Salvador Sostres o lo que no es una crónica tradicional

La crónica en general y, concretamente la crónica temática deportiva, es un género que muestra una gran cantidad de información acerca de la personalidad de su autor. Así, este trabajo de investigación pretende aproximarse a las características de las crónicas futbolísticas de un autor particular, Salvador Sostres, mediante el estudio de veintidós de sus crónicas publicadas en la versión impresa de ABC entre junio de 2015 y enero de 2016. Esta aproximación se hace por dos vías: En primer lugar, mediante una revisión de las características de la crónica delimitadas por las teorías de autores especialistas como Sonia Parrat, establecemos una tabla de codificación de rasgos comunes de la crónica temática tradicional a fin de contrastar si las del autor cumplen o no con dichos rasgos. En segundo lugar, mediante un estudio detallado de los textos, establecemos una segunda tabla de codificación de rasgos comunes del autor a fin de confirmar, tal y como predecimos, la existencia de un ‘estilo Sostres’. Este se caracteriza por la presencia de abundante opinión de carácter personal y político y temáticas recurrentes (casi obsesivas) como la exaltación de la derecha y crítica a la izquierda, la exaltación del capitalismo y crítica al comunismo, el dinero, el lujo, la gastronomía, los pobres o las mujeres

“Little Spains” [Spanish Bellwether Electoral Districts]: A Precision Journalism Investigation on Districts with the Greatest Capability in the Electoral Prediction

La existencia de distritos electorales con una distribución de votos similar al cómputo nacional puede servir para predecir los resultados globales de un país. New Hampshire en Estados Unidos, Donzy en Francia o Almendralejo en España han sido considerados en las últimas décadas espejos locales o ‘pueblos clónicos’ del resultado global. Este artículo identifica localidades predictoras de ese tipo para los principales partidos políticos españoles. Aplica para ello el enfoque y técnicas del ‘periodismo de precisión’ o ‘de datos’ y muestra una vía de convergencia interdisciplinar entre la sociología electoral, la comunicación política y los estudios y la práctica del periodismo.The existence of electoral districts with a similar voting distribution to that of national ones may be used to forecast the national elections results. New Hampshire, in United States, Donzy in France, or Almendralejo in Spain have been known in the last decades as predictors of national results or ‘bellwether electoral districts’. This article identifies some towns of this type in Spain, in relation with the results of the main political parties. To do that, it applies the perspective and techniques of ‘precision journalism’ or ‘data journalism’ and it shows and interdisciplinary and convergent research line among electoral sociology, political communication, journalism studies and the practice of journalism.Depto. de Periodismo y Comunicación GlobalFac. de Ciencias de la InformaciónTRUEpu

The Caesar’s Wealth before the Watchdog: A Precision Journalism analysis about financial transparency of Government Cabinet in Spain

La información administrativa sobre la actividad de altos cargos y funcionarios continúa en España bajo importantes restricciones en cuanto pueda afectar a datos personales de cualquier índole, conforme a la prevalente protección en nuestro país de la privacidad sobre el derecho a la información de interés público. Aun así, desde el año 2009 se ha producido alguna apertura reglamentaria en materia de declaración de patrimonio e intereses socioeconómicos de miembros del Gobierno y diputados, lo que constituye un tímido avance hacia la transparencia democrática de la documentación administrativa de interés general. Mediante el acceso a las correspondientes bases de datos, el periodismo de precisión como especialidad dedicada al cruce o contraste sistemático de grandes conjuntos de datos objetivados sobre asuntos de interés público, obtiene así una oportunidad de contribuir a la transparencia democrática en cuestiones que pudieran afectar al desvelamiento de irregularidades, desequilibrios institucionales o simple conocimiento ciudadano de los datos contrastados de la actividad de los servidores públicos. A través de una petición concreta de datos y de acceso a los correspondientes ficheros de reciente liberación, este artículo muestra los resultados de una aplicación del periodismo de precisión al conocimiento de la situación económica e intereses de los principales miembros del poder Ejecutivo, al tiempo que pone de manifiesto la debilidad e insuficiencia de alcance que las citadas modificaciones legales suponen aún para una fiscalización plena de la responsabilidad de los representantes políticos.The administrative information about top officials and civil servants’ activities in Spain is still kept under important restrictions. Such limitation is particularly severe on personal data of any type related to these politicians, in accordance with the Spanish preference for protection to privacy over the right to public interest information. Even so, since 2009 some regulations openness has taken place in relation to Government and Parliament members’ declarations about their assets, their personal economic interests and their business ties. The new regulation supposes a tiny advance towards a democratic transparency of general interest administrative documentation. Through the access to the specific data bases, precision journalism –a newsmedia strategy specialized on computer cross-checking and matching of big data collections-, contributes to a real democratic transparency by means of the disclosure of unveil irregularities, institutional unbalances or just basic data about public servants’ activities which can improve the control of the public institutions responsiveness by the citizens. Across an accurate data petition and the access to the specific datafiles recently unlocked to the public scrutiny in Spain, this article shows the results of an application of precision journalism to the case of the main directors of the executive power regarding their personal assets, complementary incomes and business connections. Nevertheless, the poor data specification showed in the disclosure records of the Spanish Administration seriously restricts the goal of a full watchdogging of the political representativesDepto. de Periodismo y Comunicación GlobalFac. de Ciencias de la InformaciónTRUEpu

Pequeñas Españas: Una aplicación del Periodismo de Precisión a la detección de municipios con máximo potencial de predicción electoral

La existencia de distritos electorales con una distribución de votos similar al cómputo nacional puede servir para predecir los resultados globales de un país. New Hampshire en Estados Unidos, Donzy en Francia o Almendralejo en España han sido considerados en las últimas décadas espejos locales o pueblos clónicos del resultado global.Este artículo identifica localidades predictoras de ese tipo para los principales partidos políticos españoles. Aplica para ello el enfoque y técnicas del periodismo de precisión o de datos y muestra una vía de convergencia interdisciplinar entre la sociología electoral, la comunicación política y los estudios y la práctica del periodismo.; Estatu mailan ematen den boto banaketaren antzekoa duten hauteskunde barrutiak erabilgarriak izan daitezke herrialde baten emaitza globalak aurreikusteko. Azken hamarkadetan, New Hampshire Estatu Batuetan, Donzy Frantzian edo Almendralejo Espainian emaitza globalaren tokiko ispilu edo herri kloniko-tzat hartu izan dira.Artikulu honek espainiar alderdi politiko nagusientzako mota horretako herri iragarleak identifikatzen ditu. Horretarako, zehaztasuneko kazetaritza edo datu kazetaritza-ren teknika eta ikuspegiak erabili dira, hauteskunde soziologia, komunikazio politikoa eta kazetaritzaren ikerketa eta praktikaren arteko konbergentzia interdisziplinariorako bide bat erakutsiz.; The existence of electoral districts with a similar voting distribution to that of national ones may be used to forecast the national elections results. New Hampshire, in United States, Donzy in France, or Almendralejo in Spain have been known in the last decades as predictors of national results or bellwether electoral districts.This article identifies some towns of this type in Spain, in relation with the results of the main political parties. To do that, it applies the perspective and techniques of precision journalism or data journalism and it shows and interdisciplinary and convergent research line among electoral sociology, political communication, journalism studies and the practice of journalism

Twitter como herramienta de comunicación política en el contexto del referéndum independentista catalán: asociaciones ciudadanas frente a instituciones públicas

This academic article analyses and interprets the contents related to the Catalan referendum spread through Twitter by Spanish public institutions and civic associations’ official accounts during the fortnight before the 1st October 2017 and analysed through Oraquo Analytics. Our aim is stating the diffusion capacity of every account in a separate and joint study according to their typology and ideology, proving there are big differences when comparing public institutions with civic associations which grow even more when gathering independents on the one side and constitutionalist on the other side. Lastly, an analyse on the volume of conversation on Twitter is performed by counting the amount of response tweets to other user’s messages, related to the amount of original tweets posted. All this proving that Twitter is just used as a diffusion channel and not as a conversation channel.El presente artículo hace un análisis e interpretación de los contenidos difundidos a través de Twitter por parte de las cuentas oficiales de las principales instituciones públicas y asociaciones ciudadanas relacionadas con el referéndum catalán durante los 15 días previos al 1 de octubre de 2017 utilizando como herramienta Oraquo analytics. El objetivo es comprobar la capacidad de difusión de cada una de las cuentas por separado, así como agrupadas según su tipología y perfil ideológico, demostrando que existen diferencias a la hora de estudiar las agrupaciones de instituciones públicas frente a las de asociaciones ciudadanas, y más aún cuando se agrupan entre independentistas por un lado y constitucionalistas por otro. Por otro lado, se analiza la cantidad de conversación que cada entidad mantiene en Twitter contabilizando la cantidad de tuits de respuesta a mensajes de otros usuarios, en relación con la cantidad de tuits originales publicados. Se comprueba cómo Twitter es utilizado como un mero canal de difusión y no como un canal de conversación

Adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells as a strategy to improve recovery after stroke

Introduction: Based on the positive results observed in experimental animal models, adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells (AD-MSCs) constitute a promising therapy for stroke treatment. However, several aspects need to be clarified to identify the optimal conditions for successful clinical translation. Areas covered: This review focuses on AD-MSC treatment for ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke in experimental animal models. In addition, we will explore the optimization of treatment conditions including AD-MSC production, administration routes and therapeutic windows for their appropriate use in patients, and we will provide an update on clinical trials on this therapy. Expert opinion: Compared with other cell types, AD-MSCs have been less investigated in stroke studies. Currently, experimental animal models have shown safety and efficacy with this treatment after stroke. Due to several advantages of AD-MSCs, such as their abundance and accessibility, they can be considered a promising strategy for use in patients. However, many questions are still to be resolved regarding their mechanisms of action, immune system modulation and the effects of AD-MSCs on all components of the brain that may be affected after ischemic and hemorrhagic strokesThis project is supported by research grants PS12/01754 (Spanish Ministry of Science) and INVICTUS (RD12/0014/0006) (Spanish Neurovascular Network), and Research Institute Carlos III, Ministry Science and Innovatio

Search on speech from spoken queries: the Multi-domain International ALBAYZIN 2018 Query-by-Example Spoken Term Detection Evaluation

[Abstract] The huge amount of information stored in audio and video repositories makes search on speech (SoS) a priority area nowadays. Within SoS, Query-by-Example Spoken Term Detection (QbE STD) aims to retrieve data from a speech repository given a spoken query. Research on this area is continuously fostered with the organization of QbE STD evaluations. This paper presents a multi-domain internationally open evaluation for QbE STD in Spanish. The evaluation aims at retrieving the speech files that contain the queries, providing their start and end times, and a score that reflects the confidence given to the detection. Three different Spanish speech databases that encompass different domains have been employed in the evaluation: MAVIR database, which comprises a set of talks from workshops; RTVE database, which includes broadcast television (TV) shows; and COREMAH database, which contains 2-people spontaneous speech conversations about different topics. The evaluation has been designed carefully so that several analyses of the main results can be carried out. We present the evaluation itself, the three databases, the evaluation metrics, the systems submitted to the evaluation, the results, and the detailed post-evaluation analyses based on some query properties (within-vocabulary/out-of-vocabulary queries, single-word/multi-word queries, and native/foreign queries). Fusion results of the primary systems submitted to the evaluation are also presented. Three different teams took part in the evaluation, and ten different systems were submitted. The results suggest that the QbE STD task is still in progress, and the performance of these systems is highly sensitive to changes in the data domain. Nevertheless, QbE STD strategies are able to outperform text-based STD in unseen data domains.Centro singular de investigación de Galicia; ED431G/04Universidad del País Vasco; GIU16/68Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; TEC2015-68172-C2-1-PMinisterio de Ciencia, Innovación y Competitividad; RTI2018-098091-B-I00Xunta de Galicia; ED431G/0

ALBAYZIN 2018 spoken term detection evaluation: a multi-domain international evaluation in Spanish

[Abstract] Search on speech (SoS) is a challenging area due to the huge amount of information stored in audio and video repositories. Spoken term detection (STD) is an SoS-related task aiming to retrieve data from a speech repository given a textual representation of a search term (which can include one or more words). This paper presents a multi-domain internationally open evaluation for STD in Spanish. The evaluation has been designed carefully so that several analyses of the main results can be carried out. The evaluation task aims at retrieving the speech files that contain the terms, providing their start and end times, and a score that reflects the confidence given to the detection. Three different Spanish speech databases that encompass different domains have been employed in the evaluation: the MAVIR database, which comprises a set of talks from workshops; the RTVE database, which includes broadcast news programs; and the COREMAH database, which contains 2-people spontaneous speech conversations about different topics. We present the evaluation itself, the three databases, the evaluation metric, the systems submitted to the evaluation, the results, and detailed post-evaluation analyses based on some term properties (within-vocabulary/out-of-vocabulary terms, single-word/multi-word terms, and native/foreign terms). Fusion results of the primary systems submitted to the evaluation are also presented. Three different research groups took part in the evaluation, and 11 different systems were submitted. The obtained results suggest that the STD task is still in progress and performance is highly sensitive to changes in the data domain.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; TIN2015-64282-R,Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; RTI2018-093336-B-C22Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; TEC2015-65345-PXunta de Galicia; ED431B 2016/035Xunta de Galicia; GPC ED431B 2019/003Xunta de Galicia; GRC 2014/024Xunta de Galicia; ED431G/01Xunta de Galicia; ED431G/04Agrupación estratéxica consolidada; GIU16/68Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; TEC2015-68172-C2-1-

Comparison between xenogeneic and allogeneic adipose mesenchymal stem cells in the treatment of acute cerebral infarct: Proof of concept in rats

Background: Rat adipose tissue-derived-mesenchymal stem cells (rAD-MSCs) have proven to be safe in experimental animal models of stroke. However, in order to use human AD-MSCs (hAD-MSCs) as a treatment for stroke patients, a proof of concept is needed. We analyzed whether the xenogeneic hAD-MSCs were as safe and effective as allogeneic rAD-MSCs in permanent Middle Cerebral Artery Occlusion (pMCAO) in rats. Methods: Sprague–Dawley rats were randomly divided into three groups, which were intravenously injected with xenogeneic hAD-MSCs (2 × 106), allogeneic rAD-MSCs (2 × 106) or saline (control) at 30 min after pMCAO. Behavior, cell implantation, lesion size and cell death were evaluated. Brain markers such as GFAP (glial fibrillary acid protein), VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) and SYP (synaptophysin) and tumor formation were analyzed. Results: Compared to controls, recovery was significantly better at 24 h and continued to be so at 14 d after IV administration of either hAD-MSCs or rAD-MSCs. No reduction in lesion size or migration/implantation of cells in the damaged brain were observed in the treatment groups. Nevertheless, cell death was significantly reduced with respect to the control group in both treatment groups. VEGF and SYP levels were significantly higher, while those of GFAP were lower in the treated groups. At three months, there was no tumor formation. Conclusions: hAD-MSCs and rAD-MSCs were safe and without side effects or tumor formation. Both treatment groups showed equal efficacy in terms of functional recovery and decreased ischemic brain damage (cell death and glial scarring) and resulted in higher angiogenesis and synaptogenesis marker levelsThis research was supported by research grants FIS06/0575, FIS09/01606, FIS12/01754 and INVICTUS (RD12/0014/0006) (Spanish Neurovascular Network), Cellerix, and Research Institute Carlos III, Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain

White matter repair after extracellular vesicles administration in an experimental animal model of subcortical stroke

Mesenchymal stem cells have previously been shown to mediate brain repair after stroke; they secrete 50-100 nm complexes called extracellular vesicles (EVs), which could be responsible for provoking neurovascular repair and functional recovery. EVs have been observed by electron microscopy and NanoSight, and they contain associated proteins such as CD81 and Alix. This purified, homogeneous population of EVs was administered intravenously after subcortical stroke in rats. To evaluate the EVs effects, we studied the biodistribution, proteomics analysis, functional evaluation, lesion size, fiber tract integrity, axonal sprouting and white matter repair markers. We found that a single administration of EVs improved functional recovery, fiber tract integrity, axonal sprouting and white matter repair markers in an experimental animal model of subcortical stroke. EVs were found in the animals' brain and peripheral organs after euthanasia. White matter integrity was in part restored by EVs administration mediated by molecular repair factors implicated in axonal sprouting, tract connectivity, remyelination and oligodendrogenesis. These findings are associated with improved functional recovery. This novel role for EVs presents a new perspective in the development of biologics for brain repair.This study has been partially supported by grants from PS15/01318 and INVICTUS (RD12/0014) (Spanish Neurovascular Network), Miguel Servet (CP15/00069 to María Gutiérrez-Fernández) and a Sara Borrell postdoctoral fellowship (CD12/00706, to Laura Otero-Ortega) from Research Institute Carlos III, Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain and European Regional Development Fun