Evaluation of emerging audio description systems for broadcast TV

Following EU directives on Media Access and Ambient Assisted Living, the broadcasting industry needs to introduce new services in order to guarantee access to all citizens. The article and its conclusions are part of the EU project DTV4ALL, which focuses on some possible broadcasting scenarios for achieving barrier - free television for those with visual impairments. Five enhanced Audiodescription (AD) scenarios were proposed and evaluated: 1) Live streaming Internet TV with AD, 2) AD reception in a group situation, 3) Video on demand over aset - top - box , 4) Video on PC and 5) Podcasts. User evaluation concerning usefulness, quality and usability of the services was assessed using questionnaires. Results of the user evaluation show that not only are AD emerging services technically viable but they are also positively rated by users. Implementation of these services will provide improved access to content, making TV accessible for all

Laboratori virtual de psicologia bàsica : l'experiència com a clau de l'aprenentatge

El Laboratori Virtual de Psicologia Bàsica (LVPB) és una eina que pretén aprofitar les noves tecnologies per donar un nou enfocament al procés d'aprenentatge dels processos psicològics bàsics. Amb el LVPB s'acompanya a l'estudiant en un recorregut a través d'experiments que s'han convertit en clàssics de la Psicologia Cognitiva amb l'objectiu d'assolir coneixements relacionats amb els processos cognitius a partir de la pròpia experiència. La plataforma conté experiments provinents de l'estudi de l'atenció, l'emoció, el llenguatge, la memòria, la motivació, el pensament i la percepció. En cada experiment, el LVPB presenta un text d'introducció amb enllaços als articles originals on s'ha proposat per primera vegada. Després d'aquesta primera presa de contacte l'estudiant pot realitzar l'experiment, fent de subjecte experimental. A posteriori, el sistema li permetrà veure els resultats generats en la seva (o seves) sessió experimental. El sistema orientarà a l'estudiant en l'anàlisi de dades mitjançant quadres d'ajuda que aniran apareixent en forma de "pop-out" en relació al punt d'anàlisi de dades en el que es troba l'estudiant (depuració de dades, generació de gràfiques o informe). El LVPB es basa en la plataforma d'e-learning Moodle, fet que permet que cada estudiant tingui el seu propi espai on guardar els resultats i les anàlisis que ha realitzat. Tota la interacció amb el sistema queda registrada i pot ésser consultada tant per l'estudiant com pel seu professor en qualsevol moment. Això permet que el LVPB pugui ser utilitzat també com a eina d'avaluació per part del professor.The Virtual Laboratory of Cognitive Psychology (LVPB) is a tool that tries to take advantage of the new technologies in order to give a new approach to the learning process of the psychological basic processes. In the LVPB the student is accompanied in a tour across several experiments with the aim of achieving knowledge related to the cognitive processes from his/her own experience. The platform contains experiments from the study of attention, emotion, language, memory, motivation, thinking and perception. In every experiment, the student finds a text of presentation with links to the original articles where they have appeared for the first time. After this first contact, the student runs the experiment and the system shows him/her the raw data, i.e. the results, without any analysis. The student is led towards the analysis of the information, allowing him/her to generate different graphs on the results whose interpretation is supported on texts prepared by the teachers who have designed the experiment. The LVPB is supported on the e-learning Moodle platform, which allows every student to have his/her own space in order to keep the results and the analyses that he/she has performed. The whole interaction with the system is registered and can be recovered at any moment. Because of that, the LVPB can also be used as an assessment tool

Is subtitling equally effective everywhere? A first cross-national study on the reception of interlingually subtitled messages

Recent research on the reception of interlingual subtitling revealed that it is cognitively effective: watching a subtitled film results in a good understanding of the film content, it does not require a significant tradeoff between image processing and text processing, and it leads to a good performance in the recognition of the words and expressions contained in the subtitles. To date, the studies that revealed the effectiveness of subtitle processing have been conducted mono-nationally - e.g. d'Ydewalle and De Bruycker (2007) in Belgium; Wissmath et al. (2009) in Switzerland; Perego et al. (2010, 2015) in Italy; Hinkin et al. (2014) in the US. However, it has not yet been demonstrated empirically whether subtitle effectiveness varies depending on the familiarity of viewers with subtitles. The crossnational study described in this paper aims to fill this gap and appraise the cognitive performance and overall appreciation of a moderately complex subtitled film by viewers with different degrees of familiarity with subtitles, i.e., viewers living in countries (Italy, Spain, Poland and Dutch-speaking Belgium) with different audiovisual translation traditions. The main findings reveal that subtitling is effective irrespective of users' familiarity with it, although it is not enjoyed equally among the tested populations

The reception of subtitled colloquial language in Catalan : en eye-tracking exploratory study

Usually, colloquial oral features in audiovisual fiction disappear when the oral language is transferred into written text by means of interlingual subtitles. Expressive devices and colloquial items are often omitted for the sake of condensation; standard forms generally substitute non-standard units; and grammatical mistakes are often corrected. However, not all the agents involved in the subtitling industry tackle this issue in the same way. For instance, at the Catalan Television (TVC), there has been an internal debate concerning the use of non-standard forms in subtitles, particularly concerning colloquial pronominal clitics. Moving away from this debate, by using eyetracking technologies and questionnaires, this exploratory study aims to investigate whether using non-standard colloquial pronominal clitics instead of standard pronominal clitics alters the reception of the audiovisual product, and whether this approach is effective in transmitting the colloquial flavour of the dialogues

Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing of Porcine Bacterial Pathogens: Investigating the prospect of testing a representative drug for each antimicrobial family

Antimicrobial susceptibility testing is necessary to carry out antimicrobial stewardship but a limited number of drugs belonging to each antimicrobial family has to be tested for techni- cal limitations and economic resources. In this study, we have determined the minimal inhibitory concentration, using microdilution following international standards (CLSI), for 490 Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae, 285 Pasteurella multocida, 73 Bordetella bronchiseptica, 398 Streptococcus suis and 1571 Escherichia coli strains from clinical cases collected in Spain between 2018 and 2020. The an- timicrobial susceptibility pattern was deciphered using a principal component analysis for each bacterium and a matrix correlation (high > 0.8, medium 0.5-0.8 and low < 0.5) was obtained for each pair of antimicrobials. No significant associations were observed between MIC patterns for different antimicrobial families, suggesting that co-selection mechanisms are not generally present in these porcine pathogens. However, a high correlation was observed between the fluroquinolones (mar- bofloxacin and enrofloxacin) for all mentioned pathogens and for ceftiofur and cefquinome for E. coli and S. suis. Moreover, a significant association was also observed for tetracyclines (doxycycline and oxytetracycline) and B. bronchiseptica and tildipirosin/tulathromycin for P. multocida. These results suggest that generally, a representative drug per antimicrobial class cannot be selected, however, for some drug-bug combinations, MIC values from one representative drug could be extrapolated to the whole antimicrobial family

Antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of porcine respiratory bacteria in Spain

The monitoring of antimicrobial susceptibility of pig pathogens is critical to optimize antimicrobial treatments and prevent development of resistance with a one-health approach. The aim of this study was to investigate the antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of swine respiratory pathogens in Spain from 2017 to 2019. Bacterial isolation and identification were carried out following standardized methods from samples coming from sacrificed or recently deceased pigs with acute clinical signs compatible with respiratory tract infections. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values were determined using the broth microdilution method containing a total of 10 and 7-8 antimicrobials/concentrations respectively, in accordance with the recommendations presented by the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI). The obtained antimicrobial susceptibility varies between pig respiratory pathogens. Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae (APP) and Pasteurella multocida (PM) were highly susceptible (≥90%) to ceftiofur, florfenicol and macrolides (tilmicosin, tildipirosin and tulathromycin). However, the antimicrobial susceptibility was intermediate (>60% but <90%) for amoxicillin and enrofloxacin in the case of APP and sulfamethoxazole/trimethropim and tiamulin in the case of PM. Both bacteria showed low (<60%) antimicrobial susceptibility to doxycycline. Finally, Bordetella bronchiseptica was highly susceptible only to tildipirosin and tulathromycin (100%) and its susceptibility for florfenicol was close to 50% and <30% for the rest of the antimicrobial families tested. These results emphasize the need of determining antimicrobial susceptibility in pig respiratory cases in order to optimize the antimicrobial treatment in a case-by-case scenario

Antimicrobial Resistance Genes in Porcine Pasteurella multocida Are Not Associated with Its Antimicrobial Susceptibility Pattern

Forty-eight Pasteurella multocida isolates were recovered from porcine pneumonic lungs collected from farms in "Castilla y León" (north-western Spain) in 2017-2019. These isolates were characterized for their minimal inhibition concentrations to twelve antimicrobial agents and for the appearance of eight resistance genes: tetA, tetB, blaROB1, blaTEM, ermA, ermC, mphE and msrE. Relevant resistance percentages were shown against tetracyclines (52.1% for doxycycline, 68.7% for oxytetracycline), sulphamethoxazole/trimethoprim (43.7%) and tiamulin (25.0%), thus suggesting that P. multocida isolates were mostly susceptible to amoxicillin, ceftiofur, enrofloxacin, florfenicol, marbofloxacin and macrolides. Overall, 29.2% of isolates were resistant to more than two antimicrobials. The tetracycline resistance genes (tetA and tetB) were detected in 22.9% of the isolates, but none were positive to both simultaneously; blaROB1 and blaTEM genes were found in one third of isolates but both genes were detected simultaneously in only one isolate. The ermC gene was observed in 41.7% of isolates, a percentage that decreased to 22.9% for msrE; finally, ermA was harbored by 16.7% and mphE was not found in any of them. Six clusters were established based on hierarchical clustering analysis on antimicrobial susceptibility for the twelve antimicrobials. Generally, it was unable to foresee the antimicrobial susceptibility pattern for each family and the association of each particular isolate inside the clusters established from the presence or absence of the resistance genes analyzed.Junta de Castilla y León (Consejería de Agricultura y Ganadería, Junta de Castilla y León, Spain) and Cost Action CA18217 (European Network for Optimization of Veterinary Antimicrobial Treatment)

Revealing Genomic Insights of the Unexplored Porcine Pathogen Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae Using Whole Genome Sequencing

Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae (APP) is the causative agent of pleuropneumonia in pigs, one of the most relevant bacterial respiratory diseases in the swine industry. To date, 19 serotypes have been described based on capsular polysaccharide typing with significant virulence dissimilarities. In this study, 16 APP isolates from Spanish origin were selected to perform antimicrobial susceptibility tests and comparative genomic analysis using whole genome sequencing (WGS). To obtain a more comprehensive worldwide molecular epidemiologic analyses, all APP whole genome assemblies available at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the time of the study were also included. An in-house in silico PCR approach enabled the correct serotyping of unserotyped or incorrectly serotyped isolates and allowed for the discrimination between serotypes 9 and 11. A pangenome analysis identified the presence or absence of gene clusters to be serotype specific, as well as virulence profile analyses targeting the apx operons. Antimicrobial resistance genes were correlated to the presence of specific plasmids. Altogether, this study provides new insights into the genetic variability within APP serotypes, correlates phenotypic tests with bioinformatic analyses and manifests the benefits of populated databases for a better assessment of diversity and variability of relatively unknown pathogens. Overall, genomic comparative analysis enhances the understanding of transmission and epidemiological patterns of this species and suggests vertical transmission of the pathogen, including the resistance genes, within the Spanish integrated systems.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio