Supporting navigation accessibility requirements in Web engineering methods

Web accessibility not only guarantees universal user access to the Web, but also provides interesting benefits for Web development. In order to achieve the goal of Web accessibility, an interesting approach is the incorporation of accessibility requirements into current Web engineering methods. This article presents the Accessibility for Web Applications (AWA) approach with the aim of integrating accessibility into Web engineering methods. The paper also discusses the application of the AWA approach to the Object-Oriented Web Solutions (OOWS) engineering method to produce accessible Web applications with a focus on navigational requirements. In order to demonstrate the practical applicability and usefulness of the approach, a proof of concept is described, the results of which indicating the satisfaction of navigation accessibility requirements. With the application of the AWA approach in the model-driven development (MDD) method, previously-defined OOWS models have been extended with the accessibility criteria, providing resources for the required changes in the process.This study has been developed with the support of the MAVIR Research Network (S2009/TIC-1542 [www.mavir.net/]), MULTIMEDICA PROJECT(tin201020644-c03-01) and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the project, PROS-Req TIN2010-19130-C02-02. Co-financing was received from the ERDF.Publicad

UrOAC: Urban Objects in Any-light Conditions

In the past years, several works on urban object detection from the point of view of a person have been made. These works are intended to provide an enhanced understanding of the environ- ment for blind and visually challenged people. The mentioned approaches mostly rely in deep learning and machine learning methods. Nonetheless, these approaches only work with direct and bright light, namely, they will only perform correctly on daylight conditions. This is because deep learning algorithms require large amounts of data and the currently available datasets do not address this matter. In this work, we propose UrOAC, a dataset of urban objects captured in a range of different lightning conditions, from bright daylight to low and poor night-time lighting conditions. In the latter, the objects are only lit by low ambient light, street lamps and headlights of passing-by vehicles. The dataset depicts the following objects: pedestrian crosswalks, green traffic lights and red traffic lights. The annotations include the category and the bounding-box of each object. This dataset could be used for improve the performance at night-time and under low-light conditions of any vision-based method that involves urban objects. For instance, guidance and object detection devices for the visually challenged or self-driving and intelligent vehicles.This work has been supported by the Spanish Government PID2019-104818RB-I00 Grant, co-funded by EU Structural Funds

Transport and Combustion of Firebrands. Final Report of Grants FG-SP-114 and FG-SP-146 Vol. II

A theoretical and experimental study has been carried out on the combustion properties and flight paths of firebrands when they are carried upwards by convective currents and then forwards by the winds. The study has shown that the flight paths of firebrands can be fall decreases continuously as the firebrand burns. Several types of wind tunnels have been developed especially designed to study combustion of firebrands at their final velocity of fall. The study has also show that combustion of firebrands at constant wind speed. The influence of the initial size and initial shape of the firebrands, kind of wood and initial moisture content has been studied, as well as the influence of several types convection columns configurations. Results of these studies enable the calculation of the maximum range of possible fire spread by firebrands of given initial characteristics, once the convective currents above the fire are known as vell as the horizontal wind conditions

Cladobotryum mycophilum as Potential Biocontrol Agent

A study was conducted to explore the efficacy of potential biocontrol agent Cladobotryum mycophilum against different phytopathogenic fungi. The growth rates of 24 isolates of C. mycophilum were determined, and their antagonistic activity was analysed in vitro and in vivo against Botrytis cinerea, Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. radicis-lycopersici, Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. cucumerinum, Fusarium solani, Phytophthora parasitica, Phytophthora capsici, Pythium aphanidermatum and Mycosphaerella melonis. Most isolates grow rapidly, reaching the opposite end of the Petri dish within 72–96 h. Under dual-culture assays, C. mycophilum showed antagonistic activity in vitro against all phytopathogenic fungi tested, with mycelial growth inhibition ranging from 30 to 90% against all the different phytopathogens tested. Similarly, of all the selected isolates, CL60A, CL17A and CL18A significantly (p < 0.05) reduced the disease incidence and severity in the plant assays compared to the controls for the different pathosystems studied. Based on these results, we conclude that C. mycophilum can be considered as a potential biological control agent in agriculture. This is the first study of Cladobotryum mycophilum as a biological control agent for different diseases caused by highly relevant phytopathogens in horticultur

The Role of the university in eco-entrepreneurship: evidence from the eurobarometer survey on attitudes of European entrepreneurs towards eco-innovation

There is an increasing social and political awareness of the importance of sustainable innovations. Strategic partnerships between policy makers, businesses, researchers and citizens are key to developing, implementing and applying eco-innovation, essential for the transition to a competitive green economy. Within this innovation ecosystem, universities can play a central role in creating viable alternative models that are driven by environmental sustainability. Based on evidence from the first survey on Eco-innovation in Europe- ‘The Eurobarometer 315 Survey on Attitudes of European Entrepreneurs towards Eco-Innovation’, the present paper examines the impact of university collaboration on eco-innovating small firms. It also considers how technology push, demand side factors and the regulatory framework, drive eco-innovation in European SMEs. This paper has several implications for managers, as well as for policy makers. For managers, it should be stressed that collaboration with universities is essential to drive all types of eco-innovations. Our findings also suggest that national government should foster cooperation with universities following EU example (eg. European Innovation Partnership in EcoAP), as national policies based on subsidies and fiscal incentives appear to be ineffective

Female leadership in sports clubs

The objective of this study was to determine the type of leadership applied by the directors of amateur sports clubs. This quantitative, descriptive and cross-sectional study was carried out on a sample of 48 directors of sports clubs in total: 23 (47.91%) belonging to collective sports clubs and 25 (52.08%) to individual sports clubs. The study administered the MLQ-X5 Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (45 items). The answers are collected on a Likert scale ranging from 0 (never) to 4 (almost always). The results indicated that the directors opt for a transformational leadership style (3.24), preferably followed by the corrective leadership type (3.18) and almost the same level as the developer type (3.17). The study concluded that the collective sports directors opt for the style of transformational leadership by being proactive and promoting the achievement of extraordinary goals

Narco-celebridad y representaciones de Pablo Escobar en Narcos y Escobar, el patrón del mal : un análisis textual de construcción narrativa desde el personaje

La presente tesis plantea un análisis comparativo de dos productos audiovisuales de consumo masivo inspirados en la vida de la infame celebridad criminal Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, las series en cuestión son Escobar, el patrón del mal de Caracol Televisión emitida por primera vez en las pantallas nacionales durante el año 2012, y Narcos estrenada durante el año 2015 en el catálogo de Netflix Originals, ambas series han sido las producciones más exitosas en torno a la figura de Pablo Escobar en los mercados colombiano y estadounidense respectivamente. El objetivo de esta investigación es comparar los elementos de construcción narrativa del personaje de Pablo Escobar en cada una de las series, preliminarmente se realizó un visionado de ambos productos donde fueron seleccionados fragmentos que estuvieran presentes en ambas y relataran momentos paralelos de la vida de Pablo Escobar, esta selección fue analizada mediante la aplicación del modelo de construcción narrativa desde el protagonista como eje de construcción del relato televisivo (Rodrigo Mesonero-Izquierdo, 2013). Adicionalmente se realizó un análisis de las relaciones de mercado y producto partiendo del marco de la transducción cultural (Uribe-Jongbloed & Espinosa-Medina, 2014) donde se estudiaron los distintos procesos culturales relacionados al comportamiento como productos extranjeros de Narcos en Colombia y Escobar, el patrón del mal en Estados Unidos. A partir del análisis de las distintas dimensiones que componen la figura de Pablo Escobar como celebridad, se propuso como contribución al campo de los estudios de medios una nueva conceptualización denominada narco-celebridad