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Background: The recently published COMPLETE trial has demonstrated that patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and multivessel coronary artery disease (MVD), who underwent successful percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) of both culprit and non-culprit (vs. culprit-only) lesions had a reduced risk of major adverse cardiac events (MACE), but not of cardiovascular or total mortality. The aim of this meta-analysis was to assess the efficacy of complete revascularization on cardiovascular or total mortality reduction using available randomized controlled trials (RCTs) including the COMPLETE trial, in hemodynamically stable STEMI patients with MVD. Methods: PubMed, MEDLINE, Embase, Scopus, Google Scholar, CENTRAL and ClinicalTrials.gov databases search identified 10 RCTs of 7033 patients with STEMI and MVD which compared complete (n = 3420) vs. only culprit lesion (n = 3613) PCI for a median 27.7 months follow-up. Random effect risk ratios were used to estimate for efficacy and safety outcomes. Results: Complete revascularization reduced the risk of MACE (10.4% vs.16.6%; RR = 0.59, 95% CI: 0.47 to 0.74, p < 0.0001), CV mortality (2.87% vs. 3.72%; RR = 0.73, 95% CI: 0.56 to 0.95, p = 0.02), reinfarction (5.1% vs. 7.1%; RR = 0.67, 95% CI: 0.52 to 0.86, p = 0.002), urgent revascularization (7.92% vs.17.4%; RR = 0.47, 95% CI: 0.30 to 0.73, p < 0.001), and CV hospitalization (8.68% vs.11.4%; RR = 0.65, 95% CI: 0.44to 0.96, p = 0.03) compared with culprit only revascularization. All-cause mortality, stroke, major bleeding events, or contrast induced nephropathy were not affected by the revascularization strategy. Conclusion: The findings of this meta-analysis suggest that in patients with STEMI and MVD, complete revascularization is superior to culprit-only PCI in reducing the risk of MACE outcomes, including cardiovascular mortality, without increasing the risk of adverse safety outcomes.

Background Acromegaly is produced by excess growth hormone secreted by a pituitary adenoma of somatotroph cells (ACRO). First-line therapy, surgery and adjuvant therapy with somatostatin analogs, fails in 25% of patients. There is no predictive factor of resistance to therapy. New therapies are investigated using few dispersed tumor cells in acute primary cultures in standard conditions where the cells do not grow, or using rat pituitary cell lines that do not maintain the full somatotroph phenotype. The RET/PIT1/p14ARF/p53 pathway regulates apoptosis in normal pituitary somatotrophs whereas the RET/GDNF pathway regulates survival, controlling PIT1 levels and blocking p14ARF (ARF) and p53 expression. Methods We investigated these two RET pathways in a prospective series of 32 ACRO and 63 non-functioning pituitary adenomas (NFPA), studying quantitative RNA and protein gene expression for molecular-clinical correlations and how the RET pathway might be implicated in therapeutic success. Clinical data was collected during post-surgical follow-up. We also established new'humanized’ pituitary cultures, allowing 20 repeated passages and maintaining the pituitary secretory phenotype, and tested five multikinase inhibitors (TKI: Vandetanib, Lenvatinib, Sunitinib, Cabozantinib and Sorafenib) potentially able to act on the GDNF-induced RET dimerization/survival pathway. Antibody arrays investigated intracellular molecular pathways. Findings In ACRO, there was specific enrichment of all genes in both RET pathways, especially GDNF. ARF and GFRA4 gene expression were found to be opposing predictors of response to first-line therapy. ARF cut-off levels, calculated categorizing by GNAS mutation, were predictive of good response (above) or resistance (below) to therapy months later. Sorafenib, through AMPK, blocked the GDNF/AKT survival action without altering the RET apoptotic pathway. Interpretation Tumor ARF mRNA expression measured at the time of the surgery is a prognosis factor in acromegaly. The RET inhibitor, Sorafenib, is proposed as a potential treatment for resistant ACRO. Fund This project was supported by national grants from Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (AEI) and Instituto Investigacion Carlos III, with participation of European FEDER funds, to IB (PI150056) and CVA (BFU2016-76973-R). It was also supported initially by a grant from the Investigator Initiated Research (IIR) Program (WI177773) and by a non-restricted Research Grant from Pfizer Foundation to IB. Some of the pituitary acromegaly samples were collected in the framework of the Spanish National Registry of Acromegaly (REMAH), partially supported by an unrestricted grant from Novartis to the Spanish Endocrine Association (SEEN). CVA is also supported from a grant of Medical Research Council UK MR/M018539/1.

Background: Respiratory tract infections represent a significant public health risk, and timely and accurate detection of bacterial infections facilitates rapid therapeutic intervention. Furthermore, monitoring the progression of infections after intervention enables ‘course correction’ in cases where initial treatments are ineffective, avoiding unnecessary drug dosing that can contribute to antibiotic resistance. However, current diagnostic and monitoring techniques rely on non-specific or slow readouts, such as radiographic imaging and sputum cultures, which fail to specifically identify bacterial infections and take several days to identify optimal antibiotic treatments. Methods: Here we describe a nanoparticle system that detects P. aeruginosa lung infections by sensing host and bacterial protease activity in vivo, and that delivers a urinary detection readout. One protease sensor is comprised of a peptide substrate for the P. aeruginosa protease LasA. A second sensor designed to detect elastases is responsive to recombinant neutrophil elastase and secreted proteases from bacterial strains. Findings: In mice infected with P. aeruginosa, nanoparticle formulations of these protease sensors—termed activity-based nanosensors (ABNs)—detect infections and monitor bacterial clearance from the lungs over time. Additionally, ABNs differentiate between appropriate and ineffective antibiotic treatments acutely, within hours after the initiation of therapy. Interpretation: These findings demonstrate how activity measurements of disease-associated proteases can provide a noninvasive window into the dynamic process of bacterial infection and resolution, offering an opportunity for detecting, monitoring, and characterizing lung infections. Fund: National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Keywords: protease; nanoparticle; diagnostic; bacterial pneumonia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. David H. Koch School of Chemical Engineering Practice (National Cancer Institute (U.S.) Grant 30-CA14051), National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (Core Center Grant P30-ES002109), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (U.S.) (Grant R01-AI132413)

This paper examines how a nationwide infrastructure investment policy, implemented at the local level, impacted local crime rates. The policy, developed in the wake of the global recession of 2008–09, was designed to boost local economies through job creation. Using monthly figures from the more than 900 municipalities making up the Spanish region of Catalonia, the paper exploits spatial and temporal variations in the Spanish Ministry of Public Administration's random approval of local investment policies, to estimate their impact on both unemployment and crime. The combination of difference-in-differences and IV estimates makes it possible to assess both the size and timing of the policy's impact on the local labor market and on municipal-level crime rates. While the policy did little to palliate the effects of the economic recession in the long run, local public finances did experience a short-term boost, resulting in a temporary reduction in local unemployment rates (as required by the policy), as well as a significant drop in crime rates.

We provide an introduction to Multiple Classifier Systems (MCS) including basic nomenclature and describing key elements: classifier dependencies, type of classifier outputs, aggregation procedures, architecture, and types of methods. This introduction complements other existing overviews of MCS, as here we also review the most prevalent theoretical framework for MCS and discuss theoretical developments related to MCS The introduction to MCS is then followed by a review of the application of MCS to the particular field of multimodal biometric person authentication in the last 25 years, as a prototypical area in which MCS has resulted in important achievements. This review includes general descriptions of successful MCS methods and architectures in order to facilitate the export of them to other information fusion problems. Based on the theory and framework introduced here, in the companion paper we then develop in more technical detail recent trends and developments in MCS from multimodal biometrics that incorporate context information in an adaptive way. These new MCS architectures exploit input quality measures and pattern-specific particularities that move apart from general population statistics, resulting in robust multimodal biometric systems. Similarly as in the present paper, methods in the companion paper are introduced in a general way so they can be applied to other information fusion problems as well. Finally, also in the companion paper, we discuss open challenges in biometrics and the role of MCS to advance them, This work was funded by projects CogniMetrics (TEC2015-70627-R) from MINECO/FEDER and RiskTrakc (JUST-2015-JCOO-AG-1). Part of thisthis work was conducted during a research visit of J.F. to Prof. Ludmila Kuncheva at Bangor University (UK) with STSM funding from COST CA16101 (MULTI-FORESEE)

Nanoscience and nanotechnology, collectively called nanotechnology, are emerging disciplines that have attracted enormous research interest for about three decades. Nanotechnology is not a single process nor does it involve a specific type of material. Instead, the term covers all aspects of the production of materials, devices, and systems by manipulating matter at the nanoscale.1 Nanotechnology is widely considered to be the latest key technology, able to change our lives in many ways, and all the more so because it is becoming increasingly linked with advances in many different scientific fields. The tremendous progress of nanotechnologies during the last decades has led to a greater availability of techniques for the fabrication of nanometric structures with controlled composition and dimensions, resulting in nanostructures with very specific properties and several functionalities. . The Nanostructured Thin Films IV conference was held in San Diego, California, on 23-25 August 2011. Around 50 papers were submitted encompassing topics covering many relevant aspects of nanostructured thin films, from modeling, fabrication, and characterization to practical applications. As such, eight sessions were arranged, namely Plasmonics, Optics, Homogenization Studies, Applications, Nanostructured Porous Silicon, and Fabrication and Characterization I, II, and III. Additionally, the opening session was devoted to green nanotechnology. . This special section of the Journal of Nanophotonics comprises a set of selected papers that have been expanded from those presented during the Nanostructured Thin Films IV conference.

Emerging evidence suggests that an effective or functional connectivity network does not use a static process over time but incorporates dynamic connectivity that shows changes in neuronal activity patterns. Using structural equation models (SEMs), we estimated a dynamic component of the effective network through the effects (recursive and nonrecursive) between regions of interest (ROIs), taking into account the lag 1 effect. The aim of the paper was to find the best structural equation model (SEM) to represent dynamic effective connectivity in people with Down syndrome (DS) in comparison with healthy controls. Twenty-two people with DS were registered in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) resting-state paradigm for a period of six minutes. In addition, 22 controls, matched by age and sex, were analyzed with the same statistical approach. In both groups, we found the best global model, which included 6 ROIs within the default mode network (DMN). Connectivity patterns appeared to be different in both groups, and networks in people with DS showed more complexity and had more significant effects than networks in control participants. However, both groups had synchronous and dynamic effects associated with ROIs 3 and 4 related to the upper parietal areas in both brain hemispheres as axes of association and functional integration. It is evident that the correct classification of these groups, especially in cognitive competence, is a good initial step to propose a biomarker in network complexity studies.

A new version of the code system pengeom , which provides a complete set of tools to handle different geometries in Monte Carlo simulations of radiation transport, is presented. The distribution package consists of a set of Fortran subroutines and a Java graphical user interface that allows building and debugging the geometry-definition file, and producing images of the geometry in two- and three-dimensions. A detailed description of these tools is given in the original paper [ Comput. Phys. Commun. 199 (2016) 102–113] and in the code manual included in the distribution package. The present new version corrects a bug in the Fortran subroutines, and it includes various improvements of the Java graphical user interface. New Version Program Summary Program Title: pengeom CPC Library link to program files: https://doi.org/10.17632/zgswr8kyf5.1 Licensing provisions: CC BY NC 3.0 Programming language: Fortran 90, Java Journal reference of previous version: Comput. Phys. Commun. 199 (2016) 102–113 Does the new version supersede the previous version?: Yes Reasons for the new version: The original Fortran code contained a subtle bug, which had an effect only when (1) a particle moving within a void region entered a material body, and (2) the particle was left in the void volume because of numerical roundoff errors (undershot). In such case, the steering main program erroneously concluded that the particle was in the external vacuum and, consequently, it discontinued the simulation of the particle trajectory. This anomalous behavior has been corrected by shifting the position of the particle a small distance, determined by the parameters of the master ray equation, which places the particle a small distance inside the material body. In the original Fortran subroutines, inconsistencies in the geometry-definition file resulted in a stop of the program; this reaction was hard to control from a graphical user interface. The present new version has been verified to work correctly under Java 8, Java 11, and Java 13. Summary of revisions: In the new version the tracking bug is corrected. In addition, any apparent syntax error is now resolved by returning the control to the calling program with an error flag activated and with an error message. Various aspects of the Java user interface have been improved: the text editor now includes line numbers, which are used to locate possible inconsistencies and errors in the geometry definition file; the size of the application window can now be modified, and the possible sizes of the graphics windows are adapted to the actual resolution of the monitor; the action of keystroke commands under Windows, Linux, and macOS is now the same. Nature of problem: The Fortran subroutines perform all geometry operations in Monte Carlo simulations of radiation transport with arbitrary interaction models. They track particles through complex quadric geometries, i.e., through material systems consisting of homogeneous bodies limited by quadric surfaces. Particles are moved in steps (free flights) of a given length, which is dictated by the simulation program, and are halted when they cross an interface between media of different compositions or when they enter selected bodies. At the end of each step, pengeom returns the indices of the material and body where the particle is. Solution method: pengeom is tailored to optimize simulation speed and accuracy. Fast tracking is accomplished by the use of quadric surfaces, which facilitate the calculation of ray intersections , and of modules (connected volumes limited by quadric surfaces) organized in a hierarchical structure. Optimal accuracy is obtained by considering fuzzy surfaces, with the aid of a simple algorithm that keeps control of multiple intersections of a ray and a surface. The 64-bit Java GUI PenGeomJar provides a complete geometry toolbox; it allows building and debugging of the geometry definition file, as well as visualizing the resulting geometry in two and three dimensions. Additional comments including restrictions and unusual features: All geometrical operations are performed internally. The connection between the steering main program and the tracking routines is through a Fortran module, which contains the state variables of the transported particle, and the input-output arguments of subroutine STEP . Rendering of two- and three-dimensional images is performed by using the pengeoem subroutines, so that what we see in the images is what is passed to the simulation program. By default pengeom can handle systems with up to 5,000 bodies and 10,000 surfaces. These numbers can be increased by editing the source file. [1] J. Almansa, F. Salvat-Pujol, G. Diaz-Londono, A. Carnicer, A.M. Lallena, and Francesc Salvat, Comput. Phys. Commun. 199 (2016) 102–113.

This paper quantifies the combined effect on-the-job training and workers' on-the-job learning decisions have on aggregate employment. Initially, we present an index of on-the-job human capital acquisition (OJHCA) based on data from the OECD program for international assessment of adult competencies. The data shows a positive relationship between the on-the-job training and on-the-job learning indexes and a strong positive correlation between the human capital index and employment rates across OECD economies. Next, we build a search and matching model that hinges on the training provided by firms as well as workers' learning. The model also includes education along with taxes that increase and decrease human capital investments. We calibrate the model to the United Kingdom and analyze the role of taxes and education to explain the variation in human capital acquired on-the-job, employment and productivity across countries. We also obtain the marginal costs in every country that reproduce the levels of on-the-job human capital as observed in the data. The model is almost able to reproduce the observed differences in employment rates between the groups of countries in the highest and lowest tertiles of the OJHCA distribution, and OJHCA accounts for forty percent of the simulated employment differences. Finally, we analyze subsidies to training costs and conclude that a 10% reduction in marginal training cost increases long-term employment by almost 0.5 percentage points We are grateful for the financial support of the Instituto de Estudios Fiscales (Silva and Vázquez-Grenno), the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación -PID2019-109813RB-I00 and PID2019-108265RB-I00 (Vázquez-Grenno) and ECO2017-82350-R (Naval and Silva), the Generalitat de Catalunya - 2017SGR796 (Vázquez-Grenno) and -2017SGR558 (Naval and Silva)

The Averaged Strain Energy Density (ASED) criterion has been widely used for the prediction of fracture conditions in a number of materials containing notch type defects, similarly to other well-known methodologies such as the Theory of Critical Distances (TCD). This criterion is linear-elastic, so the results obtained in linear-elastic materials have been accurate. However, as soon as the material behavior becomes nonlinear, the resulting accuracy decreases. With the aim of using linear-elastic simple methods (such as the ASED criterion) in nonlinear materials, several attempts have been made to convert a physically nonlinear behavior into an equivalent linear behavior. Thus, when the tensile behavior in plain specimens reveals nonlinearity, but the fracture behavior in the presence of defects is linear, the Equivalent Material Concept (EMC) has been successfully validated (EMC-ASED criterion). However, there are situations in which the nonlinear behavior takes place in both tensile and fracture behaviors, and the EMC-ASED criterion loses accuracy and requires further evolution. At this point, the Fictitious Material Concept allows the analysis of nonlinear materials (at both tensile and fracture conditions) to be performed with significant accuracy. In this context, this article provides the prediction of fracture loads in single edge notched bending (SENB) specimens made of short glass fiber reinforced polyamide 6 (SGFR-PA6, 10 wt.%) containing U-notches and different levels of moisture content. The predictions are obtained through the combination of the FMC and the ASED criterion (FMC-ASED combined criterion). The results are significantly more accurate than those obtained through the ASED and the EMC-ASED criteria, but less accurate than those used when combining the FMC with the TCD. The authors of this work wish to extend their gratitude to the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation for the financial support of the Project MAT2014-58443-P: “Análisis del comportamiento en fractura de componentes estructurales con defectos en condiciones debajo confinamiento tensional”, on the results of which this paper is based.

This paper aims to contribute to the knowledge on how the Smart Tourism Destination (STD) might enhance the Tourist Shopping Journey (TSJ) through offering information sources that meet visitors' needs and preferences. The CAN (Cognitive-Affective-Normative) model was employed to explore the antecedents of using information sources for purchases made in destinations. The importance of the cognitive variables performance and effort expectancy in the purchasing process are highlighted: tourists are pragmatic when consulting information sources in destinations. This study contributes to the knowledge of the role of information sources in TSJ behaviour, and can help managers in the development of STD strategies and services. It also opens new research lines by considering the TSJ as a hitherto unexamined holistic process., Highlights • Being able to provide suitable information in the proper manner is crucial for a Smart Tourism Destination (STD). • STDs must develop the most adequate information strategy and influence positively in the Tourist Shopping Journey. • The search of information is the first stage in the Tourit Shopping Journey. • All dimensions of the CAN model influence on intention to use information sources when tourist shopping. • Tourists aim to make best use of their time behaving in a pragmatic way when shopping.

This paper quantifies the impact of public employment on local labor markets in the long-run. We adopt two quantitative approaches and apply them to the case of Spanish cities. In the first, we develop a 3-sector (public, tradable and non-tradable) search and matching model embedded within a spatial equilibrium model. We characterize the steady state of the model, which we calibrate to match the labor market characteristics of the average Spanish city. The model is then used to simulate the local labor market effects of expanding public sector employment. In the second empirical approach, we use regression analysis to estimate the effects of public sector job expansions on decadal changes (1980-1990 and 1990-2001) in the employment and population of Spanish cities. This analysis exploits the dramatic expansion of public employment that followed the advent of democracy in the period 1980 to 2001. The instrumental variables’ approach that we adopt uses the capital status of cities to instrument for changes in public sector employment. The two empirical approaches yield qualitatively similar results and, thus, cross-check each other. One additional public sector job creates about 1.3 jobs in the private sector. However, these new jobs do not translate into a substantial reduction in the local unemployment rate as better labor market conditions attract new workers to the city. Increasing public employment by 50% only reduces unemployment from 0.156 to 0.150.

The main limitation of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) is its maximum operating temperature, since the main fluid used as heat transfer fluid (HTF) and thermal storage media (TES) is molten salts, which degrade around 565 °C. Therefore, there is great interest in developing HTFs that allow the maximum working temperature to be increased to more than 565 °C. This increase in the maximum operating temperature of the HTFs will, in turn, allow CSP plant efficiency to be enhanced. Different studies have proposed using particles as a medium to capture and store solar energy, but very little is known about the effect on the particles after resisting several cycles of cooling and heating and what happens to the particles’ physical properties when they are fluidized. It is true that a variety of solid particles permit high performance to be achieved at high temperatures and with low material costs, but not all particles are valid for this purpose. This work focuses on different materials considered promising candidates for use as alternative HTF and storage materials in CSP plants, which were characterized and tested: sand, carbo Accucast ID50 and silicon carbide. The properties of the particles before and after being fluidized (assessing their resistance to abrasion) and before and after high temperature (900 °C) thermal treatments (aging treatment) are the main finding of this paper. This work highlights the considerable advantages of SiC and carbo over sand. This study also determines that the combination of high temperature and several hours of fluidization does not affect the diameter of the particles: However, the fluidized samples vary considerably in diameter. In this way, SEM and DSC techniques highlight the problem of the fine appearance associated with sand during fluidization.

The problem of vehicle autonomous driving currently represents a topic of great interest from both theoretical and practical points of view. Among the challenging tasks to be addressed within any autonomous driving framework, one of the most important ones is localization from data collected in real time. Within such framework, this paper is specifically focused on the localization problem for rail vehicles, such as railway and tramway vehicles. Our specific interest is on investigating solutions to the localization problem which are (as much as possible) independent on ground sensor infrastructure and are therefore suitable to be employed on any rail vehicle, irrespective of the ground equipment of the specific tracks. To this end, we refer to a multi-sensor framework and, specifically, to a sensor fusion scheme which collects data from different sensors installed on the vehicle (namely, an Inertial Measurement Unit and a Global Positioning System) and carries out a Kalman-based filtering recursion which relies on a simplified vehicle model. With the aim of identifying a solution for the localization problem providing desirable performance, we carry out a comparative simulation analysis concerning different Kalman-based data fusion strategies (in particular, the Extended Kalman Filter and the Unscented Kalman Filter are considered).

The aim of this paper is to test two methodologies, applicable to different spatial scales (from regional to local), to predict the capacity of agroecosystems to provide habitats for the species richness of butterflies and birds, based on the ways their socio-metabolic flows change the ecological functionality of bio-cultural landscapes. First, we use the more general Intermediate Disturbance-Complexity (IDC) model to assess how different levels of human appropriation of photosynthetic production affect the landscape functional structure that hosts biodiversity. Second, we apply a more detailed Energy-Landscape Integrated Analysis (ELIA) model that focusses on the energy storage carried out by the internal biomass loops, and the energy information held in the network of energy flows driven by farmers, in order to correlate both (the energy reinvested and redistributed) with the energy imprinted in the landscape patterns and processes that sustain biodiversity. The results obtained after applying both models in the province and the metropolitan region of Barcelona support the Margalef's energy-information-structure hypothesis by showing positive relations between butterflies' species richness, IDC and ELIA, and between birds' species richness and energy information. Our findings support the view that strong relationships between farming energy flows, agroecosystem functioning and biodiversity can be detected, and highlight the importance of farmers' knowledge and labour to maintain bio-cultural landscapes.

There is an ever-increasing complexity of the systems we engineer in modern society, which includes facing the convergence of the embedded world and the open world. This complexity creates increasing difficulty with providing assurance for factors including safety, security and performance. In such a context, the AQUAS project investigates the challenges arising from e.g., the inter-dependence of safety, security and performance of systems and aims at efficient solutions for the entire product life-cycle. The project builds on knowledge of partners gained in current or former EU projects and will demonstrate the newly developed methods and techniques for co-engineering across use cases spanning Aerospace, Medicine, Transport and Industrial Control. A special thanks to all the AQUAS consortium people that have worked on the AQUAS proposal on which this paper is based, especially to Charles Robinson (TRT), the proposal coordinator. The AQUAS project is funded from the ECSEL Joint Undertaking under grant agreement n 737475, and from National funding.

This paper develops a unified framework to analyze a continuum of hybrid cooperation agreements along two dimensions: their degree of revenue sharing (scope of alliances) and their degree of cost sharing (scope of joint ventures). The analysis focuses on the air transportation industry, distinguishing between interline and interhub markets. As economies of traffic density become stronger, we find that the socially optimal cooperation agreement moves from full alliance to joint venture in interline markets, whereas it moves from joint ventureto merger in interhub markets. These results are driven by the tradeoff between a procompetitive effect of alliances in interline markets and an anticompetitive effect in interhub markets, along with the efficiency gains associated with joint ventures in interhub markets. We also develop an empirical application for intercontinental routes for the period 2010–2016 that identifies a positive impact of deeper degrees of airline cooperation (revenue and cost sharing) on traffic, both in interline and interhub markets. Therefore, the potential anticompetitive effect of deeper alliances in interhub markets is not observed in our sample.

Technical Universities (TUs) exhibit a distinct ranking performance in comparison with other universities. In this paper we identify 137 TUs included in the THE Ranking (2017 edition) and analyse their scores statistically. The results highlight the existence of clusters of TUs showing a general high performance in the Industry Income category and, in many cases, a low performance on Research and Teaching. Finally, the global score weights were simulated, creating several scenarios that confirmed that the majority of TUs (except those with a world-class status) would increase their final scores if industrial income was accounted for at the levels parametrised., Comment: 34 pages, 5 figures, 9 tables

In this paper we analyse the effects of all sources of the accumulation of nonfinancial debt (household, corporate as well as government) on economic growth in ten euro-area countries during the 1980-2015 period. To this end, we make use of three models (a baseline, an asymmetric and a threshold model) based on the empirical growth literature augmented by debt to assess whether a debt change has an impact on growth over and above other determinants, treating the different types of borrowers separately. By exploring the time series dimension in order to properly account for the historical experience of each country in the sample, we aim to detect potential heterogeneities in the relationship across euro area countries. Our results with both the baseline and the asymmetric models suggest that although the effects on nonfinancial debt accumulation clearly differ across countries, on average, the highest marginal impact of a rise in debt corresponds to the household and public sector, with an increase in private debt being more harmful in peripheral than in central countries; in contrast, the average effect of a rise in public debt does not differ between these two groups of countries. As for the effects of a debt increase beyond the turning point estimated in the threshold model, our findings indicate that the highest marginal impact corresponds to the household sector.

In this paper, we study the welfare implications of the zero-price rule of the Net Neutrality (NN) regulation in an economy where two competing Content Providers (CPs) can engage in interlinking agreements. When CPs link their contents, they attract indirect visitors who first visit one CP and then the other so as to benefit from the complementarities of their products. We show that CPs are interested in reaching a linking agreement when the termination fee set by the Internet Service Provider (ISP) is not particularly high. The ISP may also find it profitable to set a low termination fee that leads CPs to reach a linking agreement. First, it benefits from the increase in the Internet traffic, provided that its cost of transmitting content is not too high. And second, the links increase the consumers’ willingness to pay for the service, which allows it to set a higher subscription fee. Last, we show the cases in which the regulation of the termination fee can increase social welfare. We also point out that when the ISP’s transmission cost is sufficiently low the imposition of the NN principle is justifiable, although this is a sufficient, but not a necessary, policy intervention for welfare maximization.

The purpose of the paper is to show the importance of interdisciplinarity in the creation of technical innovations and the possibilities of complex educational projects to prepare students to meet future requirements. The major requirements for advanced high technology systems design are also presented. A conceptual proposal for transport system adding to the known ones in high-technology greenhouses is given and the connections between the subsystems are shown too. The interdisciplinary approach to industrial decision implementation in agriculture is proved.

Creative city policies have been critically assessed at length. Nevertheless, the bottom-up initiatives that go beyond and challenge the meaning and uses of creativity that underpin creative city policies, have received less attention. Thus, the aim of this paper is to study the nature of local Socially Innovative Initiatives (Moulaert; MacCallum; Mehmood & Hamdouch, 2013) developed in the socio-cultural field and their capacity to counterbalance the tendency towards a market rationality in urban cultural affairs. We examine this problem through a significant case study: the community-managed socio-cultural centre Can Batllo opened in 2011 in an old industrial neighbourhood of Barcelona. By analysing this case we propose to explore how and to what extent Socially Innovative Initiatives offer alternatives to creative city policies focusing on the production of socio-cultural services and innovation in governance and decision-making processes. We have collected data using qualitative methods that include observation, in-depth interviews and the study of documentary sources.

In this paper a night charging method that optimizes the recharging process of electric vehicles (EVs) depending on hourly energy price in a peer to peer (P2P) energy trading system is presented. This algorithm determines how much energy should be recharged in the battery of each EV and the corresponding time slot to do it, avoiding the discontinuities in the charging process and considering the users’ personal mobility constraints.

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2016.06.049 0377-2217/ Self-Sufficiency (SS) is the ability to maintain capability without external support or aid. Operations in austere environments with limited functional infrastructure and logistical support, which are common in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief as well as military operations, must be self-sufficient. In this paper, we explore the challenges of SS in the United States Marine Corps (USMC). Marines engage in a wide variety of expeditionary operations, and must function without logistical support for long stretches of time. They face competing constraints, including the load that a squad can carry, mission requirements, resources required for sustainment, and the extent to which resources can be shared. We extend the knapsack problem in several ways to model a Marine squad’s decisions regarding what items to carry and how to distribute them. The Office of Naval Research found the models and the results to be significant as baseline analysis for the resource demands of a self-sufficient squad. Though the data and scenarios are USMC-specific, the challenges of SS can be found in any expeditionary undertakings or operations in austere environments. Office of Naval Research (ONR) Office of Naval Research (ONR)

In recent years, robotics has been widely used in the sport sector, but few examples of robotic platforms are currently used in combat sports. This work presents T.P.T., a novel robotic prototype used in the context of Taekwondo, an Olympic martial art sport, able of interacting with children and with adult athletes. In this paper, the conceptual and functional design of the robot, including some preliminary tests aimed at its calibration, is described in details. The robot has been presented at the 2013 Italian Championship of Taekwondo, and it is in a patent pending status (Muscolo and Recchiuto, 2013). A novel robotic prototype for sport training is described.The conceptual and functional design of the novel robot is presented.First experimental tests with the platform have been carried out.The internal odometry of the robot has been evaluated.

From the literature review it was observed that there is no established methodology, neither a common pattern, when selecting a phase change material for a thermal energy storage application. Melting temperature and enthalpy have traditionally been the considered thermal properties for the material selection. Therefore, the authors of this paper propose a new method of investigation on the suitability of a PCM that takes into account not only thermal properties but also health hazard and both cycling and thermal stability. Health hazard is related with the handling of the material, and both cycling and thermal stabilities with durability. This methodology is applied to five different PCM in the 150–200 °C range: salicylic acid, benzanilide, d-mannitol, hydroquinone, and potassium thiocyanate. Results show that for an application in the 150–200 °C range the suitable PCM are benzanilide and d-mannitol. Moreover, hydroquinone is also suitable but only in closed systems. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) under Grant agreement N° PIRSES-GA-2013-610692 (INNOSTORAGE) and from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 657466 (INPATH-TES). The work is partially funded by the Spanish government (ENE2011-22722). The authors would also like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to their research group GREA (2014 SGR 123). Aran Solé would like to thank the Departament d’Universitats, Recerca i Societat de la Informació de la Generalitat de Catalunya for her research fellowship. Laia Miró would like to thank the Spanish Government for her research fellowship (BES-2012-051861).

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Computer Vision and Image Understanding. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Computer Vision and Image Understanding, VOL147 (2016) DOI 10.1016/j.cviu.2016.03.012, Background estimation in video consists in extracting a foreground-free image from a set of training frames. Moving and stationary objects may affect the background visibility, thus invalidating the assumption of many related literature where background is the temporal dominant data. In this paper, we present a temporal-spatial block-level approach for background estimation in video to cope with moving and stationary objects. First, a Temporal Analysis module obtains a compact representation of the training data by motion filtering and dimensionality reduction. Then, a threshold-free hierarchical clustering determines a set of candidates to represent the background for each spatial location (block). Second, a Spatial Analysis module iteratively reconstructs the background using these candidates. For each spatial location, multiple reconstruction hypotheses (paths) are explored to obtain its neighboring locations by enforcing inter-block similarities and intra-block homogeneity constraints in terms of color discontinuity, color dissimilarity and variability. The experimental results show that the proposed approach outperforms the related state-of-the-art over challenging video sequences in presence of moving and stationary objects., This work was partially supported by the Spanish Government (HAVideo, TEC2014-53176-R) and by the TEC department (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid).

Understanding the attitude to risk implicit within a risk measure sheds some light on the way in which decision makers perceive losses. In this paper, a two-stage strategy is developed to characterize the underlying risk attitude involved in a risk evaluation, when executed by the family of distortion risk measures. First, we show that aggregation indicators defined for discrete Choquet integrals provide informa- tion about the implicit global risk attitude of the agent. Second, an analysis of the distortion function offers a local description of the agent's stance on risk in relation to the occurrence of accumulated losses. Here, the concepts of absolute risk attitude and local risk attitude arise naturally. An example is provided to illustrate the usefulness of this strategy for characterizing risk attitudes in an insurance company.

In the area of data mining, the discovery of valuable changes and connections (e.g., causality) from multiple data sets has been recognized as an important issue. This issue essentially differs from finding statistical associations in a single data set because it is complicated by the different data behaviors and relationships across multiple data sets. Using rough set theory, this paper proposes a change and connection mining algorithm for discovering a time delay between the quantitative changes in the data of two temporal information systems and for generating the association rules of changes from their connected decision table. We establish evaluation criteria for the connectedness of two temporal information systems with varying time delays by calculating weight-based accuracy and coverage of the association rules of changes, adjusted by a fuzzy membership function.

According to the IPCC, societies can respond to climate changes by adapting to its impacts and by mitigation, that is, by reducing GHG emissions. No single technology can provide all of the mitigation potential in any sector, but many technologies have been acknowledged in being able to contribute to such potential. Among the technologies that can contribute in such potential, Thermal Energy Storage (TES) is not included explicitly, but implicitly as part of technologies such as energy supply, buildings, and industry. To enable a more detailed assessment of the CO2 mitigation potential of TES across many sectors, the group Annex 25 "Surplus heat management using advanced TES for CO2 mitigation" of the Energy Conservation through Energy Storage Implementing Agreement (ECES IA) of the International Energy Agency (AEI) present in this article the CO2 mitigation potential of different case studies with integrated TES. This potential is shown using operational and embodied CO2 parameters. Results are difficult to compare since TES is always designed in relation to its application, and each technology impacts the energy system as a whole to different extents. The applications analyzed for operational CO2 are refrigeration, solar power plants, mobile heat storage in industrial waste heat recovery, passive systems in buildings, ATES for a supermarket, greenhouse applications, and dishwasher with zeolite in Germany. The paper shows that the reason for mitigation is different in each application, from energy savings to larger solar share or lowering energy consumption from appliances. The mitigation potential dues to integrated TES is quantified in kg/MWh energy produced or heat delivered. Embodied CO2 in two TES case studies is presented, buildings and solar power plants. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. PIRSES-GA-2013-610692 Seventh Framework Programme 0327383B BES-2012-051861, ENE2011-22722, ENE2011-28269-C03-02 The work was partially funded by the Spanish government (project ENE2011-22722 and ENE2011-28269-C03-02). The authors would also like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to their research group GREA (2014 SGR 123) and DIOPMA (2014 SGR 1543). Laia Miró would like to thank the Spanish Government for her research fellowship (BES-2012-051861). The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° PIRSES-GA-2013-610692 (INNOSTORAGE). The work of ZAE Bayern in the development of the mobile sorption heat storage was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology under the project code 0327383B. ZAE Bayern thanks the Bosch-Siemens-Hausgeräte GmbH for the fruitful collaboration in the development of a sorption storage for dishwashers.

To face the challenges posed by climate change, environmental R&D and innovation are critical factors if we hope to cut emissions; yet, investment in environmental R&D remains below the social optimum. The aim of this paper is to analyse the determinants of investment in environmental innovation and to detect the differences, if any, with the determinants of investment in general innovation. In addition, this paper examines the relationship between environmental innovation R&D expenditure and a range of policy instruments, including environmental regulation and other policy measures including R&D subsidies and environmental taxes. The empirical analysis is carried out for 22 manufacturing sectors in Spain for the period 2008-2013. To overcome problems of data availability, we construct a comprehensive database from different surveys. The main implications from our results are (1). Managerial strategy appears as a relevant driver of environmental R&D investments. (2) The establishment of a policy mix between environmental, energy and technological regulatory measures is recommended. (3) The promotion of self-regulation through actions that encourage companies to follow a policy that affects their energy efficiency and is environmentally friendly.

European energy markets have undergone a major transformation as they have advanced towards market liberalisation and it is vital that the details of these developments be carefully examined. The success of liberalisation is based on smart regulation, which has been capable of providing solutions to unforeseen events in the process. Our paper seeks to contribute to existing understanding of the unexpected and collateral effects of the liberalisation process in the power system by examining a natural experiment that occurred in Spain in 2009. In that year, the electricity supply by distribution system operators disappeared. This change in retail market competition, as we demonstrate in this paper, has had an unexpected effect in terms of the system's balancing requirements. We undertake a rigorous assessment of the economic consequences of this policy change for the whole system, in terms of its impact on final electricity prices.

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2012.01.065 Effective application of systems engineering in rapid response environments has been difficult, particularly those where large, complex brownfield systems or systems of systems exist and are constantly being updated with both short and long term software enhancements. This paper proposes a general case for solving this problem by combining a services approach to systems engineering with a kanban-based scheduling system. It provides the basis for validating the approach with agent-based simulations.

Hot Wire Chemical Vapor Deposition (HW-CVD) is one of the most promising techniques for depositing the intrinsic microcrystalline silicon layer for the production of micro-morph solar cells. However, the silicide formation at the colder ends of the tungsten wire drastically reduces the lifetime of the catalyzer, thus limiting its industrial exploitation. A simple but interesting strategy to decrease the silicide formation is to hide the electrical contacts of the catalyzer in a long narrow cavity which reduces the probability of the silane molecules to reach the colder ends of the wire. In this paper, the working mechanism of the cavity is elucidated. Measurements of the thickness profile of the silicon deposited in the internal walls of the cavity have been compared with those predicted using a simple diffusion model based on the assumption of Knudsen flow. A lifetime study of the protected and unprotected wires has been carried out. The different mechanisms which determine the deterioration of the catalyzer have been identified and discussed.

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Interacting with Computers. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Interacting with Computers, Interacting with Computers 17, 4 (2007) DOI: 10.1016/j.intcom.2007.01.006, Generally speaking, emerging web-based technologies are mostly intended for professional developers. They pay poor attention to users who have no programming abilities but need to customize software applications. At some point, such needs force end-users to act as designers in various aspects of software authoring and development. Every day, more new computing-related professionals attempt to create and modify existing applications in order to customize web-based artifacts that will help them carry out their daily tasks. In general they are domain experts rather than skilled software designers, and new authoring mechanisms are needed in order that they can accomplish their tasks properly. The work we present is an effort to supply end-users with easy mechanisms for authoring web-based applications. To complement this effort, we present a user study showing that it is possible to carry out a trade-off between expressiveness and ease of use in order to provide end-users with authoring facilities., The work reported in this paper is being partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (MCyT), projects TIN2005-06885 and TSI2005-08225-C07-06.

The possible use of polyethylene naphthalate as substrate for low-temperature deposited solar cells has been studied in this paper. The transparency of this polymer makes it a candidate to be used in both substrate and superstrate configurations. ZnO:Al has been deposited at room temperature on top of PEN. The resulting structure PEN/ZnO:Al presented good optical and electrical properties. PEN has been successfully textured (nanometer and micrometer random roughness) using hot-embossing lithography. Reflector structures have been built depositing Ag and ZnO:Al on top of the stamped polymer. The deposition of these layers did not affect the final roughness of the whole. The reflector structure has been morphologically and optically analysed to verify its suitability to be used in solar cells.

The clinical diagnosis of many dermatological conditions suffers from inadequacies and a histopathological analysis of skin biopsies remains the standard for confirmation of a diagnosis. We suggest that near-infrared (IR) spectroscopy may be a suitable non-invasive, objective tool for characterizing skin conditions. This paper will highlight our in vivo near-IR spectroscopic characterization of skin tumors presented for differential diagnosis of skin cancer. In vivo visible and near-IR spectra (400–2500 nm) were collected from actinic keratoses, basal cell carcinomata, benign nevi, dysplastic nevi, actinic lentigines and seborrheic keratoses by placing a fiber optic probe on the skin. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) was used to determine whether spectra could be classified according to lesion type and resulted in accuracies of 70–98% in differentiating benign from pre-malignant or malignant lesions. Near-IR spectroscopy is a promising non-invasive technique for the screening of skin lesions., Shedding New Light on Disease: Optical Diagnostics for the New Millennium, June 25-30, 2000, Winnipeg, Canada

In this paper we present a method for reconstructing Fresnel holograms using two liquid crystal devices, one to display the amplitude information and the other to display the phase. The theoretical approach has been adapted to real configurations of VGA panels removed from a commercial video projector. The optical setup is based on the projection of the phase plane into the amplitude plane by means of an imaging lens. Simulated and experimental results are presented.

This paper examines the extent to which innovative Spanish firms pursue improvements in energy efficiency (EE) within their innovation objectives. The increase in energy consumption and its impact on greenhouse gas emissions justifies the greater attention being paid to energy efficiency and especially to industrial EE. The ability of manufacturing companies to innovate and improve their EE has a substantial influence on reaching the objectives regarding climate change mitigation. Despite the effort to design more efficient energy policies, the EE determinants in manufacturing firms have been little studied in the empirical literature. From an exhaustive sample of Spanish manufacturing firms and using a probit model, we examine the energy efficiency determinants to those firms that have innovated. To carry out the econometric analysis, we use a panel data coming from CIS (Community Innovation Survey) for the period 2008-2011 that includes 4,458 manufacturing firms. Among firm characteristics, the empirical results underline the importance of size in facilitating the adoption of technology that improves energy efficiency; while among the factors related to companies’ behavior, the favorable influence of organizational innovations and innovations related with the reduction of environmental impacts stand out as the main factors in carrying out innovations with the objective of increasing energy efficiency.

Financial support from the FundaciÛn RamÛn Areces; MOVE; FEDER; the Spanish Ministry of Education through grants ECO2008-02752, ECO2009-09847, ECO2009-06953, and ECO2011-23959; the Generalitat of Catalonia through the grants SGR2009-00350 and SGR2009-1051; and Xunta de Galicia through grant 10PXIB300177PR is also gratefully acknowledged In this paper, we characterize the relationship between the initial distribution of human capital and physical inheritances among individuals and the long-run distribution of these two variables. In a model with indivisible investment in education, we analyze how the initial distribution of income determines the posterior intergenerational mobility in human capital and the evolution of intragenerational income inequality. This analysis enables us in turn to characterize the effects of fiscal policy on future income distribution and mobility when the composition of intergenerational transfers is endogenous. To this end, we consider the following government interventions: a pay-as-you-go social security system, a tax on inheritance, a tax on capital income, a tax on labor income, and a subsidy on education investment

Background In 2012 the Spanish government passed Royal Decree-Law 16/2012 (RDL) aimed at containing public expenditure in response to the economic crisis. This RDL redefined just who would be entitled to public health care. As a result, a large proportion of undocumented immigrants in Spain were excluded from basic publicly financed health care with access only being granted under particular circumstances (emergency care, maternal care, children under 18, asylum seekers and victims of human trafficking). Aim The aims of this paper are to identify the specific traits of this policy, review its impact on health and health care access, and to evaluate its economic impact. Results Most political parties and health professional groups opposed the RDL, and a large number of Spanish regions either declined to apply it or opted to apply it partially. To date, the RDL has had a considerable impact on the access of undocumented immigrants to public health care, with evidence suggesting that approximately 870,000 people have been excluded. A slight increase in infectious diseases has been reported, albeit not as high as originally predicted, and recent evidence points to an increase in mortality among this population subgroup. Conclusions Regional legislation favouring the coverage of undocumented immigrants might have acted as a counterweight and thus contained the negative health effects in this population subgroup. But the Constitutional Court invalidated all regional arrangements obliging regions to comply with the RDL.

The European Space Agency’s Gaia mission will create the largest and most precise three dimensional chart of our galaxy (the Milky Way), by providing unprecedented position, parallax, proper motion, and radial velocity measurements for about one billion stars. The resulting catalog will be made available to the scientific community and will be analyzed in many different ways, including the production of a variety of statistics. The latter will often entail the generation of multidimensional histograms and hypercubes as part of the precomputed statistics for each data release, or for scientific analysis involving either the final data products or the raw data coming from the satellite instruments. In this paper we present and analyze a generic framework that allows the hypercube generation to be easily done within a MapReduce infrastructure, providing all the advantages of the new Big Data analysis paradigm but without dealing with any specific interface to the lower level distributed system implementation (Hadoop). Furthermore, we show how executing the framework for different data storage model configurations (i.e. row or column oriented) and compression techniques can considerably improve the response time of this type of workload for the currently available simulated data of the mission. In addition, we put forward the advantages and shortcomings of the deployment of the framework on a public cloud provider, benchmark against other popular solutions available (that are not always the best for such ad-hoc applications), and describe some user experiences with the framework, which was employed for a number of dedicated astronomical data analysis techniques workshops.

Objective The aim of this paper is to explore the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity in different immigrant groups in Spain. In keeping with prior studies carried out in Europe, it is expected that the immigrant population will have elevated levels of psychopathology, with some variation across immigrant groups. Method Design: Multicenter, observational, cross-sectional study. Setting: Primary care settings of two Spanish regions. Sample: N= 1.503 immigrants paired with the same number of Spanish controls, adjusted by gender and age. Variables: Demographic variables, MINI International Neuropsychiatric Interview and Standardized Polyvalent Psychiatric Interview, somatic symptoms section. Student's t tests, ORs and logistic regressions were used to analyze the data. Results No differences in psychiatric morbidity were found (native born 30.9%, population vs. immigrants 29.6%, OR=.942, CI=.806–1.100) when comparing immigrants to native born Spaniards. Relative to Spaniards (30.9%), Latin American immigrants had significantly higher levels of psychopathology (36.8%), Sub-Saharan Africans (24.4%) and Asians (16%) had significantly lower levels, and Eastern Europeans (31.4%) and North Africans (26.8%) showed no significant difference. Conclusions The hypotheses were only partially supported. Although overall immigrants did not differ from the native born population, when analyzed by geographic origin, only Latin Americans had higher levels of psychopathology. It is concluded that multiple factors need to be taken into consideration when studying the mental health of immigrants given that different immigrant groups have different levels of psychopathology.

The productivity of the agri-food sector experiences continuous and growing challenges that make the use of innovative technologies to maintain and even improve their competitiveness a priority. In this context, this paper presents the foundations and validation of a flexible and portable system capable of obtaining 3D measurements and classifying objects based on color and depth images taken from multiple Kinect v1 sensors. The developed system is applied to the selection and classification of fruits, a common activity in the agri-food industry. Being able to obtain complete and accurate information of the environment, as it integrates the depth information obtained from multiple sensors, this system is capable of self-location and self-calibration of the sensors to then start detecting, classifying and measuring fruits in real time. Unlike other systems that use specific set-up or need a previous calibration, it does not require a predetermined positioning of the sensors, so that it can be adapted to different scenarios. The characterization process considers: classification of fruits, estimation of its volume and the number of assets per each kind of fruit. A requirement for the system is that each sensor must partially share its field of view with at least another sensor. The sensors localize themselves by estimating the rotation and translation matrices that allow to transform the coordinate system of one sensor to the other. To achieve this, Iterative Closest Point (ICP) algorithm is used and subsequently validated with a 6 degree of freedom KUKA robotic arm. Also, a method is implemented to estimate the movement of objects based on the Kalman Filter. A relevant contribution of this work is the detailed analysis and propagation of the errors that affect both the proposed methods and hardware. To determine the performance of the proposed system the passage of different types of fruits on a conveyor belt is emulated by a mobile robot carrying a surface where the fruits were placed. Both the perimeter and volume are measured and classified according to the type of fruit. The system was able to distinguish and classify the 95% of fruits and to estimate their volume with a 85% of accuracy in worst cases (fruits whose shape is not symmetrical) and 94% of accuracy in best cases (fruits whose shape is more symmetrical), showing that the proposed approach can become a useful tool in the agri-food industry. This project has been supported by the National Commission for Science and Technology Research of Chile (Conicyt) under FONDECYT grant 1140575 and the Advanced Center of Electrical and Electronic Engineering - AC3E (CONICYT/FB0008).