Professional and Interpersonal Skills for ICT Specialists

This article's overall objective is to define the cross-sectional or generic professional abilities Spanish information and communication technologies (ICT) engineers need to develop their work in a dynamic, uncertain environment. The authors determine the relevant professional abilities (based on a literature review and expert panel) and sum them up with a list of 19 cross-sectional skills. They then describe the different occupational profiles required in the Spanish ICT sector. Finally, after filtering the 18 profiles into three homogeneous sets, according to a Mintzberg classification, they present and analyze the results.     

Building a Usable and Accessible Semantic Web Interaction Platform

Semantic Web applications take off is being slower than expected, at least with respect to “real-world” applications and users. One of the main reasons for this lack of adoption is that most Semantic Web user interfaces are still immature from the usability and accessibility points of view. This is due to the novelty of these technologies, but this also motivates the exploration of alternative interaction paradigms, different from the “traditional” Web or Desktop applications ones. Our proposal is realized in the Rhizomer platform, which explores the possibilities of the object–action interaction paradigm at the Web scale. This paradigm is well suited for heterogeneous resource spaces such as those common in the Semantic Web. Resources, described by metadata, correspond to the objects in the paradigm. Semantic web services, which are dynamically associated to these objects, correspond to the actions. The platform is being put into practice in the context of a research project in order to build an open application for media distribution based on Semantic Web technologies. Moreover, its usability and accessibility have been evaluated in this real setting and compared to similar systems.     

The semantic web as a newspaper media convergence facilitator

Newspapers are evolving and this causes great changes in how newspapers reach their consumers, but also in how newspapers work internally. Advanced computerised support is needed in order to cope with the new needs, which require that machines are aware of a greater part of the underlying semantics. Ontologies and Semantic Web technologies are clear candidates for web-wide semantics. However, newspapers have made great investments in their current news management systems and their wish is to undertake a smooth transition. Our proposal is to build an ontological framework based on existing journalism and multimedia standards. These standards are based on XML technologies. Therefore, we have developed a generic XML Schema to OWL mapping, complemented with an XML to RDF one. Together, they allow reusing existing metadata that, once in a semantic space, facilitates data integration, news management and retrieval. The resulting ontological framework is being applied in the Diari Segre Media Group¹, which produces press, radio and television content.     

Urinary 1-hydroxypyrene, air pollution exposure and associated life style factors in pregnant women

1-hydroxypyrene (1-OHP) is a biomarker of exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). PAHs are pollutants produced by the combustion of organic material, and could be found both indoors and outdoors. Prenatal exposure to these compounds has been associated with retarded intrauterine growth and respiratory problems in children. The objective of this study is to describe the 1-OHP levels in urine in pregnant women in the INMA cohort in Valencia, and to study the association with socio-demographic and lifestyle variables, as well as with indicators of air pollution. The study population is a sub-sample (n: 204) of a cohort of pregnant women in the multicentre INMA project in Valencia (Spain). Urine samples were taken in week 12 of gestation, and 1-OHP was analyzed, and adjusted for creatinine. Socio-demographic and lifestyle information was collected using a questionnaire. Data from the monitoring stations in Valencia were used to assign levels of exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2), total suspended particulates (TSP) and carbon monoxide (CO). The median 1-OHP level was 0.061 muicrool/mol of creatinine. Women who smoked had higher 1-OHP levels (0.095 micromol/mol of creatinine) than non-smokers (0.050 micromol/mol of creatinine). The variables predicting 1-OHP levels on linear multivariate analysis were: tobacco consumption, consumption of fried and smoked foods. There was also a significant association with NO2 levels 4 and 5 days before the samples were taken. The 1-OHP levels found in pregnant women in Valencia were higher than those found among women in reports in USA. 1-hydroxypyrene could be a good marker of exposure to PAHs from tobacco and diet, and also a useful marker of short term exposure to air pollution.     

Toward Bioelectronic Nanomaterials: Photoconductivity in Protein–Porphyrin Hybrids Wrapped around SWCNT

The development of sophisticated ordered functional materials is one of the important challenges in current science. One of the keys to enhance the properties of these materials is the control of the organization and morphology at different scales. This work presents a novel bioinspired methodology to achieve highly ordered donor/acceptor bio‐nanohybrids using a designed repeat protein as scaffold, endowed with photoactive and electron donating porphyrin (P) units, to efficiently wrap around electron accepting single wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNT). A systematic experimental and theoretical study to evaluate the effect of the length of the protein reveals that longer proteins wrap around the SWCNT in a more efficient manner due to the stronger supramolecular interaction existing between the inner concave surface of the protein (namely Trp and His residues) and the convex surface of the (7,6)‐SWCNT. Interestingly, spectroscopy and X‐ray diffraction data further confirm that the so‐called protein‐P–SWCNT donor–acceptor bio‐nanohybrids retain the original protein structure. Finally, the new bio‐nanohybrids show a remarkable enhancement on the photoconductivity values by flash‐photolysis microwave conductivity (FP‐TRMC technique) demonstrating that the major charge carriers of electrons are injected into the SWCNTs and move along the 1D‐structures.     

Low-voltage CMOS programmable gain amplifier for UHF applications

A CMOS programmable gain amplifier suitable for low-voltage operation over the very high frequency range is presented. The scheme is based on a very simple common-mode feedforward pseudo-differential pair with resistive loads. Post-layout results for a 1.8 V-0.18 mum CMOS design show a linear-in-dB programmable gain from 0 to 12 dB with a -3 dB bandwidth above 1.4 GHz and power consumption below 17 mW over all the gain range.     

Knowledge environments representing molecular entities for the virtual physiological human

In essence, the virtual physiological human (VPH) is a multiscale representation of human physiology spanning from the molecular level via cellular processes and multicellular organization of tissues to complex organ function. The different scales of the VPH deal with different entities, relationships and processes, and in consequence the models used to describe and simulate biological functions vary significantly. Here, we describe methods and strategies to generate knowledge environments representing molecular entities that can be used for modelling the molecular scale of the VPH. Our strategy to generate knowledge environments representing molecular entities is based on the combination of information extraction from scientific text and the integration of information from biomolecular databases. We introduce @neuLink, a first prototype of an automatically generated, disease-specific knowledge environment combining biomolecular, chemical, genetic and medical information. Finally, we provide a perspective for the future implementation and use of knowledge environments representing molecular entities for the VPH.