Participatory Design of a Public Space in the Historic Center of Seville.

Desde los años noventa del pasado siglo, el casco norte de la ciudad histórica de Sevilla, se transformó en un laboratorio de innovación social en materia de urbanismo emergente, resistencia a la gentrificación y producción social de espacios públicos autogestionados (Barber et al., 2006). La disputa por el uso público de un solar, sobre el que la iniciativa vecinal reclama la creación de un “Pulmón Verde” para el barrio, es el último eslabón de una larga cadena de experiencias innovadoras de urbanismo emergente.Este trabajo registra el avance del proceso participativo impulsado por un grupo motor ciudadano, en colaboración con un equipo de investigación acción participativa de la Universidad de Sevilla, del que los autores forman parte, para generar un espacio público verde en un solar del casco norte. Inicialmente, el ayuntamiento pretendía construir viviendas, ante la movilización vecinal, se comprometió a incorporar la participación de los vecinos en la decisión sobre el destino del solar.A partir de la colaboración técnico-vecinal se construye la base del triángulo de la gestión social del hábitat (Ortiz Flores, 2007; Romero, 2008; de Manuel Jerez, 2010); se proponen satisfactores sinérgicos (Max-Neef et al., 1986); y se elabora una dinámica lúdica de diseño participativo para presentar a la administración municipal y al vecindario. Para concluir, este trabajo extrae algunas reflexiones sobre las ventajas de la participación activa de los vecinos en el proceso de diseño frente a otras concepciones meramente consultivas del diseño participativo.Since the 1990s, the northern part of the historic city of Sevilla has been transformed into a laboratory for social innovation in terms of emerging urban planning, resistance to gentrification, and social production of down-to-top managed public spaces (Barber et al., 2006). The debate on the public use of a plot, on which neighborhood initiative calls for a "Green Lung" for the quarter, represents the last instance of a long series of experiences referred to emerging urbanism. This article reviews the participatory process initiated by an active group of citizens, in collaboration with a participatory action research team of the University of Sevilla, of which authors take part, to generate a green public space on a plot of the northern part of the city. Initially, the city council intended to build a housing complex, when neighborhood mobilization began, the authorities promised to carry out a participatory process to discuss the fate of the site. The collaboration between neighbors and technicians allows the building of the base of the triangle of social management of habitat (Ortiz Flores, 2007; Romero, 2008; de Manuel Jerez, 2010); and after agreeing on synergistic satisfiers (Max-Neef et al., 1986), the group proposes a participatory design methodology to neighbors and local authorities. To conclude, this article discusses advantages of active participation of neighbors in design compared to other merely consultative approaches to participatory design.Fil: Palero, Juan Santiago. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Centro Cientifico Tecnologico Conicet - Cordoba. Instituto de Humanidades. Grupo Vinculado Instituto de Investigacion de Vivienda y Habitat (invihab) Al Idh | Universidad Nacional de Cordoba. Instituto de Humanidades. Grupo Vinculado Instituto de Investigacion de Vivienda y Habitat (invihab) Al Idh.; ArgentinaFil: de Manuel Jerez, Esteban. Universidad de Sevilla; Españ

Animal welfare: the visitor effect on the behavior of five “Gorilla gorilla” individuals

Oral session 3[EN] Can the presence of visitors influence gorilla behavior? Tourists are an inevitable presence in zoos, so this study aimed to determine their impact on the behavior of the gorillas in the Parque de la Naturaleza de Cabárceno, as an indicator of their welfare. For this purpose, a comparative study of the behavior of 5 individuals was carried out, between the summer period when visitor numbers are high (277,082), and the winter period when there are fewer visitors (71,279)

A Hardware/Software Platform to Acquire Bioelectrical Signals. A Case Study: Characterizing Computer Access through Attention

This paper describes a hardware/software platform to acquire human body signals. In the field of physiological computing it is desirable to have a system that allows the synchronized acquisition of signals coming from different sources. Here is described how to unify the whole process of acquiring signals from both customized hardware and low cost commercial devices such as Neurosky’s mindwave. A case study using this platform is also shown: studying the feasibility of using sustained attention to access a computer. In order to do that brain activity was measured using Neurosky’s mindwave. The participants in this study were asked to keep their attention high/low for as long as possible during several trials. Experimentation was performed by 7 normally developed subjects and 3 people with cerebral palsy (CP). Our preliminary work shows that 60% of participants might be potential users of this technology. Eventually, modulating the attention to access a communication board needs a scanning period greater than 5.76s

Coding Prony's method in MATLAB and applying it to biomedical signal filtering

Background:The response of many biomedical systems can be modelled using a linear combination of damped exponential functions. The approximation parameters, based on equally spaced samples, can be obtained using Prony's method and its variants (e.g. the matrix pencil method). This paper provides a tutorial on the main polynomial Prony and matrix pencil methods and their implementation in MATLAB and analyses how they perform with synthetic and multifocal visual-evoked potential (mfVEP) signals. This paper briefly describes the theoretical basis of four polynomial Prony approximation methods: classic, least squares (LS), total least squares (TLS) and matrix pencil method (MPM). In each of these cases, implementation uses general MATLAB functions. The features of the various options are tested by approximating a set of synthetic mathematical functions and evaluating filtering performance in the Prony domain when applied to mfVEP signals to improve diagnosis of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Results:The code implemented does not achieve 100%-correct signal approximation and, of the methods tested, LS and MPM perform best. When filtering mfVEP records in the Prony domain, the value of the area under the receiver-operating-characteristic (ROC) curve is 0.7055 compared with 0.6538 obtained with the usual filtering method used for this type of signal (discrete Fourier transform low-pass filter with a cut-off frequency of 35 Hz). Conclusions:This paper reviews Prony's method in relation to signal filtering and approximation, provides the MATLAB code needed to implement the classic, LS, TLS and MPM methods, and tests their performance in biomedical signal filtering and function approximation. It emphasizes the importance of improving the computational methods used to implement the various methods described above.Universidad de AlcaláSecretaría de Estado de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovació

Análisis multivariado en plantaciones de eucaliptos en dos micro-ambientes de La Esperanza, provincia de Jujuy, con el método Procrustes Generalizado = Multivariate analysis of eucalyptus plantations in two microenvironments in La Esperanza, province of Jujuy, with the Generalized Procrustes method

El Análisis de Procrustes Generalizado (GPA por sus siglas en inglés) constituye un método de análisis multivariado muy conveniente para el análisis de variabilidad multiambiental, ya que permite el ajuste de componentes principales parciales dentro de cada ambiente, que luego conforman una matriz de consenso que ajusta mejor a la estructura intrínseca de la variabilidad de los fenómenos observados. En este trabajo se realizó un GPA sobre plantaciones de dos años de tres genotipos de eucalipto en dos microambientes o lotes en la localidad de La Esperanza, Provincia de Jujuy, a fin de determinar la contribución relativa que sobre la variabilidad total observada tuvieron el genotipo y el ambiente, como una herramienta para el análisis y la toma de decisiones. De esta forma, se pudo identificar que el híbrido Eucalyptus grandis x camaldulensis fue el genotipo más estable, es decir, el que presentó menor variabilidad entre ambientes, como así también el de mayor productividad. Eucalyptus saligna presentó la mayor variabilidad entre ambientes, y Eucalyptus camaldulensis presentó una variabilidad intra y entre ambientes intermedias.The Generalized Procrustes Analysis (GPA) is a very convenient multivariate method for the analysis of multienvironmental variability, since it allows the adjustment of partial principal components within each environment, which then form a consensus or average matrix that best fits the intrinsic structure of the variability of the observed phenomena. In this work, a GPA was carried out on two-year-old plantations of three eucalyptus genotypes in two microenvironments or plots in La Esperanza, Jujuy province, to determine the relative contribution of the genotype and the environment over the total observed variability, as a tool for analysis and decision making. In this way, it was possible to ascertain that the hybrid Eucalyptus grandis x camaldulensis was the most stable genotype and exhibited the least variability across environments, and it was also the most productive one. Eucalyptus saligna displayed the highest variability across environments. Lastly, Eucalyptus camaldulensis demonstrated intermediate intra- and inter-environment variability.EEA Hilario AscasubiFil: Solis, Juan Manuel. Universidad Nacional de Jujuy. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias; ArgentinaFil: De Tellería, Santiago. Universidad Nacional de Jujuy. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias; ArgentinaFil: Montenegro, Agustín Rodrigo. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Hilario Ascasubi; Argentina.Fil: Quispe, Julián. Universidad Nacional de Jujuy. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias; Argentin

¿Predice la retribución diseñada a partir de la teoría de costes de transacción el rendimiento de la empresa y del equipo de ventas?

Transaction Cost Analysis provides an appealing framework for examining the role of salary versus incentive compensation because it identifies a set of theoretical constructs for determining the appropriate balance between these components. However, there is no evidence on the performance impact of a compensation plan designed on the theoretical basis of TCA. This work analyses this impact through a sample of 108 salesforces operating in Spain. We consider variables as difficulty of replacing salespeople, uncertainty, output variables adequacy to measure salesforce performance and salesforce size to verify the relationship between the compensation design and the company and salesforce performance. Our results permit us to state that the TCA framework is appropriate for determining the success of a compensation plan for salespeople, specifically regarding salesforce outcomes

Box counting dimension of red blood cells samples when filtered with wavelet transform

Automatic recognizing of different populations of several millions of red blood cells (RBCs) is a useful tool in Hematology and Clinical Diagnosis. In this work we studied samples of several millions of RBCs: on one hand healthy control RBCs and on the other hand control RBCs incubated with Trichinella spiralis larval parasites. The alteration on the cells membrane with the parasite can be studied with box-counting dimension on both samples. Previously we applied wavelet transform to all the samples in order to improve the results. The procedure to remove noise from an image is based on the decomposition of the observed signal in a set of wavelets and taking threshold values to select the appropriate coefficients through which the signal can be reconstructed. In our work we compared the results obtained when analyzing the raw signals and the ones obtained after applying wavelet transform, and the results were different and more clearly characterized when the signal were treated with wavelet transform. Finally, the present method using wavelet transform is suitable to optimize the characterization of the RBCs damage when incubated with the larval parasites.Publicado en: Mecánica Computacional vol. XXXV, no. 43Facultad de Ingenierí

Revalorización y propuesta de catalogación de la Torre de Los Jerónimos, en Pinos Puente (Granada)

"La Torre de los Jerónimos" es el edificio principal de una gran explotación agrícola que, con el paso del tiempo, dio lugar a la aparición de Casanueva, núcleo de población en el que se asienta. Se atribuye su construcción a la Orden de los Jerónimos entre finales del S. XVI y principios del S. XVII, salvo la segunda planta levantada en la fachada principal, cuya construcción se atribuye a la familia Borbón durante el S. XIX. Presenta una arquitectura planificada que aleja al edificio de la arquitectura agrícola de la época. Con el objetivo de demostrar su relevancia, se aborda su estudio a través de un exhaustivo análisis tras el cual quede patente el gran valor que tiene histórica y constructivamente a nivel local. Se propone su declaración como Bien de Interés Cultural como forma de reconocer su valor y poner fin al deterioro que sufre en la actualidad para, finalmente, proceder a rehabilitarlo.Consejo General de la Arquitectura Técnica de Españ

Controlling Robot Motion by Blinking Eyes: an Experience on Users Training

This article aims to describe a system designed to control the movement of mobile robots by blinking eyes. It is based on the use of a Brain Computer Interface and a particular control architecture. The paper addresses the key aspects that allow simplifying usersrobot interaction and proposes a control strategy that facilitates a fast learning of robot handling. In this sense, the main advantage of the approach is the short period of time required for users’ training. The article details a methodology aimed to evaluate this feature, presents experimental results that confirm this fact and also discusses about the influence of interacting with a real or a simulated robot. Particularly, it analyses if a previous training with the virtual robot helps to improve the interaction with the real robot or vice versa

Sex-specific foraging behaviour in response to fishing activities in a threatened seabird

Some seabird species have learnt to efficiently exploit fishing discards from trawling activities. However, a discard ban has been proposed as necessary in Europe to ensure the sustainability of the seas. It is of crucial importance for the management and conservation purposes to study the potential consequences of a discard ban on the foraging ecology of threatened seabirds. We assessed the influence of fishing activities on the feeding habits of 22 male and 15 female Audouin's gulls ( Larus audouinii ) from the Ebro Delta (Mediterranean Sea) during the breeding period using GPS loggers together with Stable Isotope Analysis (SIA), which provided new insights into their foraging behavior and trophic ecology, respectively. GPS data revealed different sex-specific foraging patterns between workdays and weekends. Females were highly consistent in that they foraged at sea throughout the week even though discarding stops at weekends. In contrast, males switched from foraging at sea during the week (when discards are produced) to an increased use of rice field habitats at week- ends (when fishermen do not work). This sex-specific foraging behavior could be related to specific nutritional requirements associated with previous egg pro- duction, an energetically demanding period for females. However, on a broader time scale integrated by the SIA, both sexes showed a high degree of individual specialization in their trophic ecology. The need to obtain detailed information on the dependence and response of seabirds to fishing activities is crucial in conservation sciences. In this regard, sex-specific foraging behavior in relation to fisheries has been overlooked, despite the ecological and conservation impli- cations. For instance, this situation may lead to sex differentiation in bycatch mortality in longlines when trawlers do not operate. Moreover, any new fisher- ies policy will need to be implemented gradually to facilitate the adaptation of a specialized species to a discard ban scenario