Sulfonated copolymers of acrylamide synthesized by plasma-initiated copolymerization in order to obtain polymers for enhanced oil recovery

Summary High molecular weight acrylamide (AAM, M1)-co-2-acrylamido-2-methyl propane sulfonic acid (AAMPS, M2) copolymers were obtained by plasma-initiated copolymerization in water solutions. The reactivity ratios, determined by Kelen-Tudos method, were shown to be r₁=1.04 and r₂=0.41. Some microstructural aspects of the obtained copolymers are presented. In order to test a special use (mobility control in polymer flooding technology), the rheological and thermal behavior were investigated.     

Globilization and regional scenarios: EU and mediterranean from marginalization to co-development

Despite globalization a progressively increasing economic and financial concentration in the cores of the world economy (e.g. EU) as well as the rise of new socioeconomic marginalization of peripheries (e.g. Maghreb and Mashraq) has been observed since the early 1980s. Marginalization has produced its own models of specialization in production which reflect in various countries and regions the needs of the cores economy forces. A regional strategy for regional co-operation, so called co-development, is advanced to overcome the current economic and social problems faced by marginalized regions in relation to world economic trends.     

Electrochemical and geometrical characterization of iridium oxide electrodes in stainless steel substrate

A geometrical and electrochemical characterization of stainless steel electrodes electrodeposited with iridium oxide (IrO₂) is presented. There is a dramatic increase in the double layer capacitance (C) and an important decrease in the charge transfer resistance (R_ct) after electrodeposition, causing also a significant two orders of magnitude reduction of the electrode–electrolyte interface impedance (EEIZ). These phenomena may be explained by the fine-grained iridium oxide, which has a high grain boundary density and which increases the actual electrodic area. An RC model is presented, which would explain the electrical behaviour of the system.     

Trust perceptions of online travel information by different content creators: Some social and legal implications

Consumers are increasingly turning to the online environment to provide information to assist them in making purchase decisions related to travel products. They often rely on travel recommendations from different sources, such as sellers, independent experts and, increasingly, other consumers. A new type of online content, user-generated content (UGC), provides a number of legal and social challenges to providers and users of that content, especially in relation to areas such as defamation, misrepresentation and social embarrassment. This paper reports research that examined the level of trustworthiness of online travel information from these different sources. The study used a survey of Australian travel consumers (n = 12,000) and results support the notion that there are differences in the level of trust for online travel information from different sources. Respondents ‘tended to agree’ that they trusted information provided by travel agents, information from commercial operators and comments made by travellers on third party websites. However, the highest level of trust was afforded to information provided on State government tourism websites. These results suggest that greater trust is placed in online travel comments when they are on a specific travel website than when they are on a more generic social networking website. However, respondents were ‘not sure’ that they trusted comments made by travellers on weblogs and on social networking sites. Some 88% of respondents that had not visited UGC websites (or were unsure if they had) indicated that they thought that UGC would be useful in the future – suggesting that they feel that any concerns they may have in relation to legal and social problems resulting from its use will be resolved.     

Mobile Application Profiling for Connected Mobile Devices

The SymPA (Symbian Protocol Analyzer) tool correlates traffic information, radio-access-technology measurements, and location data to help developers evaluate mobile applications in the field.     

Development in lipid analysis: Some new extraction techniques and in situ transesterification

The development of methods for analyzing fatty acids that provide rapid and reliable results is currently in great demand. Recently, different lipid extraction procedures such as microwave or supercritical fluid extraction have been researched. Both procedures avoid the use of large volumes of solvents and provide rapid lipid isolations. Only a few papers have reported work on microwave extraction, but many studies about supercritical fluid extraction have been carried out and have been gaining acceptance within the scientific community. Avoiding the lipid isolation step, by synthesizing fatty acid esters by simultaneous lipid extraction and derivatization through in situ reactions, has also been proposed. The saving of time and reagents is significant. Owing to the differences among the procedures, some knowledge of their characteristics is essential in order to improve methods and achieve reliable and accurate results. Clearly, results depend on factors such as the type of catalysis selected, the use of nonpolar solvents, heating applied during the synthesis, and the degree of suitability of the procedure chosen for the particular features of each sample.     

Do drivers change their manual car-following behaviour after automated car-following?

There is evidence that drivers’ behaviour adapts after using different advanced driving assistance systems. For instance, drivers’ headway during car-following reduces after using adaptive cruise control. However, little is known about whether, and how, drivers’ behaviour will change if they experience automated car-following, and how this is affected by engagement in non-driving-related tasks (NDRT). The aim of this driving simulator study, conducted as part of the H2020 L3Pilot project, was to address this topic. We also investigated the effect of the presence of a lead vehicle during the resumption of control, on subsequent manual driving behaviour. Thirty-two participants were divided into two experimental groups. During automated car-following, one group was engaged in an NDRT (SAE Level 3), while the other group was free to look around the road environment (SAE Level 2). Both groups were exposed to Long (1.5 s) and Short (.5 s) Time Headway (THW) conditions during automated car-following, and resumed control both with and without a lead vehicle. All post-automation manual drives were compared to a Baseline Manual Drive, which was recorded at the start of the experiment. Drivers in both groups significantly reduced their time headway in all post-automation drives, compared to a Baseline Manual Drive. There was a greater reduction in THW after drivers resumed control in the presence of a lead vehicle, and also after they had experienced a shorter THW during automated car-following. However, whether drivers were in L2 or L3 did not appear to influence the change in mean THW. Subjective feedback suggests that drivers appeared not to be aware of the changes to their driving behaviour, but preferred longer THWs in automation. Our results suggest that automated driving systems should adopt longer THWs in car-following situations, since drivers’ behavioural adaptation may lead to adoption of unsafe headways after resumption of control.

     

Lectin-binding pattern of the Senegalese sole Solea senegalensis oogenesis

The glycoconjugate pattern of developing ovarian follicles in wild and cultured Senegalese sole Solea senegalensis was investigated by means of lectin histochemistry. Ovaries from cultured fish contained oocytes up to the late vitellogenic stage, whereas they reached the hydration stage in wild specimens. The follicular cells bound MAL II, SBA, HPA, DBA, Con A, KOH-sialidase (K-s)-WGA, GSA I-B(4) in the late vitellogenic stage, and in wild fish also SNA and K-s-PNA, whereas in the hydration stage SBA, HPA, DBA, and GSA I-B(4) only. The zona radiata reacted with SBA, HPA, DBA, Con A, and GSA I B(4) in the late vitellogenic stage and in cultured fish also with UEA I, whereas in the hydration stage it stained with SBA only. The cortical alveoli bound SBA, HPA, RCA(120) during the late vitellogenic stage, also SNA, PNA, K-s-PNA, GSA I-B(4) in cultured fish, DBA, and K-s-WGA in wild ones which stained with SBA, HPA, and GSA I-B(4) in the hydrated stage. The yolk reacted with Con A in the late vitellogenic oocytes, and also with MAL II, SNA, K-s-PNA, SBA, HPA, K-s-WGA, GSA I-B(4), UEA I in the hydrated ones. From perinucleolus to late vitellogenic stages, the oocyte nucleoplasm bound Con A, GSA I-B(4), GSA II, UEA I, and in wild fish also MAL II, SNA, LTA but only GSA I-B(4) reactivity in the early maturation stage. These findings demonstrate that the glycan pattern of fish ovarian follicles changes during the maturative stages and that it is affected by culture-rearing conditions.     

Semantic speech recognition in the Basque context Part I: cross-lingual approaches

This work, divided into Part I and II, describes the development of GorUP a Semantic Speech Recognition System in the Basque context. Part I analyses cross-lingual approaches oriented to under-resourced languages and Part II the development of the Language Identification system. During the development, data optimization methods and Soft Computing methodologies oriented to complex environment are used in order to overcome the lack of resources. Moreover, in this context three languages coexist: French, Spanish and Basque. Indeed our main goal is the development of robust Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems for Basque, but all language variability has to be analyzed. In this regard, Basque speakers mix during the speech not only sounds but also words of the three languages which results in a strong presence of cross-lingual elements. Besides, Basque is an agglutinative language with a special morpho-syntactic structure inside the words that may lead to intractable vocabularies. Nowadays, our work is oriented to Information Retrieval and mainly to small internet mass-media. In these cases the available resources for Basque in general, and for this task in particular, are very few and complex to process because of the noisy environment. Thus, the methods employed in this development (ontology-based approach or cross-lingual methodologies oriented to profit from more powerful languages) could suit the requirements of many under-resourced languages.     

Experiments for the selection of sub-word units in the Basque context for semantic tasks

The long term goal of our project is the development of robust ASR systems in the Basque context where coexist French, Spanish and Basque (a minority language). The development of ASR systems involves dealing with issues such as Acoustic Phonetic Decoding (APD), Language Modelling (LM) or the development of appropriate Language Resources (LR). Thus, these applications are generally very language-dependent and require very large resources. This work is focused on the selection of appropriate sub-word units with under-resourced and noisy conditions. Nowadays, in particular, the work is oriented to Basque Broadcast News (BN) due to the interest of digital mass-media as the trilingual Infozazpi radio (situated in French Basque Country). Thus, in order to decrease the negative impact that the lack of resources has in this issue we apply several data optimization methodologies based on Matrix Covariance Estimation and Ontology-based approaches.