Showing papers by "Open University of Catalonia published in 2016"

Places: An Image Database for Deep Scene Understanding

Abstract: The rise of multi-million-item dataset initiatives has enabled data-hungry machine learning algorithms to reach near-human semantic classification at tasks such as object and scene recognition. Here we describe the Places Database, a repository of 10 million scene photographs, labeled with scene semantic categories and attributes, comprising a quasi-exhaustive list of the types of environments encountered in the world. Using state of the art Convolutional Neural Networks, we provide impressive baseline performances at scene classification. With its high-coverage and high-diversity of exemplars, the Places Database offers an ecosystem to guide future progress on currently intractable visual recognition problems.

Exercise-induced stress behavior, gut-microbiota-brain axis and diet: a systematic review for athletes

Abstract: Fatigue, mood disturbances, under performance and gastrointestinal distress are common among athletes during training and competition. The psychosocial and physical demands during intense exercise can initiate a stress response activating the sympathetic-adrenomedullary and hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axes, resulting in the release of stress and catabolic hormones, inflammatory cytokines and microbial molecules. The gut is home to trillions of microorganisms that have fundamental roles in many aspects of human biology, including metabolism, endocrine, neuronal and immune function. The gut microbiome and its influence on host behavior, intestinal barrier and immune function are believed to be a critical aspect of the brain-gut axis. Recent evidence in murine models shows that there is a high correlation between physical and emotional stress during exercise and changes in gastrointestinal microbiota composition. For instance, induced exercise-stress decreased cecal levels of Turicibacter spp and increased Ruminococcus gnavus, which have well defined roles in intestinal mucus degradation and immune function. Diet is known to dramatically modulate the composition of the gut microbiota. Due to the considerable complexity of stress responses in elite athletes (from leaky gut to increased catabolism and depression), defining standard diet regimes is difficult. However, some preliminary experimental data obtained from studies using probiotics and prebiotics studies show some interesting results, indicating that the microbiota acts like an endocrine organ (e.g. secreting serotonin, dopamine or other neurotransmitters) and may control the HPA axis in athletes. What is troubling is that dietary recommendations for elite athletes are primarily based on a low consumption of plant polysaccharides, which is associated with reduced microbiota diversity and functionality (e.g. less synthesis of byproducts such as short chain fatty acids and neurotransmitters). As more elite athletes suffer from psychological and gastrointestinal conditions that can be linked to the gut, targeting the microbiota therapeutically may need to be incorporated in athletes’ diets that take into consideration dietary fiber as well as microbial taxa not currently present in athlete’s gut.

Smart contradictions: The politics of making Barcelona a Self-sufficient city:

Abstract: In recent years, the Smart City has become a very popular concept amongst policy makers and urban planners. In a nutshell, the Smart City refers to projects and planning strategies that aim to join up new forms of inclusive and lowcarbon economic growth based on the knowledge economy through the deployment of information and communication technologies. However, at the same time as new urban Smart interventions are being designed and applied, insufficient attention has been paid to how these strategies are inserted into the wider political economy and, in particular, the political ecology of urban transformation. Therefore, in this paper we critically explore the implementation of the Smart City, tracing how the ‘environment’ and environmental concerns have become an organising principle in Barcelona’s Smart City strategy. Through an urban political ecology prism we aim to critically reflect upon the contradictions of the actually existing Smart City in Barcelona and how Smart discourses and practices might be intentionally or unintentionally mobilised in ways that serve to depoliticise urban redevelopment and environmental management. The paper stresses the need to repoliticise the debates on the Smart City and put citizens back at the centre of the urban debate.

ChaLearn LAP 2016: First Round Challenge on First Impressions - Dataset and Results

Abstract: This paper summarizes the ChaLearn Looking at People 2016 First Impressions challenge data and results obtained by the teams in the first round of the competition. The goal of the competition was to automatically evaluate five “apparent” personality traits (the so-called “Big Five”) from videos of subjects speaking in front of a camera, by using human judgment. In this edition of the ChaLearn challenge, a novel data set consisting of 10,000 shorts clips from YouTube videos has been made publicly available. The ground truth for personality traits was obtained from workers of Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT). To alleviate calibration problems between workers, we used pairwise comparisons between videos, and variable levels were reconstructed by fitting a Bradley-Terry-Luce model with maximum likelihood. The CodaLab open source platform was used for submission of predictions and scoring. The competition attracted, over a period of 2 months, 84 participants who are grouped in several teams. Nine teams entered the final phase. Despite the difficulty of the task, the teams made great advances in this round of the challenge.

Scoping the Sharing Economy: Origins, Definitions, Impact and Regulatory Issues

Abstract: This report selectively draws on the systematic review of a large set of data sources, which is presented elsewhere, and comprises 430 secondary sources (Codagnone, 2016). The report also provides a critical overview of key analytical, empirical, and normative dimensions of the ‘sharing economy’. It reviews both the rhetorical and controversial debates currently surrounding the topics and the available empirical evidence in order to sharpen our understanding of relevant policy and regulatory issues. The broad umbrella term 'sharing economy' is critically assessed and a typology developed that identifies the commercial 'peer to peer' sharing economy as the main focus of both controversies and policy-relevant issues. Empirical evidence of the benefits and costs of the sharing economy and its implications for sustainability and employment is very limited and inconclusive, particularly as regards the European landscape. This critical review, hence, shows that, as yet, there are no unambiguous answers to some of the fundamental questions about the ‘sharing economy’. The available research is too limited and patchy to give us a comprehensive and coherent picture. This report’s main contribution is to clear some of the conceptual and empirical fog around the ‘sharing economy’ and to identify where possible answers might be found in the future. It is suggested that the definition of sharing platforms should focus on P2P activities, as most of the policy concerns are found there. These include regulatory and consumer protection issues resulting from the informal production of services, potentially unfair competition with formal B2C service providers, and questions related to dominance and market power of P2P platform operators as commercial businesses.

Minor hallucinations occur in drug-naive Parkinson's disease patients, even from the premotor phase.

Abstract: Objectives The description of minor hallucinatory phenomena (presence, passage hallucinations) has widened the spectrum of psychosis in Parkinson's disease (PD). Minor hallucinatory phenomena seem to antedate the development of more severe hallucinations. Early detection of minor hallucinations may be useful for screening patients with more severe endophenotypes. Motivated by the observation of “de novo,” drug-naive PD patients reporting minor hallucinations, we aimed to prospectively identify “de novo” untreated PD patients experiencing hallucinatory phenomena, and to compare their clinico-demographic characteristics with those of untreated PD patients without hallucinations and healthy controls. Methods Screening and description of psychosis was assessed by the Movement Disorders Society Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale—Part I and a structured interview covering all types of psychotic phenomena reported in PD. Clinical, neuropsychological, and demographic data of PD patients with and without psychotic phenomena were compared with those of age- and education-matched healthy controls. Results Fifty drug-naive, “de novo” PD patients and 100 controls were prospectively included. Minor hallucinations were experienced in 42% (21 of 50) PD patients and 5% controls (P < 0.0001). Coexistence of passage and presence hallucinations was the most common finding. Unexpectedly, 33.3% of patients with minor hallucinations manifested these as a pre-motor symptom, starting 7 months to 8 years before first parkinsonian motor symptoms. The presence of minor hallucinations was significantly associated with presence of rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder. Conclusions In this first study to prospectively analyze the frequency of minor hallucinatory phenomena in incident, untreated PD patients, hallucinations appeared as a frequent early non-motor symptom that may even predate the onset of parkinsonism. © 2015 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society

Electric Vehicles in Logistics and Transportation: A Survey on Emerging Environmental, Strategic, and Operational Challenges

Abstract: Current logistics and transportation (LT and (b) strategic, planning and operational issues associated with “standard” EVs and with hydrogen-based EVs. The paper also analyzes how the introduction of EVs in L&T systems generates new variants of the well-known Vehicle Routing Problem, one of the most studied optimization problems in the L&T field, and proposes the use of metaheuristics and simheuristics as the most efficient way to deal with these complex optimization problems.

Patterns of authorship in the IPCC Working Group III report

Abstract: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has completed its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). Here, we explore the social scientific networks informing Working Group III (WGIII) assessment of mitigation for the AR5. Identifying authors’ institutional pathways, we highlight the persistence and extent of North–South inequalities in the authorship of the report, revealing the dominance of US and UK institutions as training sites for WGIII authors. Examining patterns of co-authorship between WGIII authors, we identify the unevenness in co-authoring relations, with a small number of authors co-writing regularly and indicative of an epistemic community’s influence over the IPCC’s definition of mitigation. These co-authoring networks follow regional patterns, with significant EU–BRICS collaboration and authors from the US relatively insular. From a disciplinary perspective, economists, engineers, physicists and natural scientists remain central to the process, with insignificant participation of scholars from the humanities. The shared training and career paths made apparent through our analysis suggest that the idea that broader geographic participation may lead to a wider range of viewpoints and cultural understandings of climate change mitigation may not be as sound as previously thought.

Role of Vitamin D in the Hygiene Hypothesis: The Interplay between Vitamin D, Vitamin D Receptors, Gut Microbiota, and Immune Response

Abstract: The hygiene hypothesis postulates that higher levels of cleanliness and improper exposure to microorganisms early in childhood could disturb the intestinal microbiome resulting in abnormal immune responses. Recently, more attention has been put on how a lack of sun exposure and consequently vitamin D deficiency could lead to less immune tolerance and aberrant immune responses. Moreover, vitamin D receptor (VDR) function has been positioned to be a critical aspect of immune response and gut homeostasis. Therefore, this review focuses on the role that the interaction between vitamin D, VDR function and gut microbiome might have on autoimmune diseases in the context of the hygiene hypothesis. Literature shows that there is a high correlation between vitamin D deficiency, VDR dysfunction, gut microbiota composition and autoimmune diseases. The biologically active form of vitamin D, 1,25(OH)2D3, serves as the primary ligand for VDRs which have been shown to play a fundamental role in reducing autoimmune disease symptoms. Although the biological functions of VDR, the effects of its genetic variants and the effects of epigenetic profiles in its promoter region are largely unknown in humans, studies in murine models are increasingly demonstrating that VDRs play a crucial role in attenuating autoimmune disease symptoms by regulating autophagy and the production of antimicrobial peptides such cathelicidin and β-defensin, which are responsible for modifying the intestinal microbiota to a healthier composition. Remarkably, evidence shows that hormonal compounds and byproducts of the microbiota such as bile acids might also activate VDR. Therefore, understanding the interaction between VDR and gut microbiota is of the utmost importance towards understanding the rise in autoimmune diseases in Western countries. We have gained insights on how the VDR functions affects inflammation, autophagy, and microbiota composition that could lead to the development of pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases, while confirming the role vitamin D and VDRs have in the context of hygiene hypothesis.

Food advertising and eating behavior in children

Abstract: Systematic research reviews have repeatedly shown that food advertising affects children's eating behavior. Given that most food advertising promotes unhealthy, palatable, and rewarding food products, it is considered to be a significant contributor to the current obesity epidemic. This review describes recent studies that have tested the effect of contemporary food advertisements on children's eating behavior, including newly emerging data showing marketing effects on subconscious cognitive processes and studies illuminating the mechanistic underpinnings of these effects. In addition, this review presents an integration of empirical findings in a new theoretical framework that increases the understanding of the effects of food advertising on eating behavior and might be used for future research in this area.

A Comparative Study of Anomaly Detection Techniques for Smart City Wireless Sensor Networks.

Abstract: In many countries around the world, smart cities are becoming a reality. These cities contribute to improving citizens’ quality of life by providing services that are normally based on data extracted from wireless sensor networks (WSN) and other elements of the Internet of Things. Additionally, public administration uses these smart city data to increase its efficiency, to reduce costs and to provide additional services. However, the information received at smart city data centers is not always accurate, because WSNs are sometimes prone to error and are exposed to physical and computer attacks. In this article, we use real data from the smart city of Barcelona to simulate WSNs and implement typical attacks. Then, we compare frequently used anomaly detection techniques to disclose these attacks. We evaluate the algorithms under different requirements on the available network status information. As a result of this study, we conclude that one-class Support Vector Machines is the most appropriate technique. We achieve a true positive rate at least 56% higher than the rates achieved with the other compared techniques in a scenario with a maximum false positive rate of 5% and a 26% higher in a scenario with a false positive rate of 15%.

A global call for action to include gender in research impact assessment

Abstract: Global investment in biomedical research has grown significantly over the last decades, reaching approximately a quarter of a trillion US dollars in 2010. However, not all of this investment is distributed evenly by gender. It follows, arguably, that scarce research resources may not be optimally invested (by either not supporting the best science or by failing to investigate topics that benefit women and men equitably). Women across the world tend to be significantly underrepresented in research both as researchers and research participants, receive less research funding, and appear less frequently than men as authors on research publications. There is also some evidence that women are relatively disadvantaged as the beneficiaries of research, in terms of its health, societal and economic impacts. Historical gender biases may have created a path dependency that means that the research system and the impacts of research are biased towards male researchers and male beneficiaries, making it inherently difficult (though not impossible) to eliminate gender bias. In this commentary, we – a group of scholars and practitioners from Africa, America, Asia and Europe – argue that gender-sensitive research impact assessment could become a force for good in moving science policy and practice towards gender equity. Research impact assessment is the multidisciplinary field of scientific inquiry that examines the research process to maximise scientific, societal and economic returns on investment in research. It encompasses many theoretical and methodological approaches that can be used to investigate gender bias and recommend actions for change to maximise research impact. We offer a set of recommendations to research funders, research institutions and research evaluators who conduct impact assessment on how to include and strengthen analysis of gender equity in research impact assessment and issue a global call for action.

The Future of Work in the ‘Sharing Economy’. Market Efficiency and Equitable Opportunities or Unfair Precarisation?

Abstract: This critical and scoping review essay analyses digital labour markets where labour-intensive services are traded by matching requesters (employers and/or consumers) and providers (workers). It focuses on digital labour markets which allow the remote delivery of electronically transmittable services (i.e. Amazon Mechanical Turk, Upwork, Freelancers, etc.) and those where the matching and administration processes are digital but the delivery of the services is physical and requires direct interaction. The former broad type is called Online Labour Markets (OLMs) and is potentially global. The latter broad type is termed Mobile Labour Markets (MLMs) and is by definition localised. The essay defines and conceptualises these markets proposing a typology which proves to be empirically valid and heuristically useful. It describes their functioning and the socio-demographic profiles of the participants, reviews their economic and social effects, discusses the possible policy implications, and concludes with a research agenda to support European level policy making. It alternates the discussion of ‘hard’ findings from experimental and quasi-experimental studies with analysis of ‘softer’ issues such as rhetorical discourses and media ‘hyped’ accounts. This triangulation is inspired by, and a tribute to, the enduring legacy of the work of Albert O. Hirschman and his view that ideas and rhetoric can become endogenous engines of social change, reforms, and policies. This essay tries to disentangle the rhetoric with available empirical evidence in order to enable a more rational debate at least in the discussion of policies, if not in the public arena. To do so, an in depth analysis of 39 platforms was undertaken together with a formal review of 70 scientific sources. These two main sources have been integrated with: a) an exploration of 100 media accounts (business press, newspapers, magazines, and blogs); b) 50 reports and surveys produced by ‘interested parties’ (industrial associations, platforms own reports and public relation materials, think tanks with a clear political orientation, NGOs, trade unions, etc.); and c) about 200 indirectly relevant scientific contributions and policy reports (used as sources to contextualise and integrate the above sources, and to derive theoretical and interpretative insights).While the evidence is limited and inconclusive with respect to various dimensions, the findings of this essay show, among other things, that: a) individuals engage in these activities primarily for money, for a large segment of them this work is their primary source of income, and most are under-employed and self-employed and fewer are unemployed and inactive; b) matching frictions and hiring inefficiencies are widespread and even the OLMs are far from being globalised online meritocracies; c) a behavioural approach to big data exploration should be further applied because there is emerging evidence of heuristic and biases contributing to hiring inefficiencies.

The role of cognitive aptitudes for explicit language learning in the relative effects of explicit and implicit feedback

Abstract: This study investigated the extent to which cognitive abilities that involve explicit cognitive processes (i.e., explicit language aptitude) are related to second language (L2) learning outcomes under two corrective feedback conditions. The study followed a pretest-posttest-delayed posttest experimental design. Forty-eight L2 learners of English carried out three oral production tasks, in which their errors on the indefinite article were treated according to their group assignment (i.e., explicit, implicit, and no-feedback). A set of controlled oral production tests was administered as pretest and posttest. Explicit language aptitude was measured using three subtests from the LLAMA Language Aptitude Test battery (Meara, 2005). Results showed that explicit language aptitude predicted immediate posttest performance only under the explicit feedback condition, suggesting that this type of feedback requires mental processes that are facilitated by explicit cognitive abilities and that its short-term effectiveness is not the same for learners with different aptitude levels.

The Passions and the Interests: Unpacking the ‘Sharing Economy’

Abstract: The phenomenal growth of "sharing economy" platforms, the increasing number of economic sectors affected and the conflicting interests among involved stakeholders explain the huge controversies around the "Sharing economy". This report aims to provide a better understanding of this phenomenon and the issues at stake. The platforms reviewed cover both factor (capital, labour) and product markets (goods and services), i.e. the entire economy (and potentially society at large), taking account of both empirical evidence and rhetorical discourses in order to remove confusion and identify both available and lacking empirical evidence. There is controversy on what the "sharing economy" is or is not. Because of its positive connotation, more companies started to claim belonging to the "sharing economy" although they actually pursue economic self-interest. The conditions of "on-demand workers" raise conflicting views, as earnings for providers are not as high as claimed and practices add to the erosion of the labour contract and to the increase of "contingent" labour. Another controversial issue is whether or not the "sharing economy’ has positive redistributive effects, for which evidence is lacking or not conclusive. Last but not least conflicts, legal disputes, and consumer protection concerns are on the rise. In this respect, the size and scope of a platform may pose very different regulatory and policy challenges which is why a conceptual clarification is needed.

Industrial Wireless IP-Based Cyber –Physical Systems

Abstract: Industrial control systems have traditionally been built around dedicated wired solutions. The requirements of flexibility, mobility, and cost have created a strong push toward wireless solutions, preferably solutions requiring low power. Simultaneously, the increased need for interoperability and integration with the wider Internet made a transition to IP-based communication unavoidable. Following these trends, we survey 6TiSCH, the emerging family of standards for IP-based industrial communication over low-power and lossy networks. We describe the state of the standardization work, the major issues being discussed, and open questions recently identified. Based on extensive first-hand experience, we discuss challenges in implementation of this new wave of standards. Lessons learned are highlighted from four popular open-source implementations of these standards: OpenWSN, Contiki, RIOT, and TinyOS. We outline major requirements, present insights from early interoperability testing and performance evaluations, and provide guidelines for chip manufacturers and implementers.

Using biased randomization for solving the two-dimensional loading vehicle routing problem with heterogeneous fleet

Abstract: This paper discusses the two-dimensional loading capacitated vehicle routing problem (2L-CVRP) with heterogeneous fleet (2L-HFVRP). The 2L-CVRP can be found in many real-life situations related to the transportation of voluminous items where two-dimensional packing restrictions have to be considered, e.g.: transportation of heavy machinery, forklifts, professional cleaning equipment, etc. Here, we also consider a heterogeneous fleet of vehicles, comprising units of different capacities, sizes and fixed/variable costs. Despite the fact that heterogeneous fleets are quite ubiquitous in real-life scenarios, there is a lack of publications in the literature discussing the 2L-HFVRP. In particular, to the best of our knowledge no previous work discusses the non-oriented 2L-HFVRP, in which items are allowed to be rotated during the truck-loading process. After describing and motivating the problem, a literature review on related work is performed. Then, a multi-start algorithm based on biased randomization of routing and packing heuristics is proposed. A set of computational experiments contribute to illustrate the scope of our approach, as well as to show its efficiency.

Financializing Desalination: Rethinking the Returns of Big Infrastructure

Abstract: Against the trend prevalent during the 1990s and 2000s, large-scale infrastructural projects have made a comeback in the water sector. Although sometimes framed as part of a broader sustainable transition, the return of big infrastructure is a much more complicated story in which finance has played a crucial role. In the following article, we explore this encounter between finance and water infrastructure using the case of Britain's first experiment in desalination technologies, the Thames Water Desalination Plant (TWDP). On the surface, the plant appears to be a classic example of the successes of normative industrial ecology, in which sustainability challenges have been met with forward-thinking green innovations. However, the TWDP is utterly dependent on a byzantine financial model, which has shaped Thames Water's investment strategy over the last decade. This article returns to the fundamental question of whether London ever needed a desalination plant in the first place. Deploying an urban political ecology approach, we demonstrate how the plant is simultaneously an iconic illustration of ecological modernization and a fragile example of an infrastructure-heavy solution to the demands of financialization. Understanding the development of the TWDP requires a focus on the scalar interactions between flows of finance, waste, energy and water that are woven through the hydrosocial cycle of London.

What Leads People to Keep on E-Learning? An Empirical Analysis of Users' Experiences and Their Effects on Continuance Intention.

Abstract: User retention is a major goal for higher education institutions running their teaching and learning programmes online. This is the first investigation into how the senses of presence and flow, together with perceptions about two central elements of the virtual education environment (didactic resource quality and instructor attitude), facilitate the user's intention to continue e-learning. We use data collected from a large sample survey of current users in a pure e-learning environment along with objective data about their performance. The results provide support to the theoretical model. The paper further offers practical suggestions for institutions and instructors who aim to provide effective e-learning experiences.