Search

The paper presents a detailed LES analysis of turbulent round jets dominated by the mechanism of Kelvin-Helmholtz (K-H) instability and the so-called self-sustained regime, which is characterised by large velocity fluctuations, reminiscent of the behaviour of excited jets. It is shown that the occurrence of this regime is largely conditioned by the type and parameters of the inlet jet velocity profile, i.e., the shear layer momentum thickness 𝜃, turbulence intensity Ti. A high order numerical code based on the combined pseudo-spectral / compact difference methods is used in the simulations. Analysis is performed for the Reynolds number Re = 1 × 104 with 𝜃 characterised by R/𝜃 = 16, 20, 24, 28 and 32 (with R - jet radius) and for Ti = 10−2, 10−3, 10−4. Two inlet velocity profiles are used in the simulations: hyperbolic tangent and Blasius. Comparisons focus on the axial velocity profiles and the spectra of the velocity signals. It is shown that in the self-sustained regime the results obtained with the Blasius profile are significantly closer to the experimental data. Sensitivity tests of the self-sustained regime on the sub-grid modelling are performed based on four well known models: classical and dynamic Smagorinsky, the filtered structure function model of Ducros et al. (JFM, 1996) and the relatively new model proposed by Vreman (PoF, 2004). It is shown that in the case of the classical Smagorinsky model an excess of sub-grid dissipation prevents the appearance of self-sustained velocity oscillations and in effect gives results significantly different from the remaining models. On the other hand, when the jets are dominated by K-H instability all the models lead to very similar solutions.

Exploring the connections between successive phases and overlapping layers from different ages in an ancient building is paramount for its understanding and study. Archaeologists and cultural heritage experts are always eager to unveil the hidden relations of an archaeological building to reconstruct its history and for its interpretation. This paper presents CRMba, a CIDOC CRM extension developed to facilitate the discovery and the interpretation of archaeological resources through the definition of new concepts required to describe the complexity of historic buildings. The CRMba contributes to solving the datasets interoperability issue by exploiting the use of the CIDOC CRM to overcome data fragmentation, to investigate the semantics of building components, of functional spaces and of the construction phases of historic buildings and complexes, making explicit their physical and topological relations through time and space. The approach used for the development of the CRMba makes the model valid for the documentation of different kinds of buildings, across periods, styles and conservation state.

In this paper we will give a short and elementary proof that critical relations unfold transversally in the space of rational maps., Comment: Published version (open access)

The study of low regularity (in-)extendibility of Lorentzian manifolds is motivated by the question whether a given solution to the Einstein equations can be extended (or is maximal) as a weak solution. In this paper we show that a timelike complete and globally hyperbolic Lorentzian manifold is C0- inextendible. For the proof we make use of the result, recently established by S ̈amann [17], that even for continuous Lorentzian manifolds that are globally hyperbolic, there exists a length-maximizing causal curve between any two causally related points.

This paper presents combinations of inclusive and differential measurements of the charge asymmetry (AC) in top quark pair (t[¯ over t]) events with a lepton+jets signature by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations, using data from LHC proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV. The data correspond to integrated luminosities of about 5 and 20 fb[superscript −1] for each experiment, respectively. The resulting combined LHC measurements of the inclusive charge asymmetry are A[subscript C][superscript CHC7] = 0.005 ± 0.007 (stat) ± 0.006(syst) at 7 TeV and A[subscript C][superscript CHC8] = 0.0055 ± 0.0023 (stat) ± 0.0025 (syst) at 8 TeV. These values, as well as the combination of AC measurements as a function of the invariant mass of the t[¯ over t] system at 8 TeV, are consistent with the respective standard model predictions. Keywords: Hadron-Hadron scattering (experiments), Top physics, National Science Foundation (U.S.), United States. Department of Energy

In this paper we first consider the problem of extending fuzzy (weak and strict) preference relations, represented by fuzzy preorders on a set to a fuzzy preferences on subsets, and we characterise different possibilities. Based on their properties, we then semantically define and axiomatize several two-tiered graded modal logics to reason about the corresponding different notions of fuzzy preferences., Esteva and Godo acknowledges partial support by the Spanish FEDER/MINECO project TIN2015-71799-C2-1-P. Vidal acknowledges partial support by the joint project of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) I1897-N25 and the Czech Science Foundation (GACR) 15-34650L, and by the institutional grant RVO:67985807.

The home care crew scheduling (HCCS) problem is a planning task whose goal is to allocate a set of professional caregivers in the most efficient way to perform a number of assistencial and health care visits to the customers private homes. This is part of an important trend in advanced health care systems, to promote "independent living" specially in situations of dependency on long-term care. This not only ensures a higher quality of life but also a lower cost for society. Real instances of the HCCS problem are large and highly constrained due to both caregivers' contract limitations and customers' needs. This paper presents an advanced parallel model that solves HCCS problems using a grid-based asynchronous evolutionary algorithm (EA). Our approach has been tested using a grid computing facility of up to 300 nodes. The algorithm is a modified (1 + lambda) EA, parallelized using a master/worker model that minimizes communication requirements and processor bottlenecks by distributing both the execution of the EA operators and the evaluation of solutions. We have used three large real-world instances provided by a private company to perform experimentation with different configurations of the EA and number of workers. Results show that our algorithm achieves solutions that clearly outperform the solution provided by the company and the grid-based algorithm is able to handle real world HCCS problems The work of Francisco Luna and Juan F. Valenzuela is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness under contract TIN2016-75097-P. The work of Alejandro Cervantes and Pedro Isasi is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under contract TIN2011-28336.

The fossil record of ticks has been classically used to discern the probable vicariance events of these arthropods, and to date the split moments of the different lineages. Although new techniques based on molecular clock methods are already available, tick fossil record still stands as a valuable source of information if correctly interpreted. Here we report about a male specimen of Ornithodoros (Alectorobius) sp. found in Dominican amber of about 25 millions years, illustrating its main morphological features. We also discuss the findings in a recent paper, which may contain unreliable interpretations on some fossil ticks. We support previous data on the presence of Argasidae in Miocene Dominican amber, and provide comments on the presence of ticks in Burmese amber. We further elaborate on the spread of ticks in the light of the record and description of a new family found in Cretaceous amber.

Secure software development represents a fundamental part of ‘security by design’ which in turn is a prerequisite for ‘privacy by design’ in the terminology of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). To follow and adhere to the principles of privacy by design and security by design during software development is a legal requirement throughout Europe with the introduction of GDPR in 2018. Secure software development is typically based on specific methods that software-design teams apply to discover and solve security threats and thereby to improve the security of systems in general. This paper describes Threat Poker as a team-based method to be exercised during agile software development for assessing both security risk and privacy risk, and for evaluating the effort needed to remove corresponding vulnerabilities in the developed software.

The elderly in the future will use smart house technology, sensors, and robots to stay at home longer. Privacy at home for these elderly is important. In this exploratory paper, we examine different understandings of privacy and use Palen and Dourish's framework to look at the negotiation of privacy along boundaries between a human at home, the robot, and its sensors. We select three dilemmas: turning sensors on and off, the robot seeing through walls, and machine learning. We discuss these dilemmas and also discuss ways the robot can help make the elderly more aware of privacy issues and to build trust.

The objective of this paper is to unveil a novel damping mechanism exhibited by 3D woven lattice materials (3DW), with emphasis on response to high-frequency excitations. Conventional bulk damping materials, such as rubber, exhibit relatively low stiffness, while stiff metals and ceramics typically have negligible damping. Here we demonstrate that high damping and structural stiffness can be simultaneously achieved in 3D woven lattice materials by brazing only select lattice joints, resulting in a load-bearing lattice frame intertwined with free, ‘floating’ lattice members to generate damping. The produced material samples are comparable to polymers in terms of damping coefficient, but are porous and have much higher maximum use temperature. We shed light on a novel damping mechanism enabled by an interplay between the forcing frequency imposed onto a load-bearing lattice frame and the motion of the embedded, free-moving lattice members. This novel class of damping metamaterials has potential use in a broad range of weight sensitive applications that require vibration attenuation at high frequencies.

In this paper, we consider a confined physical scenario to prove the global existence of smooth solutions with bounded density and finite energy for the inviscid incompressible porous media (IPM) equation. The result is proved using the stability of stratified solutions, combined with an additional structure of our initial perturbation, which allows us to get rid of the boundary terms in the energy estimates., The authors are supported by Spanish National Research Project MTM2014-59488-P and ICMAT Severo Ochoa Projects SEV-2011-0087 and SEV-2015-556, the grant ERC Grant 7882250-NONFLU. AC was partially supported by the ERC Grant 307179-GFTIPFD and DL was supported by La Caixa-Severo Ochoa grant.

Weighted Sobolev spaces play a main role in the study of Sobolev orthogonal polynomials. The aim of this paper is to prove several important properties of weighted Sobolev spaces: separability, reflexivity, uniform convexity, duality and Markov-type inequalities. Francisco Marcellán: Supported in part by two Grants from Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MTM2012-36732-C03-01 and MTM2015-65888-C4-2-P), Spain. Yamilet Quintana: Supported in part by a Grant from Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MTM2012-36732-C03-01), Spain. José M. Rodríguez: Supported in part by three Grants from Ministerio de Economía y Competititvidad, Agencia Estatal de Investigacin (AEI) and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) (MTM2013-46374-P, MTM2016-78227-C2-1-P and MTM2015-69323-REDT), Spain, and a Grant from CONACYT (FOMIX-CONACyT-UAGro 249818), México.

Semi-natural open habitats have drastically changed in the last few decades due to agricultural intensification and rural depopulation. Steppe-birds, and especially those adapted to primary stages of vegetation succession, are threatened by an increase in scrub cover, and management actions are being applied to reverse scrub encroachment and restore habitat suitability in semi-natural open habitats. In this paper we evaluated for the first time, the long-term effects of a wildfire on habitat structure, vegetation productivity, and the associated response of an endangered scrub-steppe specialist bird, the Dupont’s Lark Chersophilus duponti. Wildfire occurred in a Mediterranean steppe of central Spain dominated by permanent community of dwarf cushions scrubs. Bird abundance was evaluated by line transects in the burnt and unburnt areas 3 years prior to the fire and 4 and 7 years after the fire. We quantified changes in habitat structure at fine scale level through vegetation sampling points and in vegetation productivity by estimating the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Fire had strong effects for at least up to 4 years after the fire, when lower NDVI values, less scrub cover and fewer, but not significant, number of males were detected in the burnt area with respect to the pre-fire conditions. Seven years after fire most vegetation variables measured did not differ between areas, number of males detected within the burnt area was recovered and NDVI values in burnt area were slightly recovered but were significantly lower than in control area. Slow regeneration of the scrub cover after fire explained the unsuccessful occupation of the burnt area by the Dupont’s Lark up to several years after fire. The more dispersed and shorter habitat created by fire 7 years after the fire seems to be more suitable for the species than that in control areas. The large number of males around the burnt area may have played a role in the recolonization process. In sum, vegetation recovery and the presence of a low scrub-steppe specialist, as the Dupont’s lark, suggests that fire management could be integrated into conservation plans to effectively manage scrub encroachment processes in Mediterranean scrub-steppes.

The UNFCCC Paris Agreement, entered into force on 4 November 2016, represents a step forward in involving all countries in mitigation actions, even though it is based on a voluntary approach and lacks the active participation of some major polluting countries. The underinvestment in mitigation actions depends on market and policy failures and the absence of price signals internalizing the economic losses due to climatic damage. This contributes to underestimating potential benefits from global action. In this paper we discuss how crucial is the assessment of the vulnerability of a country to climate change in defining the threat and action strategies. A dynamic climate-economy CGE model is developed that includes a monetary evaluation of regional damages associated with climate change. By considering alternative damage profiles, results show that internalizing climatic costs might change the bargaining position of countries in climate negotiations. Consequently, damage costs should be given greater importance when defining the implementation of a global climate agreement. © 2018, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Visual topological localization is a process typically required by varied mobile autonomous robots, but it is a complex task if long operating periods are considered. This is because of the appearance variations suffered in a place: dynamic elements, illumination or weather. Due to these problems, long-term visual place recognition across seasons has become a challenge for the robotics community. For this reason, we propose an innovative method for a robust and efficient life-long localization using cameras. In this paper, we describe our approach (ABLE), which includes three different versions depending on the type of images: monocular, stereo and panoramic. This distinction makes our proposal more adaptable and effective, because it allows to exploit the extra information that can be provided by each type of camera. Besides, we contribute a novel methodology for identifying places, which is based on a fast matching of global binary descriptors extracted from sequences of images. The presented results demonstrate the benefits of using ABLE, which is compared to the most representative state-of-the-art algorithms in long-term conditions., Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Comunidad de Madrid

Many think that properties are powers. However, whilst some claim that properties are pure powers, others claim that properties are powerful qualities. In this paper, I argue that the canonical formulation of the powerful qualities view (advocated by John Heil, C. B. Martin and others) is no different from the pure powers view. Contrary to appearances, the two positions accept the same view of properties. Thus, the debate between them rests on an illusion. I draw out some consequences of this surprising result for issues over property individuation. Along the way, I argue that all existing objections to the powerful qualities view fail.

Although business model innovation (BMI) is essential to remaining competitive, many firms fail at it. A promising approach is building on reoccurring successful solutions – business model patterns (BMP) – as a blueprint for BMI. However, existing patterns face constraints subject to a high diversity and overlaps among patterns. In addition, literature do not consider relations among BMPs, which limits their potential for BMI. This paper develops a hierarchical taxonomy of BMPs including generalizations and specializations based on inheritance. We conduct a literature review to identify patterns and a cluster analysis to create an inductive structure, followed by a qualitative analysis. The resulting hierarchical taxonomy includes 194 elements. It is the first hierarchical taxonomy of BMPs. The hierarchy addresses the diversity of patterns and overlaps with inheritance. It aids research to structure and understand BMPs. For practice, the taxonomy allows for the application of patterns and supports BMI.

In new product development, the rapid proposal of innovative solutions represents an important phase. This in turn relies on creative ideas, their evaluation, refinement and embodiment of worthwhile directions. This study aims to describe a CBDT based process model for product conceptual design that concentrates on rapidly generating innovations with the support of decision-making rationale. Case-based decision theory (CBDT), derived from case-based reasoning, is applied in this paper as a core method to aid design engineers to make an informed decision quickly, thus accelerating the design process. In the process of utilizing CBDT to support a decision, as for the similarity function, the proper value assignment methods to the selected attribute set for calculation are discussed. In order to assist with innovative solution, aspects of the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) are integrated into the case-based reasoning process. Accordingly, a CBDT-TRIZ model is developed. Quality-function deployment is used to translate customer wants into relevant engineering design requirements and thus formulating the design specification. Image-Scale is used to offer an orthogonal coordinates system to aid evaluation. Finally, a case study is used to demonstrate the validity of the proposed process model based on the design of a cordless hand-tool for garden and lawn applications.

The UK referendum on European Union membership exposed profound social and political divisions, rooted in the establishment of a neoliberal consensus that eclipsed the left and arguments against inequality, and intensified over several years of post-crisis austerity’s assault on the working poor, the disadvantaged and the immigrants. The narrow vote to leave confounded expectations on both sides of the referendum campaign, provoking a political crisis that has empowered a far right unlikely to address grievances, incited intense hostility between triumphant ‘leavers’ and dismayed ‘remainers’, and produced profound uncertainty about the future. This paper argues that while ‘Brexit’ has been characterized as a ‘people’s revolt’ against capitalist globalization, the decision to leave the EU has been aligned by a discourse of nativist nationalism and attempts to re-entrench an authoritarian Conservative hegemony; these attempts are, however, floundering which poses both opportunities and challenges for a resurgent parliamentary left and for radical grassroots politics going forward.

The Trial Comparing Cardiovascular Safety of Insulin Degludec vs Insulin Glargine in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes at High Risk of Cardiovascular Events (DEVOTE) was a double-blind, randomised, event-driven, treat-to-target prospective trial comparing the cardiovascular safety of insulin degludec with that of insulin glargine U100 (100 units/ml) in patients with type 2 diabetes at high risk of cardiovascular events. This paper reports a secondary analysis investigating associations of day-to-day fasting glycaemic variability (pre-breakfast self-measured blood glucose [SMBG]) with severe hypoglycaemia and cardiovascular outcomes. In DEVOTE, patients with type 2 diabetes were randomised to receive insulin degludec or insulin glargine U100 once daily. The primary outcome was the first occurrence of an adjudicated major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE). Adjudicated severe hypoglycaemia was the pre-specified secondary outcome. In this article, day-to-day fasting glycaemic variability was based on the standard deviation of the pre-breakfast SMBG measurements. The variability measure was calculated as follows. Each month, only the three pre-breakfast SMBG measurements recorded before contact with the site were used to determine a day-to-day fasting glycaemic variability measure for each patient. For each patient, the variance of the three log-transformed pre-breakfast SMBG measurements each month was determined. The standard deviation was determined as the square root of the mean of these monthly variances and was defined as day-to-day fasting glycaemic variability. The associations between day-to-day fasting glycaemic variability and severe hypoglycaemia, MACE and all-cause mortality were analysed for the pooled trial population with Cox proportional hazards models. Several sensitivity analyses were conducted, including adjustments for baseline characteristics and most recent HbA1c. Day-to-day fasting glycaemic variability was significantly associated with severe hypoglycaemia (HR 4.11, 95% CI 3.15, 5.35), MACE (HR 1.36, 95% CI 1.12, 1.65) and all-cause mortality (HR 1.58, 95% CI 1.23, 2.03) before adjustments. The increased risks of severe hypoglycaemia, MACE and all-cause mortality translate into 2.7-, 1.2- and 1.4-fold risk, respectively, when a patient’s day-to-day fasting glycaemic variability measure is doubled. The significant relationships of day-to-day fasting glycaemic variability with severe hypoglycaemia and all-cause mortality were maintained after adjustments. However, the significant association with MACE was not maintained following adjustment for baseline characteristics with either baseline HbA1c (HR 1.19, 95% CI 0.96, 1.47) or the most recent HbA1c measurement throughout the trial (HR 1.21, 95% CI 0.98, 1.49). Higher day-to-day fasting glycaemic variability is associated with increased risks of severe hypoglycaemia and all-cause mortality. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01959529

Aims/hypothesis The double-blind Trial Comparing Cardiovascular Safety of Insulin Degludec vs Insulin Glargine in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes at High Risk of Cardiovascular Events (DEVOTE) assessed the cardiovascular safety of insulin degludec. The incidence and rates of adjudicated severe hypoglycaemia, and all-cause mortality were also determined. This paper reports a secondary analysis investigating associations of severe hypoglycaemia with cardiovascular outcomes and mortality. Methods In DEVOTE, patients with type 2 diabetes were randomised to receive either insulin degludec or insulin glargine U100 (100 units/ml) once daily (between dinner and bedtime) in an event-driven, double-blind, treat-to-target cardiovascular outcomes trial. The primary outcome was the first occurrence of an adjudicated major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE; cardiovascular death, non-fatal myocardial infarction or non-fatal stroke). Adjudicated severe hypoglycaemia was the pre-specified secondary outcome. In the present analysis, the associations of severe hypoglycaemia with both MACE and all-cause mortality was evaluated in the pooled trial population using time-to-event analyses, with severe hypoglycaemia as a time-dependent variable and randomised treatment as a fixed factor. An investigation with interaction terms indicated that the effect of severe hypoglycaemia on the risk of MACE and all-cause mortality were the same for both treatment arms, and so the temporal association for severe hypoglycaemia with subsequent MACE and all-cause mortality is reported for the pooled population. Results There was a non-significant difference in the risk of MACE for individuals who had vs those who had not experienced severe hypoglycaemia during the trial (HR 1.38, 95% CI 0.96, 1.96; p = 0.080) and therefore there was no temporal relationship between severe hypoglycaemia and MACE. There was a significantly higher risk of all-cause mortality for patients who had vs those who had not experienced severe hypoglycaemia during the trial (HR 2.51, 95% CI 1.79, 3.50; p

This paper is concerned with the distributions of zeros of solutions to first order delay dynamic equations on time scales. The results are obtained using iterative sequences.

In this paper we describe Jacc, an experimental framework which allows developers to program GPGPUs directly from Java. The goal of Jacc, is to allow developers to benefit from using heterogeneous hardware whilst minimizing the amount of code refactoring required. Jacc utilizes two key abstractions: tasks which encapsulate all the information needed to execute code on a GPGPU; and task graphs which capture both inter-task control-flow and data dependencies. These abstractions enable the Jacc runtime system to automatically choreograph data movement and synchronization between the host and the GPGPU; eliminating the need to explicitly manage disparate memory spaces. We demonstrate the advantages of Jacc, both in terms of programmability and performance, by evaluating it against existing Java frameworks. Experimental results show an average performance speedup of 19x, using NVIDIA Tesla K20m GPU, and a 4x decrease in code complexity when compared with writing multi-threaded Java code across eight evaluated benchmarks.

9 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, supplementary information https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14255.-- All data are presented in the paper as tables in the main manuscript or in the supporting information. Raw data will be provided upon request from the authors, A detailed understanding of the formation of the potent neurotoxic methylmercury is needed to explain the large observed variability in methylmercury levels in aquatic systems. While it is known that organic matter interacts strongly with mercury, the role of organic matter composition in the formation of methylmercury in aquatic systems remains poorly understood. Here we show that phytoplankton-derived organic compounds enhance mercury methylation rates in boreal lake sediments through an overall increase of bacterial activity. Accordingly, in situ mercury methylation defines methylmercury levels in lake sediments strongly influenced by planktonic blooms. In contrast, sediments dominated by terrigenous organic matter inputs have far lower methylation rates but higher concentrations of methylmercury, suggesting that methylmercury was formed in the catchment and imported into lakes. Our findings demonstrate that the origin and molecular composition of organic matter are critical parameters to understand and predict methylmercury formation and accumulation in boreal lake sediments, This research was funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR) grants to A.G.B. (project 2011–7192) and S.B. (grant 2012–3892 and 2013–6978), the Kempe Foundation (grants SMK-2745 to E.B. and SMK-2840 to Sy.B.) and the Swedish Research Council Formas (grant 2012–986 to S.B.). For J.T., the study has been conducted within a postdoctoral fellow financed by Umeå University and directed by Professor R Bindler and Professor J.-F. Boily

This paper presents a significant effect of manganese ferrite nanoparticles (MnFe2O4 NPs) on the increase of the surface photoconductivity of semiconductors. Herein, the optical characterization of photo-excited carriers of silicon coated with MnFe2O4 NPs was studied by using THz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDs). We observed that silicon coated with MnFe2O4 NPs provided a significantly enhanced attenuation of THz radiation in comparison with bare silicon substrates under laser irradiation. The experimental results were assessed in the context of a surface band structure model of semiconductors. In addition, photoconductive antennas coated with MnFe2O4 NPs significantly improved the efficiency of THz radiation generation and signal to noise ratio of the THz signal. This work demonstrates that coating with MnFe2O4 NPs could improve the overall performance of THz systems, and MnFe2O4 NPs could be further used for the implementation of novel optical devices Q.Z. acknowledges a fellowship from the Chinese Scholarship Council. Part of the project was funded by the European Commission (grant Future NanoNeeds to WJP). Financial support from MINECO (MAT2015–74381-JIN to B.P., RYC-2014–16962 to P.dP.), the Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria (Centro singular de investigación de Galicia accreditation 2016–2019, ED431G/09), and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) is gratefully acknowledged SI

Dark-field imaging is a scattering-based X-ray imaging method that can be performed with laboratory X-ray tubes. The possibility to obtain information about unresolvable structures has already seen a lot of interest for both medical and material science applications. Unlike conventional X-ray attenuation, orientation dependent changes of the dark-field signal can be used to reveal microscopic structural orientation. To date, reconstruction of the three-dimensional dark-field signal requires dedicated, highly complex algorithms and specialized acquisition hardware. This severely hinders the possible application of orientation-dependent dark-field tomography. In this paper, we show that it is possible to perform this kind of dark-field tomography with common Talbot-Lau interferometer setups by reducing the reconstruction to several smaller independent problems. This allows for the reconstruction to be performed with commercially available software and our findings will therefore help pave the way for a straightforward implementation of orientation-dependent dark-field tomography.

Trabajo presentado a la Third Iberian Robotics Conference, celebrada en Sevilla del 22 al 24 de noviembre de 2017., In this paper, we present an on-line adaptive side-by-side human-robot companion to approach a moving person to interact with. Our framework makes the pair robot-human capable of overpass, in a joint way, the dynamic and static obstacles of the environment while they reach a moving goal, which is the person who wants to interact with the pair. We have defined a new moving final goal that depends on the environment, the movement of the group and the movement of the interacting person. Moreover, we modified the Extended Social Force model to include this new moving goal. The method has been validated over several situations in simulation. This work is an extension of the On-line adaptive side-by-side human robot companion in dynamic urban environments, IROS2017.

Testing database applications is a complex task since it involves designing test databases with meaningful test data in order to reveal faults and, at the same time, with a small size in order to carry out the testing process in an efficient way. This paper presents an automated approach to generating test data (test relational databases and test inputs for query parameters) for a set of SQL queries, with the aim of covering test requirements as obtained from said queries. The test data generation follows an incremental approach where, in each increment, test data are generated to cover a test requirement by re-using test data previously generated for other test requirements. The test data generation for each test requirement is formulated as a constraint satisfaction problem, where constraints are derived from the test requirement, initial database states and previously generated test data. The generation process is fully automated and supports the execution on complex queries and databases. Evaluation is carried out on a real life application, and the results show that small-size generated test relational databases achieve high coverage scores for the queries under test in a short generating time., Projects TIN2013-46928-C3-1-R and TIN2016- 76956-C3-1-R, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology, and GRUPIN14-007, funded by the Principality of Asturias (Spain) and ERDF funds.

Trabajo presentado a la Third Iberian Robotics Conference, celebrada en Sevilla del 22 al 24 de noviembre de 2017., This paper presents an approach for plan generation, seletion and pruning of trajectories for autonomous driving, capable of dealing with dynamic complex environments, such as driving in urban scenarios. The planner rst discretizes the plan space and searches for the best trajectory and velocity prole of the vehicle. The main contributions of this work are the use of G2-splines for path generation and a method that takes into account accelerations and passenger comfort for generating and pruning velocity profiles based on 3rd order splines, both fulfilling kino-dynamic constraints. The proposed methods have been implemented in a motion planner in MATLAB and tested through simulation in different representative scenarios, involving obstacles and other moving vehicles. The simulations show that the planner performs correctly in different dynamic scenarios, maintaining the passenger comfort.

In this paper, solid-phase chemical amination was applied to enrich the surface of Geotrichum candidum lipase (GCL) with amino groups. The aminated enzyme was slightly thermostabilized and showed a different activity profile at different pH in relation to the non-aminated enzyme. Furthermore, the chemical modification allowed the enzyme to be rapid and easily immobilized on carboxymethyl and sulfopropyl agarose-based supports. The cationically exchanged derivatives presented higher thermostability and higher stability at alkaline pH than the soluble aminated enzyme. In addition, the carboxymethyl derivative was 5.4-, 8.7- and 9.1- and the sulfopropyl derivative was 6.6-, 11.7- and 10.7-fold more stable than the free aminated enzyme in methanol, propanol and cyclohexane, respectively. The ionic derivatives were applied for fish oil hydrolysis in organic aqueous medium at 37 °C. After 72 h of reaction, Omega-3 production corresponded to 354 and 482 μM using the carboxymethyl and sulfopropyl derivatives, respectively. These derivatives resulted, respectively, in 2.4- and 3.2-fold increased fish oil hydrolysis when compared to the soluble aminated lipase. After the reaction, carboxymethyl derivative presented 6.65 U per gram of support and sulfopropyl derivative showed 7.85 U per gram of support, making them attractive for industrial application., The authors wish to thank CAPES (Brazil) for financial support through the PDSE Program (BEX 14174/13-8) and the “Instituto de Investigación en Ciencia de la Alimentación” (CIAL) for supporting this project.

The present paper reports the synthesis of a single crystal of a new organic–inorganic hybrid compound, with the formula (C4H7N2) [CdCl3(H2O)], by slow evaporation method at room temperature. It was characterized by single crystal X-ray diffraction, X-ray powder, Hirshfeld surface, spectroscopy measurement, thermal study and photoluminescence properties. A preliminary single crystal X-ray diffraction structural analysis revealed that it crystallized in the monoclinic system (space group P21/c) with the following unit cell parameters: a = 9.02786 (19) Å, b = 14.8876 (3) Å, c = 7.4510 (1) Å, β = 94.1212 (17)° with Z = 4. The refinement converged to R = 0.038 and ωR = 0.097. Its atomic arrangement can be described as an alternation of organic and inorganic layers along the a-axis. The crystal packing was governed by the N–H···Cl and O–H···Cl hydrogen bonding interaction between the 2 methyl imidazolium cations, the [CdCl3(H2O)n−]n anions and π–π stacking interactions in which they may be effective in the stabilization of the crystal structure. The Hirshfeld surface analysis was conducted to investigate intermolecular interactions and associated 2D fingerprint plots, revealing the relative contribution of these interactions in the crystal structure quantitatively. Furthermore, the room temperature infrared spectrum of the title compound was recorded and analyzed on the basis of data found in the literature. Besides, the thermal analysis studies were performed, but no phase transition was found in the temperature range between 400 and 700 K. The optical and photoluminescence properties of the compound were investigated in the solid state at room temperature and exhibited two bands at 320 and 340 nm and a strong fluorescence at 570 nm. Finally, the dielectric properties were carried out in order to characterize the complex., Financial support from Faculty of Science in University of Gabes, Tunisia, Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO-13-MAT2013-40950-R, and FPI Grant BES-2011-046948 to MSM.A.) and Gobierno del Principado de Asturias (GRUPIN14-060) are acknowledged.

Studies have found that higher levels of community participation are associated with a number of positive outcomes such as increased recovery and quality of life. People with serious mental illnesses (SMI) leaving jail face a number of barriers that limit their ability to participate in community activities. In this paper we examine whether the combined experience of mental illness and recent discharge from jail furthers the community isolation that is already experienced by individuals with serious mental illnesses. This analysis found that people with SMI recently released from jail had significantly lower levels of community participation in terms of overall number of community participation days and activities, number of time spent in activities individuals identified as important, and on measures of sufficiency related to the time spent engaged in these activities. Community participation is a key component of community re-integration for people with SMI leaving jail. The results of this study show that services for people with SMI leaving jail need to include interventions that foster engagement in community based activities.

Trabajo presentado al 4th International Workshop on Parallelism in Bioinformatics (euro-Par), celebrado del 22 al 26 de agosto de 2016 en Grenoble, France., Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies initiated a revolution in genomics, producing massive amounts of biological data and the consequent need for adapting current computing infrastructures. Multiple alignment of genomes, analysis of variants or phylogenetic tree construction, with quadratic polynomial complexity in the best case are tools that can take days or weeks to complete in conventional computers. Most of these analysis, involving several tools integrated in workflows, present the possibility of dividing the computational load in independent tasks allowing parallel execution. Determining adequate load balancing, data partitioning, granularity and I/O tuning are key factors for achieving suitable speedups. In this paper we present a coarse-grain parallelization of GH caller (Genotype/Haplotype caller), a tool used in population genomics workflows that performs a probabilistic identification process to account for the frequency of variants present between population individuals. It implements a master-worker model, using the standard Message Passing Interface (MPI), and concurrently and iteratively distributes the data among the available worker processes by mapping subsets of data and leaving the orchestration to the master process. Our results show a performance gain factor of 260x using 64 processes and additional optimizations with regard to the initial non-parallelized version., This work was supported by Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (Spain) under project number TIN2014-53234-C2-1-R, and Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (grant AGL2013-41834-R) to S.E.R.-O.

In this paper, we simultaneously estimate camera pose and non-rigid 3D shape from a monocular video, using a sequential solution that combines local and global representations. We model the object as an ensemble of particles, each ruled by the linear equation of the Newton’s second law of motion. This dynamic model is incorporated into a bundle adjustment framework, in combination with simple regularization components that ensure temporal and spatial consistency. The resulting approach allows to sequentially estimate shape and camera poses, while progressively learning a global low-rank model of the shape that is fed back into the optimization scheme, introducing thus, global constraints. The overall combination of local (physical) and global (statistical) constraints yields a solution that is both efficient and robust to several artifacts such as noisy and missing data or sudden camera motions, without requiring any training data at all. Validation is done in a variety of real application domains, including articulated and non-rigid motion, both for continuous and discontinuous shapes. Our on-line methodology yields significantly more accurate reconstructions than competing sequential approaches, being even comparable to the more computationally demanding batch methods., This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under project RobInstruct TIN2014-58178-R; by a scholarship FPU12/04886 from the Spanish MECD; and by the ERA-net CHISTERA projects VISEN PCIN-2013-047 and I-DRESS PCIN-2015-147.

This paper addresses the analysis of aircraft control capabilities during the cruise phase (flying at the established level with practically constant configuration and speed) in the presence of windshears. The study uses a point-mass aircraft model describing flight in a vertical plane. The problem is formulated as a differential game against wind disturbances. The first player, autopilot, controls the angle of attack and the power setting, whereas the second player, wind, produces dangerous gusts. The state variables of the model are subjected to constraints expressing aircraft safety conditions. Namely, the altitude, path inclination, and velocity are constrained. Viability theory is used to find the so-called viability kernel, the maximal subset of the state constraint where the aircraft trajectories can remain arbitrary long if the first player utilizes an appropriate feedback control, and the second player generates any admissible disturbances. The computations are based on grid methods developed by the authors and implemented on a multiprocessor computer system.

This paper investigates the resilience of an elementary electricity system (machine-generator) under proportional and derivative (PD) control when subject to large perturbations. A particular attention is paid to small power grids, representative of power grid structure in some developing countries. The considered elementary electricity system consists of a consumer (machine), a power plant (generator) and a transmission line. Both Runge-Kutta and Newton methods are used to solve the dynamical equations and the characteristic equations for stability. It is found that the controller increases the resilience of the system. We also show that time delays associated to the feedback loop of the controller have a negative impact on the performance. It is also shown that the asymmetry due to energy demand of different consumers to power plant increases the stability of the system.

Background Data on the haematological outcomes of patients who continue clozapine treatment following neutropenia are very rare as even mild neutropenia results in mandatory discontinuation of clozapine in most countries. However, in Iceland where clozapine monitoring is less stringent allows an observational study to be done on the risk of agranulocytosis and neutropenia during treatment with clozapine compared with other antipsychotics among patients with schizophrenia. Methods The present study is a part of a wider ongoing longitudinal study of schizophrenia in Iceland. We identified 201 patients with schizophrenia treated with clozapine and 410 patients with schizophrenia who had never been on clozapine by searching the electronic health records of Landspitali, the National University Hospital. Neutrophil counts were searched in electronic databases to identify patients who developed neutropenia/agranulocytosis and the frequency of neutrophil measurements was examined as well. Results The median number of days between neutrophil measurements during the first 18 weeks of clozapine treatment was 25 days but after the first 18 weeks on the drug the median became 124 days. Thirty four cases of neutropenia were identified during clozapine treatment with an average follow up time of 9.2 years. The majority, 24 individuals developed mild neutropenia (1500–1900 neutrophils/mm3). None of these progressed to agranulocytosis. The remaining 10 patients developed neutropenia in the range 500–1400 /mm3 of whom one developed agranulocytosis, three stopped clozapine use and 6 patients continued on clozapine for at least a year without developing agranulocytosis. Unexpectedly, schizophrenia patients on other antipsychotics had an equal risk of developing neutropenia as those on clozapine. Conclusions Neutropenia is common both in patients with schizophrenia on clozapine treatment and in those never on clozapine. Therefore a large part of neutropenia during clozapine treatment is probably not caused by clozapine. These findings have implications in assessing the balance between the risk of progression from neutropenia to agranulocytosis against the morbidity resulting from the premature discontinuation of clozapine under the current monitoring regulations in the US and in most of Europe., This project received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. 279227 (Crestar). Dr MacCabe receives salary support from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Mental Health Biomedical Research Centre at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King's College London. Our funders had no further role in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the paper for publication. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the European Union, the NHS, the NIHR or the UK Department of Health.

This paper describes the search for a high-mass narrow-width scalar particle decaying into a Z boson and a photon. The analysis is performed using proton-proton collision data recorded with the CMS detector at the LHC at center-of-mass energies of 8 and 13 TeV, corresponding to integrated luminosities of 19.7 and 2.7 fb⁻¹, respectively. The Z bosons are reconstructed from opposite-sign electron or muon pairs. No statistically significant deviation from the standard model predictions has been found in the 200-2000 GeV mass range. Upper limits at 95% confidence level have been derived on the product of the scalar particle production cross section and the branching fraction of the Z decaying into electrons or muons, which range from 280 to 20 fb for resonance masses between 200 and 2000 GeV. Keywords: Beyond Standard Model; Hadron-Hadron scattering (experiments)

The Asian invasive brown seaweed Undaria pinnatifida was found for the first time in the Republic of Ireland in Kilmore Quay in Co. Wexford in July 2016. As this brown kelp is of considerable economic importance and is cultivated in Asia as well as in Europe, it opens up the discussion if this invasive species is socially acceptable to be cultivated in the Republic of Ireland for food and other purposes. This paper briefly examines the global economic importance, cultivation aspects compared to the European native equivalents such as Alaria esculenta and Saccharina latissima, cultivation yield, economic considerations and the ecological impact of the spread of Undaria into non-native areas. Based on the information and facts presented, it is concluded that Undaria from a physical, social and economic point of view can be cultivated in Ireland.

In this paper we present a decentralized gradient-based controller that optimizes communication between mobile aerial vehicles and stationary ground sensor vehicles in an environment with infeasible regions. The formulation of our problem as a MIQP is easily implementable, and we show that the addition of a scaling matrix can improve the range of attainable converged solutions by influencing trajectories to move around infeasible regions. We demonstrate the robustness of the controller in 3D simulation with agent failure, and in 10 trials of a multi-agent hardware experiment with quadrotors and ground sensors in an indoor environment. Lastly, we provide analytical guarantees that our controller strictly minimizes a nonconvex cost along agent trajectories, a desirable property for general multi-agent coordination tasks., United States. Army Research Office (Grant W911NF-08-2-0004)

The European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) is providing a sustainable pan---European Computing Grid to support e---Science, integrating more than 350 computing resource centers worldwide. One of its main challenges is that the middleware driving this production infrastructure is constantly evolving, as it adapts to the changing needs of the EGI Community. Since the software is provided by external technology providers, it needs to pass through a quality verification process before it is included in the EGI official release called Unified Middleware Distribution (UMD). Therefore, all software components undergo a release process covering the definition of the functionality and quality criteria, the verification of those criteria, and the testing under production environments. This paper details the design, development and implementation of this software validation process. An analysis is performed on several metrics to evaluate the process impact on the stability of the production infrastructure, by capturing malfunctions and other issues at the initial testing phases.

The paper deals with characteristics of a wide range of ternary and quaternary metal nitrides (M = Ti, Zr, Hf, V, Nb or Ta) of various compositions obtained by ab initio calculations. We focus on the formation energies (E form), bulk moduli (B), shear moduli (G) and a difference of B and G from the weighted average of B and G of binary metal nitrides (∆B and ∆G). We show numerous monotonous dependencies, and identify exceptions to them. For elastic moduli of M1M2N we find that ∆B decreases (down to −19 GPa) and ∆G increases (up to 20 GPa) with increasing difference between atomic radii of M1 and M2. In parallel, low ∆B and high ∆G correspond to high E form and |E form|, respectively. E form of M1M2N increases with increasing difference between atomic radii and electronegativities of M1 and M2. The lowest E form values were observed for Ta-containing compositions, and the difference between E form of TaM1M2N and M1M2N is more significant for lower atomic radius and higher electronegativity of M1 and M2. Overall, we present trends which allow one to use fundamental arguments (such as atomic radii and electronegativities) to understand and predict which compositions form (nano)composites, which compositions form (stable) solid solutions, and which materials exhibit enhanced elastic moduli. The phenomena shown can be tested experimentally, and examined for even wider range of materials.

Within the field of ocean science there is a long history of using controlled vocabularies and other Semantic Web techniques to provide a common and easily exchanged description of datasets. As an activity within the European Union, United States, Australian-funded project "Ocean Data Interoperability Platform", a workshop took place in June 2014 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to further the use of these Semantic Web techniques with the aim of producing a set Linked Data publication patterns which describe many parts of a marine science dataset. During the workshop, a Semantic Web development methodology was followed which promoted the use of a team with mixed skills (computer, data and marine science experts) to rapidly prototype a model ontology which could be iterated in the future. In this paper we outline the methodology employed in the workshop, and examine both the technical and sociological outcomes of a workshop of this kind.

One way to reduce the computational load of the agents is the distribution of their services. To achieve this goal, the functionality of a MAS (multiagent system) should not reside in the agents themselves, but ubiquitously be distributed so that allows the system to perform tasks in parallel avoiding an additional computational cost. The distribution of services that offers SCODA (Distributed and Specialized Agent Communities) allows an intelligent management of these services provided by agents of the system and the parallel execution of threads that allow to respond to requests asynchronously, which implies an improvement in the performance of the system at both the computational level as the level of quality of service in the control of these services. The comparison carried out in the case of study that is presented in this paper demonstrates the existing improvement in the distribution of services on systems based on SCODA.

The Drosophila compound eye is formed by about 800 ommatidia or simple eyes, packed in an almost crystalline lattice. The precise ommatidial arrangement makes the fly eye especially sensitive to pattern aberrations. These properties, together with the fact that the eye is an external and largely dispensable organ, have made the Drosophila eye an excellent genetic model to investigate the mechanisms of cell proliferation, patterning and differentiation, as well as mechanisms of human disease, such as cancer, neurodegeneration or metabolic pathologies. Part of these studies have coalesced into the Drosophila eye (or retinal) gene regulatory network (GRN): a text-book example of an organ-specification gene network that has been used as a point-of-comparison in the study of the mechanisms of eye specification and evolution, as well as a paradigm of signaling integration. This paper reviews the gene network that covers the period from eye progenitor specification to the onset of retinal differentiation as marked by activation of the proneural gene atonal, while paying special attention to the dynamics of the network and its intimate relation to the control of eye size., Recent work in the Casares lab related to the subject of this review has been partly funded through grants BFU2009-07044 and BFU2012-34324 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation/MINECO. IA has been supported through “Programa de Fortalecimiento” of Pablo de Olavide University and a MSC postdoctoral contract from the EU H2020 Program.

This paper proposes a new breeding strategy, marker-assisted introgression (MAI), to obtain lines of perennial species with a single introgressed fragment from a compatible species two generations after the interspecific hybrid. MAI allows enrichment of the genome of a species with genes from a wild or exotic relative in a short timeframe and with an intermediate step that allows a first exploration of genes/QTLs that the donor species can provide to the target crop. This method has three phases: (1) creating a large backcross one (BC1) population to select, with markers, a reduced number of individuals (15–30, called the prIL set) with a low number of introgressions; (2) phenotyping the prIL set for the traits of interest and inferring the inheritance and map position of segregating major genes/QTLs based on the known genotypes of the prILs; and (3) advancing selected lines carrying the traits of interest to a next generation of backcross or selfing to obtain individuals with a single introgression in the background of the elite commercial germplasm. The proof of concept of this strategy was implemented by using peach as the recurrent species and almond as the donor. The whole process can be done in 9–10 years as the identification of the first line with one introgression was after 5 years (2006–2011), and 4–5 additional years are needed for phenotypic evaluation of selected lines. The expansion of this method to other perennial clonally propagated crops and to other species of Prunus compatible with peach is discussed., We acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, through the “Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D” 2016-2019 (SEV-2015-0533)” and project AGL2012-40228.

This paper presents the design and implementation of dedicated hardware IP modules for background subtraction, which are suitable to be implemented in embedded vision systems and are efficient in terms of performance, resource consumption, and operational speed. To achieve this goal, a comprehensive experimental study of different algorithms has been carried out by evaluating a wide range of quality parameters. From the results of this analysis, five candidate algorithms were selected and implemented using a model-based design methodology supported by Matlab and Xilinx FPGA tools. Using only the internal block memory available in the FPGA, they provide adequate solutions for processing low-resolution images with CIF and QCIF formats., This work was partially supported by TEC2011-24319 from the Spanish Government (with support from FEDER). E. Calvo-Gallego is funded by a FPU fellowship from the Spanish Government and P. Brox is supported by the ‘V Plan Propio de Investigación’ of the University of Seville.

In this paper we present the authors' experience of teaching a course in Ethics for Engineers, which has been delivered four times in three different universities in Spain and Chile. We begin by presenting the material context of the course (its place within the university program, the number of students attending, its duration, etc.), and especially the intellectual background of the participating students, in terms of their previous understanding of philosophy in general, and of ethics in particular. Next we set out the objectives of the course and the main topics addressed, as well as the methodology and teaching resources employed to have students achieve a genuine philosophical reflection on the ethical aspects of the profession, starting from their own mindset as engineers. Finally we offer some results based on opinion surveys of the students, as well as a more personal assessment by the authors, recapitulating the most significant achievements of the course and indicating its underlying Socratic structure. This work is part of the research developed within Project FFI2012-37670, “Fundamentos filosóficos de la idea de solidaridad: amor, amistad y generosidad” (philosophical foundations of the idea of solidarity: love, friendship and generosity), supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad.

Scientists continuously generate research data but only a few of them are published. If these data were accessible and reusable, researchers could examine them and generate new knowledge. Our purpose is to determine whether there is a relationship between the impact factor and the policies concerning open availability of raw research data in journals of Information Science and Library Science (ISLS) subject category from the Web of Science database. We reviewed the policies related to public availability of papers and data sharing in the 85 journals included in the ISLS category of the Journal Citation Reports in 2012. The relationship between public availability of published data and impact factor of journals is analysed through different statistical tests. The variable “statement of complementary material” was accepted in 50 % of the journals; 65 % of the journals support “reuse”; 67 % of the journals specified “storage in thematic or institutional repositories”; the “publication of the manuscript in a website” was accepted in 69 % of the journals. We have found a 50 % of journals that include the possibility to deposit data as supplementary material, and more than 60 % accept reuse, storage in repositories and publication in websites. There is a clear positive relationship between being a top journal in impact factor ranking of JCR and having an open policy., This work has benefited from assistance by the National R+D+I of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Spanish Government (CSO2012-39632-C02).