On the Selection of Non-Invasive Methods Based on Speech Analysis Oriented to Automatic Alzheimer Disease Diagnosis

The work presented here is part of a larger study to identify novel technologies and biomarkers for early Alzheimer disease (AD) detection and it focuses on evaluating the suitability of a new approach for early AD diagnosis by non-invasive methods. The purpose is to examine in a pilot study the potential of applying intelligent algorithms to speech features obtained from suspected patients in order to contribute to the improvement of diagnosis of AD and its degree of severity. In this sense, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) have been used for the automatic classification of the two classes (AD and control subjects). Two human issues have been analyzed for feature selection: Spontaneous Speech and Emotional Response. Not only linear features but also non-linear ones, such as Fractal Dimension, have been explored. The approach is non invasive, low cost and without any side effects. Obtained experimental results were very satisfactory and promising for early diagnosis and classification of AD patients.

Alzheimer disease diagnosis based on automatic spontaneous speech analysis

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most prevalent form of progressive degenerative dementia and it has a high socio-economic impact in Western countries, therefore is one of the most active research areas today. Its diagnosis is sometimes made by excluding other dementias, and definitive confirmation must be done trough a post-mortem study of the brain tissue of the patient. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to im-provement of early diagnosis of AD and its degree of severity, from an automatic analysis performed by non-invasive intelligent methods. The methods selected in this case are Automatic Spontaneous Speech Analysis (ASSA) and Emotional Temperature (ET), that have the great advantage of being non invasive, low cost and without any side effects.

El Confort a través de la domòtica

Els objectius del projecte és dissenyar un habitatge unifamiliar aïllat intel•ligent, situat al carrer Marbella, 25, de la localitat de Santa Coloma de Farners, província de Girona; i fer una simulació de com actuen els elements domòtics, amb el programa informàtic LabView

Multidimensional Adaptations for Open Learning Management Systems

Our work is focused on alleviating the workload for designers of adaptive courses on the complexity task of authoring adaptive learning designs adjusted to specific user characteristics and the user context. We propose an adaptation platform that consists in a set of intelligent agents where each agent carries out an independent adaptation task. The agents apply machine learning techniques to support the user modelling for the adaptation process

Retórica, comedia, diálogo. La fusión de géneros en la literatura griega del s. II d.C.

Lucien de Samosate est sans doute un écrivain difficile a classer. Certains en font le roi du pastiche. Pour nous il s'agit. par contre, d'un écrivain lucide et intelligent qui cherche dans la tradition les éléments qui peuvent l'aider a comprendre le présent et a en faire une critique parfois féroce.

A Classification of Tools for Learning Logic

A table showing a comparison and classification of tools (intelligent tutoring systems) for e-learning of Logic at a college level.

Prácticas docentes con simuladores de vuelo

Este trabajo presenta las prácticas de laboratorio de la asignatura de Tecnología Aaeroespacial, perteneciente a la titulación de Ingeniería Técnica Aeronáutica (especialidad en Aeronavegación) y que se imparte en la Escuela Politécnica Superior de Castelldefels (EPSC) de laUniversidad Politécnica de Catalunya (UPC). Dichas prácticas se desarrollan en grupos de dos estudiantes alrededor de un conocido programa de simulación de vuelo y permiten al alumno ver y profundizar en los diferentes aspectos tratados en las clases teóricas de una manera próxima a la realidad y muy amigable.El alumno debe afrontarse a situaciones que, a lo largo de las diferentes sesiones de laboratorio, aumentan progresivamente en complejidad y conocimientos previos necesarios para resolverlas. Con esto, se llega a la práctica final donde cada pareja de estudiantes realiza un vuelo completosimulado de principio a fin que ha ido preparando y experimentando por partes durante el curso.Además, este vuelo se realiza en un entorno de simulación de tráfico aéreo en tiempo real con control del tráfico aéreo virtual (formado por estudiantes voluntarios de cursos superiores) que da aun más realismo a la simulación.Después de seis cursos consecutivos realizando esta experiencia, este trabajo concluye que este tipo de prácticas motivan significativamente al alumno a profundizar en los aspectos de la asignatura y potencian el trabajo cooperativo y el aprendizaje basado en proyectos.

A Middleware architecture for Unmanned Aircraft Avionics

An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is a non-piloted airplane designed to operate in dangerous and repetitive situations. With the advent of UAV's civil applications, UAVs are emerging as a valid option in commercial scenarios. If it must be economically viable, the same platform should implement avariety of missions with little reconguration time and overhead.This paper presents a middleware-based architecture specially suited to operate as a exible payload and mission controller in a UAV. The system is composed of low-costcomputing devices connected by network. The functionality is divided into reusable services distributed over a number ofnodes with a middleware managing their lifecycle and communication.Some research has been done in this area; yetit is mainly focused on the control domain and in its realtime operation. Our proposal differs in that we address the implementation of adaptable and reconfigurable unmannedmissions in low-cost and low-resources hardware.

Advances in UAS for forest fire fighting

Peer reviewed

Project SKY-EYE: applying UAVs to forest fire fighter support and monitoring

Peer reviewed

L'educació física i la intel·ligència

L a denominació Educació Física pot confondre la ciutadania respecte dels veritables objectius psicopedagògics, orgànics i socioculturals del comportament motor humà en l’educació integral de la persona. La manca de valoració social de la matèria converteix la recerca del prestigi en una lluita contínua contra la resta de disciplines científi ques acceptades culturalment, i es tradueix en múltiples situacions: l’utilitarisme dels seus coneixements, el reconeixement social o el volum de dedicació horària a la matèria. En- front d’aquesta casuística, des d’un enfocament de camp de la psique humana, es defensa que l’Educació Física és també educació intel·lectual. Així es comprèn que l’Educació Física no és una activitat que realitza un subjecte com a manifestació d’alguna facultat interna o cognoscitiva que li ho permet. Educar-se en la motricitat quotidiana i esportiva signifi ca, per a l’ésser humà, construir-se psicològicament com a tal persona diferenciada. Aquest plantejament naturalista de la intelligència permet identifi car el caràcter multidimensional d’aquesta, que, en primer lloc i en un sentit ampli del concepte, invita a plantejar la conveniència del cognom de l’Educació: «Física». I, en segon lloc, des d’un sentit restringit, ajuda a comprendre que el comportament motor humà és educació intel·lectual que fon la sensorialitat propioceptiva i esquelètica amb la temporalitat com a criteri d’èxit: l’alumne, l’atleta o el jugador intel·ligent que realitza els moviments en el moment oportú, independentment del nivell funcional rígid o canviant del comportament motor o esportiu a ensenyar. Aquest plantejament teòric pretén superar la incertesa de l’edifi ci acadèmic de l’Educació Física per bastir-lo en una futura comprensió antropològica i humanista de la intel·ligència i del moviment: ... «La carrera del hombre no es la carrera de un animal con una inteligencia humana sobreañadida, sino que es una nueva forma de correr, la del hombre, no sólo diferenciada por su específi ca contextura corporal y su particular locomoción , sino en cuanto que es un ser inteligente que corre: la propia carrera es inteligencia.» (Cagigal, 1986, p.17).

Ambient intelligence application based on environmental measurements performed with an assistant mobile robot

This paper proposes the use of an autonomous assistant mobile robot in order to monitor the environmental conditions of a large indoor area and develop an ambient intelligence application. The mobile robot uses single high performance embedded sensors in order to collect and geo-reference environmental information such as ambient temperature, air velocity and orientation and gas concentration. The data collected with the assistant mobile robot is analyzed in order to detect unusual measurements or discrepancies and develop focused corrective ambient actions. This paper shows an example of the measurements performed in a research facility which have enabled the detection and location of an uncomfortable temperature profile inside an office of the research facility. The ambient intelligent application has been developed by performing some localized ambient measurements that have been analyzed in order to propose some ambient actuations to correct the uncomfortable temperature profile.

Sistema de presa de decisions distribuït

DDM is a framework that combines intelligent agents and artificial intelligence traditional algorithms such as classifiers. The central idea of this project is to create a multi-agent system that allows to compare different views into a single one.

A logic programming framework for possibilistic argumentation: formalization and logical properties

In the last decade defeasible argumentation frameworks have evolved to become a sound setting to formalize commonsense, qualitative reasoning. The logic programming paradigm has shown to be particularly useful for developing different argument-based frameworks on the basis of different variants of logic programming which incorporate defeasible rules. Most of such frameworks, however, are unable to deal with explicit uncertainty, nor with vague knowledge, as defeasibility is directly encoded in the object language. This paper presents Possibilistic Logic Programming (P-DeLP), a new logic programming language which combines features from argumentation theory and logic programming, incorporating as well the treatment of possibilistic uncertainty. Such features are formalized on the basis of PGL, a possibilistic logic based on G¨odel fuzzy logic. One of the applications of P-DeLP is providing an intelligent agent with non-monotonic, argumentative inference capabilities. In this paper we also provide a better understanding of such capabilities by defining two non-monotonic operators which model the expansion of a given program P by adding new weighed facts associated with argument conclusions and warranted literals, respectively. Different logical properties for the proposed operators are studied

El medievalismo fértil de Paloma Díaz-Mas

The author of this article is concerned with trying to understand why Paloma Díaz-Mas, the writer of such an excellent novel as La tierra fértil (1999), has not received much critical attention. He underlines three main reasons. First, she does not live in Madrid or Barcelona and so she is far away from the main centres of cultural power. Second, she teaches Spanish literature in the Basque Country, a political and linguistic community which significantly differs from that of many other writers. Third, she writes historical novels, which does not appear to be very fashionable in Spain these days. Moreover, Díaz-Mas is a woman writer who does not make use of the most commonly available feminine patterns, and she does not seem to offer a model easy to include in a given feminist methodology either. However, Mérida-Jiménez argues that Paloma provides an intelligent deconstruction of “male authority” through subtle rhetorical means, as well as a representation of the weakness of his “domination” in very innovative ways, such as those derived from the dialectics between history and fiction, centrality and marginality, heterosexuality and homosexuality, individual and society, dream and reason or tradition and modernity.