A proposal to encourage entrepreneurship and training in the future of journalism

La profesión periodística puede ofrecer una prestigiosa carrera a sus futuros graduados, pero la situación del sector es crítica y llena de cambios a los que nuevos periodistas deber responder con una mayor capacitación profesional, que les permita ofrecer una mayor calidad en el servicio al consumidor. Ante este escenario, la integración del emprendimiento en la formación de los periodistas resulta clave para que la innovación y la creatividad impulsen el autoempleo o nuevas iniciativas en las empresas periodísticas existentes. Para que esta formación sea más efectiva, en este estudio se expone la experiencia de una propuesta docente que emplea una metodología de aprendizaje de servicio, cuyos resultados corroboran su importancia didáctica para fomentar el espíritu emprendedor y la capacitación de los futuros periodistas.Journalism can offer a prestigious career development to their future graduates, but the current situation for this activity sector is critical and full of changes the new journalists must respond to. This response has to be based upon a better professional training able to provide a higher quality customer service. Considering this scenario, the integration of entrepreneurship in the journalist’s education is key to make innovation and creativity boost selfemployment and new initiatives in existing media companies. In order to contribute towards a more effective training in this area, a teaching proposal based on the methodology of service learning is shown. Our results support the importance of education to encourage entrepreneurship and its associated skills in future journalists

On the Feasibility of 5G Slice Resource Allocation With Spectral Efficiency: A Probabilistic Characterization

An important concern that 5G networks face is supporting a wide range of services and use cases with heterogeneous requirements. Radio access network (RAN) slices, understood as isolated virtual networks that share a common infrastructure, are a possible answer to this very demanding scenario and enable virtual operators to provide differentiated services over independent logical entities. This article addresses the feasibility of forming 5G slices, answering the question of whether the available capacity (resources) is sufficient to satisfy slice requirements. As spectral efficiency is one of the key metrics in 5G networks, we introduce the minislot-based slicing allocation (MISA) model, a novel 5G slice resource allocation approach that combines the utilization of both complete slots (or physical resource blocks) and mini-slots with the adequate physical layer design and service requirement constraints. We advocate for a probabilistic characterization that allows to estimate feasibility and characterize the behavior of the constraints, while an exhaustive search is very computationally demanding and the methods to check feasibility provide no information on the constraints. In such a characterization, the concept of phase transition allows for the identification of a clear frontier between the feasible and infeasible regions. Our method relies on an adaptation of the Wang-Landau algorithm to determine the existence of, at least, one solution to the problem. The conducted simulations show a significant improvement in spectral efficiency and feasibility of the MISA approach compared to the slot-based formulation, the identification of the phase transition, and valuable results to characterize the satisfiability of the constraints.The work of J. J. Escudero-Garzás was supported in part by the Spanish National Project TERESA-ADA (MINECO/AEI/FEDER, UE) under Grant TEC2017-90093-C3-2-R, and in part by the National Spectrum Consortium, USA, under Project NSC-16-0140

An energy-efficient adaptive modulation suitable for wireless sensor networks with SER and throughput constraints

We consider the problem of minimizing transmission energy in wireless sensor networks by taking into account that every sensor may require a different bit rate and reliability according to its particular application. We propose a cross-layer approach to tackle such a minimization in centralized networks for the total transmission energy consumption of the network: in the physical layer, for each sensor the sink estimates the channel gain and adaptively selects a modulation scheme; in the MAC layer, each sensor is correspondingly assigned a number of time slots. The modulation level and the number of allocated time slots for every sensor are constrained to attain their applications bit rates in a global energy-efficient manner. The signal-to-noise ratio gap approximation is used in our exposition in order to jointly handle required bit rates, transmission energies, and symbol error rates.This work has been partially funded by CRUISE NoE (IST-4-027738), MAMBO2 (CCG06-UC3M/TIC-0698) and MACAWI (TEC- 2005-07477-C02-02) projects.Publicad

On the Economic Significance of Stock Market Prediction and the No Free Lunch Theorem

Forecasting of stock market returns is a challenging research activity that is now expanding with the availability of new data sources, markets, financial instruments, and algorithms. At its core, the predictability of prices still raises important questions. Here, we discuss the economic significance of the prediction accuracy. To develop this question, we collect the daily series prices of almost half of the publicly traded companies around the world over a period of ten years and formulate some trading strategies based on their prediction. Proper visualization of these data together with the use of the No Free Lunch theoretical framework gives some unexpected results that show how the a priori less accurate algorithms and inefficient strategies can offer better results than the a priori best alternatives in some particular subsets of data that have a clear interpretation in terms of economic sectors and regions.This work was supported in part by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid under Strategic Action 2013/00199/002

Offline speaker segmentation using genetic algorithms and mutual information

We present an evolutionary approach to speaker segmentation, an activity that is especially important prior to speaker recognition and audio content analysis tasks. Our approach consists of a genetic algorithm (GA), which encodes possible segmentations of an audio record, and a measure of mutual information between the audio data and possible segmentations, which is used as fitness function for the GA. We introduce a compact encoding of the problem into the GA which reduces the length of the GA individuals and improves the GA convergence properties. Our algorithm has been tested on the segmentation of real audio data, and its performance has been compared with several existing algorithms for speaker segmentation, obtaining very good results in all test problems.This work was supported in part by the Universidad de Alcalá under Project UAH PI2005/078

On the Economic Significance of Stock Market Prediction and the No Free Lunch Theorem

Forecasting of stock market returns is a challenging research activity that is now expanding with the availability of new data sources, markets, financial instruments, and algorithms. At its core, the predictability of prices still raises important questions. Here we discuss the economic significance of the prediction accuracy. To develop this question, we collect the daily series prices of almost half of the publicly traded companies around the world over a period of ten years and formulate some trading strategies based on their prediction. Proper visualization of these data together with the use of the No Free Lunch theoretical framework give some unexpected results that show how the a priori less accurate algorithms and inefficient strategies can offer better results than the a priori best alternatives in some particular subsets of data that have a clear interpretation in terms of economic sectors and regions.2018-201

Patología pulmonar en la fibrosis quística

Los autores de este artículo llevan a cabo una revisión de conocimientos en materia de Fibrosis Quística (FQ) o Mucoviscidosis

Cumulative advantages and social capabilities in scientific mobility in the Health Sciences: The Spanish case

Background The big problem in global public health, arising from the international migration of physicians from less-developed to more-developed countries, increases if this migration also affects sci- entists dedicated to health areas. This article analyzes critical variables in the processes of Spanish scientific mobility in Health Sciences to articulate effective management policies for the benefit of national public health services and the balance between local and global science. Methods This study develops a survey to measure and analyze the following crucial variables: research career, training, funding, working with a world-class team, institutional prestige, wages, facilities/infrastructure, working conditions in the organization of the destination country, fringe benefits in the organization of the destination country and social responsibility in the organization of the departure country. A total of 811 researchers have participated in the survey, of which 293 were from the health sector: Spanish scientists abroad (114), sci- entists that have returned to Spain (32) and young researchers in Spain (147). Results The most crucial variables for Spanish scientists and young researchers in Spain in Health Sciences moving abroad are the cumulative advantages (research career, training, funding and institutional prestige) plus wages. On the other hand, the return of Spanish scientists in the Health Sciences is influenced by cumulative variables (working with a world-class team, research career and institutional prestige) and also by other variables related to social fac- tors, such as working conditions and fringe benefits in the destination country. Permanent positions are rare for these groups and their decisions regarding mobility depend to a large extent on job opportunities. Conclusions Spanish health organizations can influence researchers to return, since these decisions mainly depend on job opportunities. These organizations can complement the cumulative advantages offered by the wealthier countries with the intensification of social factors.Dirección General de Migraciones del Ministerio de Empleo y Seguridad Social de España.2017-1

Communication systems for scientific collaboration and mobility. Evidence from Spain

Given the effectiveness shown for the creation of collaborative environments of social network sites and the scarcity of work on their use by researchers, the purpose of this article is the analysis of the use of communication systems in scientific collaboration by the collective most involved in scientific mobility. A survey among the Spanish groups most involved in scientific mobility (n = 415) was carried out to analyze the communication systems they use for their collaboration. Scientists use social network sites scarcely for their collaboration, although these can serve as a complement to face-to-face communication systems. The main framework for their collaboration is meetings, congresses, and workshops. Our results can contribute to articulate effective policies to improve this mobility for the benefit of the processes of creation and transfer of scientific knowledge of the countries of origin.This study has been financed by Grupo Reacciona and Universitat Jaume I in Castellon (Plan Propio de Investigación 2017 with number UJI-B2017-55).2019-2