Metal Accumulation by Jatropha curcas L. Adult Plants Grown on Heavy Metal-Contaminated Soil

Jatropha curcas has the ability to phytoextract high amounts of heavy metals during its first months just after seeding. Notwithstanding, there is scarce information about metal uptake by adult J. curcas plants. To shed light on this issue, 4-year-old J. curcas L. plants were planted in a soil mixture of peat moss and mining soil (high metals content), and the biomass growth and metal absorption during 90 days were compared with those of plants growing in peat moss. The main metal found in the mining soil was Fe (31985 mg kg-1) along with high amounts of As (23717 mg kg-1). After the 90-day phytoremediation, the plant removed 29% of Fe and 44% of As from the soil mixture. Results revealed that J. curcas L. translocated high amounts of metals to its aerial parts, so that translocation factors were much higher than 1. Because of the high translocation and bioaccumulation factors obtained, J. curcas L. can be regarded as a hyperaccumulator plant. Despite the great capacity of J. curcas L. to phytoremediate heavy-metal-contaminated soils, the main drawback is the subsequent handling of the metal-contaminated biomass, although some potential applications have been recently highlighted for this biomass.University of Seville (VIPPIT-2019-I.5

A New Frequency Planning for Improved Capacity and Coverage in Sectorized OFDMA Cellular Networks

One of the main challenges in cellular systems is how to reduce Other Cells Interference (OCI) while keeping high spectral efficiency and high coverage probability. Since the beginning of cellular technologies, frequency planning with sectoring has been used to mitigate such OCI. However, in modern wireless Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) technologies much attention is being paid to more complex strategies like Coordintation Multi-Point transmission/reception (CoMP) techniques due to its higher performance. This paper presents a new frequency planning for sectorized cell networks. Simulation results show that this scheme considerably outperforms classical sectoring (CS) in terms of both capacity and coverage probability. In particular, for the case of hexagonal grid, the capacity improvement is around 6 b/s/Hz compared to CS while keeping a coverage probability higher than 0.9 for a 0 dB Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) threshold.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

A New Tractable Model to Estimate the Uplink Inter-Cell Interference in LTE

This paper presents a tractable model to estimate the uplink Inter-Cell Interference (ICI) in fully loaded LTE networks. Interfering users are considered to be uniformly distributed in an annulus so that evaluation of the interference power is obtained asymptotically for a high number of users. Model validity is proved through Monte Carlo simulations, showing that analytical results are close to simulation results even for a low number of users per cell.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Coordinated Multicast/Unicast Transmission on 5G: A Novel Approach for Linear Broadcasting

Linear broadcasting services, with a scheduled programming, constitute a paramount tel-ecommunication service for today’s society. Although the existing technology is mature, current linear broadcast systems have serious limitations when providing service to moving users or users placed in areas with complex orography and poor signal quality. To over-come these limitations, 3GPP 5G standard has included a work item to support 5G mul-ticast/broadcast services for future Release 17. This paper investigates the integration of point-to-point (unicast) communication with cellular multicast/broadcast on 5G technology to extend the current support of linear broadcasting services. This integration relies on the use mobile edge computing (MEC) at the 5G base station (gNB) to host a dynamic adap-tive streaming over HTTP (DASH) server that is coordinated with the multicast transmis-sion to complement the broadcast service. This approach join the reliability of point-to-point communications, with dedicated resources for each user, with the spectrum efficiency of multi-cast communications, where a set of users share common resources. The coopera-tion between those unicast and multicast schemes allows those users whose coverage is not good enough, to complete the linear broadcast flow through the point-to-point transmission via MEC. The benefits of such approach have been assessed with simulations in a realistic scenario that considers a vehicle moving across a sparsely populated region in southern Spain. Results reveals that throughput and bitrate playback (reproduction rate) are greatly improved when unicast/multicast integration is enabled since the number of stalling events is reduced significantly.This work has been partially supported by Radio Televisión Española through Impulsa Visión RTVE grant and by the Universidad de Málaga. We are grateful to Pere Vila, Esteban Mayoral Campos, Adolfo Muñoz Berrón and Miguel Ángel Bona San Vicente for their support and collaboration during the development of the project. Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málaga / CBU

EvalGRAPHs: herramienta para implementar evaluadores inteligentes. Metodología de estudio del comportamiento de los evaluadores

El Modelo Granular Lingüístico de la Evaluación del aprendizaje humano ha sido desarrollado a partir del paradigma GLMP, basado en la computación con palabras y percepciones, con el objetivo de diseñar un modelo teórico de representación del aprendizaje que pueda aplicarse a la creación de sistemas (GLMPs) que emulen la evaluación realizada por un profesor, en base a sus criterios, y expresen dicha evaluación mediante un informe en lenguaje natural. Un GLMP es una estructura jerárquica que organiza y procesa datos mediante inferencia borrosa y modela un fenómeno mediante percepciones o unidades de conocimiento. Estos sistemas utilizan como datos de entrada los generados automáticamente por un entorno de aprendizaje y producen como salida un informe de evaluación que incluye una calificación numérica. De esta manera se puede compaginar la evaluación formativa, comparando logros y objetivos de aprendizaje, que realiza un profesor, con la rapidez y eficacia de un sistema automatizado. Como aplicación del modelo general, hemos diseñado varios sistemas que evalúan, en base a criterios de un profesor, unos los quizzes de Moodle y otros las simulaciones visuales de algoritmos de grafos hechas en el entorno de aprendizaje GRAPHs

Do we have friendly services to meet the needs of young women exposed to intimate partner violence in the Madrid region?

Introduction: Women experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) do not tend to go very frequently to formal support services. The objective of this study is to identify barriers related to the accessibility, acceptability, equity, appropriateness and effectiveness of IPV services from the perspective of the professionals working in the IPV public services. Methods: A qualitative study was carried out in the Madrid region based on 13 semi-structured interviews of young women who had survived IPV as well as 17 interviews with professionals. A thematic content analysis was performed, guided by the dimensions proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) for friendly services for young people. Results: From the perspective of the young women and professionals, barriers were identified for all the dimensions of the WHO's friendly services for young people: accessibility: lack of information and support from the social setting, scarce dissemination of the services, economic cost, non-adapted schedules, inadequate locations or lack of services in settings close to young people; acceptability: lack of protocols to guarantee confidentiality, lack of speed in the provision of services or their referral, unwelcoming environments or unsympathetic professional malpractice; equity: discriminatory professional attitudes towards groups with different social status and lack of protocols to ensure the care of these groups; appropriateness: unmet needs and lack of multidisciplinary teams; and effectiveness: shortage of time, resources, competent professionals, protocols and coordination. Conclusions: Strategies are needed to make the necessary changes to promote friendly services for the care of young people exposed to IPV. Additionally, it must be emphasized that resources are needed to raise awareness and disseminate IPV services, as well as to train professionals in this area. Patient or Public Contribution: This paper is based on professionals' perspectives of public IPV-related services of different areas such as Psychology, Social Work, Nursing, Psychiatry, Social Education and young women exposed to IPV. They either work in the public administration at the local, regional or state level or in NGOs in Spain.This study was funded by the Health Institute Carlos III (Ref. PI17CIII/00022)

What kind of video gamer are you?

Producción CientíficaPurpose.- This paper attempts to understand the extent to which the effect of motivations on purchase intention varies for diverse segments of video gamers (depending on their personality). Design/Methodology.- Information was collected from 511 Spanish video game consumers. Structural equation modeling, clustering, and multi-group analysis were then conducted to compare results between segments of gamers. Findings.- Results show that hedonic, social and mainly addiction motivations lead to purchase intention of game-related products. Moreover, we identify a typology of gamer that gives rise to differences in motivations-purchase intention links: (1) Analysts include individuals who are essentially conscientious, prefer inventive or cognitive and simulation games and whose behavior is more influenced by hedonic and social motivations to play; (2) Socializers comprise individuals who are mainly extrovert and emotionally stable gamers and who prefer sports and strategy games. The motivations to play that affect their purchase intentions are mainly social; and (3) Sentinels include individuals that are unmindful and introvert, prefer inventive, cognitive, sports and simulation games, and whose social motivations drive their purchase intentions. Originality.- There are 2,200 million video gamers around the world, although it is assumed that this vast market is not homogeneous, which has implications for consumer motivations and purchase intention. However, the currently available classifications that address this challenge are rather limited. In this sense, the present paper provides valuable insights into understanding how personality offers a useful variable to segment consumers in the video game industry and how it moderates the effect of motivations on purchase behavior.Ministerio de Economía y Competetitividad (proyecto ECO2017-82107-R)Junta de Castilla y León (proyecto VA112P17

The Path between Personality, Self-Efficacy, and Shopping Regarding Games Apps

Producción CientíficaThe smartphone has made gaming more accessible and desirable for a wider market than ever before. Game apps are one of the most consumed and fastest growing products in the world today. Yet, few studies have thus far explored the implications of games apps consumption from a consumer perspective, addressing the transfer of abilities from one technological field to another. The main purpose of this paper is threefold: to ascertain the role of personality as a determinant of self-efficacy, to establish whether there is a transfer process from self-efficacy in video gaming with apps to online shopping and to analyze the impact of self-efficacy on the online purchase of game-related products. Results show that neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness determine the gaming self-efficacy that is transferred to online shopping self-efficacy and finally to the online purchase of game-related products. These insights provide interesting managerial implications that could affect video game marketing.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (proyecto ECO2017-82107-R)Fondo europeo de desarrollo regional (proyecto VA112P17)Junta de Castilla y León (proyecto VA112P17

Playful interaction for learning collaboratively and individually

Playful interactions facilitate the development of engaging applications for different purposes. This aspect is very important for serious games, and especially when these games are for children. Another aspect to consider is the interaction among children, which could be a great reinforcement in learning environments. Children enjoy playing, and they like playing with other children. This relationship could encourage their motivation and their learning outcomes. In this paper, a playful interaction system for learning about a period of history is presented. The interaction of the system was achieved using natural gestures and the visuali-zation was autostereoscopic. A study was carried out to determine whether their learning outcomes were greater playing collabo-ratively or playing individually. Forty six children from 7 to 10 years old participated in the study. The analysis of the pre-tests and the post-tests indicate that the children increased their knowledge about historical periods after playing with the two modes. Therefore, the game could be used as an effective transmitter of knowledge both collaboratively and individually. When the post-knowledge scores for the two modes were compared, statistically significant differences were found in favor of the collaborative mode. Therefore, the collaborative mode facilitates learning to a greater extent than the individual mode. The rest of the questions indicated that the children had a lot of fun while playing the game; they found the game easy to play; they would recommend the game to their friends; and they scored the game as a mean of 9.57 over 10. Finally, we believe that the combination of playful interaction and autostereoscopy is an option that should be exploited not only for the development of computer-supported learning systems, but also for the development of systems for different purposesThis work was funded by the Spanish APRENDRA project (TIN2009-14319-C02-01).Martín San José, JF.; Juan Lizandra, MC.; Torres, E.; Vicent López, MJ. (2014). Playful interaction for learning collaboratively and individually. Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments. 6(3):295-311. https://doi.org/10.3233/AIS-140257S2953116

Joint Distribution of Distance and Angles in Finite Wireless Networks

Directional beamforming will play a paramount role in 5G and beyond networks in order to combat the higher path losses incurred at millimeter wave bands. Appropriate modeling and analysis of the angles and distances between transmitters and receivers in these networks are thus essential to understand performance and limiting factors. Most existing literature considers either infinite and uniform networks, where nodes are drawn according to a Poisson point process, or finite networks with the reference receiver placed at the origin of a disk. Under either of these assumptions, the distance and azimuth angle between transmitter and receiver are independent, and the angle follows a uniform distribution between $0$ and $2\pi$. Here, we consider a more realistic case of finite networks where the reference node is placed at any arbitrary location. We obtain the joint distribution between the distance and azimuth angle and demonstrate that these random variables do exhibit certain correlation, which depends on the shape of the region and the location of the reference node. To conduct the analysis, we present a general mathematical framework which is specialized to exemplify the case of a rectangular region. We then also derive the statistics for the 3D case where, considering antenna heights, the joint distribution of distance, azimuth and zenith angles is obtained. Finally, we describe some immediate applications of the present work, including the analysis of directional beamforming, the design of analog codebooks and wireless routing algorithms.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figure