Anàlisi de la petjada de carboni de la gestió i el tractament dels residus municipals a Menorca

En aquesta investigació s’analitza l’impacte que ocasiona les emissions de CO2eq en la gestió i tractament dels residus municipals de l’illa de Menorca. El present treball s’ha realitzat mitjançant l’eina innovadora d’anàlisi ambiental CO2ZW que segueix un protocol de càlcul per a la identificació i quantificació dels gasos d’efecte hivernacle al llarg del cicle de vida de la gestió dels residus municipals. Aquest treball caracteritza l’impacte generat i evitat recomanats segons els informes de l’IPCC i esdevé com un punt de partida per la reducció de les emissions en el conjunt de l’economia. L’objectiu del treball és observar l’estat actual de la petjada de carboni per poder així establir una sèrie de escenaris futurs que facilitin el camí per arribar a la petjada de carboni zero.

Neural networks complemented with genetic algorithms and fuzzy systems for predicting nitrogenous effluent variables in wastewater treatment plants

This work focuses on the prediction of the two main nitrogenous variables that describe the water quality at the effluent of a Wastewater Treatment Plant. We have developed two kind of Neural Networks architectures based on considering only one output or, in the other hand, the usual five effluent variables that define the water quality: suspended solids, biochemical organic matter, chemical organic matter, total nitrogen and total Kjedhal nitrogen. Two learning techniques based on a classical adaptative gradient and a Kalman filter have been implemented. In order to try to improve generalization and performance we have selected variables by means genetic algorithms and fuzzy systems. The training, testing and validation sets show that the final networks are able to learn enough well the simulated available data specially for the total nitrogen

Partial correlation : Network analysis

The final year project came to us as an opportunity to get involved in a topic which has appeared to be attractive during the learning process of majoring in economics: statistics and its application to the analysis of economic data, i.e. econometrics.Moreover, the combination of econometrics and computer science is a very hot topic nowadays, given the Information Technologies boom in the last decades and the consequent exponential increase in the amount of data collected and stored day by day. Data analysts able to deal with Big Data and to find useful results from it are verydemanded in these days and, according to our understanding, the work they do, although sometimes controversial in terms of ethics, is a clear source of value added both for private corporations and the public sector. For these reasons, the essence of this project is the study of a statistical instrument valid for the analysis of large datasets which is directly related to computer science: Partial Correlation Networks.The structure of the project has been determined by our objectives through the development of it. At first, the characteristics of the studied instrument are explained, from the basic ideas up to the features of the model behind it, with the final goal of presenting SPACE model as a tool for estimating interconnections in between elements in large data sets. Afterwards, an illustrated simulation is performed in order to show the power and efficiency of the model presented. And at last, the model is put into practice by analyzing a relatively large data set of real world data, with the objective of assessing whether the proposed statistical instrument is valid and useful when applied to a real multivariate time series. In short, our main goals are to present the model and evaluate if Partial Correlation Network Analysis is an effective, useful instrument and allows finding valuable results from Big Data.As a result, the findings all along this project suggest the Partial Correlation Estimation by Joint Sparse Regression Models approach presented by Peng et al. (2009) to work well under the assumption of sparsity of data. Moreover, partial correlation networks are shown to be a very valid tool to represent cross-sectional interconnections in between elements in large data sets.The scope of this project is however limited, as there are some sections in which deeper analysis would have been appropriate. Considering intertemporal connections in between elements, the choice of the tuning parameter lambda, or a deeper analysis of the results in the real data application are examples of aspects in which this project could be completed.To sum up, the analyzed statistical tool has been proved to be a very useful instrument to find relationships that connect the elements present in a large data set. And after all, partial correlation networks allow the owner of this set to observe and analyze the existing linkages that could have been omitted otherwise.

Disseny i implantació d’una nova pràctica informàtica per promoure l’aprenentatge actiu de l’assignatura de Microbiologia II

En l’adaptació de les titulacions universitàries a l’Espai Europeu d’Educació Superior (EEES), cada cop té més importància l’adquisició de competències per part de l’alumne utilitzant les noves tecnologies de la informació. En aquest context, vàries professores de l’assignatura de Microbiologia II, obligatòria de tercer curs del Grau de Farmàcia de la Universitat de Barcelona, hem dissenyat una pràctica presencial innovadora utilitzant eines bioinformàtiques, per facilitar la comprensió de la docència teòrica i promoure l’aprenentatge actiu de l’alumne d’un bloc important de l’assignatura.

Construcció i explotació d'un magatzem de dades per a l'anàlisi d'informació sobre trànsit rodat de vehicles

Aquest document defineix la construcció i explotació d'un magatzem de dades per a la Fundació d'Estudis per a la Conducció Responsable. L'objectiu del projecte és homogeneïtzar la informació que rep la fundació, des de diverses fonts i en diferents formats, consolidar-la en un únic magatzem de dades i habilitar eines que facilitin la seva explotació i anàlisi. La consecució d'aquestes fites és determinant perquè la direcció conegui l'evolució del trànsit rodat de vehicles a Catalunya i minimitzi el riscos en cas de qualsevol presa de decisions.

Construcció i explotació d'un magatzem de dades per a l'anàlisi d'informació sobre trànsit rodat de vehicles

Aquest treball de fi de carrera proposa la construcció i explotació d'un magatzem de dades o data warehouse amb l'objectiu d'analitzar la informació relativa a l'evolució del parc de vehicles a Catalunya.

Anàlisi d'una conversa argumentativa : Articles al diari Ara, Tresserras vs. Pastor

Aquest treball té per objecte l'anàlisi d'una "conversa" argumentativa -un conjunt de sis articles periodístics que conformen un macrotext-, des del punt de vista del model pragmadialèctic. Els columnistes expressen els seus punts de vista al voltant de la "qüestió catalana", de vigència notable especialment d'ençà del setembre de 2012.

L'atur de llarga durada de les dones majors de 45 anys a Catalunya: una anàlisi exploratòria tenint en compte la classe social i la divisió sexual del treball

This article provides an in-depth study of long-term female unemployment in Catalonia.Long-term unemployment statistics reveal which social groups are most likely to experience difficulty re-entering the labour market. In this case, we found that women are mainly affected by this type of labour exclusion, in particular poorly qualified, working-class women who are aged over 45 and with family responsibilities.The article aims to explore how the overlapping of factors such as gender, age, social class, origin and the division of work based on gender are related to long-term female unemployment. Moreover, we were able to detect which conceptual tools provide us with the production/reproduction paradigm so as to be able to analyse the future of female unemployment. The methodology we used combines quantitative and qualitative approaches. On the one hand, the analysis of secondary statistical data focusing on Catalonia is useful in understanding the situation from a macro-social perspective. On the other hand, an exploratory discussion group enables us to investigate social imaginary practises among unemployed working class women aged over 45. This discussion group was held in Igualada -capital of the Anoia region - an area of Catalonia deeply affected by unemployment in the current economic crisis.

Open Educational Resources: an opportunity for virtual learning institutions

The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC, Open University of Catalonia) is involved inseveral research projects and educational activities related to the use of Open Educational Resources (OER). Some of the discussed issues in the concept of OER are research issues which are being tackled in two EC projects (OLCOS and SELF). Besides the research part, the UOC aims at developing a virtual centre for analysing and promoting the concept of OERin Europe in the sector of Higher and Further Education. The objectives are to makeinformation and learning services available to provide university management staff,eLearning support centres, faculty and learners with practical information required to create, share and re-use such interoperable digital content, tools and licensing schemes. In the realisation of these objectives, the main activities are the following: to provide organisationaland individual e-learning end-users with orientation; to develop perspectives and useful recommendations in the form of a medium-term Roadmap 2010 for OER in Higher and Further Education in Europe; to offer practical information and support services about how to create, share and re-use open educational content by means of tutorials, guidelines, best practices, and specimen of exemplary open e-learning content; to establish a larger group ofcommitted experts throughout Europe and other continents who not only share theirexpertise but also steer networking, workshops, and clustering efforts; and to foster and support a community of practice in open e-learning content know-how and experiences.

Binary proposal for assessing quality of Open Access Institutional Repositories : the case of Spanish repositories

The reason for this study is to propose a new quantitative approach on how to assess the quality of Open Access University Institutional Repositories. The results of this new approach are tested in the Spanish University Repositories. The assessment method is based in a binary codification of a proposal of features that objectively describes the repositories. The purposes of this method are assessing the quality and an almost automatically system for updating the data of the characteristics. First of all a database was created with the 38 Spanish institutional repositories. The variables of analysis are presented and explained either if they are coming from bibliography or are a set of new variables. Among the characteristics analyzed are the features of the software, the services of the repository, the features of the information system, the Internet visibility and the licenses of use. Results from Spanish universities ARE provided as a practical example of the assessment and for having a picture of the state of the development of the open access movement in Spain.

ZigBee/ZigBee PRO security assessment based on compromised cryptographic keys

Sensor networks have many applications in monitoring and controlling of environmental properties such as sound, acceleration, vibration and temperature. Due to limitedresources in computation capability, memory and energy, they are vulnerable to many kinds of attacks. The ZigBee specification based on the 802.15.4 standard, defines a set of layers specifically suited to sensor networks. These layers support secure messaging using symmetric cryptographic. This paper presents two different ways for grabbing the cryptographic key in ZigBee: remote attack and physical attack. It also surveys and categorizes some additional attacks which can be performed on ZigBee networks: eavesdropping, spoofing, replay and DoS attacks at different layers. From this analysis, it is shown that some vulnerabilities still in the existing security schema in ZigBee technology.