Reviewers' ratings and bibliometric indicators: hand in hand when assessing over research proposals?

The peer review system has been traditionally challenged due to its many limitations especially for allocating funding. Bibliometric indicators may well present themselves as a complement. Objective: We analyze the relationship between peers' ratings and bibliometric indicators for Spanish researchers in the 2007 National R&D Plan for 23 research fields. We analyze peers' ratings for 2333 applications. We also gathered principal investigators' research output and impact and studied the differences between accepted and rejected applications. We used the Web of Science database and focused on the 2002-2006 period. First, we analyzed the distribution of granted and rejected proposals considering a given set of bibliometric indicators to test if there are significant differences. Then, we applied a multiple logistic regression analysis to determine if bibliometric indicators can explain by themselves the concession of grant proposals. 63.4% of the applications were funded. Bibliometric indicators for accepted proposals showed a better previous performance than for those rejected; however the correlation between peer review and bibliometric indicators is very heterogeneous among most areas. The logistic regression analysis showed that the main bibliometric indicators that explain the granting of research proposals in most cases are the output (number of published articles) and the number of papers published in journals that belong to the first quartile ranking of the Journal Citations Report. Bibliometric indicators predict the concession of grant proposals at least as well as peer ratings. Social Sciences and Education are the only areas where no relation was found, although this may be due to the limitations of the Web of Science's coverage. These findings encourage the use of bibliometric indicators as a complement to peer review in most of the analyzed areas

Towards Openness in Biomedical Informatics

Over the last years, and particularly in the context of the COMBIOMED network, our biomedical informatics (BMI) group at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid has carried out several approaches to address a fundamental issue: to facilitate open access and retrieval to BMI resources —including software, databases and services. In this regard, we have followed various directions: a) a text mining-based approach to automatically build a “resourceome”, an inventory of open resources, b) methods for heterogeneous database integration —including clinical, -omics and nanoinformatics sources—; c) creating various services to provide access to different resources to African users and professionals, and d) an approach to facilitate access to open resources from research project

Fast algorithm for H.264/AVC intra prediction based on discrete wavelet transform

H.264 or MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding) is the new world-wide accepted international Standard for video coding, approved by ITU-T and ISO. New Tools have been added to improve the coding efficiency allowing a save up above of 50%, when is compared with previous standards (H.263, MPEG-2 y MPEG-4). From April 2007 there is a new set of profiles known as “all-Intra”. They were born as a sub-set from the “High” profile and have reached a high impact within broadcast industry where the highest quality video formats are demanded. The high efficiency of “all-Intra” mode in H.264 is due to Rate Distortion Optimization (RDO) technique. RDO chooses for each macroblock (MB) the best partition mode and directional prediction. However, the computational burden becomes extremely high due to huge number of prediction-prediction modes that should be evaluated. This article shows a new algorithm for fast partition mode algorithm based on Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). It allows reducing the number of candidate modes to those which are strictly defined for each partition. By using the local 2D-DWT over each MB, information of the homogeneity is obtained. It is got from multiresolution analysis of the transformed coefficients in each sub-band. This way it is easier to classify quickly the optimum partition mode avoiding the exhaustive seek made by RDO

Secure Geographic Routing in Ad Hoc and Wireless Sensor Networks

Security in sensor networks is one of the most relevant research topics in resource constrained wireless devices and networks. Several attacks can be suffered in ad hoc and wireless sensor networks (WSN), which are highly susceptible to attacks, due to the limited resources of the nodes. In this paper, we propose innovative and lightweight localization techniques that allow for intrusion identification and isolation schemes and provide accurate location information. This information is used by our routing protocol which additionally incorporates a distributed trust model to prevent several routing attacks to the network. We finally evaluate our algorithms for accurate localization and for secure routing which have been implemented and tested in real ad hoc and wireless sensor networks

Architectures for Future Media Internet

Among the major reasons for the success of the Internet have been the simple networking architecture and the IP interoperation layer. However, the traffic model has recently changed. More and more applications (e.g. peerto-peer, content delivery networks) target on the content that they deliver rather than on the addresses of the servers who (originally) published/hosted that content. This trend has motivated a number of content-oriented networking studies. In this paper we summarize some the most important approache

Disclosure of temporary exposures as permanent website applications through the patrimonial survey

In a context of web application in the field of the dissemination of cultural heritage, this article advances in a methodology for the optimization of points clouds obtained through the technology of Laser Scanner (TLS). Identifying the potential of TLS surveys as interactive models that allow the cultural heritage to be perpetuated over time. This point cloud optimization is developed with free software, focusing its exploitation on an interactive web application, which has made it possible to convert two temporary museum exhibitions into permanent exhibitions in virtual format. Developed in conjunction with the Museu d’Història de la Ciutat de Barcelona. The case study focuses on the Palau Reial Major, Gothic style, formed by the chapel of Santa Àgata (built in 1302, on the Roman wall) and Saló del Tinell (built between 1359 and 1370, on the Roman remains). Located in the Plaça del Rei, in the old town of Barcelona. In this application is very important the visual impact, it requires to represent a faithful model of the interior of the building, from the point of view of color and lighting, avoiding the transparencies of the model through a dense cloud of dots, without occlusions, this requires a great quantity of positions. This implies a clear methodology, using different techniques such as photographic proyection, given the complexity of lighting of the building, as much for the artificial lighting as for the lighting of the stained glass. In this process, there were 84 positions that provide greater density of points, which are optimized with free programs. The temporary exhibitions of the case studies, elaborated by the MUHBA in the Saló del Tinell are:Postprint (published version

Subjective quality assessment in stereoscopic video based on analyzing parallax and disparity

Disparity may cause visual discomfort. Pairs of video sequences with different levels of parallax, both negative and positive, were presented together to the observers. The observers evaluated the cases in which visual discomfort occurred after visualizing the transition on each pair

Proposal for Characterization of 3DTV Video Sequences Describing Parallax Information

Recommendations such as P.910 suggests parameters TI (temporal information) and SI (spatial information) for characterizing video sequences for quality assessment. In this paper, we suggest two additional parameter based on disparity called SPI (spatial parallax information) and TPI (temporal parallax information) to characterize 3DTV video sequences for this purpose

Insertion of impairments in test video sequences for quality assessment based on psychovisual characteristics

Assessing video quality is a complex task. While most pixel-based metrics do not present enough correlation between objective and subjective results, algorithms need to correspond to human perception when analyzing quality in a video sequence. For analyzing the perceived quality derived from concrete video artifacts in determined region of interest we present a novel methodology for generating test sequences which allow the analysis of impact of each individual distortion. Through results obtained after subjective assessment it is possible to create psychovisual models based on weighting pixels belonging to different regions of interest distributed by color, position, motion or content. Interesting results are obtained in subjective assessment which demonstrates the necessity of new metrics adapted to human visual system

RESTOS HUMANOS PREHISTÓRICOS DE LOS «TAJOS DE CACÍN» (ALHAMA DE GRANADA)

Los restos óseos, objeto de este artículo, proceden de dos sepulturas halladas fortuitamente en la zona conocida como "Tajos de Cacín", en las cercanías del "Cortijo Bartolo", en el término municipal de Alhama de Granada