ANÁLISIS DE LAS ACTITUDES DE LOS ESTUDIANTES HACIA LAS HERRAMIENTAS INFORMÁTICAS DE TRADUCCIÓN ASISTIDA

Students show an acquired and relatively durable disposition to evaluate computer technology in general, and Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) tools in particular, and to behave accordingly. However, some of these attitudinal patterns which have been detected in students can negatively interfere in their learning performance. Thus, developing a positive attitude towards using CAT tools in translation students constitutes a desirable objective for any university program in this field.  The results of a survey research about the cognitive, affective and behavioural factors of this particular attitude in translation students from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain) are presented. The aim of this study is to analyse students’ attitudinal components in detail, in order to detect those aspects which need more attention and to anticipate CAT-related learning difficulties. Finally, pathways of promoting a positive attitudinal change are introduced.El artículo analiza la predisposición —relativamente duradera— que los alumnos de traducción muestran hacia las herramientas de la traducción asistida por ordenador (TAO). Estas herramientas son evaluadas de forma sesgada por los estudiantes, lo que tiene consecuencias en su utilización. Se observa cómo algunos de estos patrones actitudinales interfieren negativamente en el rendimiento del aprendizaje. Es por ello un objetivo deseable de todo programa de formación en este área desarrollar una actitud positiva en los futuros traductores hacia la incorporación y aprovechamiento de estas herramientas.  Con  este  fin, se  presenta  un  análisis  de  los  componentes  actitudinales cognitivos,  afectivos  y  conductuales  hacia  las  herramientas  de TAO  predominantes entre los estudiantes de la FTI de la Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Los resultados, obtenidos mediante encuesta, contribuirán a mejorar la evaluación de los aspectos determinantes en los que es necesario incidir en el aula y a anticipar posibles dificultades de aprendizaje. Como conclusión se presentan estrategias que favorecen un cambio de actitudes

Impacts of Use and Abuse of Nature in Catalonia with Proposals for Sustainable Management

This paper provides an overview of the last 40 years of use, and in many cases abuse, of the natural resources in Catalonia, a country that is representative of European countries in general, and especially those in the Mediterranean region. It analyses the use of natural resources made by mining, agriculture, livestock, logging, fishing, nature tourism, and energy production and consumption. This use results in an ecological footprint, i.e., the productive land and sea surface required to generate the consumed resources and absorb the resulting waste, which is about seven times the amount available, a very high number but very similar to other European countries. This overexploitation of natural resources has a huge impact on land and its different forms of cover, air, and water. For the last 25 years, forests and urban areas have each gained almost 3% more of the territory at the expense of agricultural land; those municipalities bordering the sea have increased their number of inhabitants and activity, and although they only occupy 6.7% of the total surface area, they account for 43.3% of the population; air quality has stabilized since the turn of the century, and there has been some improvement in the state of aquatic ecosystems, but still only 36% are in good condition, while the remainder have suffered morphological changes and different forms of nonpoint source pollution; meanwhile the biodiversity of flora and fauna remains still under threat. Environmental policies do not go far enough so there is a need for revision of the legislation related to environmental impact and the protection of natural areas, flora, and fauna. The promotion of environmental research must be accompanied by environmental education to foster a society which is more knowledgeable, has more control and influence over the decisions that deeply affect it. Indeed, nature conservation goes hand in hand with other social and economic challenges that require a more sustainable vision. Today's problems with nature derive from the current economic model, which is environmentally unsustainable in that it does not take into account environmental impacts. Lastly, we propose a series of reasonable and feasible priority measures and actions related to each use made of the country's natural resources, to the impacts they have had, and to their management, in the hope that these can contribute to improving the conservation and management of the environment and biodiversity and move towards sustainability

A view of the Brazil-Malvinas confluence, March 2015

The encountering of the subtropical Brazil Current (BC) and the subantarctic Malvinas Current (MC) along the western margin of the Argentine Basin forms the Brazil-Malvinas Confluence (BMC), one of the most intense open-ocean fronts in the world ocean and a site for the formation of intermediate water masses. Here, we provide a comprehensive description of the BMC based on physical and biogeochemical data – hydrographic stations, profiling floats and subsurface drifters – gathered in March 2015. We use these data in order to characterize the impinging and outflowing currents and to describe the cross- and along-frontal thermohaline structure. In addition, we compare the in-situ measurements with both climatological data and the Mercator Ocean eddy-resolving reanalysis. The hydrographic sections illustrate the contrasting properties between the two western boundary currents: warm, salty, nutrient- and oxygen-poor oligotrophic subtropical waters carried southward by the BC and the cold, fresh, oxygen- and nutrient-rich subantarctic waters carried northward by the MC. The frontal system is also characterized by the presence of thermohaline intrusions, with the cross-frontal gradients and along-front velocities sharpening as the colliding currents shape the frontal system. We also observe brackish waters spreading on top of the frontal jet as a result of both the confluence dynamics and off-shelf advection favored by north-easterly winds. These low-salinity waters are positively correlated with surface ageostrophic speeds over the frontal jet. The cruise data illustrates the high regional and mesoscale variability as compared with climatological conditions, and further document the submesoscale subsurface complexity, which is not properly captured by available operational models.Fil: Orúe Echevarría, Dorleta. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Ciencias del Mar; EspañaFil: Pelegrí, Josep L.. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Ciencias del Mar; EspañaFil: Alonso González, Iván J.. Oceomic, Marine Bio And Technology S.L; EspañaFil: Benítez Barrios, Verónica M.. Oceomic, Marine Bio And Technology S.L; EspañaFil: Emelianov, Mikhail. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Ciencias del Mar; EspañaFil: García Olivares, Antonio. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Ciencias del Mar; EspañaFil: Gasser i Rubinat, Marc. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Ciencias del Mar; EspañaFil: De La Fuente, Patricia. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Ciencias del Mar; EspañaFil: Herrero, Carmen. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Ciencias del Mar; EspañaFil: Isern Fontanet, Jordi. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Ciencias del Mar; EspañaFil: Masdeu Navarro, Marta. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Ciencias del Mar; EspañaFil: Peña Izquierdo, Jesús. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Ciencias del Mar; EspañaFil: Piola, Alberto Ricardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera; ArgentinaFil: Ramírez Garrido, Sergio. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Ciencias del Mar; EspañaFil: Rosell Fieschi, Miquel. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Ciencias del Mar; EspañaFil: Salvador, Joaquín. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Ciencias del Mar; EspañaFil: Saraceno, Martin. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera; Argentina. Universidad de Barcelona; EspañaFil: Valla, Daniel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Ciencias de la Atmósfera y los Océanos; ArgentinaFil: Vallès Casanova, Ignasi. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Ciencias del Mar; EspañaFil: Vidal, Montserrat. Universidad de Barcelona; Españ

Impacts of Use and Abuse of Nature in Catalonia with Proposals for Sustainable Management

This paper provides an overview of the last 40 years of use, and in many cases abuse, of the natural resources in Catalonia, a country that is representative of European countries in general, and especially those in the Mediterranean region. It analyses the use of natural resources made by mining, agriculture, livestock, logging, fishing, nature tourism, and energy production and consumption. This use results in an ecological footprint, i.e., the productive land and sea surface required to generate the consumed resources and absorb the resulting waste, which is about seven times the amount available, a very high number but very similar to other European countries. This overexploitation of natural resources has a huge impact on land and its different forms of cover, air, and water. For the last 25 years, forests and urban areas have each gained almost 3% more of the territory at the expense of agricultural land; those municipalities bordering the sea have increased their number of inhabitants and activity, and although they only occupy 6.7% of the total surface area, they account for 43.3% of the population; air quality has stabilized since the turn of the century, and there has been some improvement in the state of aquatic ecosystems, but still only 36% are in good condition, while the remainder have suffered morphological changes and different forms of nonpoint source pollution; meanwhile the biodiversity of flora and fauna remains still under threat. Environmental policies do not go far enough so there is a need for revision of the legislation related to environmental impact and the protection of natural areas, flora, and fauna. The promotion of environmental research must be accompanied by environmental education to foster a society which is Land 2021, 10, 144 3 of 53 more knowledgeable, has more control and influence over the decisions that deeply affect it. Indeed, nature conservation goes hand in hand with other social and economic challenges that require a more sustainable vision. Today’s problems with nature derive from the current economic model, which is environmentally unsustainable in that it does not take into account environmental impacts. Lastly, we propose a series of reasonable and feasible priority measures and actions related to each use made of the country’s natural resources, to the impacts they have had, and to their management, in the hope that these can contribute to improving the conservation and management of the environment and biodiversity and move towards sustainability.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Efficient plane detection in multilevel surface maps

An automatic system aimed at producing a compact tridimensional description of indoor environments using a mobile 3D laser scanner is described in this paper. The resulting description is made up of a Multi-Level Map (ML map) and a series of planar patches extracted from the map. We propose a novel plane detection algorithm, based on the efficient RANSAC algorithm, that operates directly over the data structures of an ML map and does not need to rely on the low level laser data cloud. The mobile 3D scanner is built from a Hokuyo laser range sensor attached to a 2DOF pan-tilt, which is installed on top of a 3DX Pioneer mobile robot. The 3D spatial information acquired by the laser sensor from different poses is used to build a large single map of the environment using the SLAM 6D library. Experimental results demonstrate that the system described is capable of efficiently building compact and accurate 3D representations of complex large indoor environments at multiple semantic levels.This work has been partially supported by the Research Project TIN2008-06068 funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Gobierno de España, Spain

Obstacle avoidance in underwater glider path planning

Underwater gliders have revealed as a valuable scientific platform, with a growing number of successful environmental sampling applications. They are specially suited for long range missions due to their unmatched autonomy level, although their low surge speed make them strongly affected by ocean currents. Path planning constitute a real concern for this type of vehicle, as it may reduce the time taken to reach a given waypoint or save power. In such a dynamic environment it is not easy to find an optimal solution or any such requires large computational resources. In this paper, we present a path planning scheme with low computational cost for this kind of underwater vehicle that allows static or dynamic obstacle avoidance, frequently demanded in coastal environments, with land areas, strong currents, shipping routes, etc. The method combines an initialization phase, inspired by a variant of the A* search process and ND algorithm, with an optimization process that embraces the physical vehicle motion pattern. Consequently, our method simulates a glider affected by the ocean currents, while it looks for the path that optimized a given objective. The method is easy to configure and adapt to various optimization problems, including missions in different operational scenarios. This planner shows promising results in realistic simulations, including ocean currents that vary considerably in time, and provides a superior performance over other approaches that are compared in this paper

Integrating robotics software

Abstract — Developing software for controlling robotic systems is costly due to the complexity inherent in these systems. There is a need for tools that permit a reduction in the programming efforts, aiming at the generation of modular and robust applications, and promoting software reuse. The techniques which are of common use today in other areas are not adequate to deal with the complexity associated with these systems. In this work we present CoolBOT, a component oriented framework for programming robotic systems, based on the Port Automata model that fosters controllability and observability of software components. A simple demonstrator outlines the bene ts of using the proposed approach in the development of a robotic application. Index Terms — robotic systems, software components, system integration, code reuse, cognizant failure

Component Software in Robotics

Abstract — Developing software for controlling robotic systems is costly due to the complexity inherent in these systems. There is a need for tools that permit a reduction in the programming efforts, aiming at the generation of modular and robust applications, and promoting software reuse. The techniques which are of common use today in other areas are not adequate to deal with the complexity associated with these systems. In this work we present CoolBOT, a component oriented framework for programming robotic systems, based on the Port Automata model that fosters controllability and observability of software components. A simple demonstrator illustrates the benefits of using the proposed approach in the development of a robotic application. Index Terms — robotic systems, software components, system integration, code reuse, cognizant failure

More about CoolBOT ∗

This document presents an operating version of CoolBOT, a component oriented software framework for programming robotic systems, that was already presented in WAF’2002 [3] when it was at the beginning of its development. CoolBOT has been designed having in mind the idea of programming by integrating software components, in order to reduce the developing effort typically invested when programming robots. CoolBOT also fosters some interesting features, such as asynchronous execution, asynchronous inter communication, data-flowdriven processing, and cognizant failure systems. A simple demonstrator illustrates the benefits of using the proposed approach.