Cultural Heritage and Mobile Robotics Technologies

This paper reviews current research works at the authors’ Institutions to illustrate how mobile robotics and related technologies can be used to enhance economical fruition, control, protection and social impact of the cultural heritage. Robots allow experiencing on-line, from remote locations, tours at museums, archaeological areas and monuments. These solutions avoid travelling costs, increase beyond actual limits the number of simultaneous visitors, and prevent possible damages that can arise by over-exploitation of fragile environments. The same tools can be used for exploration and monitoring of cultural artifacts located in difficult to reach or dangerous areas. Examples are provided by the use of underwater robots in the exploration of deeply submerged archaeological areas. Besides, technologies commonly employed in robotics can be used to help exploring, monitoring and preserving cultural artifacts. Examples are provided by the development of procedures for data acquisition and mapping and by object recognition and monitoring algorithms.

Changing family models in Spain: the impact of the sociodemographic factors

Abstract During the last few decades, there has been an increasing international recognition of the studies related to the analysis of the family models change, the focus being the determinants of the female employment and the problems related to the work family balance (Lewis, 2001; Petit & Hook, 2005Saraceno, Crompton & Lyonette, 20062008; Pfau-Effinger, 2012). The majority of these studies have been focused on the analysis of the work-family balance problems as well as the effectiveness of the family and gender policies in order to encourage female employment (Korpi et al., 2013). In Spain, special attention has been given to the family policies implemented, the employability of women and on the role of the father in the family (Flaquer et al., 2015; Meil, 2015); however, there has been far less emphasis on the analysis of the family cultural models (González and Jurado, 2012; Crespi and Moreno, 2016). The purpose of this paper is to present some of the first results on the influence of the socio-demographic factors on the expectations and attitudes about the family models. This study offers an analytical reflection upon the foundation of the determinants of the family ambivalence in Spain from the cultural and the institutional dimension. This study shows the Spanish family models of preferences following the Pfau-Effinger (2004) classification of the famiy living arrangements. The reason for this study is twofold; on the one hand, there is confirmed the scarcity of studies that have focused their attention on this objective in Spain; on the other hand, the studies carried out in the international context have confirmed the analytical effectiveness of researching on the attitude and value changes to explain the meaning and trends of the family changes. There is also presented some preliminary results that have been obtained from the multinomial analysis related to the influence of the socio-demographic factors on the family model chosen by the individuals in Spain (father and mother working full time; mother part-time father full-time; mother not at work father full-time; mother and father part-time). 3 The database used has been the International Social Survey Programme: Family and Changing Gender Roles IV- ISSP 2012-. Spain is the only country of South Europe that has participated in the survey. For this reason it has been considered as a representative case study.