Raquel Lázaro Gutiérrez

Indoor location system based on ZigBee devices and Metric Description Graphs

This paper proposes a way to improve the position estimates in an indoor location systems (ILS) based on readings from the power levels (RSSI) of an ad hoc ZigBee network. A mobile object, also equipped with a ZigBee device, can be located, positioned, and tracked by the system. The initial estimate of the mobile node position is extracted from IC devices from Texas Instruments, equipped with a specific hardware module for this function called Location Engine; it computes its position from RSSI readings of the signals coming from a set of reference beacons. Positioning of the blind nodes is enhanced by a post-filtering of the initial estimates by adjusting them into a Metric Description Graph (MDG) of the building, which includes information on distances and connectivity among the various enclosures of the coverage area of the ILS. The system has been experimentally verified in localization tasks of pedestrians in indoor environments.

Monitoring vital signs and location of patients by using ZigBee wireless sensor networks

This work proposes a WWBAN (Wearable Wireless Body Area Network) for patients and its localization by means of a Zigbee-based LPS (Local Positioning System). To carry out both systems a mote has been used. This mote is a device composed by a microcontroller, some sensors and some communication modules. The WWBAN is used to measure user movement and heart rate, save it and send it to a remote device. For the LPS implementation, a set of ZigBee beacons is used. All the data from WWBAN and LPS are sent through a Bluetooth link to a mobile phone.

Low complexity QRS detectors for performance and energy aware applications

Telemedicine or mHealth systems can improve the quality of life of patients who need to be monitored continuously. Not only will it allow them to stay at their own home with a higher level of mobility but also maintaining or even improving the accuracy of the diagnostic. Remote monitoring can enable information about the health status of all patients to be passed to the medical staff continuously for prolonged periods of time. Some of the vital physiological parameters for diagnostic are heart rate and heart rate variability. The calculation of these parameters relies on an accurate heartbeats detector (QRS complexes detector). In this work, two QRS detectors are proposed. They have been designed taking into account not only the accuracy, but also the computational complexity and the power consumption they require to analyze the electrocardiographic signal (ECG) in order to implement them on wearable platforms with different levels of constrained resources (integer numbers or floating point arithmetic). The complexity, power consumption and accuracy parameters of both algorithms are also analyzed.

Corpus-Based Interpreting Studies and Public Service Interpreting and Translation Training Programs: The Case of Interpreters Working in Gender Violence Contexts

The growing popularity of Public Service Interpreting and Translation (PSIT) in different fields, such as healthcare or legal environments, has highlighted the need for interlingual and intercultural communication between public service providers and users who do not have any or sufficient command of the official language of the public authorities. Training is essential in those settings if we want to successfully achieve the appropriate communication. Interpreting and translation training programs are especially useful in the cases of gender violence victims from other countries, with different pragmatic communication strategies. This article explores the use of Corpus-based Interpreting Studies (CIS) as a methodology to train interpreters in gender-based violence context. After a theoretical introduction on CIS, PSIT and interpreting in gender violence contexts a particular emphasis is placed on the design, compilation process and use of a monolingual corpus and concordance software.

Activity monitoring and emergency warning with location information of the user

Recent advances in communications technologies and embedded systems have allowed the development of remote health monitoring systems. There are different approaches depending on the available measurements and the communication system used. In this paper an activity monitoring system is proposed in order to detect falls and/or faints of the user. The feature that distinguishes this system from other activity monitoring systems is the ability of auto-localization in both outdoor and indoor environments as well as the ability to automatically generate alarms to alert the medical personnel if there is any emergency situation.

Interpreting in the Emergency Department: How Context Matters for Practice

The literature on medical interpreting shows that lack of a common language between a patient and a doctor is a major cause of health disparities in healthcare in multilingual environment. This problem is exacerbated around the world by the fact that emergency departments are becoming increasingly diverse and cater for multicultural as well as multilingual societies. Language barriers pose frequent problems between patients and caregivers, and this contribution stems from a project that is seeking to identify ways of dealing more effectively with multilingualism on in hospitals. As 80% of the diagnosis depends on oral communication, medical mishaps in emergency departments often result from vulnerable communication processes, due to language barriers; this area of research is under-represented in the growing focus on medical interpreting. Furthermore, considering that the conditions for communication in emergency departments are very different from primary care settings, this contribution presents the results of a research conducted to better understand interpreting needs in this context. This chapter hence reports on practices, emerging needs, and varying degrees of concerted, institutional responses in two specific local contexts (in which the research was carried out) that may be representative of endemic situations.

Perceptions from the outside in cases of gender violence. ‘What are you [the interpreter] doing here?’

A 2011 Gender Violence Macrosurvey carried out by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS, Spanish Centre for Sociological Research) in collaboration with the Spanish Government warns that “the prevalence of gender-based violence amongst foreign women is twice that of Spanish women.” The problem gets worse when these women do not speak the contact language, in this case Spanish. The efforts of the Spanish Administration and the information and support provided to every gender violence victim hardly ever reach foreign victims, who essentially need the assistance of interpreters. When the presence of qualified interpreters (or interpreters at all) is not guaranteed, this may lead to inadequate, inaccurate and inefficient communication. The main purpose of this paper is to present the results of a survey conducted in 2013 amongst the main agents involved in the communication process with foreign victims of gender violence who do not speak Spanish or co-official languages. The sample size is about 600 answers by agents distributed in four fields (police, legal, health, welfare) with the majority of respondents from the police. The survey includes questions about how communication problems without an interpreter are solved, which protocol – if any – is followed to seek the assistance of an interpreter, how often they use interpreters, what problems they have experienced working with them and what they think is the interpreters’ role as well as what strategies or specific knowledge interpreters may have. Note: This article summarizes the report produced by the SOS-VICS project: Communication between professionals providing attention to gender violence victims/survivors who do not speak the language, and published by Del Pozo Triviño, M., Vaamonde Liste, A., Casado Neira, D., Pérez Freire, S., Vaamonde Paniagua, A., Fernandes Del Pozo, D., & GuinarteMencía, R. (2014). The report can be accessed at: http://cuautla.uvigo.es/sos-vics/blogs/files/informe-cuestionario-

Genetic algorithm for searching a Doppler resilient multilevel complementary waveform

This work proposes the use of Genetic Algorithms (GAs) to search a Doppler resilient multilevel complementary pair of sequences. The fitness function deals with the desired ambiguity function to be fit, while it minimizes the crest factor of the resulting sequences. The simulated results show how the waveform obtained has a better performance than that achieved with binary sequences.

Educación abierta e innovación en TISP: diseño de un curso MOOC sobre Iniciación a la Traducción e Interpretación en los Servicios Públicos - [Open Education and Innovation in PSIT: Designing a MOOC on Introduction to Public Service Interpreting and Translation]

This article describes the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)“Try Public Service Interpreting and Translation!” taught at the University of Alcalá, the first course on introduction to Public Service Interpreting and Translation (PSIT) in Spain, as well as the results obtained up to now from quality surveys considering the variety of students’ profiles who attended it. The course, in Spanish, offers a general overview of the world of PSIT over a period of ten weeks. It aims to contribute to the dissemination of information about this emerging profession among professionals and users of different sectors who need specific knowledge on intercultural communication.