Designing Adaptive Engagement Approaches for Audience-bounded Online Communities

Audience-bounded online communities require innovative user engagement techniques. Without special efforts focus- ing on engagement, the contribution volume will likely to be insufficient to maintain a sustainable community-driven sys- tem. This paper presents an adaptive approach for user en- gagement that aims to apply alternative engagement strate- gies to users with different behavior in the online community. We report the results of the first experiments testing the fea- sibility of such approach. We discuss further design options that can be explored and the implications of the approach

Consequences of Content Diversity for Online Public Spaces for Local Communities

While there is significant potential for social technologies to strengthen local communities, creating viable online spaces for them remains difficult. Maintaining a reliable content stream is challenging for local communities with their bounded emphases and limited population of potential contributors. Some systems focus on specific information types (e.g. restaurant, events). Others allow many different information types. This paper reports our findings about the consequences of content diversity from a study of neighborhood-oriented Facebook groups. The findings raise questions about the viability of designs for local online communities that focus narrowly on single topics, goals, and audiences

Energy consumption, income and CO2 emissions in Latin America

I describe and compare the environment policies of European Union and of 12 Latin Americans economies. For this, I use common statistical methods, such as non-parametric tests, convergence analysis (Beta and Sigma) and panel data, in order to verify the hypothesis that emissions and energy use in Latin America has been increasing since the mid-20th century. The statistical tests used confirm the proposed hypothesis. I also rely upon the Environmental Kuznets Curve- whereby economies that are at the growth stage are more focused on achieving the latter than they are on environmental concerns and those which have already achieved growth focus more on environmental concerns-to take an alternative approach by introducing the role of economic growth in the evolution of energy consumption and emissions. This chapter reaches the conclusion that energy consumption and pollutant emissions in LA, in per capita terms, are converging. This suggests that the initial levels of the variables help to explain why some countries have increased emissions (in this case, energy consumption) to a greater extent than other economies in the region. Evidence of convergence is also found, as well as a monotonic relationship between the level of pollution and the level of development (consistent with the Environmental Kuznets Curve).Energy Consumption, emissions, Latin America, Convergence

Woman’s presence in sports media

[Resumen]: El objeto de esta revisión bibliográfica será el de buscar evidencias científicas donde se trate la situación de la mujer en los medios de comunicación deportivos, estableciendo como objetivo principal: conocer los estudios e investigaciones que analizan la presencia de la mujer (deportistas y periodistas) en los medios de comunicación deportivos. Teniendo en cuenta este objetivo también se tratará de atender a los siguientes: conocer la presencia actual de la mujer deportista reflejada en los medios de comunicación; describir cuál es la imagen que se da de las deportistas en los medios; conocer la presencia actual de las periodistas deportivas en los medios; describir cuál es la imagen de las periodistas deportivas en los medios; conocer las consecuencias de la ausencia de las deportistas en los medios de comunicación; conocer propuestas para mejorar la situación de la presencia e imagen de la deportistas en los medios de comunicación.Traballo fin de grao (UDC.FCDEF). Ciencias da actividade física e do deporte. Curso 2016/201

Construction of a taxonomy for requirements engineering commercial-off-the-shelf components

This article presents a procedure for constructing a taxonomy of COTS products in the field of Requirements Engineering (RE). The taxonomy and the obtained information reach transcendental benefits to the selection of systems and tools that aid to RE-related actors to simplify and facilitate their work. This taxonomy is performed by means of a goal-oriented methodology inspired in GBRAM (Goal-Based Requirements Analysis Method), called GBTCM (Goal-Based Taxonomy Construction Method), that provides a guide to analyze sources of information and modeling requirements and domains, as well as gathering and organizing the knowledge in any segment of the COTS market. GBTCM claims to promote the use of standards and the reuse of requirements in order to support different processes of selection and integration of components.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Time Periodic Solutions for 3D Quasi-Geostrophic Model

C.G. has been partially supported by the MINECO-Feder (Spain) research Grant Number RTI2018098850-B-I00, the Junta de Andalucia (Spain) Project FQM 954, the MECD (Spain) research grant FPU15/04094, and the European Research Council through Grant ERC-StG-852741 (CAPA), T. H. has been partially supported by the ANR grant ODA (ANR-18-CE40-0020-01), and J. M. has been partially supported by MTM2016-75390 (Mineco, Spain) and 2017-SGR-395 (Generalitat de Catalunya)This paper aims to study time periodic solutions for 3D inviscid quasi–geostrophic model. We show the existence of non trivial rotating patches by suitable perturbation of stationary solutions given by generic revolution shapes around the vertical axis. The construction of those special solutions are done through bifurcation theory. In general, the spectral problem is very delicate and strongly depends on the shape of the initial stationary solutions. More specifically, the spectral study can be related to an eigenvalue problem of a self–adjoint compact operator. We are able to implement the bifurcation only from the largest eigenvalues of the operator, which are simple. Additional difficulties generated by the singularities of the poles are solved through the use of suitable function spaces with Dirichlet boundary condition type and refined potential theory with anisotropic kernels.Spanish Government RTI2018098850-B-I00Junta de Andalucia European Commission FQM 954Spanish Government FPU15/04094European Research Council (ERC) European Commission ERC-StG-852741French National Research Agency (ANR) ANR-18-CE40-0020-01Spanish Government MTM2016-75390Generalitat de Catalunya General Electric 2017-SGR-39

Social preferences for ecosystem services in a biodiversity hotspot in South America

Identifying which ecosystem services are relevant to different stakeholders and understanding stakeholders’ perceptions of such services is useful for making informed decisions, especially in regions of the world where the achievement of biodiversity conservation goals is threatened by economically productive activities. In this article, we assess social preferences for ecosystem services in a biodiversity hotspot in central Chile. We use a consultative case study to ask local stakeholders (n = 70) from the Campana Peñuelas Biosphere Reserve to identify the most important ecosystem services the area provides for them and inquire about the perceived vulnerability of the services to changes in the future. We also explore the association between the perceived importance of ecosystem services and the sociodemographic and cultural characteristics of the respondents, which allows us to identify contrasting stakeholder perceptions of different ecosystem services. The most important services for local actors were the drinking water, fresh air and climate change control, genetic pool of plant communities in central Chile, and educational value. From the perspective of local actors, the services that could be threatened by negative changes in the future in terms of their provision included the possibilities of developing conservation activities focused on iconic threatened animal and plant species, water regulation, food from agriculture, and drinking water. Contrasting perceptions about the importance of ecosystem services emerged among stakeholders. While small farmers and members of local organizations attributed higher importance values to provisioning services, scientists and rangers and administrators of protected areas as well as teachers, NGO members and local government employees attributed more importance to the regulating and cultural services associated with threatened species. Our results can serve as a source of information for the planning and decision-making processes related to the search for socially and ecologically sustainable solutions for land use managemen

Is grade retention the solution for failing?

The convenience of grade retention for students’ adequate progression in the education system has been the focus of great debate. However, the characteristics that the grade retention variable presents when explaining students’ academic achievement has prevented most of the research works to delve into the effect of this policy. Because of that, in the present research work we intend to get as close as possible to endogeneity free estimate by the use of rich census and longitudinal data, together with a student fixed-effects within students between-academic years strategy. We find that grade retention affects students’ academic performance. Autores: Luis Alejandro Lopez-Agudo, Claudia Prieto Latorre, Oscar David Marcenaro-Gutierrez Palabras clave: grade retention, repetion, academic performance.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Parents' and Children's Gender: the effect of parental expectations in children's performance

Parental expectations have been found in the literature to explain their children’s academic achievement. Nevertheless, most of the evidence on this issue is the result of the endogeneity of parental expectations when explaining students’ performance. In this context, we propose to solve this issue by using longitudinal data for the education period of the transition between primary and secondary education, employing time fixed effects to analyse the effect of parental expectations on students’ progression – being the latter measured by students’ academic achievement and their likelihood of grade repetition. We go more into depth on this issue by the study of gender differences of this effect, using all possible combinations between parents’ and children’s genders. Our results have shown that higher fathers’ and mothers’ expectations improve students’ progression, but parents seem to be more demanding with girls in terms of levels of education.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec