Competencia comunicativa : Los intercambios audio-orales en la estructura propuesta por DEFI

La competencia comunicativa, eje sobre el cual gira actualmente la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras, necesita obligatoriamente de la comprensión y de la producción oral de la L2. El desarrollo de la habilidad oral en una formación enteramente a distancia en las lenguas extranjeras implica el uso de una serie de herramientas que determinarán la sincronía o la asincronía de los intercambios audio orales producidos entre los aprendices y los tutores expertos de la lengua. Estas herramientas presentan claramente características de uso que difieren mucho, pero no en su totalidad, de las técnicas empleadas en intercambios presenciales. Esta presentación abordará esas particularidades de las herramientas tecnológicas, principalmente en el área de la producción oral, a partir de las diferentes tareas propuestas por los módulos del proyecto DEFI (Dispositivo de Enseñanza de Francés Interactivo), a implantar en la Escuela de Lenguas a partir de este año lectivo. Si bien esta formación a distancia posee una guía de uso y un descriptivo de las funciones más importantes, creemos conveniente reflexionar sobre la práctica misma y cómo los aprendices llegarán a alcanzar los objetivos propuestos, es decir, la adquisición de la competencia comunicativa

Competencia comunicativa : Los intercambios audio-orales en la estructura propuesta por DEFI

La competencia comunicativa, eje sobre el cual gira actualmente la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras, necesita obligatoriamente de la comprensión y de la producción oral de la L2. El desarrollo de la habilidad oral en una formación enteramente a distancia en las lenguas extranjeras implica el uso de una serie de herramientas que determinarán la sincronía o la asincronía de los intercambios audio orales producidos entre los aprendices y los tutores expertos de la lengua. Estas herramientas presentan claramente características de uso que difieren mucho, pero no en su totalidad, de las técnicas empleadas en intercambios presenciales. Esta presentación abordará esas particularidades de las herramientas tecnológicas, principalmente en el área de la producción oral, a partir de las diferentes tareas propuestas por los módulos del proyecto DEFI (Dispositivo de Enseñanza de Francés Interactivo), a implantar en la Escuela de Lenguas a partir de este año lectivo. Si bien esta formación a distancia posee una guía de uso y un descriptivo de las funciones más importantes, creemos conveniente reflexionar sobre la práctica misma y cómo los aprendices llegarán a alcanzar los objetivos propuestos, es decir, la adquisición de la competencia comunicativa

Acoustic records of the underwater soundscape at PALAOA with links to audio stream files, 2005-2011

Scientific background: Marine mammals use sound for communication, navigation and prey detection. Acoustic sensors therefore allow the detection of marine mammals, even during polar winter months, when restricted visibility prohibits visual sightings. The animals are surrounded by a permanent natural soundscape, which, in polar waters, is mainly dominated by the movement of ice. In addition to the detection of marine mammals, acoustic long-term recordings provide information on intensity and temporal variability of characteristic natural and anthropogenic background sounds, as well as their influence on the vocalization of marine mammals Scientific objectives: The PerenniAL Acoustic Observatory in the Antarctic Ocean (PALAOA, Hawaiian "whale") near Neumayer Station is intended to record the underwater soundscape in the vicinity of the shelf ice edge over the duration of several years. These long-term recordings will allow studying the acoustic repertoire of whales and seals continuously in an environment almost undisturbed by humans. The data will be analyzed to (1) register species specific vocalizations, (2) infer the approximate number of animals inside the measuring range, (3) calculate their movements relative to the observatory, and (4) examine possible effects of the sporadic shipping traffic on the acoustic and locomotive behaviour of marine mammals. The data, which are largely free of anthropogenic noise, provide also a base to set up passive acoustic mitigation systems used on research vessels. Noise-free bioacoustic data thereby represent the foundation for the development of automatic pattern recognition procedures in the presence of interfering sounds, e.g. propeller noise.

Road environment modeling using robust perspective analysis and recursive Bayesian segmentation

Recently, vision-based advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) have received a new increased interest to enhance driving safety. In particular, due to its high performance–cost ratio, mono-camera systems are arising as the main focus of this field of work. In this paper we present a novel on-board road modeling and vehicle detection system, which is a part of the result of the European I-WAY project. The system relies on a robust estimation of the perspective of the scene, which adapts to the dynamics of the vehicle and generates a stabilized rectified image of the road plane. This rectified plane is used by a recursive Bayesian classi- fier, which classifies pixels as belonging to different classes corresponding to the elements of interest of the scenario. This stage works as an intermediate layer that isolates subsequent modules since it absorbs the inherent variability of the scene. The system has been tested on-road, in different scenarios, including varied illumination and adverse weather conditions, and the results have been proved to be remarkable even for such complex scenarios.

Optimal Multiresolution 3D Level-Set Method for Liver Segmentation incorporating Local Curvature Constraints

Advanced liver surgery requires a precise pre-operative planning, where liver segmentation and remnant liver volume are key elements to avoid post-operative liver failure. In that context, level-set algorithms have achieved better results than others, especially with altered liver parenchyma or in cases with previous surgery. In order to improve functional liver parenchyma volume measurements, in this work we propose two strategies to enhance previous level-set algorithms: an optimal multi-resolution strategy with fine details correction and adaptive curvature, as well as an additional semiautomatic step imposing local curvature constraints. Results show more accurate segmentations, especially in elongated structures, detecting internal lesions and avoiding leakages to close structures

Probabilistic Atlas Based Segmentation Using Affine Moment Descriptors and Graph-Cuts

We show a procedure for constructing a probabilistic atlas based on affine moment descriptors. It uses a normalization procedure over the labeled atlas. The proposed linear registration is defined by closed-form expressions involving only geometric moments. This procedure applies both to atlas construction as atlas-based segmentation. We model the likelihood term for each voxel and each label using parametric or nonparametric distributions and the prior term is determined by applying the vote-rule. The probabilistic atlas is built with the variability of our linear registration. We have two segmentation strategy: a) it applies the proposed affine registration to bring the target image into the coordinate frame of the atlas or b) the probabilistic atlas is non-rigidly aligning with the target image, where the probabilistic atlas is previously aligned to the target image with our affine registration. Finally, we adopt a graph cut - Bayesian framework for implementing the atlas-based segmentation.