Diseño curricular para la enseñanza del español como L2 en contextos escolares

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Temporal evolution of some mortality indicators: Application to Spanish data

This is an author's accepted manuscript of an article published in: “North American Actuarial Journal"; Volume 16, Issue 3, 2012; copyright Taylor & Francis; available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10920277.2012.10590647[EN] In Spain, as in other developed countries, significant changes in mortality patterns have occurred during the 20th and 21st centuries. One reflection of these changes is life expectancy, which has improved in this period, although the robustness of this indicator prevents these changes from being of the same order as those for the probability of death. If, moreover, we bear in mind that life expectancy offers no information as to whether this improvement is the same for different age groups, it is important and necessary to turn to other mortality indicators whose past and future evolution in Spain we are going to study. These indicators are applied to Spanish mortality data for the period 1981–2008, for the age range 0–99. To study its future evolution, the mortality ratios have to be projected using an adequate methodology, namely, the Lee-Carter model. Con- fidence intervals for these predictions can be calculated using the methodology that Lee and Carter apply in their original article for expected lifetime confidence intervals, but they take into account only the error in the prediction of the mortality index obtained from the ARIMA model adjusted to its temporal series, excluding other sources of error such as that introduced by estimations of the other parameters in the model. That is why bootstrap procedures are preferred, permitting the combination of all sources of uncertainty.Support for the research presented in this paper was provided by a grants from MeyC (Ministerio de Educacio´n y Ciencia, Spain), projects MTM2010-14961 and MTM2008-05152. This article was finished in two research stays at Cass Business School (London) funded by ‘‘Jose´ Castillejo’’ Program, Universitat Polite`cnica de Vale`ncia (PAID-00-12) and the Faculty de Administracio´n y Direccio´n de Empresas. We appreciate this funding and the opportunity to discuss our ideas with faculty and doctoral students Cass Business School.Debón Aucejo, AM.; Martínez Ruiz, F.; Montes, F. (2012). Temporal evolution of some mortality indicators: Application to Spanish data. North American Actuarial Journal. 16(3):364-377. https://doi.org/10.1080/10920277.2012.10590647S36437716

On the analysis of the fractal basins of escape in the N‐body ring problem

This article summarizes the results of a numerical investigation of the phenomenon of escape in the N‐body ring configuration, focusing on the scenarios that result for N = 5, 6, 7, 8 peripheral bodies. There is a critical value of the Jacobi constant of the system such that for smaller values, the potential well opens and test particles may leave the potential through any of its N openings. By means of a surface of section, we show the results of the computation of the basins of escape towards the different directions of escape, analyzing the structures that appear in them

User-Guided System to Generate Spanish Popular Music

[EN]The automatic generation of music is an emerging field of research that has attracted wide attention in Computer Science. Additionally, the interaction between users and machines is nowadays very present in our daily lives, and influences fields such as Economy, Sports or Arts. Following this approach, this work develops an intelligent system that generates melodies based on Spanish popular music and some indications of the users through an interface. The system creates a melody by learning from the corpus selected through a Markov model, which is also influenced by the users’ preferences. Several experiments were carried out to evaluate the musical quality and the usefulness of the system to interact with the user and generate music. The results of the evaluation shows that the proposal is able to generate music adapted to the style standards of Spanish popular music and to the users’ indications

Checking unimodality using isotonic regression: an application to breast cancer mortality rates

In some diseases it is well-known that a unimodal mortality pattern exists. A clear example in developed countries is breast cancer, where mortality increased sharply until the nineties and then decreased. This clear unimodal pattern is not necessarily applicable to all regions within a country. In this paper, we develop statistical tools to check if the unimodality pattern persists within regions using order restricted inference. Break points as well as confidence intervals are also provided. In addition, a new test for checking monotonicity against unimodality is derived allowing to discriminate between a simple increasing pattern and an up-then-down response pattern. A comparison with the widely used joinpoint regression technique under unimodality is provided. We show that the joinpoint technique could fail when the underlying function is not piecewise linear. Results will be illustrated using age-specific breast cancer mortality data from Spain in the period 1975-2005.This work has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (project MTM 2011-22664 jointly sponsored with Feder grants, project MTM 2012-37129 and project MTM2014-51992-R). The work has been also partially supported by the Health Department of Navarre Government (Project 113, Res. 2186/2014)

Evaluación, por tratamiento digital de imágenes, del deterioro de monumentos. Metodología

In this work a methodology is proposed for data processing, integrating the techniques of digital images processing and the analytical capacity of graphical referencing systems and relational databases, in relation with the monuments. The images are generated using the digital image processing and they are included into a graphical data processing systems associated with a database containing the characteristics of the ashars or constituent elements. By combination of the images with the database induced properties the information is processed. The results are thematic maps that we save such as images. These maps are layers of new information (deduced levels). The elaboration of these maps allows attacking the problems of the restoration, renovation or treatment of the different monumental spaces on a global way, paying special attention on the most gravely affected areas.En este trabajo se propone una metodología para el tratamiento de la información, integrando las técnicas de proceso digital de imágenes, la capacidad de análisis de los sistemas de referenciación gráfica y las bases de datos relacionales, referidas a monumentos. Para ello se elaboran las imágenes base por algoritmos propios del proceso digital, incluyendo aquellas en una aplicación especifica que asocia cada capa a una base de datos con las propiedades petrofísicas, hídricas, etc., o bien entre si, dando lugar a mapas temáticos. La generación de estos mapas permite abordar los problemas de restauración, rehabilitación o tratamiento de los diferentes espacios monumentales de forma global, con incidencia especial en las zonas más afectadas

Organ-Dedicated Molecular Imaging Systems

[EN] In this review, we will cover both clinical and technical aspects of the advantages and disadvantages of organ specific (dedicated) molecular imaging (MI) systems, namely positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed tomography, including gamma cameras. This review will start with the introduction to the organ-dedicated MI systems. Thereafter, we will describe the differences and their advantages/disadvantages when compared with the standard large size scanners. We will review time evolution of dedicated systems, from first attempts to current scanners, and the ones that ended in clinical use. We will review later the state of the art of these systems for different organs, namely: breast, brain, heart, and prostate. We will also present the advantages offered by these systems as a function of the special application or field, such as in surgery, therapy assistance and assessment, etc. Their technological evolution will be introduced for each organ-based imager. Some of the advantages of dedicated devices are: higher sensitivity by placing the detectors closer to the organ, improved spatial resolution, better image contrast recovery (by reducing the noise from other organs), and also lower cost. Designing a complete ring-shaped dedicated PET scanner is sometimes difficult and limited angle tomography systems are preferable as they have more flexibility in placing the detectors around the body/organ. Examples of these geometries will be presented for breast, prostate and heart imaging. Recently achievable excellent time of flight capabilities below 300-ps full width at half of the maximum reduce significantly the impact of missing angles on the reconstructed images.This work was supported in part by the European Research Council through the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under Grant 695536, in part by the EU through the FP7 Program under Grant 603002, and in part by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad through PROSPET (DTS15/00152) funded by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad under Grant TEC2016-79884-C2-1-R.González Martínez, AJ.; Sánchez, F.; Benlloch Baviera, JM. (2018). Organ-Dedicated Molecular Imaging Systems. IEEE Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences. 2(5):388-403. https://doi.org/10.1109/TRPMS.2018.2846745S3884032

Analysis of the escape in systems with four exit channels

In this paper, we have performed a numerical investigation of the escape of a particle from two different dynamical systems with the same number of exit channels. We have chosen specific values of the parameters of the systems so that the openings of the potential well in both systems are approximately of the same size. We have found that, in the galactic system, the distribution of the times of escape follows a sequential pattern that has never been detected before. Moreover, we have proved that this pattern is directly related to the geometry of the stable manifolds to the Lyapunov orbits located at the openings of the potential. Finally, we have shown that the different nature of the two systems affects the way the escape occurs, due to the difference in the geometry of the manifolds to the Lyapunov orbits in both systems

Antioxidant starch films containing sunflower hull extracts

[EN] This study exploits sunflower hulls that are by-product from food industry for the extraction of valuable antioxidant compounds that can be used to produce antioxidant food packaging material based on starch. Fast and easy methanolic extraction of milled hulls resulted in an antioxidant extract with 137 mg GAE/100 g hulls and an antioxidant activity against DPPH* with an EC50 value of 73.5 mg raw hull material/ mg DPPH* and chlorogenic acid as main active compound. Already low amounts of extracts (1-6%) were sufficient to produce compression molded starch-glycerol films with antioxidant capacity without the loss of barrier properties. Films with the highest content of antioxidant extract showed the highest antioxidant activity and the lowest oxygen and water vapor permeability. These films were tough but less stretchable. A potential industrial use of these starch films could be in antioxidant packaging as a very thin layer in multilayer food packaging as oxygen barrier and antioxidant capacity.This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council Formas [2015-00550] and by the project AGL2016-76699-R from Spanish Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia. The authors would like to acknowledge Grefusa (Alzira, Spain) for the donated sunflower hull waste.Menzel, C.; González Martínez, MC.; Chiralt, A.; Vilaplana, F. (2019). Antioxidant starch films containing sunflower hull extracts. Carbohydrate Polymers. 214:142-151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbpol.2019.03.022S14215121