Versatile iPad forensic acquisition using the Apple Camera Connection Kit

Peer reviewed

Geo Tools Android : eines geogràfiques per Android

En aquest treball es fa un anàlisi de l'aplicació OSMDroid i d'altres aplicacions i llibreries SIG rellevants per al sistema operatiu Android.

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.

Electronic voting system for computer supported collaborative learning

The EVS4CSCL project starts in the context of a Computer Supported Collaborative Learning environment (CSCL). Previous UOC projects created a CSCL generic platform (CLPL) to facilitate the development of CSCL applications. A discussion forum (DF) was the first application developed over the framework. This discussion forum was different from other products on the marketplace because of its focus on the learning process. The DF carried out the specification and elaboration phases from the discussion learning process but there was a lack in the consensus phase. The consensus phase in a learning environment is not something to be achieved but tested. Common tests are done by Electronic Voting System (EVS) tools, but consensus test is not an assessment test. We are not evaluating our students by their answers but by their discussion activity. Our educational EVS would be used as a discussion catalyst proposing a discussion about the results after an initial query or it would be used after a discussion period in order to manifest how the discussion changed the students mind (consensus). It should be also used by the teacher as a quick way to know where the student needs some reinforcement. That is important in a distance-learning environment where there is no direct contact between the teacher and the student and it is difficult to detect the learning lacks. In an educational environment, assessment it is a must and the EVS will provide direct assessment by peer usefulness evaluation, teacher marks on every query created and indirect assessment from statistics regarding the user activity.

Human-Computer Interaction with older people through ethnographical lenses: everyday interactions with ICT

Report for the scientific sojourn carried out at the School of Computing of the University of Dundee, United Kingdom, from 2010 to 2012. This document is a scientific report of the work done, main results, publications and accomplishment of the objectives of the 2-year post-doctoral research project with reference number BP-A 00239. The project has addressed the topic of older people (60+) and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which is a topic of growing social and research interest, from a Human-Computer Interaction perspective. Over a 2-year period (June 2010-June 2012), we have conducted classical ethnography of ICT use in a computer clubhouse in Scotland, addressing interaction barriers and strategies, social sharing practices in Social Network Sites, and ICT learning, and carried out rapid ethnographical studies related to geo-enabled ICT and e-government services towards supporting independent living and active ageing. The main results have provided a much deeper understanding of (i) the everyday use of Computer-Mediated Communication tools, such as video-chats and blogs, and its evolution as older people’s experience with ICT increases over time, (ii) cross-cultural aspects of ICT use in the north and south of Europe, (iii) the relevance of cognition over vision in interacting with geographical information and a wide range of ICT tools, despite common stereotypes (e.g. make things bigger), (iv) the important relationship offline-online to provide older people with socially inclusive and meaningful eservices for independent living and active ageing, (v) how older people carry out social sharing practices in the popular YouTube, (vi) their user experiences and (vii) the challenges they face in ICT learning and the strategies they use to become successful ICT learners over time. The research conducted in this project has been published in 17 papers, 4 in journals – two of which in JCR, 5 in conferences, 4 in workshops and 4 in magazines. Other public output consists of 10 invited talks and seminars.

Semantic web adoption: online tools for web evaluation and metadata extraction

This work briefly analyses the difficulties to adopt the Semantic Web, and in particular proposes systems to know the present level of migration to the different technologies that make up the Semantic Web. It focuses on the presentation and description of two tools, DigiDocSpider and DigiDocMetaEdit, designed with the aim of verifYing, evaluating, and promoting its implementation.

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.

Coscheduling techniques and monitoring tools for non-dedicated cluster computing

Our efforts are directed towards the understanding of the coscheduling mechanism in a NOW system when a parallel job is executed jointly with local workloads, balancing parallel performance against the local interactive response. Explicit and implicit coscheduling techniques in a PVM-Linux NOW (or cluster) have been implemented. Furthermore, dynamic coscheduling remains an open question when parallel jobs are executed in a non-dedicated Cluster. A basis model for dynamic coscheduling in Cluster systems is presented in this paper. Also, one dynamic coscheduling algorithm for this model is proposed. The applicability of this algorithm has been proved and its performance analyzed by simulation. Finally, a new tool (named Monito) for monitoring the different queues of messages in such an environments is presented. The main aim of implementing this facility is to provide a mean of capturing the bottlenecks and overheads of the communication system in a PVM-Linux cluster.

REGSTATTOOLS: freeware statistical tools for the analysis of disease population databases used in health and social studies

Background: The repertoire of statistical methods dealing with the descriptive analysis of the burden of a disease has been expanded and implemented in statistical software packages during the last years. The purpose of this paper is to present a web-based tool, REGSTATTOOLS http://regstattools.net intended to provide analysis for the burden of cancer, or other group of disease registry data. Three software applications are included in REGSTATTOOLS: SART (analysis of disease"s rates and its time trends), RiskDiff (analysis of percent changes in the rates due to demographic factors and risk of developing or dying from a disease) and WAERS (relative survival analysis). Results: We show a real-data application through the assessment of the burden of tobacco-related cancer incidence in two Spanish regions in the period 1995-2004. Making use of SART we show that lung cancer is the most common cancer among those cancers, with rising trends in incidence among women. We compared 2000-2004 data with that of 1995-1999 to assess percent changes in the number of cases as well as relative survival using RiskDiff and WAERS, respectively. We show that the net change increase in lung cancer cases among women was mainly attributable to an increased risk of developing lung cancer, whereas in men it is attributable to the increase in population size. Among men, lung cancer relative survival was higher in 2000-2004 than in 1995-1999, whereas it was similar among women when these time periods were compared. Conclusions: Unlike other similar applications, REGSTATTOOLS does not require local software installation and it is simple to use, fast and easy to interpret. It is a set of web-based statistical tools intended for automated calculation of population indicators that any professional in health or social sciences may require.

Indicators and evaluation tools for the assessment of urban sustainability

This paper attempts to provide an explanation of why reductionistic approaches are not adequate to tackle the urban sustainability issue in a consistent way. Concepts such as urban environmental carrying capacity and ecological footprint are discussed. Multicriteria evaluation is proposed as a general multidimensional framework for the assessment of urban sustainability. This paper deals with the following main topics: 1) definition of the concept of urban sustainability 2) discussion of relevant sustainability indicators 3) multicriteria evaluation as a framework for the assessment of urban sustainability 4) an illustrative example.

Geometric tools to determine the hyperbolicity of limit cycles

"Vegeu el resum a l'inici del document del fitxer adjunt."

Giving SBML support to ByoDyn

Report for the scientific stay at the California Institute of Technology during the summer of 2005. ByoDyn is a tool for simulating the dynamical expression of gene regulatory networks (GRNs) and for parameter estimation in uni- and multicellular models. A software support was carried out describing GRNs in the Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML). This one is a computer format for representing and storing computational models of biochemical pathways in software tools and databases. Supporting this format gives ByoDyn a wide range of possibilities to study the dynamical properties of multiple regulatory pathways.

Sistema de Informació i Gestió Integral de la Producció Pesquera Internacional (SIGIPPI)

Des de la ciència geogràfica combinada amb el coneixement biològic i comercial, aquest projecte pretén crear una eina basada en la biogeografia i les últimes tecnologies de la Informació Geogràfica, que permetrà a l’usuari disposar de informació actualitzada per cada espècie amb interès comercial. El projecte es basa en el desenvolupament d’una aplicació web de consulta, entrada i actualització de dades referents a la producció pesquera internacional. Les eines utilitzades són les bases de dades MySQL i PostgreSQL i programació web amb html, php i javacript. Aquesta aplicació està pensada per ser accessible des de qualsevol ordinador amb connexió a internet i es subdivideix en tres sub-aplicacions. La primera sub-aplicació es basa en l’entrada d’espècies a partir de l’estructura taxonòmica. Partint de l’arbre taxonòmic, l’usuari té la possibilitat d’entrar, eliminar o modificar qualsevol tàxon o espècie. La segona subaplicació és una eina de digitalització cartogràfica on-line on l’usuari podrà marcar, eliminar o modificar sobre un mapa les localitzacions de les espècies que estiguin entrades en la sub-aplicació anterior. Finalment, la tercera sub-aplicació és una eina d’entrada de dades quinzenals referent als comportaments pel que fa tan a les dimensions com a les disponibilitats de pesca per cada espècie i localització.

Addressing Sea Surface Salinity retrieval at different spatial resolution. Feasibility study using OCCAM data within SEPS simulator and L2 processor tools

Projecte de recerca elaborat a partir d’una estada a la National Oceanography Centre of Southampton (NOCS), Gran Bretanya, entre maig i juliol del 2006. La possibilitat d’obtenir una estimació precissa de la salinitat marina (SSS) és important per a investigar i predir l’extensió del fenòmen del canvi climàtic. La missió Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) va ser seleccionada per l’Agència Espacial Europea (ESA) per a obtenir mapes de salinitat de la superfície marina a escala global i amb un temps de revisita petit. Abans del llençament de SMOS es preveu l’anàlisi de la variabilitat horitzontal de la SSS i del potencial de les dades recuperades a partir de mesures de SMOS per a reproduir comportaments oceanogràfics coneguts. L’objectiu de tot plegat és emplenar el buit existent entre les fonts de dades d’entrada/auxiliars fiables i les eines desenvolupades per a simular i processar les dades adquirides segons la configuració de SMOS. El SMOS End-to-end Performance Simulator (SEPS) és un simulador adhoc desenvolupat per la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) per a generar dades segons la configuració de SMOS. Es va utilitzar dades d’entrada a SEPS procedents del projecte Ocean Circulation and Climate Advanced Modeling (OCCAM), utilitzat al NOCS, a diferents resolucions espacials. Modificant SEPS per a poder fer servir com a entrada les dades OCCAM es van obtenir dades de temperatura de brillantor simulades durant un mes amb diferents observacions ascendents que cobrien la zona seleccionada. Les tasques realitzades durant l’estada a NOCS tenien la finalitat de proporcionar una tècnica fiable per a realitzar la calibració externa i per tant cancel•lar el bias, una metodologia per a promitjar temporalment les diferents adquisicions durant les observacions ascendents, i determinar la millor configuració de la funció de cost abans d’explotar i investigar les posibiltats de les dades SEPS/OCCAM per a derivar la SSS recuperada amb patrons d’alta resolució.

Códigos binarios no lineales en MAGMA

La finalitat d'aquest projecte és aconseguir representar codis binaris no lineals de manera eficient en un ordinador. Per fer-ho, hem desenvolupat funcions per representar un codi binari a partir del super dual. Hem millorat la funció de càlcul del kernel d'un codi binari, implementada en projectes d'anys anteriors. També hem desenvolupat un paquet software per l'intèrpret MAGMA. Aquest paquet ens proveeix d'eines per al tractament de codis binaris no necessàriament lineals.