Radio and social empowerment. Uses and the rewards gained of radio workshops for individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities

Se analiza la influencia que puede tener en una persona con discapacidad intelectual o del desarrollo la participación en talleres de radio (empoderamiento ciudadano –desarrollo de habilidades comunicativas y sociales, autoestima-; visibilidad social; comprensión de la discapacidad y alfabetización mediática). El estudio, basado en cuestionarios estructurados enviados a tutores y a sujetos participantes, presenta una imagen del funcionamiento de un taller de radio, confirma el aumento exponencial de los proyectos radiofónicos en los últimos cinco años al calor de las nuevas tecnologías de la información y la comunicación y revela un nuevo escenario de oportunidades de acceso al medio radio a través del ecosistema de Internet (radio online y alojamientos de podcasting). La investigación da a conocer el elevado grado de satisfacción que muestran las personas con discapacidad intelectual que colaboran en estos talleres.We analyze the influence that participation in radio workshops (citizen empowerment –development of communicative and social abilities, self-esteem-, social visibility, understanding disability, and media literacy) has on individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities. This study, which is based on structured questionnaires sent to tutors and participating subjects, presents a picture of the current workings of a radio workshop, confirms the exponential growth of radio projects in the last five years in light of the new technologies of information and communication, and reveals a new scenario of opportunities for accessing the radio medium through the Internet ecosystem (online radio and podcast hosting). The high degree of satisfaction shown by individuals with intellectual disabilities who collaborate in these workshops is revealed.Ciencias de la Comunicació

Ranking Semantic Web Services Using Rules Evaluation and Constraint Programming

Current Semantic Web Services discovery and ranking proposals are based on user preferences descriptions whose expressiveness are limited by the underlying logical formalism used. Thus, highly expressive preference descriptions, such as utility functions, cannot be handled by the kind of reasoners traditionally used to perform Semantic Web Services tasks. in this work, we outline a hybrid approach to allow the introduction of utility functions in user preferences descriptions, where both rules evaluation and constraint programming are used to perform the ranking process. Our proposal extends the Web Service Modeling Ontology with these descriptions, providing a highly expressive framework to specify preferences, and enabling a more general ranking process, which can be performed by different engines

Experiencias radiofónicas con personas con discapacidad intelectual y parálisis cerebral en España

La radio es el medio de comunicación que mayor visibilidad puede dar a los colectivos en situación de exclusión social, y es también una herramienta que motiva la participación y contribuye al desarrollo integral de muchas personas, entre ellas, las que presentan alguna discapacidad intelectual o del desarrollo. En este trabajo se ha llevado a cabo una revisión y actualización de la base de datos de talleres de radio para personas con DI actualmente activos en España, a fecha de 2017, a través de los dos principales colectivos que representan a estas personas: la Confederación Española de Organizaciones a favor de las Personas con Discapacidad Intelectual (FEAPS) –hoy Plena inclusión–, plataforma que integra más de 800 asociaciones en todo el país, e incorporando la oferta de los talleres de la Confederación Española de Federaciones y Asociaciones de Atención a las personas con Parálisis Cerebral y Afines (Confederación ASPACE), que agrupa a unas 80 entidades en 17 comunidades autónomas. El resultado ofrece una foto fija de la estructura, funcionamiento y características de 53 proyectos radiofónicos en los que participan cerca de 500 personas con discapacidad intelectual

Artifact: virtual environment for evaluating the QoS of distributed mobile applications

Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades RTI2018-094591-B-I00Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades RTI2018-101204-B-C21 (HORATIO)Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad BELI (TIN2015-70560-R)TIN2016-81978-REDTJunta de Extremadura GR18112Junta de Andalucía APOLO (US-1264651)Junta de Extremadura IB1803

Virtual environment for evaluating the QoS of distributed mobile applications

The increasing capabilities of end devices has led to a wider distribution of the computation and the massive deployment of distributed mobile applications. The success of these applications is highly dependent on the Quality of Service they provide. This quality is especially difficult to assess due to the large number of entities involved and their heterogeneity. Current tools are usually focused on evaluating the QoS provided by a single entity. Nevertheless, the QoS of distributed applications not only depend on the QoS of each entity, the interactions among entities has also to be evaluated. Therefore, new techniques are required to perform a comprehensive evaluation of the expected QoS of these applications before their production deployment. This paper presents a framework, called Perses, for launching virtual environments to simulate and test the execution of distributed mobile applications. This simulation provides results of the QoS achieved. Moreover, the framework has been integrated into a DevOps methodology in order to automate its execution. Video showcase- https://youtu.be/wpIApe_sPFE.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades RTI2018-101204-B-C21 (HORATIO)Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad BELI (TIN2015-70560-R)Interreg V-A España-Portugal (POCTEP) 0499-4IE-PLUS-4-EMinisterio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades TIN2016-81978-REDTJunta de Extremadura GR18112Junta de Extremadura IB18030Junta de Andalucía APOLO (US-1264651

Operating with Quantum Integers: an Efficient 'Multiples of' Oracle

Quantum algorithms are a very promising field. However, creating and manipulating these kind of algorithms is a very complex task, specially for software engineers used to work at higher abstraction levels. The work presented here is part of a broader research focused on providing operations of a higher abstraction level to manipulate integers codified as a superposition. These operations are designed to be composable and efficient, so quantum software developers can reuse them to create more complex solutions. Specifically, in this paper we present a 'multiples of' operation. To validate this operation we show several examples of quantum circuits and their simulations, including its composition possibilities. A theoretical analysis proves that both the complexity of the required classical calculations and the depth of the circuit scale linearly with the number of qubits. Hence, the 'multiples of' oracle is efficient in terms of complexity and depth. Finally, an empirical study of the circuit depth is conducted to further reinforce the theoretical analysis.Comment: 19 pages, 18 figures, preprint submitted to SummerSOC 202

Some Initial Guidelines for Building Reusable Quantum Oracles

The evolution of quantum hardware is highlighting the need for advances in quantum software engineering that help developers create quantum software with good quality attributes. Specifically, reusability has been traditionally considered an important quality attribute in terms of efficiency of cost and effort. Increasing the reusability of quantum software will help developers create more complex solutions, by reusing simpler components, with better quality attributes, as long as the reused components have also these attributes. This work focuses on the reusability of oracles, a well-known pattern of quantum algorithms that can be used to perform functions used as input by other algorithms. In particular, in this work, we present several guidelines for making reusable quantum oracles. These guidelines include three different levels for oracle reuse: the ideas inspiring the oracle, the function which creates the oracle, and the oracle itself. To demonstrate these guidelines, two different implementations of a range of integers oracle have been built by reusing simpler oracles. The quality of these implementations is evaluated in terms of functionality and quantum circuit depth. Then, we provide an example of documentation following the proposed guidelines for both implementations to foster reuse of the provided oracles. This work aims to be a first point of discussion towards quantum software reusability. Additional work is needed to establish more specific criteria for quantum software reusability.Comment: 10 page

Characterization and Therapeutic Effect of a pH Stimuli Responsive Polymeric Nanoformulation for Controlled Drug Release

Despite the large number of polymeric nanodelivery systems that have been recently developed, there is still room for improvement in terms of therapeutic efficiency. Most reported nanodevices for controlled release are based on drug encapsulation, which can lead to undesired drug leakage with a consequent reduction in efficacy and an increase in systemic toxicity. Herein, we present a strategy for covalent drug conjugation to the nanodevice to overcome this drawback. In particular, we characterize and evaluate an effective therapeutic polymeric PEGylated nanosystem for controlled pH-sensitive drug release on a breast cancer (MDA-MB-231) and two lung cancer (A549 and H520) cell lines. A significant reduction in the required drug dose to reach its half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50 value) was achieved by conjugation of the drug to the nanoparticles, which leads to an improvement in the therapeutic index by increasing the efficiency. The genotoxic effect of this nanodevice in cancer cells was confirmed by nucleus histone H2AX specific immunostaining. In summary, we successfully characterized and validated a pH responsive therapeutic polymeric nanodevice in vitro for controlled anticancer drug release.Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) BIO2016-80519Health Institute Carlos III (ISCIII) DTS18/00121Andalusian Regional Government PAIDI-TC-PVT-PSETC-2.

Demand and Storage Management in a Prosumer Nanogrid Based on Energy Forecasting

Energy efficiency and consumers' role in the energy system are among the strategic research topics in power systems these days. Smart grids (SG) and, specifically, microgrids, are key tools for these purposes. This paper presents a three-stage strategy for energy management in a prosumer nanogrid. Firstly, energy monitoring is performed and time-space compression is applied as a tool for forecasting energy resources and power quality (PQ) indices; secondly, demand is managed, taking advantage of smart appliances (SA) to reduce the electricity bill; finally, energy storage systems (ESS) are also managed to better match the forecasted generation of each prosumer. Results show how these strategies can be coordinated to contribute to energy management in the prosumer nanogrid. A simulation test is included, which proves how effectively the prosumers' power converters track the power setpoints obtained from the proposed strategy.Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigacion ; Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional

¿Por qué OMG ha elegido BPMN para modelar de Procesos de Negocio si ya existe UML?

Desde junio del 2005 la BPMI (Business Process Management Initiative) es miembro de la OMG (Object Management Group). En esta unión confluyen por una lado una organización con gran experiencia en el modelado de procesos de negocio y con una notación ampliamente difundida, BPMN (Bussiness Process Management Notation), y por otro lado la organización internacional más importante a la hora de crear estándares relacionados con la ingeniería del Software. Uno de esos estándares, el más difundido, es UML (Unified Modeling Language) una de cuyas partes, los Diagramas de Actividad, tiene entre sus objetivos el modelado de procesos de negocio. Por tanto, encontramos dos especificaciones con propósitos similares dentro de la misma organización. En este trabajo discutimos sobre algunas de las razones que en nuestra opinión favorecen que la OMG apueste por BPMN en detrimento de los diagramas de actividad de UML para modelar procesos de negocio