Automatic database acquisition software for ISDN PC cards and analogue boards

This paper describes an application for automatic speechdatabases acquisition (ADA) developed by the authors in the framework of the EC Telematics Project SpeechDat II. The software is able to work with standard inexpensive PC cards for ISDN lines, as well as Dialogic Boards for analogue telephone lines. Both program versions share a common file format and configuration. Other important characteristics of the recording software are its simple set-up, a fast and flexible configuration of the recording session, the real-time monitoring of calls and disk space, and its proven robustness.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Identificación de módulos asociados a fenotipos patológicos

Trabajo fin de máster en Bioinformática y Biología ComputacionalCopy Number Variations (CNVs) are genomic structural variations frequently observed in healthy individuals, but can also lead to disease. They are the etiological cause of many rare genomic disorders that affect a large number of people in population, constituting a major public health problem. Unlike other small mutations, deleterious CNVs can reach millions of nucleotides containing several genes and other functional DNA regions. Many of these CNVs have yet unknown relationships to the phenotypes observed in patients. Therefore, the identification of the potentially affected molecular and genetical mechanisms in the CNVs and their relation with certain phenotypes in patients with rare deleterious disorders, nowadays, remains as a big challenge for clinical geneticists. Based on different datasets that links phenotypes, patients and genomic loci, two systemic approaches were used to understand the molecular basis that underlie those CNVs. Firstly, a functional analysis of the genes coded in these regions is carried out to realise which are the biological processes affected by the CNVs mutations thus to the phenotypes. Secondly, a network propagation analysis is done to expand the knowledge of the query genes and its interactome context. The results obtained for a cluster of patients and a number of phenotypes of clinical interest are briefly explaine

The Role of heterogeneity in group cooperation

Treballs Finals del Màster d'Economia, Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2020-2021, Tutor: Sergio Lozano PérezMaintaining cooperation in large societies has been a challenging puzzle to economists for decades. Some of the concerning problems our society is facing nowadays like global warming or air pollution stem from the existence of weak local and global cooperation. New policies to promote cooperation involve social mechanisms to reinforce the behaviours needed to extend the public goods. These mechanisms locally address a wide variety of externality problems. However, the increasingly complex interactions in society pose a new challenge. This work aims at contributing to address such a challenge by exploring the effect of peer pressure over individual decisions in social networks. Specifically, based on previous models, we analyse the role played by degree heterogeneity (i.e. diversity of individuals’ number of peers) on PGG scenarios with peer-pressure. Those considerations emphasize how network position causes sensitiveness in the capacity of decision of the agents. Specifically, pressure cost unequally harms the agents in the network, negatively affecting the highly connected ones. This gap in behaviour between highly connected agents and low-connected agents do not favour the model cohesiveness. Our results suggest that heterogeneous connectivity must be considered when designing efficient and egalitarian policy tools to solve problems of externalities. These findings encourage future structural considerations in PGG with peer-pressure

Drone Flight Performance Evaluation Methodology Based on Data Science

Nowadays Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) consist of collaborators for hazardous jobs like deliveries, from commerce to clients, and emergency scenarios, like fire fighting and rescue humanitarian jobs. The pilot’s responsibility has increased as the new requirements settle for new applications, so in this way, they need to have enough capabilities to perform this valuable work. However, this required knowledge, skills, and attitudes not provided in a formal educational institute with an established process. Therefore, there is no method defined to know the level of performance of a Pilot, and this is essential before giving a duty as valuable of delivery. This thesis presents an effort to establish a detailed structured methodology for evaluating a pilot’s ability to coordinate psycho-motor and evaluate this determined pilot’s learning rate in a sequence of flights. Furthermore, to generate a predictive model representing this learning for a specific pilot and give formal evidence of the improvement in the near future and which orientation coordination ability can improve

Fir system identification using a linear combination of cumulants

A general linear approach to identifying the parameters of a moving average (MA) model from the statistics of the output is developed. It is shown that, under some constraints, the impulse response of the system can be expressed as a linear combination of cumulant slices. This result is then used to obtain a new well-conditioned linear method to estimate the MA parameters of a nonGaussian process. The proposed approach does not require a previous estimation of the filter order. Simulation results show improvement in performance with respect to existing methods.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Precise localization for aerial inspection using augmented reality markers

The final publication is available at link.springer.comThis chapter is devoted to explaining a method for precise localization using augmented reality markers. This method can achieve precision of less of 5 mm in position at a distance of 0.7 m, using a visual mark of 17 mm × 17 mm, and it can be used by controller when the aerial robot is doing a manipulation task. The localization method is based on optimizing the alignment of deformable contours from textureless images working from the raw vertexes of the observed contour. The algorithm optimizes the alignment of the XOR area computed by means of computer graphics clipping techniques. The method can run at 25 frames per second.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

New hos-based parameter estimation methods for speech recognition in noisy environments

The problem of recognition in noisy environments is addressed. Often, a recognition system is used in a noisy environment and there is no possibility of training it with noisy samples. Classical speech analysis techniques are based on second-order statistics and their performance dramatically decreases when noise is present in the signal under analysis. New methods based on higher order statistics (HOS) are applied in a recognition system and compared against the autocorrelation method. Cumulant-based methods show better performance than autocorrelation-based methods for low SNRPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Associationism and citizen participation in defense of cultural heritage. The example of the asociación cultural por el patrimonio de Marchena (ACUPAMAR)

En este trabajo plantearemos una línea de debate en torno a la Gestión Cultural y la concienciación ciudadana. Hemos tomado como ejemplo a Marchena (Sevilla), ciudad donde, ante la falta de un modelo de Gestión Cultural desarrollado desde las administraciones públicas, ha sido la propia sociedad la que se ha organizado con el fin de difundir y poner en valor su Patrimonio Cultural. Conscientes de que la Gestión Cultural requiere mucho más esfuerzo social del que hasta hoy se ha invertido, surge una asociación con el objetivo principal de difundir su Patrimonio Cultural y gestionar la iniciativa ciudadana en pro de su pasado. La Asociación Cultural por el Patrimonio de Marchena (ACUPAMAR) es una organización sin ánimo de lucro, multidisciplinar y con estructura asamblearia, que ha reavivado en apenas un año de existencia el interés de la ciudadanía por su Patrimonio y la voluntad política de protegerlo y gestionarlo.In this work we will pose a line of discussion on Cultural Management and citizen awareness. We have taken the example of Marchena (Seville), a city where people has been organized in order to spread and value their Cultural Heritage due to the absence of a model of Cultural Management developed from public institutions. As they are aware of Cultural Management requires so much social effort, it has been created an association with the main objective of spreading their Cultural Heritage and manage citizen initiative in favour of its past. The Asociación Cultural por el Patrimonio de Marchena (ACUPAMAR) is a multidisciplinary and non-profit organisation with an assembly-structure which has revived, in just one year of existence, the interest of citizens in their Heritage and the political will to protect and manage it

Una mirada desde las interacciones entre el docente y los alumnos

Desde el rol de docente o alumno, la educación superior debe ser una experiencia de hombres y mujeres que comparten su historicidad y participan en la coformación de nuevos conocimientos a partir de sus intersubjetividades, permitiendo reconfigurar la cotidianidad a partir de cada una de las acciones. Benedetti (2007) escribe lo siguiente: “Llega un momento en que cualquier realidad se acaba. Y entonces no hay más remedio que volver a inventarla (…), hay que volverla a concebir” (Mario, 2003). Estas palabras, plantean la reflexión sobre la cual puede también sustentarse la responsabilidad permanente que nos compete como docentes, en temas de formación y coformación, sin olvidar que su fundamento está basado en la alteridad, como principio esencial de respeto