ClInt: A bilingual Spanish-Catalan spoken corpus of clinical interviews

In this paper we present ClInt (Clinical Interview), a bilingual Spanish-Catalan spoken corpus that contains 15 hours of clinical interviews. It consists of audio files aligned with multiple-level transcriptions comprising orthographic, phonetic and morphological information, as well as linguistic and extralinguistic encoding. This is a previously non-existent resource for these languages and it offers a wide-ranging exploitation potential in a broad variety of disciplines such as Linguistics, Natural Language Processing and related fields.

Language extinction and linguistic fronts

Language diversity has become greatly endangered in the past centuries owing to processes of language shift from indigenous languages to other languages that are seen as socially and economically more advantageous, resulting in the death or doom of minority languages. In this paper, we define a new language competition model that can describe the historical decline of minority languages in competition with more advantageous languages. We then implement this non-spatial model as an interaction term in a reactiondiffusion system to model the evolution of the two competing languages. We use the results to estimate the speed at which the more advantageous language spreads geographically, resulting in the shrinkage of the area of dominance of the minority language. We compare the results from our model with the observed retreat in the area of influence of the Welsh language in the UK, obtaining a good agreement between the model and the observed data

A relational approach to the geography of innovation: a typology of regions

The aim of this study was to devise a method for computing a composite indicator that measures the regional degree of exposure to external knowledge sources. On the basis of this indicator, we propose a typology of regions according to their potential capacity to access extra-local items of knowledge, which might help them to recombine complementary elements of such an asset to produce a higher number of new ideas. Building on various research streams that have been relatively independent to date, we summarize a non-exhaustive instrumental list of recent studies that motivates our approach and the construction of our complex indicator, which can be used to appraise the extent to which each region is in an optimal position to access external innovative resources.

Emotion and Linguistic Diversity

In this paper we shall try to explain why speakers experience their languages so passionately. One explanation is based on the role language plays in the construction of the community and in the fact that it is a clear mark of belonging. Furthermore, we support another reason. Speakers experience their language as something received from their ancestors and that they are obliged to transmit to their descendents, an imperative which carries an extraordinary emotional charge. In fact, fear of the death of a language is experienced as an act of irreparable non-fulfilment. Why? We believe that language is one of the most evident signs of community, much more than the sum of the individuals of which it is composed. Indeed, it is a long-lasting entity projected into both the past and the future and which, moreover, accumulates within the language the whole of the culture. In the survival of the community and the language we find a response, even though it may be illusory, to the need for transcendence: our ancestors live on in our language and we, if we meet our obligations, live on in the language of our descendents

Coneixement lingüístic i matemàtic d'escolars de nivel sociocultural baix en programes d'immersió = Linguistic and mathematic knowledge in pupils of low sociocultural level in immersiom programmes

This piece of research compares knowledge of Catalan, Castilian and mathematics, as well as the attitudes to these two languages, of a sample of non-Catalan speaking pupils of low sociocultural level in their fourth year of primary school. Some of the pupils had followed an immersion programme in Catalan, whereas others had approached Catalan through their habitual language (Castilian). The findings show that not only did the immersion pupils obtain significantly better results in L2 (Catalan), but their mother tongue (Castilian) competence was undiminished and their performance on the mathematics test was superior to that of the other group. Moreover, the findings indicate that in pupils starting out from less favourable conditions (a low sociocultural level and a low I.Q.) the effect of the educational approach variable is greater than in other cases

Repensando la formación inicial del profesorado para abordar el tratamiento a la diversidad cultural y lingüística en el aula = Rethinking initial teacher education for linguistic and cvltural diversity in the classroom

In recent decades, European educational systems are facing many challenges related to the treatment of cultural and linguistic diversity. The need to address this diversity requires new approaches to education; this in turn requires changes in the way we prepare teachers for the new reality they face in their classrooms. In this article we highlight some of the major problems that initial teacher training has to address in order to enable teachers to deal effectively, respectfully, and fairly with students whose linguistic and cultural background is different from their own. We also present several models for teacher education from Europe and North America based on clearly identified teacher competences for linguistic and cultural diversity

Collaboration strategies and technological innovation: a contractual perspective of the relationship between firms and techonological centers

In this paper, a theoretical framework for analyzing the selection of governance structures for implementing collaboration agreements between firms and Technological Centers is presented and empirically discussed. This framework includes Transaction Costs and Property Rights’ theoretical assumptions, though complemented with several proposals coming from the Transactional Value Theory. This last theory is used for adding some dynamism in the governance structure selection. As empirical evidence of this theoretical explanation, we analyse four real experiences of collaboration between firms and one Technological Center. These experiences are aimed to represent the typology of relationships which Technological Centers usually face. Among others, a key interesting result is obtained: R&D collaboration activities do not need to always be organized through hierarchical solutions. In those cases where future expected benefits and/or reputation issues could play an important role, the traditional more static theories could not fully explain the selected governance structure for managing the R&D relationship. As a consequence, these results justify further research about the adequacy of the theoretical framework presented in this paper in other contexts, for example, R&D collaborations between firms and/or between Universities or Public Research Centers and firms.

The making of international environmental agreements

We examine in this paper the formation and the stability of international environmental agreements when cooperation means to commit to a minimum abatement level. Each country decides whether to ratify the agreement and this latter enters into force only if it is ratified by a number of countries at least equal to some ratification threshold. We analyze the role played by ratification threshold rules and provide conditions for international environmental agreements to enter into force. We show that a large typology of agreements can enter into force among the one constituted by the grand coalition.

Educació en valors i formació docent. La diversitat com a valor

La reflexió sobre la meva pràctica educativa m’ha portat a endinsar-me en el món de la diversitat i de l’educació en valors, i preguntar-me sobre la seva ubicació en la formació docent. L’enfocament d’aquestes qüestions s’ha realitzat des de l’òptica de la persona. Des d’ella s’han buscat uns eixos vertebradors mínims que haurien d’estar presents tant en tot plantejament educatiu concret, com en la legislació en matèria educativa i en els plans de formació del professorat. Aquests eixos vertebradors s’han articulat en una tipologia de valors formada pel valor de la persona, des del qual sorgeixen el valor de l’educació, els valors de la democràcia i el valor de la utopia. El que he realitzat en aquesta recerca ha estat analitzar la legislació educativa i els plans d’estudi de formació de mestres de les universitats de Catalunya a partir de quatre grups d’indicadors que pretenen l’estudi del seu marc contextual, del vocabulari utilitzat –concretament els termes “ètica”, “moral” i “valor”-, del tractament de la diversitat –a partir del territori i la classe social, l’ètnia, el gènere i les necessitats educatives especials-, i de l’enfocament de l’educació en valors –segons la tipologia anteriorment apuntada-.

Internship report: improving asymmetric term extraction from bilingual text

Estudi elaborat a partir d’una estada a Xerox Research Centre Europe a Grenoble, França,entre juny i desembre del 2006. El projecte tradueïx termes tècnics anglesos a noruec. És asimètric perquè no tenim recursos lingüístics per a la llengua noruega, però solament per a l'anglès. S’ha desenvolupat i posat en pràctica mètodes que comprovaven contigüitat ("local reordering" i permutació selectiva) per a millorar el funcionament d’una eina anterior. Contigüitat és quan una paraula es traduïx en paraules múltiples, aquestes paraules han de ser adjacents en l'oració. A més, s’ha construït una taula de les operacions de recerca per als termes tècnics i s’ha integrat aquesta taula en un programa de demostració.

The ‘Global Dimension’ of Contemporary Politics. An Argument for Taking ‘Global’ Seriously

Recent years have seen a striking proliferation of the term ‘global’ in public and political discourse. The popularity of the term is a manifestation of the fact that there is a widespread notion that contemporary social reality is ‘global’. The acknowledgment of this notion has important political implications and raises questions about the role played by the idea of the ‘global’ in policy making. These questions, in turn, expose even more fundamental issues about whether the term ‘global’ indicates a difference in kind, even an ontological shift, and, if so, how to approach it. This paper argues that the notion of ‘global’, in other words the ‘global dimension’, is a significant aspect of contemporary politics that needs to be investigated. The paper argues that in the globalization discourse of International Studies ‘global’ is ‘naturalized’, which means that it is taken for granted and assumed to be self-evident. The term ‘global’ is used mainly in a descriptive way and subsumed under the rubric of ‘globalization’. ‘Global’ tends to be equated with transnational and/or world-wide; hence, it addresses quantitative differences in degree but not (alleged) differences in kind. In order to advance our understanding of contemporary politics, ‘global’ needs to be taken seriously. This means, firstly, to understand and to conceptualize ‘global’ as a social category; and, secondly, to uncover ‘global’ as a ‘naturalized’ concept in the Political and International Studies strand of the globalization discourse in order to rescue it for innovative new approaches in the investigation of contemporary politics. In order to do so, the paper suggests adopting a strong linguistic approach starting with the analysis of the word ‘global’. Based on insights from post-structuralism as well as cognitive and general constructivist perspectives it argues that a frame-based corpus linguistic analysis offers the possibility of investigating the collective/social meaning(s) of global in order to operationalize them for the analysis of the ‘global dimension’ of contemporary politics.

Toward a comparative analysis of coming and going verbs in Spanish, German, and Polish

This work deals with coming and going verbs in three typologically distinct languages: a Romance one (Spanish), a Germanic one (German) and a Slavic one (Polish) within Fillmore`s (1966, 1971, 1975, 1982, 1983) framework. On the grounds of data description it is shown that visible linguistic phenomena, such as deixis or Aktionsart related clearly to the coming and going verbs, can be transcended, resorting to the more abstract notion called by the author, following Winston (1987) and Speas and Tenny (2003), “viewpoint”.

Análisis de los residuos sólidos generados en áreas administrativas, académicas, bibliotecas y cómputos, de ciudad universitària en la UMSNH, Michoacán, México

El proyecto se enmarca dentro de Plan Ambiental Institucional (PAI) de la Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo (UMSNH), México, en lo referente a la gestión de residuos y tiene por finalidad analizar la tipología y composición de los residuos que se generan en algunas de las áreas de Ciudad Universitaria (CU). Para esto se realizó una metodología de recogida no selectiva de residuos puerta a puerta que se estructuró en dos fases, la primera, con el objetivo de obtener toda la información sobre el número y tipo de espacios de los edificios para luego elaborar y llevar a cabo el muestreo de los residuos, y la segunda, que se centró en la captura informática y gestión de los pesos de los mismos. De los datos obtenidos se concluyó que los residuos de mayor peso muestreado fueron el papel, la materia orgánica, el cartón y el vidrio transparente, los residuos de mayor generación per cápita fueron el papel, cartucho de impresora, CD y disquete. Finalmente, se concluye que la UMSNH no da tratamiento a los residuos que al ser depositados al aire libre contaminan su medio ambiente. Reciclándolos podrían obtenerse no sólo beneficios ambientales sino también económicos, que disminuirían el costo del reciclado devolviendo los residuos al ciclo productivo.

Caracterización de juegos basados en agentes móviles: diseño e implementación de un caso práctico y su incorporación en el programa docente de una asignatura de redes de computadores

En aquest projecte s'han classificat i posteriorment caracteritzat els jocs on la tecnologia d'agents mòbils és més òptima. Posteriorment s'ha dissenyat un core per al desenvolupament de jocs d'aquesta tipologia. Mitjançant aquest core s'han implementat el joc del Parchís i el joc del Nim. Aquest últim cas pràctic ha estat realitzat per a l'elaboració d'una pràctica per a l'assignatura de Xarxes de Computadors II. Gràcies als avantatges que ens oferix la tecnologia d'agents mòbils, com la tolerància a fallades i flexibilitat, hem demostrat amb aquest projecte que és òptim utilitzar aquesta tecnologia per a la implementació de jocs.

La biblioteca recombinada: portals i persones

Aquest article explora el disseny i l'ús dels portals en un entorn bibliotecari. Tracta les motivacions per construir portals, així com l'estructura i la tipologia d'aquests. A més, examina l'entorn de l'usuari en què es desenvolupen aquests portals. També argumenta que aporten serveis útils d'integració i presentació, però que s'han de considerar com a component d'un conjunt de serveis més ampli que la biblioteca està construint per tal d'introduir aquests recursos útils als usuaris. Així mateix, considera breument els serveis que els portals ofereixen: consulta distribuïda o metacerca, personalització, demandes, resolució OpenURL, avisos, etc. També considera l'emergent necessitat de serveis de directori o de registre per a coses com la descripció de col·leccions i serveis, dades de drets i polítiques, etc. Tracta l'impacte dels serveis web i el canvi en els models d'investigació i aprenentatge en relació al subministrament i ús d'informació en xarxa. Finalment, considera els serveis bibliotecaris com a part d'un entorn de sistemes, cada vegada més ric, que inclou els sistemes de gestió d'aprenentatge i de programari educatiu, portals de campus, serveis compartits com l'autenticació, i altres sistemes i serveis.