A Framework for Evaluating Land Use and Land Cover Classification Using Convolutional Neural Networks

Analyzing land use and land cover (LULC) using remote sensing (RS) imagery is essential for many environmental and social applications. The increase in availability of RS data has led to the development of new techniques for digital pattern classification. Very recently, deep learning (DL) models have emerged as a powerful solution to approach many machine learning (ML) problems. In particular, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are currently the state of the art for many image classification tasks. While there exist several promising proposals on the application of CNNs to LULC classification, the validation framework proposed for the comparison of different methods could be improved with the use of a standard validation procedure for ML based on cross-validation and its subsequent statistical analysis. In this paper, we propose a general CNN, with a fixed architecture and parametrization, to achieve high accuracy on LULC classification over RS data from different sources such as radar and hyperspectral. We also present a methodology to perform a rigorous experimental comparison between our proposed DL method and other ML algorithms such as support vector machines, random forests, and k-nearest-neighbors. The analysis carried out demonstrates that the CNN outperforms the rest of techniques, achieving a high level of performance for all the datasets studied, regardless of their different characteristics.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2014-55894-C2-1-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2017-88209-C2-2-

Triquinas, cerdos y salud pública veterinaria: la inclusión del mundo microscópico en la base científica de la inspección cárnica (Barcelona, 1870s)

Ganador XLVI Premio Fundación Uriach de "Historia de la MedicinaDurante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX las autoridades españolas comenzaron a desarrollar programas específicos sobre la seguridad de algunos alimentos destinados al consumo humano. Este trabajo analiza las claves que propiciaron la inclusión del veterinario como parte integrante de la estructura administrativa encargada de salvaguardar la salud pública. Entre los aspectos tratados, se ha profundizado en las relaciones entre las medicinas humana y animal en un momento en que la alarma social originada por algunas zoonosis contribuyó a configurar la noción de una salud pública veterinaria. La aparición de una enfermedad en el ganado porcino transmisible por el consumo de carne parasitada conformó un escenario favorable para equiparar inspección veterinaria con garantía sanitaria. Los brotes de triquinosis que salpicaron la geografía española en la década de 1870 evidenciaron la existencia de un «contagio animado» en una época prebacteriológica e impulsaron la introducción de mejoras en la inspección alimentaria. En este sentido, la indagación microscópica de los productos de origen porcino imprimió un impulso modernizador a la labor inspectora de los veterinarios, más centrada hasta entonces en vigilar las características organolépticas de carnes y pescados y en advertir fraudes. La introducción del microscopio contó con una aceptación generalizada y marcó una barrera entre las formas válidas e inválidas de realizar el reconocimiento de las carnes. Además, esa manera «tecnológica» de diagnosticar aproximaba la veterinaria a otras profesiones sanitarias de mayor prestigio, al menos en el plano teórico. Entre otras cosas, la aceptación de la triquina como causa exógena de enfermedad contribuyó a que algunos médicos decimonónicos se familiarizasen con la doctrina explicativa del contagio de la mano de los veterinarios. A nivel social, el uso de este instrumento debería prevenir la transmisión al hombre de una enfermedad animal que estaba de actualidad. Y desde el punto de vista político, este proceso, analizado en el presente trabajo desde la óptica barcelonesa, nos deja entrever un contraste entre el afán modernizador de algunos veterinarios catalanes frente a lo que ocurría en otras partes de España.During the second half of the 19th century, Spanish authorities began developing specific programs on the safety of certain foods intended for human consumption. This paper analyses the key features that gave rise to the inclusion of the veterinarian in the administrative structure responsible for safeguarding public health. Among the aspects covered, special focus is put on the relationship between human and animal medicine at a time when growing public alarm in relation to certain zoonoses contributed to shaping the notion of veterinary public health. The appearance of a disease in pigs that was transmissible through the consumption of parasitized meat set the scene for veterinary inspection to be associated with the protection of public health. The outbreaks of trichinosis all over Spain in the 1870's proved the existence of contagium animatum in a pre-bacteriology era, and this led to the introduction of improvements in food inspection. In this sense, microscopic examination of pork products encouraged the modernization of inspection tasks undertaken by veterinarians, which had previously focused on the organoleptic evaluation of meat and fish and on unveiling fraud. The introduction of microscopes was widely accepted and established a watershed between acceptable and unacceptable methods of carrying out the examination of meat. Furthermore, this "technological" method of diagnosis brought veterinary medicine closer to other more prestigious health professions, at least in theory. Among other aspects, the acceptance of trichinae as an exogenous cause of disease contributed to 19th century doctors learning about the idea of pathogenic microorganisms from veterinarians. At a social level, the use of the microscope was seen as a way of preventing the transmission to people of an animal disease that was very much in the public eye at the time. From the political point of view, the process -analysed in this paper from the perspective of veterinarians in Barcelona- allows a glimpse of the contrast between the desire of some Catalan veterinarians to modernize their profession and what was happening in others parts of Spain

Science, progress, and livestock engineering in twentieth century veterinary medicine in Spain

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Spanish veterinarians were faced with reforms that redefined their work. One objective was to promote the transformation of veterinary science in Spanish life, by emphasizing its scientific aspect as evidence of its modernization. Just one formula was applied to support professional interests in the reform and it implied a shift toward two disciplines that enjoyed high social recognition, namely, engineering and medicine. This sociological redefinition focused on the campaign launched by the veterinary press to change the name of the profession

Enfermedades parasitarias como causa de cambio histórico

A partir de enfoques historiográficos diversos, este artículo da una visión generalizada de las enfermedades parasitarias como causa de cambio histórico. La relación entre el hombre y los animales domésticos con la parte física, biológica y social del entorno es clave para entender la ecología de las enfermedades, la cual está inextricablemente ligada con la aparición de "crisis" sanitarias desde los tiempos más remotos

Ciencia y exclusión : el desplazamiento de los albéitares de la veterinaria a través de la prensa especializada en el cuidado animal (1853-1855)

Las intenciones monopolistas de los veterinarios españoles a mediados del siglo XIX tuvieron un importante escollo en la existencia de los albéitares. Los veterinarios justificaron sus aspiraciones por ejercer una función preferente sobre el cuidado animal por la posesión de amplios conocimientos teóricos y de unas capacidades intelectuales abstractas que debían repercutir en una mejora de la praxis veterinaria. La retórica científica era acorde con el clima intelectual de la época, pero no se correspondió con un cambio de hábitos de los clientes ni con el apoyo de los poderes públicos, lo que forzó la búsqueda de otras vías de legitimación social. El presente artículo analiza las dinámicas de inclusión-exclusión que se produjeron en torno al proceso de monopolización de los saberes y de las prácticas veterinarias a mediados del siglo XIX en España. Las estrategias desplegadas por ambos grupos ocupacionales a través de la prensa veterinaria nos ofrecen una perspectiva original: la que se deriva del enfrentamiento entre dos figuras reconocidas legalmente para ejercer la misma función. Sobre la base de esta dicotomía, se estableció una pugna por definir el modelo de relación entre aquellos que pretendían desempeñar un papel rector en la medicina animal y los que, por su mejor encaje en la sociedad de esa época, defendían el mantenimiento de sus formas de vida tradicionales. Los primeros cambios efectivos en la organización de la actividad asistencial no vinieron refrendados por la aceptación social ni por las preferencias de los clientes, sino que estuvieron determinados por postulados estrictamente reglamentarios

Laboratory medicine and the identity change of veterinary medicine in Spain at the turn of the twentieth century

This paper analyses the impact of laboratory medicine on veterinary medicine in Spain at the turn of the twentieth century. It is considered from a perspective that places the laboratory at the centre of a strategy for introducing the ideal of progress into veterinary medicine at a sensitive moment in its history. In the adverse context created by the steady replacement of horses -the principal recipients of veterinary care- by motor vehicles, an awareness grew that the time had come to reinvent the profession. The arrival of experimental veterinary medicine, especially the area linked to bacteriological laboratories, opened the door to explore new prospects for the future and became one of the bases for the discipline's modernisation. A new professional was envisaged to attain this objective, the «scientific laboratory veterinarian», whose knowledge would be based on experimentation and who would master highly specialised technical skills. This vision of a profession in search of prestige would bring to light conflicting interests among the different healthcare professions and would emphasise the importance of adopting patterns of behaviour that led to identification of these new veterinary surgeons with the elite of society

Distributed detection of anomalous internet sessions

Financial service providers are moving many services online reducing their costs and facilitating customers¿ interaction. Unfortunately criminals have quickly found several ways to avoid most security measures applied to browsers and banking sites. The use of highly dangerous malware has become the most significant threat and traditional signature-detection methods are nowadays easily circumvented due to the amount of new samples and the use of sophisticated evasion techniques. Antivirus vendors and malware experts are pushed to seek for new methodologies to improve the identification and understanding of malicious applications behavior and their targets. Financial institutions are now playing an important role by deploying their own detection tools against malware that specifically affect their customers. However, most detection approaches tend to base on sequence of bytes in order to create new signatures. This thesis approach is based on new sources of information: the web logs generated from each banking session, the normal browser execution and customers mobile phone behavior. The thesis can be divided in four parts: The first part involves the introduction of the thesis along with the presentation of the problems and the methodology used to perform the experimentation. The second part describes our contributions to the research, which are based in two areas: *Server side: Weblogs analysis. We first focus on the real time detection of anomalies through the analysis of web logs and the challenges introduced due to the amount of information generated daily. We propose different techniques to detect multiple threats by deploying per user and global models in a graph based environment that will allow increase performance of a set of highly related data. *Customer side: Browser analysis. We deal with the detection of malicious behaviors from the other side of a banking session: the browser. Malware samples must interact with the browser in order to retrieve or add information. Such relation interferes with the normal behavior of the browser. We propose to develop models capable of detecting unusual patterns of function calls in order to detect if a given sample is targeting an specific financial entity. In the third part, we propose to adapt our approaches to mobile phones and Critical Infrastructures environments. The latest online banking attack techniques circumvent protection schemes such password verification systems send via SMS. Man in the Mobile attacks are capable of compromising mobile devices and gaining access to SMS traffic. Once the Transaction Authentication Number is obtained, criminals are free to make fraudulent transfers. We propose to model the behavior of the applications related messaging services to automatically detect suspicious actions. Real time detection of unwanted SMS forwarding can improve the effectiveness of second channel authentication and build on detection techniques applied to browsers and Web servers. Finally, we describe possible adaptations of our techniques to another area outside the scope of online banking: critical infrastructures, an environment with similar features since the applications involved can also be profiled. Just as financial entities, critical infrastructures are experiencing an increase in the number of cyber attacks, but the sophistication of the malware samples utilized forces to new detection approaches. The aim of the last proposal is to demonstrate the validity of out approach in different scenarios. Conclusions. Finally, we conclude with a summary of our findings and the directions for future work

Laboratory medicine and the identity change of veterinary medicine in Spain at the turn of the twentieth century

This paper analyses the impact of laboratory medicine on veterinary medicine in Spain at the turn of the twentieth century. It is considered from a perspective that places the laboratory at the centre of a strategy for introducing the ideal of progress into veterinary medicine at a sensitive moment in its history. In the adverse context created by the steady replacement of horses —the principal recipients of veterinary care— by motor vehicles, an awareness grew that the time had come to reinvent the profession. The arrival of experimental veterinary medicine, especially the area linked to bacteriological laboratories, opened the door to explore new prospects for the future and became one of the bases for the discipline’s modernisation. A new professional was envisaged to attain this objective, the «scientific laboratory veterinarian», whose knowledge would be based on experimentation and who would master highly specialised technical skills. This vision of a profession in search of prestige would bring to light conflicting interests among the different healthcare professions and would emphasise the importance of adopting patterns of behaviour that led to identification of these new veterinary surgeons with the elite of society.HUM2006-12278-C03-03 Spanish Ministry of Education and Scienc

El cardenal Inguanzo (1824 - 1836). Notas para un estudio de su biografía y de su pontificado en Toledo.

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