La necesaria recuperación del diálogo social para abordar la regulación del impacto de las nuevas tecnologías en los derechos de los trabajadores

The European Union has urged the European Commission, Member States and social partners to establish rules for an economic sphere which is either deregulated or has significant gaps in regulation: digitilisation and the platform economy. The European Parliament has made a series of recommendations which establish the social guidelines necessary to regulate labour relations on collaborative platforms. Accepting changes in the fundamental nature of labour law requires the overcoming of untouchable axioms which survive in contemporary economic thought, such as the one which links rigid labour regulations to the delay in recovery from the economic crisis, to rising unemployment, and more recently, to a lack of adaptation of labour regulation to technological changes. Once again, changes in labour legislation are required in order to adapt correctly to the digital economy, although it is emphacised that this “new regulation” cannot be made without the social partners.La Unión Europea ha instado a la Comisión Europea, a los Estados miembros y a los interlocutores a normar un ámbito económico desregularizado o con lagunas en la regulación: la digitalización y la economía de plataforma. El Parlamento Europeo ha dirigido una serie de recomendaciones con las directrices sociales necesarias para que se regulen las relaciones laborales en las plataformas colaborativas. Es preciso superar intocables axiomas que perviven en el pensamiento económico contemporáneo, como el que vincula la rigidez de la normativa laboral al retraso en la salida de la crisis económica y al incremento del número de desempleados, a lo que ahora quiere añadirse la falta de adaptación de la regulación laboral a las nuevas tecnologías. De nuevo se exigen cambios legislativos en el orden laboral para lograr una correcta adaptación a la economía digital; si bien, es preciso subrayar que esta “nueva regulación” no podrá hacerse al margen de los interlocutores sociales

Automated Functional Testing based on the Navigation of Web Applications

Web applications are becoming more and more complex. Testing such applications is an intricate hard and time-consuming activity. Therefore, testing is often poorly performed or skipped by practitioners. Test automation can help to avoid this situation. Hence, this paper presents a novel approach to perform automated software testing for web applications based on its navigation. On the one hand, web navigation is the process of traversing a web application using a browser. On the other hand, functional requirements are actions that an application must do. Therefore, the evaluation of the correct navigation of web applications results in the assessment of the specified functional requirements. The proposed method to perform the automation is done in four levels: test case generation, test data derivation, test case execution, and test case reporting. This method is driven by three kinds of inputs: i) UML models; ii) Selenium scripts; iii) XML files. We have implemented our approach in an open-source testing framework named Automatic Testing Platform. The validation of this work has been carried out by means of a case study, in which the target is a real invoice management system developed using a model-driven approach.Comment: In Proceedings WWV 2011, arXiv:1108.208

Potential therapeutic use of the ketogenic diet in autism spectrum disorders.

The ketogenic diet (KGD) has been recognized as an effective treatment for individuals with glucose transporter 1 (GLUT1) and pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) deficiencies as well as with epilepsy. More recently, its use has been advocated in a number of neurological disorders prompting a newfound interest in its possible therapeutic use in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). One study and one case report indicated that children with ASD treated with a KGD showed decreased seizure frequencies and exhibited behavioral improvements (i.e., improved learning abilities and social skills). The KGD could benefit individuals with ASD affected with epileptic episodes as well as those with either PDH or mild respiratory chain (RC) complex deficiencies. Given that the mechanism of action of the KGD is not fully understood, caution should be exercised in ASD cases lacking a careful biochemical and metabolic characterization to avoid deleterious side effects or refractory outcomes