Integración de la plataforma NINOS con Twitter en cliente web para la generación autónoma de material audiovisual personalizado

De un tiempo a esta parte, las imágenes generadas por ordenador han tomado una vital importancia en diversos sectores industriales como son el arte, los videojuegos, las películas y los anuncios, entre otros. Los recursos utilizados para su generación (ya sean imágenes en 2D, 3D CGI, personajes, decorados, o sonidos) son producidos en gran medida de forma independiente ante la ausencia de un marco unificador. Esto provoca que actualmente sea bastante extraña la transferencia de recursos digitales entre una película y un juego, por ejemplo, o la reutilización de los mismos en una nueva producción. NINOS es una herramienta surgida de un proyecto, cofinanciado por la Unión Europea a través del Sexto Programa Marco, que trata de poner solución a esta problemática. NINOS permite la generación automática de vídeos a partir de un conjunto de objetos y animaciones 3D prediseñadas así como archivos de audio que se componen y renderizan formando una escena tridimensional. La creación del vídeo se realiza en base a una plantilla con formato XML que relaciona, mediante una estructura de etiquetas, a los personajes, los sonidos, las cámaras y otros recursos audiovisuales que aparecerán en la escena, así como las interacciones entre éstos. Para comprobar de primera mano todas las características prometidas por NINOS, se construye en el seno de este Proyecto Fin de Carrera un sistema que pretende integrar la generación de animaciones y entornos renderizados de manera automática que proporciona NINOS al funcionamiento general de Twitter. La integración se realiza representando una escenificación de la lectura, por medio de un avatar, de los últimos tweets publicados bien por un mismo usuario, bien contengan un determinado fragmento de texto o bien pertenezcan a una conversación entre distintos usuarios. El resultado obtenido de la implementación del sistema se recoge en un demostrador en forma de una sencilla aplicación web con un funcionamiento similar a la aplicación real de Twitter, pero que es capaz de a partir de los tweets que se seleccionen generar un vídeo de manera automática obteniendo la información de éstos en tiempo real y presentarlo en la interfaz de la aplicación a través de un reproductor embebido. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Recently, computer-generated images have acquired much importance in various industrial sectors such as art, video games, movies and advertisements, among others. Resources used for their generation (2D or 3D images, CGI, characters, sets, or sounds) are mainly produced independently in absence of a unifying frame. This situation makes very strange the transfer of digital assets among movies and games, for instance, or their reuse in new productions. NINOS is a tool emerged from a project funded by the European Union's Sixth Framework Programme, which seeks to bring a solution to this problem. NINOS allows automatic generation of video from a set of objects, predesigned 3D animations and audio les that are composed and rendered to set up a three-dimensional scene. Creation of the video is done based on a XML template that relates characters, sounds, cameras and other audiovisual resources which appear on the scene, and the interactions among them. To check NINOS's features, a system is developed to integrate generation of animation and rendered environments that NINOS provides, with general functionality of Twitter. Main objective established is the generation of a performance with an avatar who reads last Twitter messages posted either by a single user, or containing a speci c piece of text or belonging to a conversation among di erent users. System implementation results are contained in a demonstrator with a simple webapp whose operation is similar to real Twitter app. Main di erence is that demo is capable of generating video automatically from tweets information gathered in real time and showing it in a player embedded in application interface.Ingeniería de Telecomunicació

Correlation of Zinc with Oxidative Stress Biomarkers

Hypertension and smoking are related with oxidative stress (OS), which in turn reports on cellular aging. Zinc is an essential element involved in an individual¿s physiology. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relation of zinc levels in serum and urine with OS and cellular aging and its effect on the development of hypertension. In a Spanish sample with 1500 individuals, subjects aged 20¿59 years were selected, whose zinc intake levels fell within the recommended limits. These individuals were classified found (Pearson¿s C = 0.639; p = 0.01) between Zn serum/urine quotient and oxidized glutathione levels (GSSG). Finally, risk of hypertension significantly increased when the GSSG levels exceeded the 75 percentile; OR = 2.80 (95%CI = 1.09¿7.18) and AOR = 3.06 (95%CI = 0.96¿9.71). Low zinc levels in serum were related with OS and cellular aging and were, in turn, to be a risk factor for hypertension

The miniJPAS & J-NEP surveys: Identification and characterization of the Lyα\alpha Emitter population and the Lyα\alpha Luminosity Function

We present the Lyman-$a$ (Lya) Luminosity Function (LF) at $2.05<z<3.75$, estimated from a sample of 67 Lya-emitter (LAE) candidates in the J-PAS Pathfinder surveys: miniJPAS and J-NEP. These two surveys cover a total effective area of $\sim 1.14$ deg$^2$ with 54 Narrow Band (NB) filters across the optical range, with typical limiting magnitudes of $\sim 23$. This set of NBs allows to probe Lya emission in a wide and continuous range of redshifts. We develop a method for detecting Lya emission for the estimation of the Lya LF using the whole J-PAS filter set. We test this method by applying it to the miniJPAS and J-NEP data. In order to compute the corrections needed to estimate the Lya LF and to test the performance of the candidates selection method, we build mock catalogs. These include representative populations of Lya Emitters at $1.9<z<4.5$ as well as their expected contaminants, namely low-$z$ galaxies and $z<2$ QSOs. We show that our method is able to provide the Lya LF at the intermediate-bright range of luminosity ($\rm 10^{43.5} erg\,s^{-1} \lesssim L_{Lya} \lesssim 10^{44.5} erg\,s^{-1}$). The photometric information provided by these surveys suggests that our samples are dominated by bright, Lya-emitting Active Galactic Nuclei. At $L_{{\rm Ly}a}<10^{44.5}$ erg\,s$^{-1}$, we fit our Lya LF to a power-law with slope $A=0.70\pm0.25$. We also fit a Schechter function to our data, obtaining: Log(\Phi^* / \text{Mpc^{-3}})=-6.30^{+0.48}_{-0.70}, Log$(L^*/ \rm erg\,s^{-1})=44.85^{+0.50}_{-0.32}$, $a=-1.65^{+0.29}_{-0.27}$. Overall, our results confirm the presence of an AGN component at the bright-end of the Lya LF. In particular, we find no significant contribution of star-forming LAEs to the Lya LF at Log$(L_{\rm Lya}$ / erg\,s$^{-1}$)>43.5. This work serves as a proof-of-concept for the results that can be obtained with the upcoming data releases of the J-PAS survey.Comment: 25 pages, 15 figures, submitted to A&

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition)

In 2008 we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, research on this topic has continued to accelerate, and many new scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Accordingly, it is important to update these guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Various reviews have described the range of assays that have been used for this purpose. Nevertheless, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to measure autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. For example, a key point that needs to be emphasized is that there is a difference between measurements that monitor the numbers or volume of autophagic elements (e.g., autophagosomes or autolysosomes) at any stage of the autophagic process versus those that measure fl ux through the autophagy pathway (i.e., the complete process including the amount and rate of cargo sequestered and degraded). In particular, a block in macroautophagy that results in autophagosome accumulation must be differentiated from stimuli that increase autophagic activity, defi ned as increased autophagy induction coupled with increased delivery to, and degradation within, lysosomes (inmost higher eukaryotes and some protists such as Dictyostelium ) or the vacuole (in plants and fungi). In other words, it is especially important that investigators new to the fi eld understand that the appearance of more autophagosomes does not necessarily equate with more autophagy. In fact, in many cases, autophagosomes accumulate because of a block in trafficking to lysosomes without a concomitant change in autophagosome biogenesis, whereas an increase in autolysosomes may reflect a reduction in degradative activity. It is worth emphasizing here that lysosomal digestion is a stage of autophagy and evaluating its competence is a crucial part of the evaluation of autophagic flux, or complete autophagy. Here, we present a set of guidelines for the selection and interpretation of methods for use by investigators who aim to examine macroautophagy and related processes, as well as for reviewers who need to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of papers that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a formulaic set of rules, because the appropriate assays depend in part on the question being asked and the system being used. In addition, we emphasize that no individual assay is guaranteed to be the most appropriate one in every situation, and we strongly recommend the use of multiple assays to monitor autophagy. Along these lines, because of the potential for pleiotropic effects due to blocking autophagy through genetic manipulation it is imperative to delete or knock down more than one autophagy-related gene. In addition, some individual Atg proteins, or groups of proteins, are involved in other cellular pathways so not all Atg proteins can be used as a specific marker for an autophagic process. In these guidelines, we consider these various methods of assessing autophagy and what information can, or cannot, be obtained from them. Finally, by discussing the merits and limits of particular autophagy assays, we hope to encourage technical innovation in the field

4to. Congreso Internacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación para la Sociedad. Memoria académica

Este volumen acoge la memoria académica de la Cuarta edición del Congreso Internacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación para la Sociedad, CITIS 2017, desarrollado entre el 29 de noviembre y el 1 de diciembre de 2017 y organizado por la Universidad Politécnica Salesiana (UPS) en su sede de Guayaquil. El Congreso ofreció un espacio para la presentación, difusión e intercambio de importantes investigaciones nacionales e internacionales ante la comunidad universitaria que se dio cita en el encuentro. El uso de herramientas tecnológicas para la gestión de los trabajos de investigación como la plataforma Open Conference Systems y la web de presentación del Congreso http://citis.blog.ups.edu.ec/, hicieron de CITIS 2017 un verdadero referente entre los congresos que se desarrollaron en el país. La preocupación de nuestra Universidad, de presentar espacios que ayuden a generar nuevos y mejores cambios en la dimensión humana y social de nuestro entorno, hace que se persiga en cada edición del evento la presentación de trabajos con calidad creciente en cuanto a su producción científica. Quienes estuvimos al frente de la organización, dejamos plasmado en estas memorias académicas el intenso y prolífico trabajo de los días de realización del Congreso Internacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación para la Sociedad al alcance de todos y todas

Erratum to: Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition) (Autophagy, 12, 1, 1-222, 10.1080/15548627.2015.1100356

non present