LinkedTV News: designing a second screen companion for web-enriched news broadcasts

LinkedTV (linkedtv.eu) is a European research project that explores how to integrate television content with Web content in meaningful ways through the use of semantic relations for automatically generating links. This report describes the process of design and evaluation of LinkedTV News, a second screen companion for interacting with hyperlinked television in the domain of newscasts. Our primary goal was to obtain knowledge about potential users of LinkedTV’s technology regarding their information needs and an indication of the reception that this technology could have among them. We performed two initial studies: a focus group and a series of interviews with 19 participants. These allowed us to identify our target group, context of use and requirements with which we created the concept of the application. The design of the application was refined through a series of design iterations and a hi-fi prototype was produced. After creating the LinkedTV News prototype, we evaluated it with a task-based study performed with 8 participants of the initial studies who matched the target profile closely. The main characteristics of LinkedTV News are: • It runs on a tablet PC. • It targets users between 25 and 45 years of age; highly-educated; who like to be up to date about the international news; watch news broadcasts regularly; and own a tablet computer or share it with someone in their household. • It proposes the integration of two activities that are related by subject, but currently often take place through different devices and at different times namely, watching TV newscasts and consulting online newspapers and videos. • It allows synchronous as well as asynchronous interaction with the television (interacting with the application while watching TV as well as bookmarking news and postponing their in depth exploration). • It offers two interaction modes represented by two main screens: lean back and lean forward. • The lean back mode presents condensed information related to the objects, places, persons, and events in the news continuously in the form of slides (a paragraph of text illustrated by an image). This mode is automatic and requires no user interaction, although interaction is possible if desired. • The lean forward mode enables in-depth exploration of each news headline in the categories: different sources; opinions of different authors; in-depth articles; timeline; and from the point of view of geo-localized tweets. We showed that LinkedTV News succeeds in fulfilling many of the user needs and requirements identified in the preliminary studies. Overall, there seems to be interest from users in a hypermedia solution for the news that integrates online newspapers and video with television broadcasts. The hi-fi prototype served as a tool for illustrating and sharing a future vision of hyperlinked broadcast news within and outside the LinkedTV project group. We recommend testing the application with a different and larger group of users. If the study proves successful, we recommend considering the production of a service represented by LinkedTV News as a commercial application of the LinkedTV technology

Evidences of evanescent Bloch waves in Phononic Crystals

We show both experimentally and theoretically the evanescent behaviour of modes in the Band Gap (BG) of finite Phononic Crystal (PC). Based on experimental and numerical data we obtain the imaginary part of the wave vector in good agreement with the complex band structures obtained by the Extended Plane Wave Expansion (EPWE). The calculated and measured acoustic field of a localized mode out of the point defect inside the PC presents also evanescent behaviour. The correct understanding of evanescent modes is fundamental for designing narrow filters and wave guides based on Phononic Crystals with defects.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Time and irreversibility in an accelerating universe

It is a remarkable fact that all processes occurring in the observable Universe are irreversible, whereas the equations through which the fundamental laws of physics are formulated are invariant under time reversal. The emergence of irreversibility from the fundamental laws has been a topic of consideration by physicists, astronomers and philosophers since Boltzmann's formulation of his famous "H" theorem. In this paper we shall discuss some aspects of this problem and its connection with the dynamics of space-time, within the framework of modern cosmology. We conclude that the existence of cosmological horizons allows a coupling of the global state of the Universe with the local events determined through electromagnetic processes.Comment: 8 pages, revised version accepted for publication in IJMP D. This paper received an Honorable Mention in the Gravity Research Foundation competition 201

Finite element modeling of energy harvesters: application to vibrational devices

[ES] En este capítulo se presenta el conjunto de ecuaciones de gobierno para estudiar el comportamiento de los materiales activos, los cuales tienen una capacidad intrínseca para acoplar varias ramas de la Física y, en consecuencia, son comúnmente utilizados para la fabricación de cosechadoras. Una vez definidas las ecuaciones, se desarrolla una formulación numérica basada en el método de los elementos finitos para modelar estos materiales. En particular, en este capítulo se estudia la producción de energía a partir de las vibraciones mecánicas presentes en puentes ferroviarios de alta velocidad. Para ello, se hace un repaso de los parámetros básicos de estos puentes, sus vibraciones, frecuencias y las características dinámicas. A continuación, se simulan cosechadores en voladizo fabricados con materiales piezoeléctricos y piezomagnéticos bajo vibraciones mecánicas típicas y se destacan varias conclusiones.[EN] This chapter presents the set of governing equations to study the behavior of active materials, which have an intrinsic ability for coupling several branches of Physics and, consequently, are commonly used for manufacturing harvesters. Once the equations are defined, a numerical formulation based on the finite element method is developed in order to model these materials. In particular, this chapter studies the energy production from mechanical vibrations present in high-speed railway bridges. For this purpose, a review of the basic parameters of these bridges, their vibrations, frequencies and the dynamic characteristics are highlighted. Then, cantilever harvesters made out of piezoelectric and piezomagnetic materials are simulated under typical mechanical vibrations and several conclusions are highlighted.Palma, R.; Pérez-Aparicio, JL.; Museros Romero, P. (2018). Finite element modeling of energy harvesters: application to vibrational devices. En Energy Harvesting for Wireless Sensor Networks: Technology, Components and System Design. De Gruyter. 3-33. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110445053-00133

Fire resistance of axially loaded slender concrete filled steel tubular columns. Development of a Three-dimensional numerical model and comparison with eurocode 4

[EN] In recent years, concrete filled tubular (CFT) columns have become popular among designers and structural engineers, due to a series of highly appreciated advantages: high load-bearing capacity, high seismic resistance, attractive appearance, reduced column footing, fast construction technology and high fire resistance without external protection. In a fire, the degradation of the material properties will cause CFT columns to become highly nonlinear and inelastic, which makes it quite difficult to predict their failure. In fact, it is still not possible for analytical methods to predict with enough accuracy the behaviour of columns of this kind when exposed to fire. Numerical models are therefore widely sought. Many numerical simulations have been carried out worldwide, without obtaining satisfactory results. This work proposes a three-dimensional numerical model for studying the actual fire behaviour of columns of this kind. This model was validated by comparing the simulation results with fire resistance tests carried out by other researchers, as well as with the predictions of the Eurocode 4 simplified calculation model.Espinós Capilla, A.; Hospitaler Pérez, A.; Romero, ML. (2009). Fire resistance of axially loaded slender concrete filled steel tubular columns. Development of a Three-dimensional numerical model and comparison with eurocode 4. Acta Polytechnica. 49(1):39-43. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/102170S394349

Anaerobic Thermophilic Colonization of Porous Support

Biofilm development in an open-pore sintered glass material (SIRAN) was studied using a laboratory-scale anaerobic fixed-film bioreactor under thermophilic conditions. The startup and performance of that bioreactor, operating on distillery waste water feed (vinasses), were also studied. Results obtained indicated that stepped organic loading during initial bioreactor start-up reduced the periods of adaptation in the colonization process and micro-organism attachment and biofilm formation was accelerated by the surface characteristics of the carrier. The results obtained by operating with stepped organic loading (& = 2.0 kg m–3 d–1 COD) over a period of 70 days suggest that a stable operation of the process (90% COD removal) and high density of biomass immobilized on the support (20 kgVSatt per m3 SIRAN) is achieved. Epifluorescence microscopy demonstrated that, initially, attached growth was developed in crevices, where biomass was protected from shear forces and, finally, SIRAN was completely covered and biofilm developed on the entire SIRAN particles

A companion screen application for TV broadcasts annotated with Linked Open Data

Increasingly, European citizens consume television content together with devices connected to the Internet where they can look up related information. In parallel, growing amounts of Linked Open Data are being published on the Web, including rich metadata about its cultural heritage. Linked Data and semantic technologies could enable broadcasters to achieve added value for their content at low cost through the re-use of existing and extracted metadata. We present ongoing work in the LinkedTV project, whose goal is to achieve seamless interlinking between TV and Web content on the basis of semantic annotations: two scenarios validated by user trials - Linked News and the Hyperlinked Documentary - and a companion screen application which provides related information for those programs during viewing