First 20 years of DNDC: Model evolution and GRAMP.

The DNDC (DeNitrification and DeComposition) model was first developed by Li et al. (1992) as a rain event-driven process-orientated simulation model for nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and nitrogen gas emissions from the agricultural soils in the U.S. Over the last 20 years, the model has been modified and adapted by various research groups around the world to suit specific purposes and circumstances. The Global Research Alliance Modelling Platform (GRAMP) is a UK-led initiative for the establishment of a purposeful and credible web-based platform initially aimed at users of the DNDC model. With the aim of improving the predictions of soil C and N cycling in the context of climate change the objectives of GRAMP are to: 1) to document the existing versions of the DNDC model; 2) to create a family tree of the individual DNDC versions; 3) to provide information on model use and development; and 4) to identify strengths, weaknesses and potential improvements for the model.

Transit Use by Young People in Times of Financial Austerity: A Cause of Equity Concern?

This study investigates the effect of price and travel time fairness and spatial equity in transit provision on the perceived transit service quality, willingness to pay, and habitual frequency of use. Based on the theory of planned behavior, we developed a web-based questionnaire for revealed preferences data collection. The survey was administered among young people in Copenhagen and Lisbon to explore the transit perceptions and use under different economic and transit provision conditions. The survey yielded 499 questionnaires, analyzed by means of structural equation models. Results show that higher perceived fairness relates positively to higher perceived quality of transit service and higher perceived ease of paying for transit use. Higher perceived spatial equity in service provision is associated with higher perceived service quality. Higher perceived service quality relates to higher perceived ease of payment, which links to higher frequency of transit use.

Mining mobile apps reviews to support release planning

The mobile apps market is a tremendous success, with millions of apps downloaded and used every day by users spread all around the world. For apps’ developers, having their apps published on one of the major app stores (e.g. Google Play market) is just the beginning of the apps lifecycle. Indeed, in order to successfully compete with the other apps in the market, an app has to be updated frequently by adding new attractive features and by fixing existing bugs. Clearly, any developer interested in increasing the success of her app should try to implement features desired by the app’s users and to fix bugs affecting the user experience of many of them. A precious source of information to decide how to collect users’ opinions and wishes is represented by the reviews left by users on the store from which they downloaded the app. However, to exploit such information the app’s developer should manually read each user review and verify if it contains useful information (e.g. suggestions for new features). This is something not doable if the app receives hundreds of reviews per day, as happens for the very popular apps on the market. In this work, our aim is to provide support to mobile apps developers by proposing a novel approach exploiting data mining, natural language processing, machine learning, and clustering techniques in order to classify the user reviews on the basis of the information they contain (e.g. useless, suggestion for new features, bugs reporting). Such an approach has been empirically evaluated and made available in a web-­‐based tool publicly available to all apps’ developers. The achieved results showed that the developed tool: (i) is able to correctly categorise user reviews on the basis of their content (e.g. isolating those reporting bugs) with 78% of accuracy, (ii) produces clusters of reviews (e.g. groups together reviews indicating exactly the same bug to be fixed) that are meaningful from a developer’s point-­‐of-­‐view, and (iii) is considered useful by a software company working in the mobile apps’ development market.

A framework for adaptive e-learning for continuum mechanics and structural analysis

This paper presents a project for providing the students of Structural Engineering with the flexibility to learn outside classroom schedules. The goal is a framework for adaptive E-learning based on a repository of open educational courseware with a set of basic Structural Engineering concepts and fundamentals. These are paramount for students to expand their technical knowledge and skills in structural analysis and design of tall buildings, arch-type structures as well as bridges. Thus, concepts related to structural behaviour such as linearity, compatibility, stiffness and influence lines have traditionally been elusive for students. The objective is to facilitate the student a teachinglearning process to acquire the necessary intuitive knowledge, cognitive skills and the basis for further technological modules and professional development in this area. As a side effect, the system is expected to help the students improve their preparation for exams on the subject. In this project, a web-based open-source system for studying influence lines on continuous beams is presented. It encompasses a collection of interactive user-friendly applications accessible via Web, written in JavaScript under JQuery and Dygraph Libraries, taking advantage of their efficiency and graphic capabilities. It is performed in both Spanish and English languages. The student is enabled to set the geometric, topologic, boundary and mechanic layout of a continuous beam. While changing the loading and the support conditions, the changes in the beam response prompt on the screen, so that the effects of the several issues involved in structural analysis become apparent. This open interaction with the user allows the student to simulate and virtually infer the structural response. Different levels of complexity can be handled, whereas an ongoing help is at hand for any of them. Students can freely boost their experiential learning on this subject at their own pace, in order to further share, process, generalize and apply the relevant essential concepts of Structural Engineering analysis. Besides, this collection is being added to the "Virtual Lab of Continuum Mechanics" of the UPM, launched in 2013 (http://serviciosgate.upm.es/laboratoriosvirtuales/laboratorios/medios-continuos-en-construcci%C3%B3n)

Desarrollo de una aplicación web para la gestión de restaurantes

Actualmente existen una gran cantidad de restaurantes diferentes en todo el mundo, tanto por su tipo de comida, especial de cada país o ciudad, como por la forma en que ofrecen sus servicios o por la temática que presentan al público. Cada día, millones de personas buscan el restaurante perfecto donde disfrutar de un desayuno, comida o cena, solos o en compañía de otras personas. A veces no es nada fácil encontrar sitios nuevos a los que ir, alejándonos un poco de la rutina del día a día. O simplemente queremos viajar a otra ciudad o país y no sabemos dónde podemos ir a comer, o dónde encontrar la comida típica. Por otra parte, a veces los propios restaurantes encuentran un poco difícil la tarea de darse a conocer o promocionar su comida. De este planteamiento surge la idea de realizar una aplicación web en la que los restaurantes puedan crear una cuenta y personalizarla para que ésta sea fiel a la imagen del establecimiento, y no una página más entre miles de restaurantes. Además, esta aplicación será el medio perfecto para que las personas puedan buscar ese lugar al que quieren ir a disfrutar de su comida, de una manera rápida y eficaz y todo desde una misma página web. ABSTRACT Currently, there are a huge amount of different restaurants around the world, and they are different for their type of food, which is specific of each country or city, for the way they offer their services or for the thematic they present to the customers. Every day, millions of people search for the perfect restaurant where they can enjoy their breakfast, lunch or dinner, on their own or in company of others. Sometimes it is not easy to find new places to go, getting away from the routine of the day-to-day. Or simply we want to travel to another country or city and we don’t know where we can go out for a meal, or where we can find the typical food. On the other hand, sometimes the restaurants find it hard to make themselves known or to promote their food. From this proposal appears the idea of making a web application where the restaurants could create an account and customize it so it is faithful to the image of the establishment and it is not just one more web page among miles of restaurants. In addition, this application will be the perfect way for people to search that place where they want to go to enjoy their meal, in a fast and efficient way and everything through the same web page.