Towards the Design of a Textile Chemical Ontology

The main goal of this paper is to present the initial version of a Textile Chemical Ontology, to be used by textile professionals with the purpose of conceptualising and representing the banned and harmful chemical substances that are forbidden in this domain. After analysing different methodologies and determining that “Methontology” is the most appropriate for the purposes, this methodology is explored and applied to the domain. In this manner, an initial set of concepts are defined, together with their hierarchy and the relationships between them. This paper shows the benefits of using the ontology through a real use case in the context of Information Retrieval. The potentiality of the proposed ontology in this preliminary evaluation encourages extending the ontology with a higher number of concepts and relationships, and validating it within other Natural Language Processing applications.

Pursuing Chemical Efficiency by Using Supported Organocatalysts for Asymmetric Reactions under Aqueous Conditions

Over the past decade, a great effort has been made by the chemical community to improve the efficiency of organic transformations and allow sustainable processes. Merging the use of supported and recyclable organocatalysts and aqueous conditions for the asymmetric synthesis of valuable molecules, has led to outstanding contributions in the area of green chemistry. Recent progresses in the field include the implementation of these methodologies in the large scale production of chiral molecules using automated flow chemistry.

Performance limits of graphene-ribbon field-effect transistors

The performance of field effect transistors based on an single graphene ribbon with a constriction and a single back gate are studied with the help of atomistic models. It is shown how this scheme, unlike that of traditional carbon-nanotube-based transistors, reduces the importance of the specifics of the chemical bonding to the metallic electrodes in favor of the carbon-based part of device. The ultimate performance limits are here studied for various constriction and metal-ribbon contact models. In particular, we show that, even for poorly contacting metals, properly tailored constrictions can give promising values for both the on conductance and the subthreshold swing.

Mathematics Game e-Library for Elementary School, study case: Mexico

One of the most relevant subjects for the intellectual formation of elementary school students is Mathematics where its importance goes back to ancient civilizations and which its importance is underestimated nowadays. This phenomenon occurs in Mexico, where 63.1% of the total population of elementary school students between the third and sixth grade have insufficient/elemental level of mathematics knowledge. This has resulted in the need to use a new mechanism to complement student’s classroom learning. With the rapid growth of wireless and mobile technologies, the mobile learning has been gradually considered as a novel and effective form of learning due to it inherits all the advantages of e-learning as well as breaks the limitations of learning time and space occurring in the traditional classroom teaching. This project proposes the use of a Mathematics Game e-Library integrated by a set of games for mobile devices and a distribution/management tool. The games are developed for running on mobile devices and for cover the six competencies related with the mathematics learning approach established in Mexico. The distribution/management tool allows students to reach contents according to their needs; this is achieved through a core engine that infers, from an initial profile, the games that cover the user’s knowledge gaps.

Theoretical insights on electron donor-acceptor interactions involving carbon dioxide

Electron donor-acceptor (EDA) interactions are widely involved in chemistry and their understanding is essential to design new technological applications in a variety of fields ranging from material sciences and chemical engineering to medicine. In this work, we study EDA complexes of carbon dioxide with ketones using several ab initio and Density Functional Theory methods. Energy contributions to the interaction energy have been analyzed in detail using both variational and perturbational treatments. Dispersion energy has been shown to play a key role in explaining the high stability of a non-conventional structure, which can roughly be described by a cooperative EDA interaction.

A semantic framework for textual data enrichment

In this work we present a semantic framework suitable of being used as support tool for recommender systems. Our purpose is to use the semantic information provided by a set of integrated resources to enrich texts by conducting different NLP tasks: WSD, domain classification, semantic similarities and sentiment analysis. After obtaining the textual semantic enrichment we would be able to recommend similar content or even to rate texts according to different dimensions. First of all, we describe the main characteristics of the semantic integrated resources with an exhaustive evaluation. Next, we demonstrate the usefulness of our resource in different NLP tasks and campaigns. Moreover, we present a combination of different NLP approaches that provide enough knowledge for being used as support tool for recommender systems. Finally, we illustrate a case of study with information related to movies and TV series to demonstrate that our framework works properly.

Hacia una ciudadanía global: enseñanza de aspectos culturales y de género en la universidad con las revistas de Oxfam Intermón

Las ONG de Desarrollo (ONGD) contribuyen a informar sobre lo las distintas realidades sociales del siglo XXI. Sin embargo, en ocasiones, la representación de las personas culturalmente diferentes está llena de prejuicios y de estereotipos, hecho que todavía queda más marcado cuando se trata de mujeres. Así, nuestro objetivo con esta comunicación es observar la representación de mujeres de otras culturas en una muestra de las revistas publicadas por la ONGD Oxfam Intermón desde mayo de 2013 hasta mayo de 2014. El corpus empleado para el análisis serán las portadas de las revistas. Se seleccionaron algunos de estos textos donde aparecían representadas mujeres para llevar a cabo una experiencia didáctica. Se explicó el modo de analizar textos con imagen y se pidió al alumnado que los analizara con el fin de desarrollar su capacidad crítica y su conciencia social. Los marcos teóricos de este estudio serán los principios del Análisis Crítico del Discurso (van Dijk 2005, 2009) y la Gramática Visual (Kress y van Leeuwen, 2006) para explorar las principales estrategias lingüísticas y visuales empleadas para presentar a mujeres. Los resultados del estudio ponen de manifiesto que la práctica docente llevada a cabo hace que el alumnado tome conciencia de que el modo en que las mujeres aparecen representadas en las revistas de Oxfam Intermón contribuye a modificar la imagen negativa que normalmente tenemos sobre éstas. La representación positiva que se observa contribuye a cambiar la percepción del alumnado. Como conclusiones podemos señalar la importancia del emplear textos sobre temas sociales para que el alumnado adquiera competencias emocionales y mejore su capacidad crítica. Además, estos textos señalan que las mujeres van avanzando hacia el empoderamiento en todos los lugares del planeta de modo que se cumplen progresivamente los objetivos del milenio.

Marine debris occurrence and treatment: A review

Marine debris produces a wide variety of negative environmental, economic, safety, health and cultural impacts. Most marine litter has a very low decomposition rate (as plastics, which are the most abundant type of marine debris), leading to a gradual, but significant accumulation in the coastal and marine environment. Along that time, marine debris is a significant source of chemical contaminants to the marine environment. Once extracted from the water, incineration is the method most widely used to treat marine debris. Other treatment methods have been tested, but they still need some improvement and so far have only been used in some countries. Several extraction and collection programs have been carried out. However, as marine debris keep entering the sea, these programs result insufficient and the problem of marine debris will continue its increase. The present work addresses the environmental impact and social aspects of the marine debris, with a review of the state of the art in the treatments of this kind of waste, together with an estimation of the worldwide occurrence and characteristics.