Places of Refuge for Ships in Need of Assistance. Looking for the Best Response

The oil spills, as a result of accidents involving tankers combined with the ambiguities that affect this area of international law, have shed light on the need to take steps aimed at providing places of refuge for ships in need of assistance. In response to these disasters and to the consequences of the oil spills for the marine environment, the International Maritime Organization highlighted access to places of refuge as an issue for consideration. This article analyses the IMO Guidelines and the response of the European Union and the Mediterranean States to this issue.Los vertidos de crudo como consecuencia de accidentes de petroleros junto con las ambigüedades que afectan a este ámbito de Derecho Internacional, han puesto de manifiesto la necesidad de adoptar medidas relativas al acceso a lugares de refugio a buques necesitados de asistencia. De hecho, en respuesta a este tipo de catástrofes y a sus consecuencias sobre medio ambiente marino, la Organización Marítima Internacional destacó el acceso a lugares de refugio como un ámbito prioritario de estudio. Este artículo analiza tanto las Directrices de la OMI como la respuesta de la Unión Europea y los países mediterráneos a esta problemática.Les déversements d’hydrocarbures résultant d’accidents de pétroliers ainsi que les ambiguïtés qui affectent ce domaine du droit international, ont mis en évidence la nécessité d’adopter des mesures en ce qui concerne l’accès aux lieux de refuge pour les navires ayant besoin d’assistance. En fait, en réponse à ces catastrophes et leurs conséquences sur le milieu marin, l’Organisation Maritime Internationale a mis en évidence l’accès aux lieux de refuge en tant que domaine prioritaire d’études. Cet article analyse autan les Directives de l’OMI comme la réponse de l’Union européenne et les pays Méditerranéens à ce problème

Improving data preparation for the application of process mining

Immersed in what is already known as the fourth industrial revolution, automation and data exchange are taking on a particularly relevant role in complex environments, such as industrial manufacturing environments or logistics. This digitisation and transition to the Industry 4.0 paradigm is causing experts to start analysing business processes from other perspectives. Consequently, where management and business intelligence used to dominate, process mining appears as a link, trying to build a bridge between both disciplines to unite and improve them. This new perspective on process analysis helps to improve strategic decision making and competitive capabilities. Process mining brings together data and process perspectives in a single discipline that covers the entire spectrum of process management. Through process mining, and based on observations of their actual operations, organisations can understand the state of their operations, detect deviations, and improve their performance based on what they observe. In this way, process mining is an ally, occupying a large part of current academic and industrial research. However, although this discipline is receiving more and more attention, it presents severe application problems when it is implemented in real environments. The variety of input data in terms of form, content, semantics, and levels of abstraction makes the execution of process mining tasks in industry an iterative, tedious, and manual process, requiring multidisciplinary experts with extensive knowledge of the domain, process management, and data processing. Currently, although there are numerous academic proposals, there are no industrial solutions capable of automating these tasks. For this reason, in this thesis by compendium we address the problem of improving business processes in complex environments thanks to the study of the state-of-the-art and a set of proposals that improve relevant aspects in the life cycle of processes, from the creation of logs, log preparation, process quality assessment, and improvement of business processes. Firstly, for this thesis, a systematic study of the literature was carried out in order to gain an in-depth knowledge of the state-of-the-art in this field, as well as the different challenges faced by this discipline. This in-depth analysis has allowed us to detect a number of challenges that have not been addressed or received insufficient attention, of which three have been selected and presented as the objectives of this thesis. The first challenge is related to the assessment of the quality of input data, known as event logs, since the requeriment of the application of techniques for improving the event log must be based on the level of quality of the initial data, which is why this thesis presents a methodology and a set of metrics that support the expert in selecting which technique to apply to the data according to the quality estimation at each moment, another challenge obtained as a result of our analysis of the literature. Likewise, the use of a set of metrics to evaluate the quality of the resulting process models is also proposed, with the aim of assessing whether improvement in the quality of the input data has a direct impact on the final results. The second challenge identified is the need to improve the input data used in the analysis of business processes. As in any data-driven discipline, the quality of the results strongly depends on the quality of the input data, so the second challenge to be addressed is the improvement of the preparation of event logs. The contribution in this area is the application of natural language processing techniques to relabel activities from textual descriptions of process activities, as well as the application of clustering techniques to help simplify the results, generating more understandable models from a human point of view. Finally, the third challenge detected is related to the process optimisation, so we contribute with an approach for the optimisation of resources associated with business processes, which, through the inclusion of decision-making in the creation of flexible processes, enables significant cost reductions. Furthermore, all the proposals made in this thesis are validated and designed in collaboration with experts from different fields of industry and have been evaluated through real case studies in public and private projects in collaboration with the aeronautical industry and the logistics sector

Determinantes sociais da não-adesão ao tratamento de tuberculose em Buenos Aires, Argentina

El objetivo fue identificar los determinantes individuales y de área de la no adherencia al tratamiento de la tuberculosis (TB) en municipios de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Se realizó un estudio transversal con un modelo jerarquizado. El análisis se llevó a cabo mediante regresión logística múltiple en dos niveles, en base a datos primarios y secundarios. Los varones tuvieron mayor riesgo de no adherencia al tratamiento. La falta de provisión de agua en el hogar aumentó el riesgo de no adherencia. En aquellos hogares cuyo jefe de familia no tenía cobertura de salud también el riesgo de no adherencia fue mayor, al igual que en los pacientes que utilizaron más de un medio de transporte para llegar al centro de salud. En las áreas con mayor proporción de hogares con red de gas natural, mayor proporción de hogares con necesidades básicas instisfechas por la capacidad de subsistencia y mayor proporción de hogares que no tenían inodoros fue mayor el riesgo de no adherencia. Se concluye que los factores sociales y económicos tienen influencia sobre la adherencia al tratamiento, tanto a nivel individual, como de área.This study aimed to identify the individual and environmental determinants of nonadherence to tuberculosis (TB) treatment in selected districts in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, in Argentina. We conducted a cross-sectional study using a hierarchical model. Using primary and secondary data, logistic regression was performed to analyze two types of determinants. The likelihood of nonadherence to treatment was greatest among male patients. The following factors led to a greater likelihood of nonadherence to treatment: patients living in a home without running water; head of household without medical insurance; need to use more than one means of transport to reach the health center; place of residence in an area with a high proportion of households connected to the natural gas network; place of residence in an area where a large proportion of families fall below the minimum threshold of subsistence capacity; place of residence in an area where a high proportion of households do not have flushing toilets and basic sanitation. Our results show that social and economic factors – related to both individual and environmental characteristics – influence adherence to TB treatment.O objetivo deste trabalho foi identificar os determinantes individuais e de área da não-adesão ao tratamento da tuberculose (TB) em municípios de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Foi realizado um estudo transversal com um modelo hierarquizado. A análise dos determinantes foi realizada em dois níveis por meio de análise de regressão logística em dois níveis, com base em dados primários e secundários. Além disso, a falta de abastecimento de água em casa aumentou o risco de não-adesão. Nesses domicílios, cujo chefe de família não tinha a cobertura de saúde, também o risco de não-adesão foi maior, como em pacientes que usaram mais de um meio de transporte para chegar ao centro de saúde. Em áreas com uma maior proporção de domicílios com uma rede de gás natural e com necessidades básicas insatisfeitas para os meios de vida e uma maior proporção de domicílios sem sanitários foi maior o risco de não-adesão. Conclui-se que os fatores sociais e econômicos influenciam a adesão ao tratamento da TB, tanto individualmente como em termos de área.Fil: Herrero, María Belén. Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad; Argentina. Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales. Sede Académica Argentina Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Arrossi, Silvina. Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Ramos, Silvina. Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad; ArgentinaFil: Braga, Jose Ueleres. Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro; Brasi

Biotechnological approaches to increase biomass production in trees

Nutrient use efficiency is one of the factors influencing growth and therefore of high importance for biomass production in trees. Poplar is a model tree widely used for molecular and functional studies and the characterization of transgenic poplars overexpressing structural and regulatory genes involved in glutamine biosynthesis has provided insights on how glutamine metabolism is involved in N economy and biomass production in woody plant models. Numerous studies have shown the relevance of GS isoenzymes in plant development, biomass production, and yield (Cánovas et al. 2006; Castro-Rodríguez et al. 2015). In this communication two examples of functional analysis of plant genes in poplar, and their potential interest for biotechnological approaches are presented (Pascual et al. 2018; Rueda-López et al. 2017). Overexpression of cytosolic NADP+-isocitrate dehydrogenase (ICDH), one of the major enzymes involved in the production of 2-oxoglutarate for amino acid biosynthesis in plants, yields poplar trees with increased growth and enhanced vascular development in young leaves and apical stems. These plants also show an increased expression of genes associated with vascular differentiation and altered amino acids and organic acids content (Pascual et al. 2018). In other study, we observed that overexpression of Dof5, a transcriptional regulator of lignin production and the carbon-nitrogen balance, produced poplar trees with increased growth and biomass production when N availability in the soil is sufficient (Rueda-López et al. 2017). Taken together, these results suggest a close relationship between carbon and nitrogen metabolism and highlights the relevance of glutamine and glutamate biosynthesis in the control of growth and development. Research supported by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and Junta de Andalucía (Grants BIO2015-69285-R, BIO2012-0474 and research group BIO-114).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

The importance of interculturalism in the immigrations policies in Portugal and Spain

A questão central deste artigo refere-se ao lugar do interculturalismo nas políticas de integração e gestão da diversidade produzida pelos imigrantes em Portugal e na Espanha nos primeiros anos do século XXI. Nosso objetivo principal foi conhecer como o interculturalismo, em sua polissemia, ganhou materialidade em avanços e recuos de normas e práticas desenvolvidas por órgãos governamentais visando a gestão da diversidade. Procuramos também conhecer a perspectiva de outros atores sociais, como representantes de associações ligadas ao tema da imigração. A pesquisa que deu origem ao artigo foi desenvolvida com base em pesquisa bibliográfica e documental, entrevistas qualitativas com base em roteiro pré-estruturado e observação direta. Os dados e os argumentos apresentados neste artigo permitem sustentar que se não é a solução definitiva para os problemas de racismos e xenofobia contra imigrantes, o interculturalismo tem sido um avanço no que diz respeito às políticas de imigração e integração do imigrante quando comparada, por exemplo, às políticas baseadas na ideia de assimilação.The central questions this article refers to is the importance of interculturalism in the integration and management policies of the diversity caused by immigration in Portugal and Spain in the early years of the 21st century. Our principal goal is to know how interculturalism, in its polysemy, have got materiality in the practices and rules development of government agencies responsible for diversity management. We have also sort to investigate the perspectives of the other social actors, like associations representatives that have also been working with the subject of immigration. This article stems from a research that had been done on semi structured interviews, bibliography and documental research as well as direct observations. The data and arguments presented in this article maintains that; if isn’t a definite solution for racism and xenophobia problems against immigrants, then interculturalism has advanced when compare with policies based on the assimilation idea.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio