Video-based assistance system for training in minimally invasive surgery

In this paper, the development of an assisting system for laparoscopic surgical training is presented. With this system, we expect to facilitate the training process at the first stages of training in laparoscopic surgery and to contribute to an objective evaluation of surgical skills. To achieve this, we propose the insertion of multimedia contents and outlines of work adapted to the level of experience of trainees and the detection of the movements of the laparoscopic instrument into the monitored image. A module to track the instrument is implemented focusing on the tip of the laparoscopic tool. This tracking method does not need the presence of artificial marks or special colours to distinguish the instruments. Similarly, the system has another method based on visual tracking to localize support multimedia content in a stable position of the field of vision. Therefore, this position of the support content is adapted to the movements of the camera or the working area. Experimental results are presented to show the feasibility of the proposed system for assisting in laparoscopic surgical training

Modelo vectorial como apoyo a la compra y venta de acciones del mercado de la bolsa de valores de Colombia

95 páginasEn este trabajo se presenta una solución de apoyo en la decisión de compra o venta para aquellas personas que tienen o administran inversiones en el mercado de renta variable de la Bolsa de Valores de Colombia (BVC), sin embargo se realizó un enfoque especial en la acción de una de las compañías más líquidas de este mercado, la de Ecopetrol. La solución consiste en un modelo basado en cuatro indicadores financieros, los cuales se seleccionaron gracias a una encuesta realizada a expertos. Los indicadores seleccionados fueron las bandas de Bollinger, el MACD (Convergencia/Divergencia del Promedio Móvil), el RSI (Índice de Fuerza relativa) y el oscilador estocástico. Dicho cuestionario fue útil no solo para encontrar la mejor combinación de indicadores, sino también para verificar la validez de un modelo que se basaría únicamente en un análisis técnico. A medida que se cierra la acción dentro de una cierta periodicidad preestablecida, el modelo toma el valor a través de la plataforma Bloomberg en tiempo real y calcula un pronóstico del próximo precio a través de una red neuronal además del valor de los cuatro indicadores, para posteriormente tomar una posición de venta, compra o neutra frente a la tendencia identificada por medio de los indicadores implementados. Adicionalmente se utilizaron dos tipos de redes neuronales; máquina de vector soporte y ART (Adaptative Resonance Theory) como apoyo y validación en la decisión final que sugiere el modelo. Se implementó un administrador de portafolio digital que funciona a través de una estrategia de negociación que es definida por un analista o el inversionista de acuerdo con el comportamiento de cada acción, sin embargo el modelo por defecto tiene implementada la estrategia usada para la acción de Ecopetrol. Esta sección simula la inversión de acuerdo con un monto inicial de capital y va calculando la rentabilidad en cada periodo de tiempo teniendo en cuenta los costos de comisión, la rentabilidad del dinero que se tiene en efectivo y unos niveles de stoploss. Los resultados obtenidos fueron validados a través de Matlab para analizar los niveles medios en los cuales el modelo aconsejó tener en cada posición de negociación. Se utilizaron las distribuciones de los precios en los cuales se habrían cerrado ventas y compras y se compararon con la distribución de todos los precios del activo. En la mayoría de los casos se obtuvo que la distribución con la menor media era la de compra, seguida por la media del precio que tuvo la acción y por último, el valor de la mayor media era el de la venta.PregradoIngeniero(a) Administrativo(a

Human pressures on two estuaries of the Iberian Peninsula are reflected in food web structure

As a result of the increased urban and agricultural development in coastal environments, estuaries are among the most modified and threatened aquatic ecosystems. This study used stable isotopes to examine the effects of human impacts by contrasting the food web structures of two Iberian estuaries exposed to different degrees of human pressure. More complex feeding pathways were found in the more altered estuary (Guadalquivir). Greater spread among species along the carbon axis suggests that the primary consumers exploit organic matter with various origins, whereas different nitrogen signals of the secondary consumers suggest that they feed on different suites of prey. In contrast, the similar isotopic signals of secondary consumers in the relatively little influenced estuary (Guadiana) suggests similarity in diet composition and feeding on the same organic matter sources. Understanding trophic interactions in estuaries is vital for defining proper management and conservation, and the preliminary data provided here are one step in this direction

A Framework to Evaluate Software Developer’s Productivity The VALORTIA Project

Currently, there is a lack in companies developing software in relation to assessing their staff’s productivity before executing software projects, with the aim of improving effectiveness and efficiency. QuEF (Quality Evaluation Framework) is a framework that allows defining quality management tasks based on a model. The main purpose of this framework is twofold: improve an entity’s continuous quality, and given a context, decide between a set of entity’s instances on the most appropriate one. Thus, the aim of this paper is to make this framework available to evaluate productivity of professionals along software development and select the most appropriate experts to implement the suggested project. For this goal, Valortia platform, capable of carrying out this task by following the QuEF framework guidelines, is designed. Valortia is a platform to certify users' knowledge on a specific area and centralize all certification management in its model by means of providing protocols and methods for a suitable management, improving efficiency and effectiveness, reducing cost and ensuring continuous quality.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2013-46928-C3-3-

La administración electrónica en los municipios de Toluca y Metepec, Estado de México

This paper attempts to conceptualize the elements and characteristics of electronic management in order to analyze progress in two municipalities of the State of Mexico. We argue that electronic management allows for the optimization of service provision, improves access to information, generates economies of scale and reduces the unit cost of each government operation, improving citizen response capacity. From the comparison between both cases, we conclude that there has been important progress but there is still much that can be done to improve the link between thecitizen and public administration.    El trabajo busca conceptualizar la administración electrónica, sus elementos y características para analizar los avances de dos municipios del Estado de México. Se argumenta que la administración electrónica permite la optimización en la prestación de los servicios, mejora el acceso a la información, genera economías de escala y reduce el costo unitario de cada operación del gobierno, mejorando la capacidad de respuesta a losciudadanos. De la comparación de ambos casos, se concluye que han existido avances importantes pero que aun queda mucho por hacer para mejorar, por esta vía, la vinculación entre el ciudadano y la administración pública.  

Software engineering 2.0: a social global repository based on semantic annotation and social web for knowledge management

Proceedings of: First World Summit on the Knowledge Society, (WSKS 2008), September 24-26, 2008, Athens (Greece)The effective management of the software development process has become an essential for business survival in an ever more competitive industry. In order to gain business strengths from the development process, organizations need to carry out software development in the most efficient manner possible, avoiding redundancy and time losses. This paper presents an architecture which combines the strengths of two technologies, Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web, as a solution to reuse and extrapolate knowledge and software products across projects and organizations.Publicad

Una nueva subespecie de Moricandia moricandioides (Boiss.) Heywood (Brassicaceae).

A new subspecies of Moricandia moricandioides (Boiss.) Heywood (Brassicaceae). Palabras clave: Moricandia, Brassicaceae, Murcia, España.Key words: Moricandia, Brassicaceae, Murcia, Spain

SOLAR: Social Link Advanced recommendation system

In today’s information society, precise descriptions of the massive volume of online content available are crucial for responding to user needs adequately and efficiently. The Semantic Web Paradigm has recently advanced across many domains for the assignment of metadata to Internet content, in order to define it with explicit, machine-readable meaning. This content has become so extensive that it must be refined according to user preferences to avoid information overload. The current paper proposes a framework for the association of semantic data to webpage links based on a specific domain ontology, additionally permitting the user to express his opinion regarding his emotions about the content of the link. This data is further exploited to suggest additional links to the user, based on the semantic metadata and the level of user satisfaction with previously viewed content. A comprehensive evaluation of the tool has demonstrated a high level of user satisfaction with the features of the system.This work is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism, and Commerce under the project SONAR (TSI-340000-2007-212), GODO2 (TSI-020100-2008-564) and SONAR2 (TSI-020100-2008-665), under the PIBES project of the Spanish Committee of Education & Science (TEC2006-12365-C02-01) and the MID-CBR project of the Spanish Committee of Education & Science (TIN2006-15140-C03-02)

Methods and Tools for Objective Assessment of Psychomotor Skills in Laparoscopic Surgery

Training and assessment paradigms for laparoscopic surgical skills are evolving from traditional mentor–trainee tutorship towards structured, more objective and safer programs. Accreditation of surgeons requires reaching a consensus on metrics and tasks used to assess surgeons’ psychomotor skills. Ongoing development of tracking systems and software solutions has allowed for the expansion of novel training and assessment means in laparoscopy. The current challenge is to adapt and include these systems within training programs, and to exploit their possibilities for evaluation purposes. This paper describes the state of the art in research on measuring and assessing psychomotor laparoscopic skills. It gives an overview on tracking systems as well as on metrics and advanced statistical and machine learning techniques employed for evaluation purposes. The later ones have a potential to be used as an aid in deciding on the surgical competence level, which is an important aspect when accreditation of the surgeons in particular, and patient safety in general, are considered. The prospective of these methods and tools make them complementary means for surgical assessment of motor skills, especially in the early stages of training. Successful examples such as the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery should help drive a paradigm change to structured curricula based on objective parameters. These may improve the accreditation of new surgeons, as well as optimize their already overloaded training schedules

Solving the Location Area Problem by Using Differential Evolution

In mobile networks, one of the hard tasks is to determine the best partitioning in the Location Area problem, but it is also an important strategy to try to reduce all the involved management costs. In this paper we present a new approach to solve the location management problem based on the Location Area partitioning, as a cost optimization problem. We use a Differential Evolution based algorithm to find the best configuration to the Location Areas in a mobile network. We try to find the best values for the Differential Evolution parameters as well as define the scheme that enables us to obtain better results, when compared to classical strategies and to other authors’ results. To obtain the best solution we develop four distinct experiments, each one applied to one Differential Evolution parameter. This is a new approach to this problem that has given us good results