Automatically exposing OpenLifeData via SADI semantic Web Services

Background: Two distinct trends are emerging with respect to how data is shared, collected, and analyzed within the bioinformatics community. First, Linked Data, exposed as SPARQL endpoints, promises to make data easier to collect and integrate by moving towards the harmonization of data syntax, descriptive vocabularies, and identifiers, as well as providing a standardized mechanism for data access. Second, Web Services, often linked together into workflows, normalize data access and create transparent, reproducible scientific methodologies that can, in principle, be re-used and customized to suit new scientific questions. Constructing queries that traverse semantically-rich Linked Data requires substantial expertise, yet traditional RESTful or SOAP Web Services cannot adequately describe the content of a SPARQL endpoint. We propose that content-driven Semantic Web Services can enable facile discovery of Linked Data, independent of their location. Results: We use a well-curated Linked Dataset - OpenLifeData - and utilize its descriptive metadata to automatically configure a series of more than 22,000 Semantic Web Services that expose all of its content via the SADI set of design principles. The OpenLifeData SADI services are discoverable via queries to the SHARE registry and easy to integrate into new or existing bioinformatics workflows and analytical pipelines. We demonstrate the utility of this system through comparison of Web Service-mediated data access with traditional SPARQL, and note that this approach not only simplifies data retrieval, but simultaneously provides protection against resource-intensive queries. Conclusions: We show, through a variety of different clients and examples of varying complexity, that data from the myriad OpenLifeData can be recovered without any need for prior-knowledge of the content or structure of the SPARQL endpoints. We also demonstrate that, via clients such as SHARE, the complexity of federated SPARQL queries is dramatically reduced.

Computing abuse related damages in the case of new entry: An illustration for the Directory Enquiry Services market

A number of European countries, among which the UK and Spain, have opened up their Directory Enquiry Services (DQs, or 118AB) market to competition. We analyse the Spanish case, where both local and foreign firms challenged the incumbent as of April 2003. We argue that the incumbent had the ability to abuse its dominant position, and that it was a perfectly rational strategy. In short,the incumbent raised its rivals' costs directly by providing an inferior quality version of the (essential) input, namely the incumbent's subscribers' database. We illustrate how it is possible to quantify the effect of abuse in situation were the entrant has no previous history in the market. To do this, we use the UK experience to construct the relevant counterfactual, that is the "but for abuse" scenario. After controlling for relative prices and advertising intensity, we find that one of the foreign entrants achieved a Spanish market share of only half of what it would have been in the absence of abuse.

Are Bar Associations Anticompetitive? An Empirical Analysis of Recommended Prices for Legal Services in Spain

The European Commission Report on Competition in Professional Services found that recommended prices by professional bodies have a significant negative effect on competition since they may facilitate the coordination of prices between service providers and/or mislead consumers about reasonable price levels. Professional associations argue, first, that a fee schedule may help their members to properly calculate the cost of services avoiding excessive charges and reducing consumers’ searching costs and, second, that recommended prices are very useful for cost appraisal if a litigant is condemned to pay the legal expenses of the opposing party. Thus, recommended fee schedules could be justified to some extent if they represented the cost of providing the services. We test this hypothesis using cross‐section data on a subset of recommended prices by 52 Spanish bar associations and cost data on their territorial jurisdictions. Our empirical results indicate that prices recommended by bar associations are unrelated to the cost of legal services and therefore we conclude that recommended prices have merely an anticompetitive effect.

The impacts of leadership in the quality of municipal public services: case study of a portuguese municipal council

[EN]The present research work, based on some of the components of the Common Assessment Framework, sets to analyse the influence held by leadership in specific factors that constitute the organisational climate, and also the impact that these factors have on the quality of municipal public services. For the purposes of this study, we propose Likert’s exploitative autocratic and participative leadership styles to explain the genesis, structure and workflow. As far as the organisational climate is concerned, the variables used are motivation, satisfaction, empowerment, conflict and stress. The main conclusions that arose was that a participative leader confers higher relevance to the quality of service, through motivation, satisfaction, empowerment and human resources positive results, than an exploitative autocratic leader. Performed contributions are based on the empiric research hereby presented, and new research guidelines are proposed. The research methodology used was qualitative, based on the case study.

Mitigation Techniques to Reduce the Impact of Wind Turbines on Radar Services

Radar services are occasionally affected by wind farms. This paper presents a comprehensive description of the effects that a wind farm may cause on the different radar services, and it compiles a review of the recent research results regarding the mitigation techniques to minimize this impact. Mitigation techniques to be applied at the wind farm and on the radar systems are described. The development of thorough impact studies before the wind farm is installed is presented as the best way to analyze in advance the potential for interference, and subsequently identify the possible solutions to allow the coexistence of wind farms and radar services.

Optimización del Lead Time de vehículos mediante la implementación de una solución RTLS (Real Time Location System)

A lo largo de este documento, se va a explicar la implantación del proyecto que he realizado basado en la localización de vehículos en la fábrica de Mercedes Benz España situada en Vitoria-Gasteiz. Durante la realización de este proyecto, se han llevado a cabo diversos estudios con el fin de conseguir la correcta implantación de las tecnologías empleadas. Se han realizado diferentes alternativas de posicionamiento de los componentes y diversas pruebas para comprobar el correcto funcionamiento de la solución. La solución del proyecto se realizará en distintas fases. La primera de ellas tratará sobre el estudio en una determinada zona de la fábrica, más concretamente la denominada “Área Técnica”, en esta zona se encuentran los vehículos que sufren algún retoque una vez están montados, esta zona se utilizará como piloto para una vez finalizado y comprobado su éxito ampliar la solución al resto de zonas. Previamente a mi incorporación se realizó un estudio para la colocación de los elementos necesarios en esta zona y se ha visto las posibilidades y beneficios que aportaría el control de los vehículos dentro de la fábrica. La siguiente fase será implantar la solución en el resto de las áreas que se encuentran dentro de la fábrica de Vitoria-Gasteiz así como la instalación de unos dispositivos que estarán ubicados en las puertas. Estos ayudarán a mejorar la ubicación de los vehículos ya que podremos conocer si los vehículos se encuentran dentro o fuera de la fábrica. Finalmente se ha realizado la integración de la solución en los sistemas actuales que utilizan en la fábrica para la gestión de los vehículos durante su ciclo de vida.

Long Run Trends in the Price of Energy and Energy Services

4 p.

Competing Ecosystem services: an Assessment of Carbon and timber in the Tropical forests of Central America

4 p.

Economic Valuation of Ecosystem Services: Conflicts in Classification

4 p.

Divergences in the Long Run Trends in the Price of Energy and of Energy Services

32 p.

Classifying Ecosystem Services for Economic Valuation: The case of forest water services

30 p.

Economic Assessment of Forest Ecosystem Services Losses: Cost of Policy Inaction

52 p.

Competing Ecosystem Services: an Assessment of Carbon and Timber in the Tropical Forests of Central America

29 p.

Exploitation of soil biota ecosystem services in agriculture: a bioeconomic approach

24 p.

Towards a Comprehensive Approach to Quantifying and Mapping Ecosystem Services Flows

25 p.