible to accurately cross-classify familiar stimuli from one category using a classifier trained with the stimulus from the other (i.e., abstract familiarity) based on local fMRI patterns. We also discovered several areas in the fusiform gyrus, frontal, and temporal regions—primarily lateralized to the right hemisphere—supporting the classification of familiar faces but failing to do so for names. Also, responses to familiar names (compared to unfamiliar names) consistently showed less activation strength than responses to familiar faces (compared to unfamiliar faces). The results evinced a set of abstract familiarity areas (independent of the stimulus type) and regions specifically related only to face familiarity, contributing to recognizing familiar individuals.Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Grant PSI2011- 28530)Cuban Neuroscience and Neurotechnology Program (PN305LH013-010