Optimising Humanness: Designing the best human-like Bot for Unreal Tournament 2004

This paper presents multiple hybridizations of the two best bots on the BotPrize 2014 competition, which sought for the best humanlike bot playing the First Person Shooter game Unreal Tournament 2004. To this aim the participants were evaluated using a Turing test in the game. The work considers MirrorBot (the winner) and NizorBot (the second) codes and combines them in two different approaches, aiming to obtain a bot able to show the best behaviour overall. There is also an evolutionary version on MirrorBot, which has been optimized by means of a Genetic Algorithm. The new and the original bots have been tested in a new, open, and public Turing test whose results show that the evolutionary version of MirrorBot apparently improves the original bot, and also that one of the novel approaches gets a good humanness level.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Energy efficiency and integration of urban electrical transport systems: EVS and metro-trains of two real European lines

Transport is a main source of pollutants in cities, where air quality is a major concern. New transport technologies, such as electric vehicles, and public transport modalities, such as urban railways, have arisen as solutions to this important problem. One of the main difficulties for the adoption of electric vehicles by consumers is the scarcity of a suitable charging infrastructure. The use of the railway power supplies to charge electric vehicle batteries could facilitate the deployment of charging infrastructure in cities. It would reduce the cost because of the use of an existing installation. Furthermore, electric vehicles can use braking energy from trains that was previously wasted in rheostats. This paper presents the results of a collaboration between research teams from University of Rome Sapienza and Comillas Pontifical University. In this work, two real European cases are studied: an Italian metro line and a Spanish metro line. The energy performance of these metro lines and their capacity to charge electric vehicles have been studied by means of detailed simulation tools. Their results have shown that the use of regenerated energy is 98% for short interval of trains in both cases. However, the use of regenerated energy decreases as the train intervals grow. In a daily operation, an important amount of regenerated energy is wasted in the Italian and Spanish case. Using this energy, a significant number of electric vehicles could be charged every day

A review of lower-limb wearable exoskeletons for overground rehabilitation

Gait disorders are common among people with neuromuscular impairments –60% of the patients– and generally have a high impact on their quality of life . Lack of physical activity increases the risk of secondary health conditions such as respiratory and cardiovascular complications, bowel/bladder dysfunction, obesity, osteoporosis and ulcers; which can further diminish life expectancy. Therefore, walking recovery is one of the main rehabilitation priorities for patients with a neuromuscular impairment. Wearable exoskeletons are emerging as a revolutionary device for gait rehabilitation, mainly due to both the active participation required from the user promoting physical activity10 and the possibility to work as an assistive device in the community. In fact, the number of research studies during the past 10 years has shown a large increase following the general tendency of rehabilitation robotics . Although wearable exoskeletons are starting to be used in clinical practice, their efficacy is still not clear. This study provides a comprehensive overview on wearable powered exoskeletons for overground rehabilitation without body weight support in people with neuromuscular impairments.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Caracterización físico-química de los morteros y de las pinturas murales de la villa romana de El Ruedo (Almedinilla, Córdoba)

In the present survey, we have proceeded to the analysis of Roman mortars and paintings in two rooms from a villa at El Ruedo (Almedinilla, Cordoba ). They were used different techniques or procedures, such as: analysis granules size, X ray diffraction and scattering reflection. It has been noticed that materials of the different decorations correspond to different compositions provenient from different sites (different canters). As far as colours are concerned, they were established the different parameters which define them in every international system. The scattering reflection techniques allowed us to identify the pigments, emphasizing that their mixtures are usually based upon only in one colour, lighter or darker.En el presente trabajo se ha procedido al análisis de los morteros y pinturas romanas de dos estancias de la villa de El Ruedo (Almedinilla, Córdoba). Se han utilizado diferentes técnicas, tales como análisis granulométrico, difracción de rayos X y reflectancia difusa. Se ha podido constatar que los materiales de las diferentes decoraciones presentan diferentes composiciones y por tanto provienen de sitios diferentes (canteras diferentes). Con respecto al color se han obtenido los parámetros que lo definen en los distintos sistemas internacionales. La técnica de reflectancia difusa ha permitido la identificación de los pigmentos, poniendo de manifiesto que sus mezclas se basan normalmente en uno solo, aclarado o oscurecido

Determinants of tourism destination competitiveness in the countries most visited by international tourists: Proposal of a synthetic index

Tourism destination competitiveness is a multidimensional concept that is widely studied in the academic literature, but multiple factors make its measurement a difficult task. In this article, we design a synthetic index to rank the 80 countries that attract the majority of international tourists by level of tourism competitiveness. In order to do this, we use all of the simple variables included in the 2017 Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index, proposing a new methodology for the construction of this synthetic index, which it solves the problems of aggregation of variables expressed in different measures, arbitrary weighting and duplicity of information; issues that remain unresolved by the TTCI. Likewise, we analyse the most influential dimensions in tourism competitiveness. Air transport infrastructures, cultural resources and ICT readiness are the key dimensions that explain the main disparities.Funding Agency Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness State Research Agency (SRA) European Union (EU) ECO2017-86822-Rinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Single-Board-Computer Clusters for Cloudlet Computing in Internet of Things

The number of connected sensors and devices is expected to increase to billions in the near future. However, centralised cloud-computing data centres present various challenges to meet the requirements inherent to Internet of Things (IoT) workloads, such as low latency, high throughput and bandwidth constraints. Edge computing is becoming the standard computing paradigm for latency-sensitive real-time IoT workloads, since it addresses the aforementioned limitations related to centralised cloud-computing models. Such a paradigm relies on bringing computation close to the source of data, which presents serious operational challenges for large-scale cloud-computing providers. In this work, we present an architecture composed of low-cost Single-Board-Computer clusters near to data sources, and centralised cloud-computing data centres. The proposed cost-efficient model may be employed as an alternative to fog computing to meet real-time IoT workload requirements while keeping scalability. We include an extensive empirical analysis to assess the suitability of single-board-computer clusters as cost-effective edge-computing micro data centres. Additionally, we compare the proposed architecture with traditional cloudlet and cloud architectures, and evaluate them through extensive simulation. We finally show that acquisition costs can be drastically reduced while keeping performance levels in data-intensive IoT use cases.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2017-82113-C2-1-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad RTI2018-098062-A-I00European Union’s Horizon 2020 No. 754489Science Foundation Ireland grant 13/RC/209

La prevención de riesgos y la accidentabilidad laboral : aportaciones desde la psicología social

El accidente y la enfermedad profesional, son, sin duda alguna, dos de los problemas más graves y de mayor relevancia que tiene planteados aún hoy el mundo del trabajo y la sociedad en general, ya que implica altos y variados costes humanos. Ahora bien, la accidentabilidad laboral o la pérdida de la salud no es un problema exclusivo del trabajador y del empresario, sino que ha de ser responsabilidad de la sociedad en su conjunto, pues tanto los accidentes como la salud en el trabajo son temas centrales desde una perspectiva política, económica y social. Desde el punto de vista científico, las líneas de investigación que se han seguido, quizás hayan estado excesivamente dirigidas hacia la restauración o intervención, aunque en la actualidad parecen desplazarse hacia el campo de la prevención._____________________ Professional accidents and diseases are without any doubt two of the main problems in the labour world and the society in general, as it implies a great deal of human lives. Now, the workplace accident rate or the health loss is not simply a problem for employers or employees, it must also be the responsibility of the society as a whole, as both workplace accidents and health are political, economic and social topics. From a scientific point of view, the research approaches have mainly been focussed towards restoration and intervention. However, at present research is developing towards prevention

Tartessian stelae: funerary slabs, ethnic markers or representations of warrior deities?

Este trabajo pretende revisar un aspecto arqueológico singular y controvertido del Bronce Final del SW peninsular: las estelas decoradas o estelas de guerreros. Se analizan distintas hipótesis vertidas sobre estos monumentos, ofreciendo nuevas interpretaciones sobre su contexto arqueológico e iconografía, proponiendo una lectura en clave mítica y religiosa de las imágenes antropomorfas y los símbolos que las acompañan.This work claim to revise one archaeological and singular aspect of the Final Bronze in the South West of the Iberian Peninsula: the decorated steles or steles of warriors. We analyse different hypotheses about these monuments, offering new interpretations about its archaeological contexts and also about its iconography, making one lecture in mythical and religious key about the human images and its symbols