Spanish Nursing Students' Practical Experience of Computer Applications in Nursing

This study aimed to determine the level of computer practical experience in a sample of Spanish nursing students. Each student was given a Spanish language questionnaire, modified from an original used previously with medical students at the Medical School of North Carolina University (USA) and also at the Education Unit of Hospital General Universitario del Mar (Spain). The 10-item self-report questionnaire probed for information about practical experience with computers. A total of 126 students made up the sample. The majority were female (80.2%; n=101). The results showed that just over half (57.1%, n=72) of the students had used a computer game (three or more times before), and that only one third (37.3%, n=47) had the experience of using a word processing package. Moreover, other applications and IT-based facilities (e.g. statistical packages, e-mail, databases, CD-ROM searches, programming languages and computer-assisted learning) had never been used by the majority of students. The student nurses' practical experience was less than that reported for medical students in previous studies.

Comparative analysis of constructive solutions for thermal insulation by using computer applications in building rehabilitation in Mediterranean climate. The Spanish case

The new Spanish legislation in Energy Saving, similar to European regulation, provides new technical requirements to adequate technical solutions used in integral rehabilitation of existing buildings. The aim of this paper is to present, analyze and discuss the main thermal insulation constructive solutions best suited to a Mediterranean climate, and conclude on their suitability under the legislation in Energy Saving. The proposed methodology is based on the most usual constructive solutions in integral rehabilitation of buildings by analyzing their outstanding design features, by studying its construction details and then by applying the software provided by the Spanish legislation of energy efficiency in buildings. The results of the study evaluate and classify several solutions for façade rehabilitation according to energy efficiency criteria and their suitability for this type of weather, verifying the necessity of using software applications in energy saving for the proper design of constructive solutions in building rehabilitation.

Importancia de los procesos de validación topológica en la gestión de alteraciones catastrales

Las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación están consiguiendo que la información geográfica sea asequible a un mayor número de profesionales a través de las Tecnologías de la Información Geográfica. La intervención multidisciplinar en el territorio enriquece la investigación y las formas de aplicación de este tipo de recursos tecnológicos. Pero esta facilidad tecnológica puede suponer el riesgo de un uso inadecuado, por falta de conocimientos técnicos adecuados a la complejidad de la información geográfica o por el mal uso de las aplicaciones informáticas. El trabajo catastral puede beneficiarse mucho del empleo de estas tecnologías de información geográfica, al facilitar el uso, la comunicación y su administración electrónica, pero el desconocimiento de las propiedades geométricas y topológicas de la información geográfica puede llevar a cometer errores de graves consecuencias a profesionales no especializados. En este artículo ofrecemos el resultado de la investigación del trabajo de diversos juristas y técnicos, con el objetivo de desarrollar métodos automatizados y aplicaciones informáticas que permitan a los especialistas no expertos en Cartografía usar este tipo de información con garantías de exactitud al más alto nivel, como una solución eficaz para que la información geográfica con calidad topológica enriquezca la seguridad jurídica en el tráfico inmobiliario.

JavaVis: An Integrated Computer Vision Library for Teaching Computer Vision

In this article, we present a new framework oriented to teach Computer Vision related subjects called JavaVis. It is a computer vision library divided in three main areas: 2D package is featured for classical computer vision processing; 3D package, which includes a complete 3D geometric toolset, is used for 3D vision computing; Desktop package comprises a tool for graphic designing and testing of new algorithms. JavaVis is designed to be easy to use, both for launching and testing existing algorithms and for developing new ones.

Synchronous collaboration of virtual and remote laboratories

Virtual and remote laboratories(VRLs) are e-learning resources which enhance the accessibility of experimental setups providing a distance teaching framework which meets the student's hands-on learning needs. In addition, online collaborative communication represents a practical and a constructivist method to transmit the knowledge and experience from the teacher to students, overcoming physical distance and isolation. Thus, the integration of learning environments in the form of VRLs inside collaborative learning spaces is strongly desired. Considering these facts, the authors of this document present an original approach which enables user to share practical experiences while they work collaboratively through the Internet. This practical experimentation is based on VRLs, which have been integrated inside a synchronous collaborative e-learning framework. This article describes the main features of this system and its successful application for science and engineering subjects.

Java software platform for the development of advanced robotic virtual laboratories

This article presents an interactive Java software platform which enables any user to easily create advanced virtual laboratories (VLs) for Robotics. This novel tool provides both support for developing applications with full 3D interactive graphical interface and a complete functional framework for modelling and simulation of arbitrary serial-link manipulators. In addition, its software architecture contains a high number of functionalities included as high-level tools, with the advantage of allowing any user to easily develop complex interactive robotic simulations with a minimum of programming. In order to show the features of the platform, the article describes, step-by-step, the implementation methodology of a complete VL for Robotics education using the presented approach. Finally, some educational results about the experience of implementing this approach are reported.

A formal framework for modelling complex network management systems

Society today is completely dependent on computer networks, the Internet and distributed systems, which place at our disposal the necessary services to perform our daily tasks. Subconsciously, we rely increasingly on network management systems. These systems allow us to, in general, maintain, manage, configure, scale, adapt, modify, edit, protect, and enhance the main distributed systems. Their role is secondary and is unknown and transparent to the users. They provide the necessary support to maintain the distributed systems whose services we use every day. If we do not consider network management systems during the development stage of distributed systems, then there could be serious consequences or even total failures in the development of the distributed system. It is necessary, therefore, to consider the management of the systems within the design of the distributed systems and to systematise their design to minimise the impact of network management in distributed systems projects. In this paper, we present a framework that allows the design of network management systems systematically. To accomplish this goal, formal modelling tools are used for modelling different views sequentially proposed of the same problem. These views cover all the aspects that are involved in the system; based on process definitions for identifying responsible and defining the involved agents to propose the deployment in a distributed architecture that is both feasible and appropriate.

Application of Text Summarization techniques to the Geographical Information Retrieval task

Automatic Text Summarization has been shown to be useful for Natural Language Processing tasks such as Question Answering or Text Classification and other related fields of computer science such as Information Retrieval. Since Geographical Information Retrieval can be considered as an extension of the Information Retrieval field, the generation of summaries could be integrated into these systems by acting as an intermediate stage, with the purpose of reducing the document length. In this manner, the access time for information searching will be improved, while at the same time relevant documents will be also retrieved. Therefore, in this paper we propose the generation of two types of summaries (generic and geographical) applying several compression rates in order to evaluate their effectiveness in the Geographical Information Retrieval task. The evaluation has been carried out using GeoCLEF as evaluation framework and following an Information Retrieval perspective without considering the geo-reranking phase commonly used in these systems. Although single-document summarization has not performed well in general, the slight improvements obtained for some types of the proposed summaries, particularly for those based on geographical information, made us believe that the integration of Text Summarization with Geographical Information Retrieval may be beneficial, and consequently, the experimental set-up developed in this research work serves as a basis for further investigations in this field.

Developing Semantic Rich Internet Applications with the Sm4RIA Extension for OIDE

This paper introduces the Sm4RIA Extension for OIDE, which implements the Sm4RIA approach in OIDE (OOH4RIA Integrated Development Environment). The application, based on the Eclipse framework, supports the design of the Sm4RIA models as well as the model-to-model and model-to-text transformation processes that facilitate the generation of Semantic Rich Internet Applications, i.e., RIA applications capable of sharing data as Linked data and consuming external data from other sources in the same manner. Moreover, the application implements mechanisms for the creation of RIA interfaces from ontologies and the automatic generation of administration interfaces for a previously design application.

A Survey on FPGA-Based Sensor Systems: Towards Intelligent and Reconfigurable Low-Power Sensors for Computer Vision, Control and Signal Processing

The current trend in the evolution of sensor systems seeks ways to provide more accuracy and resolution, while at the same time decreasing the size and power consumption. The use of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) provides specific reprogrammable hardware technology that can be properly exploited to obtain a reconfigurable sensor system. This adaptation capability enables the implementation of complex applications using the partial reconfigurability at a very low-power consumption. For highly demanding tasks FPGAs have been favored due to the high efficiency provided by their architectural flexibility (parallelism, on-chip memory, etc.), reconfigurability and superb performance in the development of algorithms. FPGAs have improved the performance of sensor systems and have triggered a clear increase in their use in new fields of application. A new generation of smarter, reconfigurable and lower power consumption sensors is being developed in Spain based on FPGAs. In this paper, a review of these developments is presented, describing as well the FPGA technologies employed by the different research groups and providing an overview of future research within this field.

Research-action Methodology between Computer Science and Educational Psychology: a Multidisciplinary Approach

Computer science studies possess a strong multidisciplinary aptitude since most graduates do their professional work outside of a computing environment, in close collaboration with professionals from many different areas. However, the training offered in computer science studies lacks that multidisciplinary factor, focusing more on purely technical aspects. In this paper we present a novel experience where computer studies and educational psychology find a common ground and realistic working through laboratory practices. Specifically, the work enables students of computer science education the development of diagnosis support systems, with artificial intelligence techniques, which could then be used for future educational psychologists. The applications developed by computer science students are the creation of a model for the diagnosis of pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), sometimes also commonly called the autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The complexity of this diagnosis, not only by the exclusive characteristics of every person who suffers from it, but also by the large numbers of variables involved in it, requires very strong and close interdisciplinary participation. This work demonstrates that it is possible to intervene in a curricular perspective, in the university, to promote the development of interpersonal skills. What can be shown, in this way, is a methodology for interdisciplinary practices design and a guide for monitoring and evaluation. The results are very encouraging since we obtained significant differences in academic achievement between students who attended a course using the new methodology and those who did not use it.

Computational approaches to subjectivity and sentiment analysis: Present and envisaged methods and applications

Recent years have witnessed a surge of interest in computational methods for affect, ranging from opinion mining, to subjectivity detection, to sentiment and emotion analysis. This article presents a brief overview of the latest trends in the field and describes the manner in which the articles contained in the special issue contribute to the advancement of the area. Finally, we comment on the current challenges and envisaged developments of the subjectivity and sentiment analysis fields, as well as their application to other Natural Language Processing tasks and related domains.

An overview of the Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems

This introduction provides an overview of the state-of-the-art technology in Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems. Specifically, we analyze the need for such technologies to successfully address the new challenges of modern information systems, in which the exploitation of the Web as a main data source on business systems becomes a key requirement. It will also discuss the reasons why Human Language Technologies themselves have shifted their focus onto new areas of interest very directly linked to the development of technology for the treatment and understanding of Web 2.0. These new technologies are expected to be future interfaces for the new information systems to come. Moreover, we will review current topics of interest to this research community, and will present the selection of manuscripts that have been chosen by the program committee of the NLDB 2011 conference as representative cornerstone research works, especially highlighting their contribution to the advancement of such technologies.

Modernizing Secure OLAP Applications with a Model-Driven Approach

The majority of the organizations store their historical business information in data warehouses which are queried to make strategic decisions by using online analytical processing (OLAP) tools. This information has to be correctly assured against unauthorized accesses, but nevertheless there are a great amount of legacy OLAP applications that have been developed without considering security aspects or these have been incorporated once the system was implemented. This work defines a reverse engineering process that allows us to obtain the conceptual model corresponding to a legacy OLAP application, and also analyses and represents the security aspects that could have established. This process has been aligned with a model-driven architecture for developing secure OLAP applications by defining the transformations needed to automatically apply it. Once the conceptual model has been extracted, it can be easily modified and improved with security, and automatically transformed to generate the new implementation.