Gestor d'incidències

El projecte consta en crear un entorn web dinàmic, flexible, àgil i independent perquè els usuaris de la UOC puguin tramitar incidències sobre possibles errates en l'entorn on estigui integrat. A més, l'eina ha de donar solució a l'usuari que transmeti la incidència, incloent-hi, entre d'altres, una gestió d'estats i adreçaments de les incidències als diferents departaments.

Agenda de proves diagnòstiques

El TFC neix d'una necessitat real, d'una empresa privada del sector sanitari, la qual ens requereix crear una aplicació web que anomenarem "Agenda de proves diagnòstiques" que ens servirà per monitoritzar quin és l'estat actual en què es troben les visites que han arribat al centre per poder assignar-li els recursos necessaris (Dr./Dra. i sala d'exploració).

Seniority-based pay: is it used as a motivation device?

The purpose of this article is to explain what factors determine the use of seniority-based pay for production workers in Spanish manufacturing industry. The data used in order to achieve these objectives was taken from 774 Spanish industrial plants. The estimation of several ordered probit models enabled us to see that in firms where it was more costly for management to engage in opportunistic behaviour, deferred payment shows a negative relation to the use of devices, like monitoring or incentive payment, designed to align workers’ objectives with those of the company.

Artificial diets for the production of natural enemies (predators and parasitoids) of greenhouse pest insects

The aim of this contract was to finalise in vitro rearing on artificial diets of entomophagous insects useful to control insect pests mainly in greenhouses through an analytical and rational approach. The work focuses on the development and optimisation of artificial diets for one coccinellid (Harmonia axyridis), two heteropteran predators (Orius laevigatus, Dicyphus tamaninii), and a braconid parasitoid of aphids (Aphidius ervi). The definition of the artificial diets was based on biochemical analyses of their natural food (aphids) or substitution food for the predators (Ephestia kuehniella eggs). Reliable quality control parameters of the entomophages produced were used in order to adjust dietary composition and formulation of the different diets tested.

Individual-based modelling of bacterial cultures to study the lag ohase

Els bacteris són la forma dominant de vida del planeta: poden sobreviure en medis molt adversos, i en alguns casos poden generar substàncies que quan les ingerim ens són tòxiques. La seva presència en els aliments fa que la microbiologia predictiva sigui un camp imprescindible en la microbiologia dels aliments per garantir la seguretat alimentària. Un cultiu bacterià pot passar per quatre fases de creixement: latència, exponencial, estacionària i de mort. En aquest treball s’ha avançat en la comprensió dels fenòmens intrínsecs a la fase de latència, que és de gran interès en l’àmbit de la microbiologia predictiva. Aquest estudi, realitzat al llarg de quatre anys, s’ha abordat des de la metodologia Individual-based Modelling (IbM) amb el simulador INDISIM (INDividual DIScrete SIMulation), que ha estat millorat per poder fer-ho. INDISIM ha permès estudiar dues causes de la fase de latència de forma separada, i abordar l’estudi del comportament del cultiu des d’una perspectiva mesoscòpica. S’ha vist que la fase de latència ha de ser estudiada com un procés dinàmic, i no definida per un paràmetre. L’estudi de l’evolució de variables com la distribució de propietats individuals entre la població (per exemple, la distribució de masses) o la velocitat de creixement, han permès distingir dues etapes en la fase de latència, inicial i de transició, i aprofundir en la comprensió del que passa a nivell cel•lular. S’han observat experimentalment amb citometria de flux diversos resultats previstos per les simulacions. La coincidència entre simulacions i experiments no és trivial ni casual: el sistema estudiat és un sistema complex, i per tant la coincidència del comportament al llarg del temps de diversos paràmetres interrelacionats és un aval a la metodologia emprada en les simulacions. Es pot afirmar, doncs, que s’ha verificat experimentalment la bondat de la metodologia INDISIM.

Response of photosynthetic organisms to global change: an approach based on marker pigments

Report for the scientific sojourn carried out at the Department of Freshwater Ecology, National Environmetal Research Institute, Denmark, from 2006 to 2008. The main objective of the project was to reconstruct photosynthetic organism community composition using pigmentbased methods and to study their response to natural (e.g. climate) or anthropogenic (e.g. eutrophication) perturbations that took place in the system over time. We performed a study in different locations and at different temporal scales. We analysed the pigment composition in a short sediment record (46 cm sediment depth) of a volcanic lake (Lake Furnas) in the Azores Archipelago (Portugal). The lake has been affected during the last century by successive fish introductions. The specific objective was to reconstruct the lake’s trophic state history and to assess the role of land-use, climate and fish introductions in structuring the lake community. Results obtained suggested that whereas trophic cascade and changes in nutrient concentrations have some clear effects on algal and microbial assemblages, interpreting the effects of changes in climate are not straightforward. This is probably related with the rather constant precipitation in the Azores Islands during the studied period. We also analysed the pigment composition in a long sediment record (1800 cm sediment depth) of Lake Aborre (Denmark) covering ca. 8kyr of lake history. The specific objective was to describe changes in lake primary production and lake trophic state over the Holocene and to determine the photosynthetic organisms involved. Results suggested that external forcing (i.e. land use changes) was responsible of erosion and nutrient run off to the lake that contributed to the reported changes in lake primary production along most of the Holocene.

Implementation of IPM programs on European greenhouse tomato production areas: Tools and constraints

Whiteflies and whitefly-transmitted viruses are some of the major constraints on European tomato production. The main objectives of this study were to: identify where and why whiteflies are a major limitation on tomato crops; collect information about whiteflies and associated viruses; determine the available management tools; and identify key knowledge gaps and research priorities. This study was conducted within the framework of ENDURE (European Network for Durable Exploitation of Crop Protection Strategies). Two whitefly species are the main pests of tomato in Europe: Bemisia tabaci and Trialeurodes vaporariorum. Trialeurodes vaporariorum is widespread to all areas where greenhouse industry is present, and B. tabaci has invaded, since the early 1990’s, all the subtropical and tropical areas. Biotypes B and Q of B. tabaci are widespread and especially problematic. Other key tomato pests are Aculops lycopersici, Helicoverpa armigera, Frankliniella occidentalis, and leaf miners. Tomato crops are particularly susceptible to viruses causingTomato yellow leaf curl disease (TYLCD). High incidences of this disease are associated to high pressure of its vector, B. tabaci. The ranked importance of B. tabaci established in this study correlates with the levels of insecticide use, showing B. tabaci as one of the principal drivers behind chemical control. Confirmed cases of resistance to almost all insecticides have been reported. Integrated Pest Management based on biological control (IPM-BC) is applied in all the surveyed regions and identified as the strategy using fewer insecticides. Other IPM components include greenhouse netting and TYLCD-tolerant tomato cultivars. Sampling techniques differ between regions, where decisions are generally based upon whitefly densities and do not relate to control strategies or growing cycles. For population monitoring and control, whitefly species are always identified. In Europe IPM-BC is the recommended strategy for a sustainable tomato production. The IPM-BC approach is mainly based on inoculative releases of the parasitoids Eretmocerus mundus and Encarsia formosa and/or the polyphagous predators Macrolophus caliginosus and Nesidiocoris tenuis. However, some limitations for a wider implementation have been identified: lack of biological solutions for some pests, costs of beneficials, low farmer confidence, costs of technical advice, and low pest injury thresholds. Research priorities to promote and improve IPM-BC are proposed on the following domains: (i) emergence and invasion of new whitefly-transmitted viruses; (ii) relevance of B. tabaci biotypes regarding insecticide resistance; (iii) biochemistry and genetics of plant resistance; (iv) economic thresholds and sampling techniques of whiteflies for decision making; and (v) conservation and management of native whitefly natural enemies and improvement of biological control of other tomato pests.

Environmental Tax on Products and Services Based on Their Carbon Footprint: A Case Study of the Pulp and Paper Sector

The main aim of this work is to define an environmental tax on products and services based on their carbon footprint. We examine the relevance of conventional life cycle analysis (LCA) and environmentally extended input-output analysis (EIO) as methodological tools to identify emission intensities of products and services on which the tax is based. The short-term price effects of the tax and the policy implications of considering non-GHG are also analyzed. The results from the specific case study on pulp production show that the environmental tax rate based on the LCA approach (1,8%) is higher than both EIO approaches (0,8% for product and 1,4% for industry approach), but they are comparable. Even though LCA is more product specific and provides detailed analysis, EIO would be the more relevant approach to apply economy wide environmental tax. When the environmental tax considers non-GHG emissions instead of only CO2, sectors such as agriculture, mining of coal and extraction of peat, and food exhibit higher environmental tax and price effects. Therefore, it is worthwhile for policy makers to pay attention on the implication of considering only CO2 tax or GHG emissions tax in order for such a policy measure to be effective and meaningful. Keywords: Environmental tax; Life cycle analysis; Environmental input-output analysis.

Opening Education Beyond the Property Relation: From Commons to Communism

Open Education, and specifically the OER movement, seeks to provide universal access to knowledge, undermining the historical enclosure and the increasing privatisation of the public education system. In this paper we examine this aspiration by submitting the implicit theoretical assumptions of Open Education to the test of critical political economy. We acknowledge the Open Education movement's revolutionary potential but outline the inherent limitations of its current focus on the commons (property relations) rather than the social relations of capitalist production (wage work, the company) and because of this, argue that it will only achieve limited, rather than revolutionary, impact.

Automatic Detection of Non-deverbal Event Nouns for Quick Lexicon Production

In this work we present the results of experimental work on the development of lexical class-based lexica by automatic means. Our purpose is to assess the use of linguistic lexical-class based information as a feature selection methodology for the use of classifiers in quick lexical development. The results show that the approach can help reduce the human effort required in the development of language resources significantly.

Urban mobilities: the anglo-catalan production of the Barcelona model

The aim of the project was to gauge the extent to which the so-called ‘Barcelona Model’ of urban transformation has been ‘exported’ to Britain and whether Barcelona has learned from British cities. We engage with the literature on successive British governments’ strategies for cities, focused on collecting data on contemporary policy initiatives and debates in the UK, did interviews in Manchester, London Barcelona and participated in the official visit of Leeds to Barcelona in March. Our research findings to date suggest that there is a good deal of mobility and interaction between Barcelona and the UK. However, it is by no means certain that this has resulted in definite instances of policy transfer. While the ‘Barcelona model’ has indeed featured in oficial discourse on urban regeneration in the UK, it does not appear to be the preferred best practice ‘model’ – other North American and European cities figure discursively as much, if not more. Where Barcelona does feature in official discourse, it is usually as an example of good design and an appealing urban aesthetic, rather than in terms of economic or social policy best practice. Our research suggests that the Barcelona model is seen as non-transferable to the UK due to the relatively more centralised governance structure therein.In contrast, evidence collected suggests that the Barcelona model is not influenced by UK British cities experiences but there is small evidence of being influenced by UK-based professionals.

Growing at the production frontier. European aggregate growth, 1870-1914

The view of a 1870-1913 expanding European economy providing increasing welfare to everybody has been challenged by many, then and now. We focus on the amazing growth that was experienced, its diffusion and its sources, in the context of the permanent competition among European nation states. During 1870-193 the globalized European economy reached a silver age . GDP growth was quite rapid (2.15% per annum) and diffused all over Europe. Even discounting the high rates of population growth (1.06%), per capita growth was left at a respectable 1.08%. Income per capita was rising in every country, and the rates of improvement were quite similar. This was a major achievement after two generations of highly localized growth, both geographically and socially. Growth was based on the increased use of labour and capital, but a good part of growth (73 per cent for the weighted average of the best documented European countries) came out of total factor productivity efficiency gains resulting from not well specified ultimate sources of growth. This proportion suggests that the European economy was growing at full capacity at its production frontier. It would have been very difficult to improve its performance. Within Europe, convergence was limited, and it only was in motion after 1900. What happened was more the end of the era of big divergence rather than an era of convergence.

Measuring time-varying economic fears with consumption-based stochastic discount factors

This paper analyzes empirically the volatility of consumption-based stochastic discount factors as a measure of implicit economic fears by studying its relationship with future economic and stock market cycles. Time-varying economic fears seem to be well captured by the volatility of stochastic discount factors. In particular, the volatility of recursive utility-based stochastic discount factor with contemporaneous growth explains between 9 and 34 percent of future changes in industrial production at short and long horizons respectively. They also explain ex-ante uncertainty and risk aversion. However, future stock market cycles are better explained by a similar stochastic discount factor with long-run consumption growth. This specification of the stochastic discount factor presents higher volatility and lower pricing errors than the specification with contemporaneous consumption growth.

Energy-based modelling and simulation of the interconnection of a back-to-back converter and a doubly-fed induction machine

This paper describes the port interconnection of two subsystems: a power electronics subsystem (a back-to-back AC/CA converter (B2B), coupled to a phase of the power grid), and an electromechanical subsystem (a doubly-fed induction machine (DFIM). The B2B is a variable structure system (VSS), due to presence of control-actuated switches: however, from a modelling simulation, as well as a control-design, point of view, it is sensible to consider modulated transformers (MTF in the bond graph language) instead of the pairs of complementary switches. The port-Hamiltonian models of both subsystems are presented and, using a power-preserving interconnection, the Hamiltonian description of the whole system is obtained; detailed bond graphs of all subsystems and the complete system are also provided. Using passivity-based controllers computed in the Hamiltonian formalism for both subsystems, the whole model is simulated; simulations are run to rest the correctness and efficiency of the Hamiltonian network modelling approach used in this work.