Bias in the Social Web

Abstract A frequent assumption in Social Media is that its open nature leads to a representative view of the world. In this talk we want to consider bias occurring in the Social Web. We will consider a case study of liquid feedback, a direct democracy platform of the German pirate party as well as models of (non-)discriminating systems. As a conclusion of this talk we stipulate the need of Social Media systems to bias their working according to social norms and to publish the bias they introduce. Speaker Biography: Prof Steffen Staab Steffen studied in Erlangen (Germany), Philadelphia (USA) and Freiburg (Germany) computer science and computational linguistics. Afterwards he worked as researcher at Uni. Stuttgart/Fraunhofer and Univ. Karlsruhe, before he became professor in Koblenz (Germany). Since March 2015 he also holds a chair for Web and Computer Science at Univ. of Southampton sharing his time between here and Koblenz. In his research career he has managed to avoid almost all good advice that he now gives to his team members. Such advise includes focusing on research (vs. company) or concentrating on only one or two research areas (vs. considering ontologies, semantic web, social web, data engineering, text mining, peer-to-peer, multimedia, HCI, services, software modelling and programming and some more). Though, actually, improving how we understand and use text and data is a good common denominator for a lot of Steffen's professional activities.

Utilidad de la relación estratégica comunitaria y el marketing en el sector de extracción de petróleo crudo y gas natural

El presente trabajo pretende investigar y analizar la utilidad de las relaciones estratégicas comunitarias y el marketing en el sector de extracción de petróleo crudo y gas natural. El mercadeo juega un papel importante a la hora de vender cualquier tipo de producto o servicio. Dependiendo de las características de cada sector, las estrategias de mercadeo pueden llegar a ser más o menos útiles y/o efectivas que otras. Por esta razón, esta investigación pretende analizar la utilidad de las estrategias de marketing comunitario y marketing en el sector de extracción de petróleo crudo y gas natural. La forma de llegar a esa respuesta, puede hallarse por medio de tres caminos: el primero de ellos es encontrar y analizar las características del sector, el segundo es identificar cuáles son las estrategias que están utilizando las empresas que operan este campo, y por último, consistiría en analizar la utilidad de integrar el concepto de relación estratégica comunitaria y marketing al sector de extracción de petróleo crudo y gas natural, en cuanto a los beneficios que el marketing comunitario le traería al sector de interés. El sector de petróleo crudo y gas natural es uno de los más importantes en la economía global y sus clientes son numerosos y totalmente heterogéneos. El mercadeo se vuelve muy complejo para esta industria ya que al tener tipos de clientes tan distintos se dificulta alcanzar las expectativas de cada uno de ellos con una misma estrategia y por supuesto la forma de vender un producto es más compleja. Estos factores mencionados anteriormente están generando relaciones entre empresas y clientes totalmente transaccionales de corto plazo, y es ahí donde se cree que la inclusión de mercadeo relacional y estrategias de mercadeo relacional pueden ser de utilidad para el sector, generando desarrollo y beneficios mutuos tanto para clientes como empresas.

Business cycle asymmentries: An investment cost approach

In this paper, investment cost asymmetry is introduced in order to test wheter this kind of asymmetry can account for asymmetries in business cycles. By using a smooth transition function, asymmetric investment cost is modeled and introduced in a canonical RBC model. Simulations of the model with Perturbations Method (PM) are very close to simulations through Parameterized Expectations Algorithm (PEA), which allows the use of the former for the sake of time reduction and computational costs. Both symmetric and asymmetric models were simulated and compared. Deterministic and stochastic impulse-response excersices revealed that it is possible to adequately reproduce asymmetric business cycles by modeling asymmetric investment costs. Simulations also showed that higher order moments are insu_cient to detect asymmetries. Instead, methods such as Generalized Impulse Response Analysis (GIRA) and Nonlinear Econometrics prove to be more e_cient diagnostic tools.

Sobre els mapes de semblança quàntica molecular

Partint de les definicions usuals de Mesures de Semblança Quàntica (MSQ), es considera la dependència d'aquestes mesures respecte de la superposició molecular. Pel cas particular en qnè els sistemes comparats siguin una molècula i un Àtom i que les mesures es calculin amb l'aproximació EASA, les MSQ esdevenen funcions de les tres coordenades de l'espai. Mantenint fixa una de les tres coordenades, es pot representar fàcilment la variació del valor de semblança en un pla determinat, i obtenir els anomenats mapes de semblança. En aquest article, es comparen els mapes de semblança obtinguts amb diferents MSQ per a sistemes senzills

Mechanism of action of cyclic antimicrobial peptides

This PhD thesis is the result of the combination of experimental and computational techniques with the aim of understanding the mechanism of action of de novo cyclic decapeptides with high antimicrobial activity. By experimental techniques the influence of the replacement of the phenylalanine for tryptophan residue in their antimicrobial activity was tested and the stability in human serum was also analyzed, in order to evaluate their potential therapeutic application as antitumor agents. On the other hand, the interaction amongst the peptide BPC194 c(KKLKKFKKLQ), the best candidate from the whole library of cyclic peptides, and a model anionic membrane was simulated. The results showed a structure-function relationship derived from the stable conformation of the peptides involved in the membrane permeabilization. As a result, a rational design was performed being BPC490 the peptide with best antimicrobial activity compared with the best active peptide from the original library.