Implementation of end-user development success factors in mashup development environments

[EN] The Future Internet is expected to be composed of a mesh of interoperable web services accessed from all over the Web. This approach has been supported by many software providers who have provided a wide range of mash up tools for creating composite applications based on components prepared by the respective provider. These tools aim to achieve the end-user development (EUD) of rich internet applications (RIA); however, most, having failed to meet the needs of end users without programming knowledge, have been unsuccessful. Thus, many studies have investigated success factors in order to propose scales of success factor objectives and assess the adequacy of mashup tools for their purpose. After reviewing much of the available literature, this paper proposes a new success factor scale based on human factors, human-computer interaction (HCI) factors and the specialization-functionality relationship. It brings together all these factors, offering a general conception of EUD success factors. The proposed scale was applied in an empirical study on current EUD tools, which found that today's EUD tools have many shortcomings. In order to achieve an acceptable success rate among end users, we then designed a mashup tool architecture, called FAST-Wirecloud, which was built taking into account the proposed EUD success factor scale. The results of a new empirical study carried out using this tool have demonstrated that users are better able to successfully develop their composite applications and that FAST-Wirecloud has scored higher than all the other tools under study on all scales of measurement, and particularly on the scale proposed in this paper. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This research was partially supported by the European Union co-funded IST projects FAST: Fast and Advanced Storyboard Tools (GA 216048), FI-WARE: Future Internet Core Platform (GA 285248) and FI-CORE: Future Internet - Core (GA 632893). The FI-WARE and FI-CORE projects are part of the European Commission's Futuree Internet Public-Private Partnership (FI-PPP) initiative.Lizcano, D.; López, G.; Soriano, J.; Lloret, J. (2016). Implementation of end-user development success factors in mashup development environments. Computer Standards & Interfaces. 47:1-18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csi.2016.02.006S1184

La protección de datos en terminales y ordenadores de uso público

In this work it is carried out an analysis, search of solutions and later use to introduce a security policy to guarantee users data protection in public terminals or computers with Internet connection. As an example of these there are, terminals placed in universities, cybercafes, Internet access in libraries, free access classrooms in universities, etc., some of them are very extended in Europe. To carry out this investigation, the directives 95/46/CE and 2002/58/EC of European Parliament and of the Council and the Organic Laws 10/1995 and 15/1999 of the Spanish Penal Code have been studied. This kind of environments does not have an explicit legislation with its all characteristics that assures the users privacy. For this development the inconveniences in a transmission medium has been analysed due to the unprotected users data circulation in the local network medium. Subsequently, a study of the deficiencies in the initial configuration in some terminals or computers operating systems, according to the request of being used by multiple users has been carried out. Likewise, the administrator configurations in this kind of environments have also been studied in order to develop some proposals and recommendations, in data privacy and protection. These proposals and recommendations should be adopted in organisms or companies with public terminals or computers to avoid harming this privacy, without the proprietor's consent. It is examined the directives 95/46/CE and 2002/58/CE of the European Parliament and of the Council, taking care of its repercussion in these kind of insecurities. Later, several implanted security policies are exposed to offer different adopted solutions. All of these solutions should be accomplished in every system independently of the hardware, the operating system or the used applications. Finally, it is elaborated some conclusions to indicate the necessity of a directive and laws to regulate the personal data protection in these environments

Identifying and assessing effectiveness of alternative low-effort nitrogen footprint reductions in small research institutions

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Messenger, S., Lloret, J., Galloway, J. N., & Giblin, A. Identifying and assessing effectiveness of alternative low-effort nitrogen footprint reductions in small research institutions. Environmental Research Letters, 16(3), (2021): 035014, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abd9f6.Concern over the ecological damage of excess nitrogen has brought increased attention to the role of research institutions and universities in contributing to this problem. Institutions often utilize the concept of the ecological 'footprint' to quantify and track nitrogen emissions resulting from their activities and guide plans and commitments to reduce emissions. Often, large-scale changes and commitments to reduce nitrogen footprints are not feasible at small institutions due to monetary and manpower constraints. We partnered with managers in the dining and facilities departments at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), a small research institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to develop five low-effort strategies to address nitrogen emissions at the institution using only resources currently available within those departments. Each proposed strategy achieved emissions reductions in their sector and in the overall nitrogen footprint of the MBL. If all modelled strategies are applied simultaneously, the MBL can achieve a 7.7% decrease in its nitrogen footprint. Managers at MBL considered strategies that required no monetary input most feasible. The intersection of carbon and nitrogen emissions also means the modelled strategies had the co-benefit of reducing the MBL's carbon footprint, strengthening the argument for applying these strategies. This paper may serve as a model for similar institutions looking to reduce the ecological impact of their activities.The work of the Nitrogen Footprint Tool Network was supported by Cooperative Agreement No. 83563201 awarded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Stable isotopic evidence of nitrogen sources and C4 metabolism driving the world’s largest macroalgal green tides in the Yellow Sea

© The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 8 (2018): 17437, doi:10.1038/s41598-018-35309-3.During recent years, rapid seasonal growth of macroalgae covered extensive areas within the Yellow Sea, developing the world’s most spatially extensive “green tide”. The remarkably fast accumulation of macroalgal biomass is the joint result of high nitrogen supplies in Yellow Sea waters, plus ability of the macroalgae to optionally use C4 photosynthetic pathways that facilitate rapid growth. Stable isotopic evidence shows that the high nitrogen supply is derived from anthropogenic sources, conveyed from watersheds via river discharges, and by direct atmospheric deposition. Wastewater and manures supply about half the nitrogen used by the macroalgae, fertiliser and atmospheric deposition each furnish about a quarter of the nitrogen in macroalgae. The massive green tides affecting the Yellow Sea are likely to increase, with significant current and future environmental and human consequences. Addressing these changing trajectories will demand concerted investment in new basic and applied research as the basis for developing management policies.This work was supported by the State Key Project of Research and Development Plan (2016YFC1402106)

Long‐term nutrient addition increases respiration and nitrous oxide emissions in a New England salt marsh

© The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Ecology and Evolution 8 (2018): 4958-4966, doi:10.1002/ece3.3955.Salt marshes may act either as greenhouse gas (GHG) sources or sinks depending on hydrological conditions, vegetation communities, and nutrient availability. In recent decades, eutrophication has emerged as a major driver of change in salt marsh ecosystems. An ongoing fertilization experiment at the Great Sippewissett Marsh (Cape Cod, USA) allows for observation of the results of over four decades of nutrient addition. Here, nutrient enrichment stimulated changes to vegetation communities that, over time, have resulted in increased elevation of the marsh platform. In this study, we measured fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) in dominant vegetation zones along elevation gradients of chronically fertilized (1,572 kg N ha−1 year−1) and unfertilized (12 kg N ha−1 year−1) experimental plots at Great Sippewissett Marsh. Flux measurements were performed using darkened chambers to focus on community respiration and excluded photosynthetic CO2 uptake. We hypothesized that N‐replete conditions in fertilized plots would result in larger N2O emissions relative to control plots and that higher elevations caused by nutrient enrichment would support increased CO2 and N2O and decreased CH4 emissions due to the potential for more oxygen diffusion into sediment. Patterns of GHG emission supported our hypotheses. Fertilized plots were substantially larger sources of N2O and had higher community respiration rates relative to control plots, due to large emissions of these GHGs at higher elevations. While CH4 emissions displayed a negative relationship with elevation, they were generally small across elevation gradients and nutrient enrichment treatments. Our results demonstrate that at decadal scales, vegetation community shifts and associated elevation changes driven by chronic eutrophication affect GHG emission from salt marshes. Results demonstrate the necessity of long‐term fertilization experiments to understand impacts of eutrophication on ecosystem function and have implications for how chronic eutrophication may impact the role that salt marshes play in sequestering C and N

Design and development of low cost smart turbidity sensor for water quality monitoring in fish farms

[EN] Turbidity monitoring is necessary in many cases and several sensors have been developed for this purpose. However, in some cases to quantify the turbidity it is not enough and its characterization is necessary. In fish farms, the increase of sedimentary or phytoplanktonic turbidity requires different actions to prevent further damages. For this reason, a sensor able to differentiate between turbidity sources is necessary. In this paper, a turbidity sensor able to distinguish different types of turbidity is designed, developed and calibrated. The sensor is based on the Beer-Lambert law and it uses four LEDs as light sources with different wavelengths. The sensing elements are located at 180° of the light sources and consist of a photodiode and a photoresistor, sensitive to infrared and visible wavelengths respectively. For the calibration process different turbidity sources were employed, Isochrysis galbana, Tetraselmis chuii and sediment. The results show that it is possible to determine the turbidity using the infrared light and to characterize the origin of that turbidity with the red light. An algorithm was created in order to create a method to process the data from each sample to obtain the turbidity, the origin of this turbidity and the concentration of the turbidity source. With this algorithm, we can create a smart turbidity sensor for water quality monitoring. Our main application is focused on monitoring the water input in fish farm facilities; however, this smart sensor will be useful in many other areas.This work has been partially supported by the "Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte", through the "Ayudas para contratos predoctorales de Formacion del Profesorado Universitario FPU (Convocatoria 2014)". Grant number FPU14/02953. This work has been partially supported by the "Conselleria de Educacion, Investigacion, Cultura y Deporte", through the "Subvenciones para la contratacion de personal investigador de caracter (Convocatoria 2017)".Grant number ACIF/2017/069.Parra-Boronat, L.; Rocher-Morant, J.; Escrivá-Perales, J.; Lloret, J. (2018). Design and development of low cost smart turbidity sensor for water quality monitoring in fish farms. Aquacultural Engineering. 81:10-18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquaeng.2018.01.004S10188

ProtoExplorer: Interpretable Forensic Analysis of Deepfake Videos using Prototype Exploration and Refinement

In high-stakes settings, Machine Learning models that can provide predictions that are interpretable for humans are crucial. This is even more true with the advent of complex deep learning based models with a huge number of tunable parameters. Recently, prototype-based methods have emerged as a promising approach to make deep learning interpretable. We particularly focus on the analysis of deepfake videos in a forensics context. Although prototype-based methods have been introduced for the detection of deepfake videos, their use in real-world scenarios still presents major challenges, in that prototypes tend to be overly similar and interpretability varies between prototypes. This paper proposes a Visual Analytics process model for prototype learning, and, based on this, presents ProtoExplorer, a Visual Analytics system for the exploration and refinement of prototype-based deepfake detection models. ProtoExplorer offers tools for visualizing and temporally filtering prototype-based predictions when working with video data. It disentangles the complexity of working with spatio-temporal prototypes, facilitating their visualization. It further enables the refinement of models by interactively deleting and replacing prototypes with the aim to achieve more interpretable and less biased predictions while preserving detection accuracy. The system was designed with forensic experts and evaluated in a number of rounds based on both open-ended think aloud evaluation and interviews. These sessions have confirmed the strength of our prototype based exploration of deepfake videos while they provided the feedback needed to continuously improve the system.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure

Low-Cost System Based on Optical Sensor to Monitor Discharge of Industrial Oil in Irrigation Ditches

[EN] Uncontrolled dumping linked to agricultural vehicles causes an increase in the incorporation of oils into the irrigation system. In this paper, we propose a system based on an optical sensor to monitor oil concentration in the irrigation ditches. Our prototype is based on the absorption and dispersion of light. As a light source, we use Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) with different colours (white, yellow, blue, green, and red) and a photodetector as a sensing element. To test the sensor's performance, we incorporate industrial oils used by a diesel or gasoline engine, with a concentration from 0 to 0.20 mL(oil)/cm(2). The experiment was carried out at different water column heights, 0 to 20 cm. According to our results, the sensor can differentiate between the presence or absence of diesel engine oil with any LED. For gasoline engine oil, the sensor quantifies its concentration using the red light source; concentrations greater than 0.1 mL(oil)/cm(2) cannot be distinguished. The data gathered using the red LED has an average absolute error of 0.003 mL(oil)/cm(2) (relative error of 15.8%) for the worst case, 15 cm. Finally, the blue LED generates different signals in the photodetector according to the type of oil. We developed an algorithm that combines (i) the white LED, to monitor the presence of oil; (ii) the blue LED, to identify if the oil comes from a gasoline or diesel engine; and (iii) the red LED, to monitor the concentration of oil used by a gasoline engine.This work is partially funded by the "Ayudas para contratacion pre-doctoral de Formacion del Profesorado Universitario FPU (Convocatoria 2016)" grant number FPU16/05540. Conselleria de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte with the Subvenciones para la contratacion de personal investigador en fase postdoctoral, grant number APOSTD/2019/04, by the European Union, through the ERANETMED (Euromediterranean Cooperation through ERANET joint activities and beyond) project ERANETMED3-227 SMARTWATIR.Basterrechea-Chertudi, DA.; Rocher-Morant, J.; Parra-Boronat, L.; Lloret, J. (2021). Low-Cost System Based on Optical Sensor to Monitor Discharge of Industrial Oil in Irrigation Ditches. Sensors. 21(16):1-21. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21165449S121211

Testing Existing Prototypes of Conductivity Sensors for Monitoring the Concentration of Organic Fertilizers in Fertigation Systems

[EN] Agricultural production has grown in recent years, increasing the use of Organic Fertilizers (OF). For that reason, the use of these compounds must be controlled in fertigation water. In this paper, we test three prototypes, using different combinations of coils, to determine the amount of OF in the water. A coil is powered by a sine wave of 3.3 peak-to-peak Volts for inducing another coil. The objective of this system is to detect different kinds of problems that can cause incorrect fertilization, which affects the sustainability of agriculture. We present the tests to verify the proper functioning of the prototypes. We test our prototypes by means of different dilutions of OF. The used concentrations of OF are between 0 and 20 g/l. We measure the conductivity for each concentration and the output voltage of our prototypes. The results show that prototype 3 is the one that has the best performance, obtaining 1.47 V of difference between the maximum and minimum output voltage and a good correlation coefficient. Finally, a verification test is carried out; the average error in the different samples tested is 0.2212%.This work has been partially supported by the European Union through the ERANETMED (Euromediterranean Cooperation through ERANET joint activities and beyond) project ERANETMED3-227 SMARTWATIR, by ¿Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte¿, through the ¿Ayudas para contratacion pre-doctoral de Formación del Profesorado Universitario FPU (Convocatoria 2016)¿. Grant number FPU16/05540, and by Conselleria de Educación, Cultura y Deporte with the Subvenciones para la contratación de personal investigador en fase postdoctoral, grant number APOSTD/2019/04.Basterrechea-Chertudi, DA.; Rocher-Morant, J.; Parra-Boronat, L.; Lloret, J. (2020). Testing Existing Prototypes of Conductivity Sensors for Monitoring the Concentration of Organic Fertilizers in Fertigation Systems. IARIA XPS Press. 50-55. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/178037S505

Development of Inductive Sensor for Control Gate Opening of an Agricultural Irrigation System

© 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.[EN] The monitoring of water level in the agriculture irrigation channels is essential to control the opening gates of these channels. In this way, WSNs (Wireless Sensor Networks) have high relevance to obtain this kind of data. In this paper, we propose a sensor to measure the depth changes in irrigation channels to control the gates opening. It is connected to an Adafruit Feather HUZZAH based on ESP8266, which allows us to build a mobile edge computing system. The developed sensor is based on two coils. Sinus-wave powers the first one, and the second is induced. The coils are winding over a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) that has high resistance for corrosion and low price. Besides, we use copper wire as a conductive metal. We test two different configurations of coils. P1 has five spires for the powered coil (PC) and ten spires for the induced coil (IC). On the other hand, P2 has 40 spires for the PC and 80 spires for the IC. The two prototypes were coiled in one layer. Then, both sensors are tested using a glass bottle where the water column increased with the target to obtain the information of the depth. In both prototypes, the difference of voltage between the maximum and minimum studied depths is more or less the same, 4.46V for P1 and 4.44V for P2. Nevertheless, during the stabilization test, the P1 showed better adaptation for the turbulences than the P2. The P1 shows an oscillation of 0.48V, where the P2 has a maximum fluctuation of 3.2V.This work has been partially supported by European Union through the ERANETMED (Euromediterranean Cooperation through ERANET joint activities and beyond) project ERANETMED3-227 SMARTWATIR by the Conselleria de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte with the Subvenciones para la contratacion de personal investigador en fase postdoctoral, grant number APOSTD/2019/04, and through the "Ayudas para contratacion predoctoral de Formacion del Profesorado Universitario FPU (Convocatoria 2016)". Grant number FPU16/05540.Basterrechea-Chertudi, DA.; Rocher-Morant, J.; Parra-Boronat, L.; Lloret, J. (2020). Development of Inductive Sensor for Control Gate Opening of an Agricultural Irrigation System. IEEE. 250-255. https://doi.org/10.1109/FMEC49853.2020.9144810S25025