Using data crawlers and semantic Web to build financial XBRL data generators: the SONAR extension approach.

Precise, reliable and real-time financial information is critical for added-value financial services after the economic turmoil from which markets are still struggling to recover. Since the Web has become the most significant data source, intelligent crawlers based on Semantic Technologies have become trailblazers in the search of knowledge combining natural language processing and ontology engineering techniques. In this paper, we present the SONAR extension approach, which will leverage the potential of knowledge representation by extracting, managing, and turning scarce and disperse financial information into well-classified, structured, and widely used XBRL format-oriented knowledge, strongly supported by a proof-of-concept implementation and a thorough evaluation of the benefits of the approach.

Algorithm for the evaluation of imperfections in auto bodywork using profiles from a retroreflective image.

Nowadays the automobile industry is becoming more and more demanding as far as quality is concerned. Within the wide variety of processes in which this quality must be ensured, those regarding the squeezing of the auto bodywork are especially important due to the fact that the quality of the resulting product is tested manually by experts, leading to inaccuracies of all types. In this paper, an algorithm is proposed for the automated evaluation of the imperfections in the sheets of the bodywork after the squeezing process.

A Two-Dimensional Modeling Procedure to Estimate the Loss Equivalent Resistance Including the Saturation Effect.

We propose a modeling procedure specifically designed for a ferrite inductor excited by a waveform in time domain. We estimate the loss resistance in the core (parameter of the electrical model of the inductor) by means of a Finite Element Method in 2D which leads to significant computational advantages over the 3D model. The methodology is validated for an RM (rectangular modulus) ferrite core working in the linear and the saturation regions.

Legal, ethical, and economic implications of breaking down once-daily fixed-dose antiretroviral combinations into their single components for cost reduction.

The availability of generic lamivudine in the context of the current economic crisis has raised a new issue in some European countries: breaking up the once-daily fixed-dose antiretroviral combinations (FDAC) of efavirenz/tenofovir/emtricitabine, tenofovir/emtricitabine, or abacavir/lamivudine, in order to administer their components separately, thereby allowing the use of generic lamivudine instead of branded emtricitabine or lamivudine. The legal, ethical, and economic implications of this potential strategy are reviewed, particularly in those patients receiving a once-daily single-tablet regimen. An unfamiliar change in antiretroviral treatment from a successful patient-friendly FDAC into a more complex regimen including separately the components to allow the substitution of one (or some) of them for generic surrogates (in the absence of a generic bioequivalent FDAC) could be discriminatory because it does not guarantee access to equal excellence in healthcare to all citizens.

Hormones and silk. Gay men in the Spanish film comedies of the transition to democracy (1976-1981).

This article studies the representation of gay men in Spanish comedies of the 1970s. It analyzes how cinema used the stereotypical image of gay men projected by the dictatorship and how, once it ended, this image endured in the comedy genre. It introduces film theories on the construction of humor taken from relevant authors, such as Jordan, Charney, Voitylla, and Petri.

Simple Procedure to Compute the Inductance of a Toroidal Ferrite Core from the Linear to the Saturation Regions.

We propose a specific procedure to compute the inductance of a toroidal ferrite core as a function of the excitation current. The study includes the linear, intermediate and saturation regions. The procedure combines the use of Finite Element Analysis in 2D and experimental measurements.

The regenerative potential of fibroblasts in a new diabetes-induced delayed humanised wound healing model.

Cutaneous diabetic wounds greatly affect the quality of life of patients, causing a substantial economic impact on the healthcare system. The limited clinical success of conventional treatments is mainly attributed to the lack of knowledge of the pathogenic mechanisms related to chronic ulceration. Therefore, management of diabetic ulcers remains a challenging clinical issue.

A review on architectures and communications technologies for wearable health-monitoring systems.

Nowadays society is demanding more and more smart healthcare services that allow monitoring patient status in a non-invasive way, anywhere and anytime. Thus, healthcare applications are currently facing important challenges guided by the u-health (ubiquitous health) and p-health (pervasive health) paradigms. New emerging technologies can be combined with other widely deployed ones to develop such next-generation healthcare systems.

Leveraging social networks for understanding the evolution of epidemics.

Background: To understand how infectious agents disseminate throughout a population it is essential to capture the social model in a realistic manner. This paper presents a novel approach to modeling the propagation of the influenza virus throughout a realistic interconnection network based on actual individual interactions which we extract from online social networks. The advantage is that these networks can be extracted from existing sources which faithfully record interactions between people in their natural environment.

An event driven hybrid identity management approach to privacy enhanced e-health.

Credential-based authorization offers interesting advantages for ubiquitous scenarios involving limited devices such as sensors and personal mobile equipment: the verification can be done locally; it offers a more reduced computational cost than its competitors for issuing, storing, and verification; and it naturally supports rights delegation. The main drawback is the revocation of rights. Revocation requires handling potentially large revocation lists, or using protocols to check the revocation status, bringing extra communication costs not acceptable for sensors and other limited devices.

Sunlight intensity based global positioning system for near-surface underwater sensors.

Water monitoring is important in domains including documenting climate change, weather prediction and fishing. This paper presents a simple and energy efficient localization strategy for near surface buoy based sensors. Sensors can be dropped randomly in the ocean and thus self-calibrate in terms of geographic location such that geo-tagged observations of water quality can be made without the need for costly and energy consuming GPS-hardware.

A New Class of Minimum Power Divergence Estimators with Applications to Cancer Surveillance.

The Annual Percent Change (APC) has been adopted as a useful measure for analyzing the changing trends of cancer mortality and incidence rates by the NCI SEER program. Difficulties, however, arise when comparing the sample APCs between two overlapping regions because of the induced dependence (e.g.

Dual-core photonic crystal fibers for tunable polarization mode dispersion compensation.

A novel type of dual concentric core photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is proposed and theoretically analyzed, aiming at the design of tunable dispersive fiber elements for polarization-mode-dispersion (PMD) compensation. The adjustment of the fiber's geometrical birefringence through the proper selection of structural parameters leads to very high values of differential group-delay (DGD). Moreover, the value of DGD can be dynamically tuned by infiltrating the outer core capillaries of the PCF with an optical liquid, which allows for the thermal control of its refractive index.

Simulating visual qualia in the CERA-CRANIUM cognitive architecture.

The concept of qualia poses a central problem in the framework of consciousness studies. Despite it being a controversial issue even in the study of human consciousness, we argue that qualia can be complementarily studied using artificial cognitive architectures. In this work we address the problem of defining qualia in the domain of artificial systems, providing a model of "artificial qualia".

Using a shallow linguistic kernel for drug-drug interaction extraction.

A drug-drug interaction (DDI) occurs when one drug influences the level or activity of another drug. Information Extraction (IE) techniques can provide health care professionals with an interesting way to reduce time spent reviewing the literature for potential drug-drug interactions. Nevertheless, no approach has been proposed to the problem of extracting DDIs in biomedical texts.

Multiple comparison of trends in cancer rates taking into account overlapping cases().

When analyzing trends in cancer rates, it is common to rely on the so-called Annual Percent Change (APC). For dealing with such a measure of trend, directly age-adjusted rates are usually considered. Classical methods such as pooled t-tests are often applied for comparing APCs of two groups of individuals in a simple way under independence assumption.

Human activity recognition based on Evolving Fuzzy Systems.

Environments equipped with intelligent sensors can be of much help if they can recognize the actions or activities of their users. If this activity recognition is done automatically, it can be very useful for different tasks such as future action prediction, remote health monitoring, or interventions. Although there are several approaches for recognizing activities, most of them do not consider the changes in how a human performs a specific activity.

LOBIN: E-textile and wireless-sensor-network-based platform for healthcare monitoring in future hospital environments.

This paper describes a novel healthcare IT platform developed under the LOBIN project, which allows monitoring several physiological parameters, such as ECG, heart rate, body temperature, etc., and tracking the location of a group of patients within hospital environments. The combination of e-textile and wireless sensor networks provides an efficient way to support noninvasive and pervasive services demanded by future healthcare environments.

Coarse WDM networking of self-referenced fiber-optic intensity sensors with reconfigurable characteristics.

A CWDM network operating in reflective configuration for multiplexing remote Radio-Frequency (RF) self-referenced fiber-optic intensity sensors is analyzed and experimentally investigated. In the described approach, the use of fiber Bragg gratings as spectral selective mirrors allows to implement delay lines in the electrical domain, achieving more compact sensor-heads and easy-reconfigurable sensing points. Two measurement parameters for the sensing heads are defined and comparatively studied in terms of design parameters, linearity, sensitivity and resolution.

Exergy optimization in a steady moving bed heat exchanger.

This work provides an energy and exergy optimization analysis of a moving bed heat exchanger (MBHE). The exchanger is studied as a cross-flow heat exchanger where one of the phases is a moving granular medium. The optimal MBHE dimensions and the optimal particle diameter are obtained for a range of incoming fluid flow rates.

Drug name recognition and classification in biomedical texts. A case study outlining approaches underpinning automated systems.

This article presents a system for drug name recognition and classification in biomedical texts. The system combines information obtained by the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) MetaMap Transfer (MMTx) program and nomenclature rules recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) International Nonproprietary Names (INNs) Program to identify and classify pharmaceutical substances. Moreover, the system is able to detect possible candidates for drug names that have not been detected by MMTx program by applying these rules, achieving, in this way, a broader coverage.

Trends in scientific activity addressing transmissible spongiform encephalopathies: a bibliometric study covering the period 1973-2002.

Background: The purpose of this study is to analyse the trends in scientific research on transmissible spongiform encephalopathies by applying bibliometric tools to the scientific literature published between 1973 and 2002.

Methods: The data for the study were obtained from Medline database, in order to determine the volume of scientific output in the above period, the countries involved, the type of document and the trends in the subject matters addressed. The period 1973-2002 was divided in three sub-periods.

Telemedicine experience for chronic care in COPD.

Information and telecommunication technologies are called to play a major role in the changes that healthcare systems have to face to cope with chronic disease. This paper reports a telemedicine experience for the home care of chronic patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and an integrated system designed to carry out this experience. To determine the impact on health, the chronic care telemedicine system was used during one year (2002) with 157 COPD patients in a clinical experiment; endpoints were readmissions and mortality.

Grandparents use of new communication technologies in a European perspective.

This study examined the pattern of use of different forms of contact between grandparents and grandchildren, and especially the use of new technologies (SMS, e-mail) and factors affecting this. Questionnaire data are reported from 408 grandparents in the UK, Spain, Finland and Estonia, regarding contacts with grandchildren mostly in the 10-15-year age range. Face-to-face contact remained the most frequent mean, followed closely by landline telephone; there was moderate use of mobile phones, and many used letters/cards occasionally; and a minority used SMS and e-mails (about one-half to one-third of those with mobile phones, and networked computers, respectively).

Relationships among tests for censored data.

In this paper we will give the relationships of several Score tests and Weighted tests for right censoring data with other classical tests. Special care will be taken with the case of ties and with the kind of estimation of the variance used. After the description of ten tests, a comparative study will be made among them.