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[EN] The prolonged latent phase of Induction of Labour (IOL) is associated with increased risks of maternal mortality and morbidity. Electrohysterography (EHG) has outperformed traditional clinical measures monitoring labour progress. Although parity is agreed to be of particular relevance to the success of IOL, no previous EHG¿related studies have been found in the literature. We thus aimed to identify EHG¿biomarkers to predict IOL success (active phase of labour in¿¿¿24¿h) and determine the influence of the myoelectrical response on the parity of this group. Statistically significant and sustained differences between the successful and failed groups were found from 150¿min in amplitude and non¿linear parameters, especially in Spectral Entropy and in their progression rates. In the nulliparous¿parous comparison, parous women showed statistically significantly higher amplitude progression rate. These biomarkers would therefore be useful for early detection of the risk of induction failure and would help to develop more robust and generalizable IOL success¿prediction systems., This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE RTI2018-094449-A-I00-AR and PID2021-124038OB-I00). Funding for open access charge: CRUE-Universitat Politècnica de València

[EN] Due to electrical features of the tissue, such as impedance, which have a significant impact on irreversible electroporation (IRE) function, the administration of glucose solution 5% (GS5%) through the hepatic artery would focus IRE on scattered liver tumors. By creating a differential impedance between healthy and tumor tissue. This study aimed to determine the effects of the GS5% protocol on healthy liver tissue and its safety. 21 male Athymic nude rats Hsd: RH-Foxn1mu were used in the study. Animals were split into two groups. In group 1, a continuous infusion through the gastroduodenal artery of GS5% was performed to measure the impedance with a dose of 0.008 mL/g for 16 min. In group 2, the animals were divided into two subgroups for infusions of GS5%. Group 2.1, at 0.008 mL/g for 16 min. Group 2.2 at 0.03 mL/g for 4 min. Blood samples were collected after anesthesia has been induced. The second sample, after catheterization of the artery, and the third after the GS5% infusion. All the animals were sacrificed to collect histological samples. The survival rate during the experiment was 100%. A considerable impact on the impedance of the tissue was noticed, on average up to 4.31 times more than the baseline, and no side effects were observed after GS5% infusion. In conclusion, impedance alteration by Glucose solution infusion may focus IRE on tumor tissue and decrease IRE¿s effects on healthy tissue., This research was supported by the Spanish government (Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) under Grants RTI2018-094357-B-C21, RTI2018-094357-B-C22 and Carlos III Health Institute under Grant PI17/0048 and also PI21/00440 from the same institution.

[SPA] Los controladores de tráfico marítimo o VTSOs (Vessel Traffic Services Operators) trabajan en un entorno muy especializado y de gran responsabilidad en el cual deben adecuarse a las situaciones especiales de cada puerto para atender las necesidades del tráfico marítimo internacional. Sumado a todo esto nos encontramos con un trabajo a turnos, nocturno, con una carga tanto mental como física. Todas estas situaciones conllevan a que los controladores acumulen fatiga y una desalineación circadiana, repercutiendo negativamente en su rendimiento provocando acumulación de errores, dificultades en mantener la atención, en percibir correctamente la información o a la hora de actuar con rapidez. Es por ello por lo que la fatiga en los controladores marítimos podría ser una amenaza potencial para la seguridad marítima, más si cabe con la inminente aparición en el escenario marítimo internacional de buques sin tripular, donde la figura del controlador se antoja más necesaria en el seguimiento y control de estos buques cuando empiecen a operar en un futuro cercano. El objetivo de este estudio es por tanto comprender los factores que afectan la fatiga en los controladores y tomar las contramedidas necesarias para prevenirla o mitigarla. La investigación se ha realizado en un entorno real de trabajo en los Centros Coordinadores de Salvamento en Cartagena y Gijón, durante las guardias normales de los controladores, utilizando para ello test psicológicos orientados a determinar la fatiga (Nasa-TLX, Stanford, Borg) y monitorizando a estos controladores en tiempo real a través de grabaciones termográficas como técnica no invasiva para obtener datos objetivos, para con todo ello, poder caracterizar las señales fisiológicas que determinan la aparición de la fatiga. Los resultados de este estudio nos muestran como la temperatura orofacial, concretamente en la zona de la nariz sufre una tendencia pronunciada de descenso según va avanzando la jornada de trabajo o en situaciones de alta densidad de comunicaciones VHF, confirmándose dichos resultados a través de los test psicológicos comentados anteriormente y resaltando como la falta de calidad del descanso, entorno y carga de trabajo afectan negativamente provocando la aparición de la fatiga. [ENG] Vessel Traffic Service Operators (VTSOs) are highly specialized personnel who contribute to the safe and efficient vessel traffic in a changing environment to which they must adapt, adjusting to the ports' features to efficiently meet the needs of international maritime traffic. In addition, we find shift work with night watches, both with a mental and physical workload. These situations lead operators to accumulate fatigue and circadian misalignment, negatively impacting operator performance, thus causing an increase in the number of errors, difficulties in maintaining attention, correctly perceiving information or acting quickly. This study has been developed in a real working environment, with traffic control situations and even rescue emergencies, and it is aimed at understanding the factors that preceded fatigue in VTSOs and taking the necessary countermeasures to prevent or reduce it. The research has been carried out in Cartagena & Gijon Maritime Rescue Coordinator Centers, during the VTSOs’ watches and it is geared to determining fatigue onset through the analysis of both subjective and objective data, by use of standardized specific testing like Nasa-TLX, Stanford, Borg, etc., and the use of non-invasive sensors i.e., thermographic cameras. The analysis of the thermographic results obtained shows how the orofacial temperature, specifically in the nose area, has a marked downward trend as the working day progresses or in situations of high density of radio communications, yielding the same results as in the psychological tests. Finally, I’d like to highlight the close relationship between the lack of quality of rest, the working midst and the workload as negative factors that trigger off the onset of fatigue. Escuela Internacional de Doctorado de la Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena Programa de Doctorado Tecnologías Industriales

[EN] Recent low-voltage, three-phase distribution networks carry inefficient power, which can be attributed to the reactive power, imbalance of linear loads, and increase in non-linear loads. Researchers have mainly focused on developing active filters to improve the quality of electrical energy. However, in most cases, compensating for the reactive power is sufficient, considering cost and quality. Active filters are expensive, thus, passive compensators are more appealing. These devices are composed of single-phase or three-phase capacitor banks that act on the reactive power consumed by the load. The operation of these devices has been sufficiently validated owing to their long-term use. For unbalanced power, compensators that contain coils are used. A methodology to obtain compensators comprising only single-phase capacitors for the inductive reactive power consumed by the load is presented here; if designed appropriately, these compensators can compensate for a part of or the entire unbalanced power, resulting in greater efficiency in the transfer of electrical energy., Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities (MICINN); European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Grant/AwardNumber: RTI2018100732-B-C21

[EN] Objective To model the evolution of peak temperature and volume of damaged esophagus during and after radiofrequency (RF) ablation using low power-moderate duration (LPMD) versus high power-short duration (HPSD) or very high power-very short duration (VHPVSD) settings. Methods An in silico simulation model of RF ablation accounting for left atrial wall thickness, nearby organs and tissues, as well as catheter contact force. The model used the Arrhenius equation to derive a thermal damage model and estimate the volume of esophageal damage over time during and after RF application under conditions of LPMD (30 W, 20 s), HPSD (50 W, 6 s), and VHPVSD (90 W, 4 s). Results There was a close correlation between maximum peak temperature after RF application and volume of esophageal damage, with highest correlation (R-2 = 0.97) and highest volume of esophageal injury in the LPMD group. A greater increase in peak temperature and greater relative increase in esophageal injury volume in the HPSD (240%) and VHPSD (270%) simulations occurred after RF termination. Increased endocardial to esophageal thickness was associated with a longer time to maximum peak temperature (R-2 > 0.92), especially in the HPSD/VHPVSD simulations, and no esophageal injury was seen when the distances were >4.5 mm for LPMD or >3.5 mm for HPSD. Conclusion LPMD is associated with a larger total volume of esophageal damage due to the greater total RF energy delivery. HPSD and VHPVSD shows significant thermal latency (resulting from conductive tissue heating after RF termination), suggesting a requirement for fewer esophageal temperature cutoffs during ablation., Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Grant/Award Number: RTI2018-094357-B-C21

[ES] La fibrilación auricular (FA) es la arritmia cardíaca más común. A pesar de la gran popularidad de la ablación con catéter (AC) como tratamiento principal, todavía hay margen de mejora. Aunque las venas pulmonares (VPs) son los principales focos de FA, muchos sitios pueden contribuir a su propagación, formando el sustrato de la FA (SFA). El mapeo preciso del SFA y el registro de la modificación del SFA, como marcador positivo después de AC, son fundamentales. Los electrocardiogramas (ECG) y los electrogramas (EGM) se reclutan para este propósito. Los EGM se utilizan para detectar candidatos de AC como áreas que provocan o perpetúan la FA. Por lo tanto, el análisis de EGM es una parte indispensable de AC. Con la capacidad de observar las aurículas globalmente, la principal aplicación de los ECG es evaluar la modificación del SFA analizando las ondas f o P. A pesar del extenso análisis de cualquiera de los tipos de registro, existen algunas brechas. La AC no-VP aumenta el tiempo en quirófano, provocando mayores riesgos y costos. En cuanto al análisis de la modificación del SFA, se utilizan varios umbrales para definir una onda P prolongada. El principal objetivo de la presente Tesis es contribuir al esfuerzo de análisis de SFA y de modificación de SFA. Para ello, la presente Tesis se desarrolló bajo dos hipótesis principales. Que la calidad de la información extraída durante el SFA y el análisis de modificación del SFA se puede mejorar mediante la introducción de pasos innovadores. Además, la combinación de análisis de ECG y EGM puede aumentar la resolución del mapeo y revelar nueva información sobre los mecanismos de FA. Para cumplir con el objetivo principal, el análisis se divide en 4 partes, conformando los 4 capítulos del Compendio de articulos. En primer lugar, se reclutó la dimensión de correlación de grano grueso (DCGG). DCGG localizó de manera confiable EGM complejos y la clasificación por tipos de FA arrojó una precisión del 84 %. Luego, se adoptó un análisis alternativo de la onda P, estudiando por separado su primera y su segunda parte, correspondientes a la aurícula derecha (AD) e izquierda (AI). Los resultados indicaron LA como la principal fuente de modificación del SFA y subrayaron la importancia de estudiar partes integrales de ECG. Los hallazgos de este estudio también sugieren la implementación de partes integrales de ondas P como un posible alivio de las discrepancias en los umbrales de ondas P para definir el tejido fibrótico. Posteriormente, se estudió el efecto diferente del aislamiento de la VP izquierda (AVPI) y derecha (AVPD) sobre la modificación del SFA. AVPI fue la parte crítica, siendo la fuente exclusiva de acortamiento de onda P. El análisis de los registros durante la AC también permitió una observación más cercana de las fluctuaciones de la variabilidad de la frecuencia cardíaca (VFC) a lo largo del procedimiento de CA, lo que reveló información sobre el efecto de la energía de radiofrecuencia (RF) en el tejido auricular. La última parte se centró en el seno coronario (SC), una estructura fundamental en el mapeo de FA para aumentar la resolución de la información. Se definieron los canales más y menos robustos durante el ritmo sinusal (RS) y se investigó la utilidad de SC en la evaluación de la modificación del SFA. Aunque CS no proporcionó una imagen global de la alteración del SFA, pudo registrar con mayor sensibilidad las fluctuaciones en la respuesta auricular durante la AC. Los hallazgos presentados en esta Tesis Doctoral ofrecen una perspectiva alternativa sobre la modificación del SFA y contribuyen al esfuerzo general sobre el mapeo de FA y la evaluación del sustrato posterior a la CAAC, abriendo futuras líneas de investigación hacia una resolución más alta y un mapeo más eficiente de los mecanismos desencadenantes de la FA., [CA] La fibril·lació auricular (FA) és l'arítmia cardíaca més comú. Tot i la gran popularitat de l'ablació amb catèter (AC) com a tractament principal, encara hi ha marge de millora. Tot i que les venes pulmonars (VPs) són els principals focus de FA, molts llocs poden contribuir a la seva propagació, formant el substrat de la FA (SFA). El mapatge precís de l'SFA i el registre de la modificació de l'SFA, com a marcador positiu després d'AC, són fonamentals. Els electrocardiogrames (ECG) i els electrogrames (EGM) es recluten per a aquest propòsit. Els EGM es fan servir per detectar candidats d'AC com a àrees que provoquen o perpetuen la FA. Per tant, lanàlisi dEGM és una part indispensable dAC. Amb la capacitat d'observar les aurícules globalment, la principal aplicació dels ECG és avaluar la modificació de l'SFA analitzant les ones f o P. Tot i l'extensa anàlisi de qualsevol dels tipus de registre, hi ha algunes bretxes. L'AC no-VP augmenta el temps a quiròfan, provocant majors riscos i costos. Pel que fa a l'anàlisi de la modificació de l'SFA, s'utilitzen diversos llindars per definir una ona P perllongada. L'objectiu principal d'aquesta Tesi és contribuir a l'esforç d'anàlisi de SFA i de modificació de SFA. Per això, aquesta Tesi es va desenvolupar sota dues hipòtesis principals. Que la qualitat de la informació extreta durant el SFA i lanàlisi de modificació de lSFA es pot millorar mitjançant la introducció de passos innovadors. A més, la combinació d'anàlisi d'ECG i EGM pot augmentar la resolució del mapatge i revelar informació nova sobre els mecanismes de FA. Per complir amb l'objectiu principal, l'anàlisi es divideix en 4 parts i es conforma els 4 capítols del Compendi d'articles. En primer lloc, es va reclutar la dimensió de correlació de gra gruixut (DCGG). DCGG va localitzar de manera fiable EGM complexos i la classificació per tipus de FA va donar una precisió del 84%. Després, es va adoptar una anàlisi alternativa de l'ona P, estudiant per separat la primera i la segona part corresponents a l'aurícula dreta (AD) i esquerra (AI). Els resultats van indicar LA com la font principal de modificació de l'SFA i van subratllar la importància d'estudiar parts integrals d'ECG. Les troballes d'aquest estudi també suggereixen la implementació de parts integrals d'ones P com a possible alleugeriment de les discrepàncies als llindars d'ones P per definir el teixit fibròtic. Posteriorment, es va estudiar l'efecte diferent de l'aïllament de la VP esquerra (AVPI) i la dreta (AVPD) sobre la modificació de l'SFA. AVPI va ser la part crítica, sent la font exclusiva d'escurçament d'ona P. L'anàlisi dels registres durant l'AC també va permetre una observació més propera de les fluctuacions de la variabilitat de la freqüència cardíaca (VFC) al llarg del procediment de CA , cosa que va revelar informació sobre l'efecte de l'energia de radiofreqüència (RF) en el teixit auricular. L'última part es va centrar al si coronari (SC), una estructura fonamental al mapeig de FA per augmentar la resolució de la informació. Es van definir els canals més i menys robustos durant el ritme sinusal (RS) i es va investigar la utilitat de SC a l'avaluació de la modificació de l'SFA. Tot i que CS no va proporcionar una imatge global de l'alteració de l'SFA, va poder registrar amb més sensibilitat les fluctuacions a la resposta auricular durant l'AC. Les troballes presentades en aquesta Tesi Doctoral ofereixen una perspectiva alternativa sobre la modificació de l'SFA i contribueixen a l'esforç general sobre el mapeig de FA i l'avaluació del substrat posterior a la CAAC, obrint futures línies de recerca cap a una resolució més alta i un mapeig més eficient dels mecanismes desencadenants de la FA., [EN] Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the commonest cardiac arrhythmia. Despite the high popularity of catheter ablation (CA) as the main treatment, there is still room for improvement. Time spent in AF affects the AF confrontation and evolution, with 1,15% of paroxysmal AF patients progressing to persistent annually. Therefore, from diagnosis to follow-up, every aspect that contributes to the AF confrontation is of utmost importance. Although pulmonary veins (PVs) are the main AF foci, many sites may contribute to the AF propagation, by triggering or sustaining the AF, forming the AF substrate. Precise AF substrate mapping and recording of the AF substrate modification, as a positive marker after CA sessions, are critical. Electrocardiograms (ECGs) and electrograms (EGMs) are vastly recruited for this purpose. EGMs are used to detect candidate CA targets as areas that provoke or perpetuate AF. Hence, EGMs analysis is an indispensable part of the CA procedure. With the ability to observe the atria globally, ECGs' main application is to assess the AF substrate modification by analyzing f- or P-waves from recordings before and after CA. Despite the extensive analysis on either recording types, some gaps exist. Non-PV CA increases the time in operation room, provoking higher risks and costs. Furthermore, whether non-PV CA is beneficial is under dispute. As for the AF substrate modification analysis, various thresholds are used to define a prolonged P-wave, related with poor CA prognostics. The main objective of the present Thesis is to contribute to the effort of AF substrate and AF substrate modification analysis. For this purpose, the present Thesis was developed under two main hypotheses. That the information quality extracted during AF substrate and AF substrate modification analysis can be improved by introducing innovative steps. Also, that combining ECG and EGM analysis can augment the mapping resolution and reveal new information regarding AF mechanisms. To accomplish the main objective, the analysis is split in 4 parts, forming the 4 chapters of the Compendium of publications. Firstly, coarse-grained correlation dimension (CGCD) was recruited. CGCD reliably localized highly complex EGMs and classification by AF types yielded 84% accuracy. Then, an alternative P-wave analysis was suggested, studying separately the first and second P-wave parts, corresponding to the right (RA) and left (LA) atrium. The findings indicated LA as the main AF substrate modification source and underlined the importance of studying integral ECG parts. The findings of this study additionally suggest the implementation of integral P-wave parts as a possible alleviation for the discrepancies in P-wave thresholds to define fibrotic tissue. Afterwards, the different effect of left (LPVI) and right pulmonary vein isolation (RPVI) on the AF substrate modification was studied. LPVI was the critical part, being the exclusive source of P-wave shortening. Analysis of recordings during CA also allowed a closer observation of the heart rate variability (HRV) fluctuations throughout the CA procedure, revealing information on the effect of radiofrequency (RF) energy on the atrial tissue. The last part was focused on coronary sinus (CS), a fundamental structure in AF mapping to increase the information resolution. The most and least robust channels during sinus rhythm (SR) were defined and the utility of CS in AF substrate modification evaluation was investigated. Although CS did not provide a global picture of the AF substrate alteration, it was able to record with higher sensitivity the fluctuations in the atrial response during the application of RF energy. The findings presented in this Doctoral Thesis offer an alternative perspective on the AF substrate modification and contribute to the overall effort on AF mapping and post-CA substrate evaluation, opening future lines of research towards a higher resolution and more efficient mapping of the AF drivers.

[EN] Many voltammetry methods have been developed to monitor brain extracellular dopamine levels. Fewer approaches have been successful in detecting serotonin in vivo. No voltammetric techniques are currently available to monitor both neurotransmitters simultaneously across timescales, even though they play integrated roles in modulating behavior. We provide proof-of-concept for rapid pulse voltammetry coupled with partial least squares regression (RPV-PLSR), an approach adapted from multi-electrode systems (i.e., electronic tongues) used to identify multiple components in complex environments. We exploited small differences in analyte redox profiles to select pulse steps for RPV waveforms. Using an intentionally designed pulse strategy combined with custom instrumentation and analysis software, we monitored basal and stimulated levels of dopamine and serotonin. In addition to faradaic currents, capacitive currents were important factors in analyte identification arguing against background subtraction. Compared to fast-scan cyclic voltammetry-principal components regression (FSCV-PCR), RPV-PLSR better differentiated and quantified basal and stimulated dopamine and serotonin associated with striatal recording electrode position, optical stimulation frequency, and serotonin reuptake inhibition. The RPV-PLSR approach can be generalized to other electrochemically active neurotransmitters and provides a feedback pipeline for future optimization of multi-analyte, fit-for-purpose waveforms and machine learning approaches to data analysis., Funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA045550) and National Institute of Mental Health (MH106806) was received. CSM was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (DGE-1650604 and DGE-2034835). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

[ES] En este trabajo se estudiarán y fabricarán electrodos y sensores depositados mediante diferentes técnicas de impresión sobre sustratos flexibles. En la primera parte se desarrollarán y se comprobará el funcionamiento de electrodos concéntricos tanto bipolares como tripolares para la captación de las señales de la actividad eléctrica del corazón humano. Se probarán tres tipos de deposición de tintas como son el huecograbado, la serigrafía y la inyección de tinta. Las tintas empleadas serán conductoras a base de plata (Ag) y grafito (C) como semiconductoras a base de polímeros orgánicos como el PEDOT-PSS. En otro capítulo se desarrollará y comprobará el funcionamiento de un "touch pad" realizado sobre sustratos textiles, también se desarrollará y comprobará el funcionamiento de un sensor gestual 3D implementado sobre sustrato textiles. Se analizarán la influencia los diferentes elementos constructivos sobre los sensores hápticos capacitivos implementados sobre sustratos textiles. Se analizarán distintas telas con diferentes tratamientos, midiendo las características eléctricas y su iteración con tintas conductoras (Ag) y tintas con polímeros orgánicos semiconductores y aislantes (dieléctricos). Finalmente se utilizará una tinta polimérica semiconductora a base de PEDOT-PSS para la realización de sensores resistivos de humedad y temperatura. Dicha tinta se probará en distintos sustratos, tanto flexibles (textiles y film plástico) como rígidos (alúmina)., [CA] En aquest treball s'estudiaran i fabricaran elèctrodes i sensors dipositats mitjançant tècniques d'impressió diferents sobre substrats flexibles. A la primera part es desenvoluparan i es comprovarà el funcionament d'elèctrodes concèntrics tant bipolars com tripolars per a la captació dels senyals de l'activitat elèctrica del cor humà. Es provaran tres tipus de deposició de tintes com són el gravat al buit, la serigrafia i la injecció de tinta. Les tintes emprades seran conductores a base de plata (Ag) i grafit (C) com a semiconductores a base de polímers orgànics com el PEDOT-PSS. A un altre capítol es desenvoluparà i comprovarà el funcionament d'un "touch pad" realitzat sobre substrats tèxtils, també es desenvoluparà i comprovarà el funcionament d'un sensor gestual 3D implementat sobre substrats tèxtils. S'analitzaran la influència dels diferents elements constructius sobre els sensors hàptics capacitius implementats sobre substrats tèxtils. S'analitzaran diferents teles amb diferents tractaments, mesurant les característiques elèctriques i la seva iteració amb tintes conductores (Ag) i tintes amb polímers orgànics semiconductors i aïllants (dielèctrics). Finalment, s'utilitzarà una tinta polimèrica semiconductor a base de PEDOT-PSS per a la realització de sensors resistius d'humitat i temperatura. Aquesta tinta es provarà en diferents substrats, tant flexibles (tèxtils i film plàstic) com a rígids (alúmina)., [EN] In this work, electrodes and sensors deposited by different printing techniques on flexible substrates will be studied and manufactured. In the first part, the operation of both bipolar and tripolar concentric electrodes for capturing the signals of the electrical activity of the human heart will be developed and tested. Three types of ink deposition will be tested, such as gravure, screen printing and inkjet. The inks used will be conductive based on silver (Ag) and graphite (C) as semiconductor based on organic polymers such as PEDOT-PSS. In another chapter, the operation of a touch pad made on textile substrates will be developed and verified, and the operation of a 3D gesture sensor implemented on textile substrates will also be developed and verified. The influence of the different constructive elements on the capacitive haptic sensors implemented on textile substrates will be analyzed. Different fabrics with different treatments will be analyzed, measuring the electrical characteristics and their iteration with conductive inks (Ag) and inks with semiconductor and insulating organic polymers (dielectric). Finally, a semiconductor polymeric ink based on PEDOT-PSS will be used for the realization of resistive humidity and temperature sensors. This ink will be tested on different substrates, both flexible (textiles and plastic film) and rigid (alumina).

[ES] En el momento en que decidí dedicarme académicamente al mundo de la comunicación empecé a ser consciente del poder que el ámbito de la información y la comunicación poseen a diferentes niveles. En aquel momento las tecnologías empezaban a despuntar en su gran evolución y revolución que vivimos a día de hoy, pero todavía no éramos conscientes, al menos del todo, de los resultados que pueden provocar determinadas informaciones poco rigurosas, más todavía, debido a su gran difusión y elevadas posibilidades de transmisión a gran velocidad a día de hoy. Dentro de esta tesis se analiza la evolución y revolución que las tecnologías digitales de la información y la comunicación han aportado al ámbito de los medios y como han logrado cambiar de paradigma. Se analiza como la ciudadanía cambia su rol de ser un agente pasivo que recibe informaciones a ser activo y con responsabilidades al poder ser también creador y transmisor de informaciones. Se realiza un análisis de las técnicas y estrategias que utilizan los profesionales de los medios de comunicación en el tratamiento de los hechos y datos para poder transformarlos en informaciones y como muchas veces este tratamiento se utiliza con intereses ocultos para favorecer objetivos políticos, económicos o bien de opinión social. Se concluye en esta tesis con una propuesta de currículum docente para poder llevar a cabo una educación en información y comunicación que nos ayude a facilitar el aprendizaje hacia una futura ciudadanía para que posea un pensamiento crítico ante cualquier tipo de información que reciba desde cualquier tipo de medio de comunicación y transmisión de la información., [CA] En el moment en què vaig decidir dedicar-me acadèmicament al món de la comunicació vaig començar a ser conscient del poder que l'àmbit de la informació i la comunicació posseeixen a diferents nivells. En aquell moment les tecnologies començaven a despuntar en la seva gran evolució i revolució que vivim avui dia, però encara no érem conscients, almenys del tot, dels resultats que poden provocar determinades informacions poc rigoroses, més encara, a causa de la seva gran difusió i elevades possibilitats de transmissió a gran velocitat avui dia. Dins d'aquesta tesi s'analitza l'evolució i revolució que les noves tecnologies de la informació i la comunicació han aportat a l'àmbit dels mitjans i com han aconseguit canviar de paradigma. S'analitza com la ciutadania canvia el seu rol de ser un agent passiu que rep informacions a ser actiu i amb responsabilitats en poder ser també creador i transmissor d'informacions. Es realitza una anàlisi de les tècniques i estratègies que utilitzen els professionals dels mitjans de comunicació en el tractament dels fets i dades per a poder transformar-los en informacions i com moltes vegades aquest tractament s'utilitza amb interessos ocults per a afavorir objectius polítics, econòmics o bé d'opinió social. Aquesta tesi conclou amb una proposta de currículum docent per a poder dur a terme una educació en informació i comunicació que ens ajudi a facilitar l'aprenentatge cap a una futura ciutadania perquè posseeixi un pensament crític davant qualsevol mena d'informació que rebi des de qualsevol mena de mitjà de comunicació i transmissió de la informació., [EN] When I decided to dedicate myself academically to the world of communication, I began to be aware of the power that the field of information and communication has at different levels. At that time, technologies were still to emerge in their great evolution and revolution that we are living today, but we were not yet aware, at least not fully, of the results certain less rigorous information can cause, even more so, due to its wide dissemination and high possibilities of transmission at high speed today. This thesis analyzes the evolution and revolution that the new information and communication technologies have brought to the media and how they have changed the paradigm. It analyzes how citizens change their role from being passive agents who receive information to being active and with responsibilities as they can also be creators and transmitters of information. An analysis is made of the techniques and strategies used by media professionals in the treatment of facts and data in order to transform them into information and how this treatment is often used with hidden interests to favor political, economic or social opinion objectives. This thesis concludes with a proposal for a teaching curriculum in order to carry out an education in information and communication that helps us to facilitate learning towards a future citizenry that possesses critical thinking in the face of any type of information received from any type of media and information transmission.

[EN] Surface electromyography (sEMG) can be used for the evaluation of respiratory muscle activity. Recording sEMG involves the use of surface electrodes in a bipolar configuration. However, electrocardiographic (ECG) interference and electrode orientation represent considerable drawbacks to bipolar acquisition. As an alternative, concentric ring electrodes (CREs) can be used for sEMG acquisition and offer great potential for the evaluation of respiratory muscle activity due to their enhanced spatial resolution and simple placement protocol, which does not depend on muscle fiber orientation. The aim of this work was to analyze the performance of CREs during respiratory sEMG acquisitions. Respiratory muscle sEMG was applied to the diaphragm and sternocleidomastoid muscles using a bipolar and a CRE configuration. Thirty-two subjects underwent four inspiratory load spontaneous breathing tests which was repeated after interchanging the electrode positions. We calculated parameters such as (1) spectral power and (2) median frequency during inspiration, and power ratios of inspiratory sEMG without ECG in relation to (3) basal sEMG without ECG (R-ins/noise), (4) basal sEMG with ECG (R-ins/cardio) and (5) expiratory sEMG without ECG (R-ins/exp). Spectral power, R-ins/noise and R-ins/cardio increased with the inspiratory load. Significantly higher values (p < 0.05) of R-ins/cardio and significantly higher median frequencies were obtained for CREs. R-ins/noise and R-ins/exp were higher for the bipolar configuration only in diaphragm sEMG recordings, whereas no significant differences were found in the sternocleidomastoid recordings. Our results suggest that the evaluation of respiratory muscle activity by means of sEMG can benefit from the remarkably reduced influence of cardiac activity, the enhanced detection of the shift in frequency content and the axial isotropy of CREs which facilitates its placement., This work was supported in part by the CERCA Program/Generalitat de Catalunya, in part by the Secretaria d'Universitats i Recerca de la Generalitat de Catalunya under Grant GRC 2017 SGR 01770, in part by the Spanish Grants RTI2018-098472-B-I00, RTI2018-094449-A-I00-AR (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE) and DPI2015-68397-R (MINECO/FEDER), and in part by the Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine (CIBER-BBN, Instituto de Salud Carlos III/FEDER). The first author was supported by the IFARHU-SENACYT Scholarship Program from the Panama Government under Grant 270-2012-273.

[EN] Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) have been recognized as a major emerging technology in the area of flexible electronics in the last decade. Although they have yet to be incorporated in common electronic fabrication technologies, they have considerably advanced as an emerging platform for biosensing applications. The paper provides a comprehensive and critical review of the most important advances in the field of OECT-based biosensors. A brief description of the device physics is given with the most important equations and a comparison has been made with the conventional MOSFET devices and characteristic equations. The use of OECTs as an emerging biosensing platform has been explored and their application as biomolecule, enzyme, bacteria, viruses, cells, nucleotide detectors as well as electrophysiological and wearable sensors has been reported. Furthermore, trends have been extracted and described in the paper in terms of fabrication technologies, electrode materials and most importantly, the semiconducting polymer. Additionally, future perspectives on the development and fabrication technologies of these devices have been further explored., This work was supported in part by the University of Cyprus Internal Funds, Advanced Researchers Article 102, the Research and Innovation Foundation of Cyprus, under Grant POST-DOC/0718/0163 and in part by the Spanish Government/FEDER for Funds (MINECO/FEDER) under Grant RTI2018-100910-BC43.

Background and objective: Hyperthermia is a cancer treatment aiming to induce cell death by directly warming cancerous tissues above 40 °C. This technique can be applied both individually and together with other cancer therapies. The main challenge for researchers and medics is to heat only tumoral cells avoiding global or localized heating of sane tissues. The objective in this study is to provide a realistic virtual scenario to develop an optimized multi-site injection plan for tailored magnetic nanoparticle-mediated hyperthermia applications. Methods: A three-dimensional model of a cat's back was tested in three different simulation scenarios, showing the impact of magnetic nanoparticles in each specific environment configuration. Results: As a result of this study. This simulation method can, minimising the affection to healthy tissue. Conclusions: This virtual method will help real and personalized therapy planning and tailor the dose and distribution of magnetic nanoparticles for an enhanced hyperthermia cancer treatment., Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, 226, ISSN:0169-2607, ISSN:1872-7565

[ES] La sociedad actual demanda un mayor control en la seguridad y calidad de los alimentos que se consumen. Esta preocupación se ve reflejada en los diferentes planes estatales y europeos de investigación científica, los cuales, plantean la necesidad de innovar y desarrollar nuevas técnicas analíticas que cubran los requerimientos actuales. En el presente documento se aborda el problema de la presencia de residuos químicos en la miel. El origen de los mismos se debe, fundamentalmente, a los tramientos veterinarios con los que se tratan enfermedades y parásitos en las abejas, y a los tratamientos agrícolas con los que las abejas se ponen en contacto cuando recolectan el néctar en cultivos próximos a las colmenas. La Agencia Europea de Seguridad Alimentaria (EFSA) confirma esta realidad al notificar numerosas alertas sanitarias en la miel. En los últimos años, los métodos de análisis basados en inmunosensores piezoeléctricos se han posicionado como la base de una técnica de cribado muy prometedora, la cual puede ser empleada como técnica complementaria a las clásicas de cromatografía, gracias a su sencillez, rapidez y bajo coste. La tecnología de resonadores High-Fundamental Frequency Quartz Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation (HFF-QCMD) combina la detección directa en tiempo real, alta sensibilidad y selectividad con un fácil manejo y coste reducido en comparación con otras técnicas. Además, está tecnología permite aumentar el rendimiento del análisis mediante el diseño de arrays de resonadores en un mismo sustrato (Monolithic HFF-QCMD). En este documento se presenta el diseño de un array de 24 sensores HFF-QCMD, junto con un cartucho de micro-fluídica que traza diversos microcanales sobre los diferentes elementos sensores, a los que hace llegar la muestra de miel diluida a analizar. El cartucho actúa también como interfaz para realizar la conexión entre el array de resonadores y el instrumento de caracterización de los mismos. Para obtener el máximo partido del array diseñado, se desarrolla un método de medida robusto y fiable que permite elevar la tasa de adquisición de datos para facilitar la toma de registros eléctricos de un elevado número de resonadores de forma simultánea, e incluso en varios armónicos del modo fundamental de resonancia. La gran sensibilidad de la tecnología HFF-QCMD a los eventos bioquímicos a caracterizar se extiende también a otro tipo eventos externos, como son los cambios de temperatura o presión, lo que es necesario minimizar con el fin de reducir el impacto que estas perturbaciones no deseadas provocan en la estabilidad y fiabilidad de la medida. Con este fin, se desarrolla un algoritmo de procesado de señal basado en la Discrete Transform Wavelet (DTW). Finalmente, todos los desarrollos tecnológicos realizados se validan mediante la implementación de un inmunoensayo para la detección simultánea, en muestras de mieles reales, de residuos químicos de naturaleza química muy diferente, a saber, el fungicida tiabendazol y el antibiótico sulfatiazol., [CA] La societat actual demanda un major control en la seguretat i qualitat dels aliments que es consumeixen. Aquesta preocupació es veu reflectida en els diferents plans estatals i europeus d'investigació científica, els quals, plantegen la necessitat d'innovar i desenvolupar noves tècniques analítiques que cobrisquen els requeriments actuals. En el present document s'aborda el problema de la presència de residus químics en la mel. L'origen dels mateixos es deu, fonamentalment, als tractaments veterinaris amb els quals es tracten malalties i paràsits en les abelles, i als tractaments agrícoles amb els quals les abelles es posen en contacte quan recol·lecten el nèctar en cultius pròxims als ruscos. L'Agència Europea de Seguretat Alimentària (EFSA) confirma aquesta realitat notificant nombroses alertes sanitàries en la mel. En els últims anys, els mètodes d'anàlisis basades en immunosensors piezoelèctrics s'han posicionat com la base d'una tècnica de garbellat molt prometedora, la qual pot ser emprada com a tècnica complementària a les clàssiques de cromatografia, gràcies a la seua senzillesa, rapidesa i baix cost. La tecnologia de ressonadors High-Fundamental Frequency Quartz Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation (HFF-QCMD) combina la detecció directa en temps real, alta sensibilitat i selectivitat amb un fàcil maneig i cost reduït en comparació amb altres tècniques. A més, està tecnologia permet augmentar el rendiment del anàlisi mitjançant el disseny d'arrays de ressonadors en un mateix substrat (Monolithic HFF-QCMD). En aquest document es presenta el disseny d'un array de 24 sensors HFF-QCMD, juntament amb un cartutx de microfluídica que estableix diversos microcanals sobre els diferents elements sensors, als quals fa arribar la mostra de mel diluïda a analitzar. El cartutx actua també com a interfície per a realitzar la connexió entre l'array de ressonadors i l'instrument de caracterització d'aquests. Per a traure el màxim partit a l'array dissenyat, es desenvolupa un mètode de mesura robust i fiable que permet elevar la taxa d'adquisició de dades per a facilitar la presa de registres elèctrics d'un elevat nombre de ressonadors de manera simultània, i fins i tot en diversos harmònics del mode fonamental de ressonància. La gran sensibilitat de la tecnologia HFF-QCMD als esdeveniments bioquímics a caracteritzar s'estén també a un altre tipus esdeveniments externs, com són els canvis de temperatura o pressió, la qual cosa és necessari minimitzar amb la finalitat de reduir l'impacte que aquestes pertorbacions no desitjades provoquen en l'estabilitat i fiabilitat de la mesura. A aquest efecte, es desenvolupa un algorisme de processament de senyal basat en la Discrete Transform Wavelet (DTW). Finalment, tots els desenvolupaments tecnològics realitzats es validen mitjançant la implementació d'un immunoassaig per a la detecció simultània, en mostres de mel reals, de residus químics de naturalesa química molt diferent, a saber, el fungicida tiabendazol i l'antibiòtic sulfatiazol., [EN] Currently, society demands greater control over the safety and quality of the food consumed. This concern is reflected in the different states and European plans for scientific research, which establish the necessity to innovate and develop new analytical techniques that meet current requirements. This document addresses the problem of the presence of chemical residues in honey. Its origin is fundamentally due to the veterinary treatments against diseases and parasites in bees, and also to the agricultural treatments with which the bees come into contact when they collect the nectar in crops close to the hives. The European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) confirms this reality by notifying numerous health alerts in honey. In recent years, analysis methods based on piezoelectric immunosensors have been positioned as the basis of a very promising screening technique, which can be used as a complementary technique to the classic chromatography, thanks to its simplicity, speed and low cost. High-Fundamental Frequency Quartz Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation (HFF-QCMD) resonator technology combines direct real-time detection, high sensitivity and selectivity with easy handling and low cost compared to other techniques. In addition, this technology allows increasing the performance of the analysis through the design of resonator arrays on the same substrate (Monolithic HFF-QCMD). This document presents the design of an array of 24 HFF-QCMD sensors, together with a microfluidic cartridge that establish various microchannels on the different sensor elements, to provide them the diluted honey sample to be analyzed. The cartridge also acts as an interface to make the connection between the array of resonators and the characterization instrument. To get the most out of the designed array, a robust and reliable measurement method has been developed that allows increasing the data acquisition rate to facilitate electrical parameters readout from a high number of resonators simultaneously, and even in several harmonics of the fundamental resonance mode. The great sensitivity of the HFF-QCMD technology to the biochemical events to be characterized also is extended to other types of external events, such as changes in temperature or pressure, which must be minimized in order to reduce the impact that these unwanted disturbances cause in the stability and reliability of the measurement. To this end, a signal processing algorithm based on the Discrete Transform Wavelet (DTW) is developed. Finally, all the technological developments carried out are validated through the implementation of an immunoassay for the simultaneous detection, in real honey samples, of chemical residues of very different chemical nature, namely, the fungicide thiabendazole and the antibiotic sulfathiazole., The authors would also like to thank Jorge Martínez from the Laboratory of High Frequency Circuits (LCAF) of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) for assistance with profilometry, and Manuel Planes, José Luis Moya, Mercedes Tabernero, Alicia Nuez and Joaquin Fayos from the Electron Microscopy Services of the UPV for helping with the AFM, and SEM measurements. M.Calero is the recipient of the doctoral fellowship BES-2017-080246 from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (Madrid, Spain). This research was funded by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness with FEDER funds (AGL 2016-77702-R) and European Commission Horizon 2020 Programme (Grant Agreement number H2020-FETOPEN-2016-2017/737212-CATCH-U-DNA - Capturing non-Amplified Tumor Circulating DNA with Ultrasound Hydrodynamics) for which the authors are grateful. Román Fernández is with the Center for Research and Innovation in Bioengineering (Ci2B), Universitat Politècnica de València, València, Spain and with Advanced Wave Sensors S.L., Paterna, València, Spain. (e-mail: rfernandez@awsensors.com); Yolanda Jiménez, Antonio Arnau and María Calero are with the Center for Research and Innovation in Bioengineering (Ci2B), Universitat Politècnica de València, València, Spain; Ilya Reiviakine is with Advanced Wave Sensors S.L., Paterna, Valencia, Spain and with the Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98150 USA; María Isabel Rocha-Gaso and José Vicente García are with Advanced Wave Sensors S.L., Paterna, València, Spain.

[EN] Purpose While the standard setting during radiofrequency catheter ablation (RFCA) consists of applying low power for long times, a new setting based on high power and short duration (HPSD) has recently been suggested as safer and more effective. Our aim was to compare the electrical and thermal performance of standard vs. HPSD settings, especially to assess the effect of the catheter orientation. Methods A 3D computational model was built based on a coupled electric-thermal-flow problem. Standard (20 W-45 s and 30 W-30 s) and HPSD settings (70 W-7 s and 90 W-4 s) were compared. Since the model only included a cardiac tissue fragment, the power values were adjusted to 80% of the clinical values (15, 23, 53 and 69 W). Three catheter-tissue orientations were considered (90 degrees, 45 degrees and 0 degrees). Thermal lesions were assessed by the Arrhenius equation. Safety was assessed by checking the occurrence of steam pops (100 degrees C in tissue) and thrombus formation (80 degrees C in blood). Results The computed thermal lesions were in close agreement with the experimental data in the literature, in particular with in vivo studies. HPSD created shallower and wider lesions than standard settings, especially with the catheter at 45 degrees. Steam pops occurred earlier with HPSD, regardless of catheter orientation. Conclusion HPSD seems to be more effective in cases that need shallow and extensive lesions, especially when the catheter is at 0 degrees or at 45 degrees, as used in pulmonary vein isolation., This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades under 'Programa Estatal de IthornDthorni Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad', Grant No 'RTI2018-094357-B-C21'.

Contribution: An improved inverted lecturing (IIL) framework based on blending flipped lectures and hands-on experiments provides instructional benefits, compared to traditional teaching (TT) and inverted lecturing (IL), in an introductory course in digital systems. Background: IL has proven more effective than TT in improving student learning in engineering courses, but has mostly been used for theory sessions. The impact of combining inverted lectures and hands-on experiments on student learning has not still been thoroughly assessed in engineering courses. Intended Outcomes: Attendance, marks, and satisfaction should improve for students in IL-based theory lectures, compared with those receiving TT, and should improve still further for students receiving the IIL-based method. Workload both for student and instructor should not increase significantly. Application Design: The three methods were compared in six consecutive offerings of the course. In the first two, TT was used for both theory and laboratory classes; in the next two, IL was used for theory lectures; and in the final two offerings the IIL-based scheme was used. The instructor, intended learning outcomes (ILOs), course syllabus, and student grading scheme were constant over the six semesters. A total of 184 students with similar backgrounds participated. Findings: Students under the IL- and IIL-based frameworks were more engaged than those receiving TT, and were more satisfied with their learning process. The IIL-based learners achieved the deepest conceptual understanding. Finally, the IL- and IIL-based methods did not significantly increase workload for either the students or the instructor.

[EN] The characteristics and electromechanical properties of conductive polymers together to their biocompatibility have boosted their application as a suitable tool in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. However, conducting polymers as drug release materials are far from being ideal. A possibility to overcome this drawback is to combine conducting polymers with on-command delivery particles with inherent high-loading capacity. In this scenario, we report here the preparation of conduction polymers containing gated mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) loaded with a cargo that is delivered on command by electro-chemical stimuli increasing the potential use of conducting polymers as controlled delivery systems. MSNs are loaded with Rhodamine B (Rh B), anchored to the conductive polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) doped with poly[(4-styrenesulfonic acid)-co-(maleic acid)], functionalized with a bipyridinium derivative and pores are capped with heparin (P3) by electrostatic interactions. P3 releases the entrapped cargo after the application of ¿640 mV voltage versus the saturated calomel electrode (SCE). Pore opening in the nanoparticles and dye delivery is ascribed to both (i) the reduction of the grafted bipyridinium derivative and (ii) the polarization of the conducting polymer electrode to negative potentials that induce detachment of positively charged heparin from the surface of the nanoparticles. Biocompatibility and cargo release studies were carried out in HeLa cells cultures., Alba Garcia-Fernandez, Beatriz Lozano-Torres contributed equally to this work. A. Garcia-Fernandez and B. Lozano-Torres are grateful to the "Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad" of the Spanish Government for her PhD fellowships. J. F. Blandez thanks the "Universitat Politecnica de Valencia" for his postdoctoral fellowship (PAID-10-17). The authors thank to the Spanish Government (Projects RTI2018-100910-B-C41 and RTI2018-101599-B-C22 (MCUI/AEI/FEDER, EU)) and the Generalitat Valencia (Project PROMETEO2018-024) for support.

[EN] Recently, Half-Cycle Nyquist Subcarrier Modulation (HC-SCM) was proposed to achieve high spectral efficiency in intensity-modulator direct-detection optical links. This paper shows that the HC-SCM scheme has a high computational load and proposes the rational Oversampled Subcarrier Modulation (OVS-SCM) as a computational efficient alternative that, furthermore, improves the spectral efficiency. The presented experimental results show that our 256-QAM proposal allows to transmit below the hard-decision forward error correction, with a throughput of 17.8 Gb/s in a 2.5 GHz bandwidth, and a spectral efficiency of 7.2 b/s/Hz, through 20 km of single-mode optical fiber., This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad and FEDER under the Grant TEC2015-70858-C2-2-R and Grant RTI2018-101658-B-I00.

[EN] Background and Objectives Radiofrequency (RF)-induced ablation can be carried out inside ducts and vessels by simultaneously dragging a bipolar catheter while applying RF power. Our objective was to characterize the relation between pullback speed, impedance progress, and temperature distribution. Study Design/Materials and Methods We built a numerical model including a bipolar catheter, which is dragged inside a duct while RF power is applied between a pair of electrodes. The model solved a triple-coupled electrical, thermal, and mechanical problem. Lesions were assessed by an Arrhenius model. The numerical model's thermal and electrical characteristics were chosen to obtain the same initial impedance value as in the experiments: 560 omega at 16 degrees C (sample temperature). Results The catheter initially remained still, and the impedance was falling during the application of power. When pullback speed was too slow (, Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades under "Programa Estatal de I + D + i Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad; Contract grant number: RTI2018-094357-B-C21; Contract grant sponsor: Predoctoral Grant from Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (Government of Spain); Contract grant number: BES-2015-073285; Contract grant sponsor: United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

The ‘letter to the Editor’ is supposedly a means to advance scientific knowledge and, therefore, it will always be well received. Although Bautista & Martin did not request us to respond to their l...

[ES] Los modelos de riesgo en el ámbito de la salud son métodos estadísticos que brindan advertencias tempranas sobre el riesgo de una persona de sufrir un episodio adverso en el futuro. Por lo general, utilizan la información almacenada de forma rutinaria en los sistemas de información hospitalaria para ofrecer una probabilidad individual de desarrollar un resultado negativo futuro en un período determinado. Concretamente, en el campo de las enfermedades crónicas que comparten factores de riesgo comunes, los modelos de riesgo se basan en el análisis de esos factores de riesgo -tensión arterial elevada, glucemia elevada, lípidos sanguíneos anormales, sobrepeso y obesidad- y sus medidas biométricas asociadas. Estas medidas se recopilan durante la práctica clínica de manera periódica y, se incorporan a los modelos de riesgo para apoyar a los médicos en la toma de decisiones. Para crear modelos de riesgo que incluyan la variable temporal, se podrían utilizar técnicas basadas en datos (Data-Driven), de forma que se tuviera en cuenta el historial de los pacientes almacenado en los registros médicos electrónicos, extrayendo conocimiento de los datos en bruto. Sin embargo, en el ámbito de la salud, los resultados de la minería de datos suelen ser percibidos por los expertos en salud como cajas negras y, en consecuencia, no confían en sus decisiones. El paradigma Interactivo permite a los expertos comprender los resultados, para que los profesionales puedan corregir esos modelos de acuerdo con su conocimiento y experiencia, proporcionando modelos perceptivos y cognitivos. En este contexto, la minería de procesos es una técnica de minería de datos que permite la implementación del paradigma Interactivo, ofreciendo una comprensión clara del proceso de atención y proporcionando modelos comprensibles para el ser humano. Las condiciones crónicas generalmente se describen mediante imágenes estáticas de variables, como factores genéticos, fisiológicos, ambientales y de comportamiento. Sin embargo, la perspectiva dinámica, temporal y de comportamiento no se consideran comúnmente en los modelos de riesgo. Eso significa que el último estado de riesgo se convierte en el estado real del paciente. No obstante, la condición de los pacientes podría verse influenciada por sus condiciones dinámicas pasadas. El objetivo de esta tesis es proporcionar una visión novedosa del riesgo asociado a un paciente, basada en tecnologías Data-Driven que ofrezcan una visión dinámica de su evolución con respecto a su condición crónica. Técnicamente, supone abordar los modelos de riesgo incorporando la perspectiva dinámica y comportamental de los pacientes gracias a la información incluida en la Historia Clínica Electrónica. Los resultados obtenidos a lo largo de esta tesis muestran cómo las tecnologías de minería de procesos pueden aportar una visión dinámica e interactiva de los modelos de riesgo de enfermedades crónicas. Estos resultados pueden ayudar a los profesionales de la salud en la práctica diaria para una mejor comprensión del estado de salud de los pacientes y una mejor clasificación de su estado de riesgo., [CA] Els models de risc en l'àmbit de la salut són mètodes estadístics que brinden advertències primerenques sobre el risc d'una persona de patir un episodi advers en el futur. Generalment, utilitzen la informació emmagatzemada de forma rutinària en els sistemes d'informació hospitalària per a oferir una probabilitat individual de desenrotllar un resultat negatiu futur en un període determinat. Concretament, en el camp de les malalties cròniques que compartixen factors de risc comú, els models de risc es basen en l'anàlisi d'eixos factors de risc -tensió arterial elevada, glucèmia elevada, lípids sanguinis anormals, sobrecàrrega i obesitat- i les seues mesures biomètriques associades. Estes mesures es recopilen durant la pràctica clínica ben sovint de manera periòdica i, en conseqüència, s'incorporen als models de risc i recolzen la presa de decisions dels metges. Per a crear estos models de risc que incloguen la variable temporal es podrien utilitzar tècniques basades en dades (Data-Driven) , de manera que es tinguera en compte l'historial dels pacients disponible en els registres mèdics electrònics, extraient coneixement de les dades en brut. No obstant això, en l'àmbit de la salut, els resultats de la mineria de dades solen ser percebuts pels experts en salut com a caixes negres i, en conseqüència, no confien en les decisions dels algoritmes. El paradigma Interactiu permet als experts comprendre els resultats, perquè els professionals puguen corregir eixos models d'acord amb el seu coneixement i experiència, proporcionant models perceptius i cognitius. En este context, la mineria de processos és una tècnica de mineria de dades que permet la implementació del paradigma Interactiu, oferint una comprensió clara del procés d'atenció i proporcionant models comprensibles per al ser humà. Les condicions cròniques generalment es descriuen per mitjà d'imatges estàtiques de variables, com a factors genètics, fisiològics, ambientals i de comportament. No obstant això, la perspectiva dinàmica, temporal i de comportament no es consideren comunament en els models de risc. Això significa que l'últim estat de risc es convertix en l'estat real del pacient. No obstant això, la condició dels pacients podria veure's influenciada per les seues condicions dinàmiques passades. L'objectiu d'esta tesi és proporcionar una visió nova del risc, associat a un pacient, basada en tecnologies Data-Driven que oferisquen una visió dinàmica de l'evo\-lució dels pacients respecte a la seua condició crònica. Tècnicament, suposa abordar els models de risc incorporant la perspectiva dinàmica i el comportament dels pacients als models de risc gràcies a la informació inclosa en la Història Clínica Electrònica. Els resultats obtinguts al llarg d'esta tesi mostren com les tecnologies de mineria de processos poden aportar una visió dinàmica i interactiva dels models de risc de malalties cròniques. Estos resultats poden ajudar els professionals de la salut en la pràctica diària per a una millor comprensió de l'estat de salut dels pacients i una millor classificació del seu estat de risc., [EN] Risk models in the healthcare domain are statistical methods that provide early warnings about a person's risk for an adverse episode in the future. They usually use the information routinely stored in Hospital Information Systems to offer an individual probability for developing a future negative outcome in a given period. Concretely, in the field of chronic diseases that share common risk factors, risk models are based on the analysis of those risk factors -raised blood pressure, raised glucose levels, abnormal blood lipids, and overweight and obesity- and their associated biometric measures. These measures are collected during clinical practice frequently in a periodic manner, and accordingly, they are incorporated into the risk models to support clinicians' decision-making. Data-Driven techniques could be used to create these temporal-aware risk models, considering the patients' history included in Electronic Health Records, and extracting knowledge from raw data. However, in the healthcare domain, Data Mining results are usually perceived by the health experts as black-boxes, and in consequence, they do not trust in the algorithms' decisions. The Interactive paradigm allows experts to understand the results, in that sense, professionals can correct those models according to their knowledge and experience, providing perceptual and cognitive models. In this context, Process Mining is a Data Mining technique that enables the implementation of the Interactive paradigm, offering a clear care process understanding and providing human-understandable models. Chronic conditions are usually described by static pictures of variables, such as genetic, physiological, environmental, and behavioural factors. Nevertheless, the dynamic, temporal, and behavioural perspectives are not commonly considered in the risk models. That means the last status of the risk becomes the actual status of the patient. However, the patients' condition could be influenced by their past dynamic circumstances. The objective of this thesis is to provide a novel risk vision based on Data-Driven technologies offering a dynamic view of the patients' evolution regarding their chro\-nic condition. Technically, it supposes to approach risk models incorporating the dynamic and behavioural perspective of patients to the risk models thanks to the information included in the Electronic Health Records. The results obtained throughout this thesis show how Process Mining technologies can bring a dynamic and interactive view of chronic disease risk models. These results can support health professionals in daily practice for a better understanding of the patients' health condition and a better classification of their risk status.

[EN] Background: Assessment of drug cardiac safety is critical in the development of new compounds and is commonly addressed by evaluating the half-maximal blocking concentration of the potassium human ether-à-go-go related gene (hERG) channels. However, recent works have evidenced that the modelling of drug-binding dynamics to hERG can help to improve early cardiac safety assessment. Our goal is to de- velop a methodology to automatically generate Markovian models of the drug-hERG channel interactions. Methods: The training and the test sets consisted of 20800 and 5200 virtual drugs, respectively, dis- tributed into 104 groups with different affinities and kinetics to the conformational states of the chan- nel. In our system, drugs may bind to any state (individually or simultaneously), with different degrees of preference for a conformational state and the change of the conformational state of the drug bound channels may be restricted or allowed. To model such a wide range of possibilities, 12 Markovian chains are considered. Our approach uses the response of the drugs to our three previously developed voltage clamp protocols, which enhance the differences in the probabilities of occupying a certain conformational state of the channel (open, closed and inactivated). The computing tool is comprised of a classifier and a parameter optimizer and uses linear interpolation, support vector machines and a simplex method for function minimization. Results: We propose a novel methodology that automatically generates dynamic drug models using Markov model formulations and that elucidates the states where the drug binds and unbinds and the preferential binding state using data obtained from simple voltage clamp protocols that captures the preferential state-dependent binding properties, the relative affinities, trapping and non-trapping dynam- ics and the onset of I Kr block. Overall, the tool correctly predicted the class of 92.04% of the drugs and the model provided by the tool accurately fitted the response of the target compound, the mean accu- racy being 97.53%. Moreover, generation of the dynamic model of an I Kr blocker from its response to our voltage clamp protocols usually takes less than an hour on a common desktop computer. Conclusion: Our methodology could be very useful to model and simulate dynamic drug¿hERG channel interactions. It would contribute to the improvement of the preclinical assessment of the proarrhythmic risk of drugs that inhibit I Kr and the efficacy of antiarrhythmic I Kr blockers., This work was the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades [grant "Formacion de Profesorado Universitario" FPU19/02200; grant PID2019-104356RB-C41 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/50110 0 011033 ]; the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program [grant agreement No 101016496 (SimCardioTest)]; and the Direccion General de Politica Cientifica de la Generalitat Valenciana [grant PROMETEO/2020/043]. Patenting of the proposed system/software is under consideration

[EN] Background and Objective In silico prediction of drug-induced ventricular arrhythmia often requires computationally intensive simulations, making its application tedious and non-interactive. This inconvenience can be mitigated using matrices of precomputed simulation results, allowing instantaneous computation of biomarkers such as action potential duration at 90% of the repolarisation (APD90). However, preparing such matrices can be computationally intensive for the method developers, limiting the range of simulated conditions. In this work, we aim to optimise the generation of these matrices so that they can be obtained with less effort and for a broader range of input values. Methods Machine learning methods were applied, building models trained with only a small fraction of the originally simulated results. The predictive performances of the models were assessed by comparing their predicted values with the actual simulation results, using percentual mean absolute error and mean relative error, as well as the percentage of data with a relative error below 5%. Results Our method obtained highly accurate estimations of the original values, leading to a nearly one hundred-fold decrease in computation time. This method also allows precomputing more complex matrices, describing the effect of more ion channels on the APD90. The best results were obtained by applying Support Vector Machine models, which yielded errors below 1% in most cases. This approach was further validated by predicting the APD90 of a set of 12 CiPA compounds and exporting the optimal settings for predicting APD90 using a different set of ion channels, always with satisfactory results. Conclusions The proposed method effectively reduces the computational effort required to generate matrices of precomputed electrophysiological simulation values. The same approach can be applied in other fields where computationally costly simulations are applied repeatedly using slightly different input values., The authors received funding from the eTRANSAFE project, Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 777365, supported from European Union's Horizon 2020 and the EFPIA. We also received funding from the SimCardioTest supported by European Union¿s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101016496. J.L.L. is being funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades for the Formacion de Profesorado Universitario (Grant Reference: FPU18/01659). The work was also partially support by the Dirección General de Política Científica de la Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO/ 2020/043).

Los objetivos de este TFG son: Diseño e implementación de una instalación solar fotovoltaica con el objetivo de realizar el abastecimiento energético de una vivienda que constara de una parte destinada al suministro eléctrico para un sistema de calentamiento de agua ACS y otro para el resto de consumos eléctricos de la instalación. Se considerara dentro de los elementos de suministro equipos de AC mediante con bomba de calor. Se implementara y diseñara un sistema de control del flujo energético para los dos sistemas energéticos de la vivienda así como la gestión de los consumos y de los excedentes mediante un sistema configurable que permita establecer el sistema fotovoltaico en modo vertido cero. El presente trabajo fin de grado, persigue el aprovechamiento de los excedentes fotovoltaicos para una vivienda en régimen de autoconsumo sin vertido a red ya existente. Se opta por esta elección debido a que en la vivienda sólo se dispone de una cubierta invertida de unos 12 m2 orientada al sureste, el resto del tejado, está orientado al noroeste con una inclinación de uno 30 grados, lo que hace muy complicado la instalación en el tejado noroeste por las sombras que da el termosifón instalado en dicha cubierta invertida y la mala orientación Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Industrial Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena

Para lograr el primer objetivo, estudiamos los métodos y técnicas actuales involucrados en el procesamiento de movimientos oculares sacádicos. Luego, definimos un pipeline de procesamiento que comprende los siguientes bloques: filtrado, diferenciación, segmentación y extracción de biomarcadores. Para cada uno de estos bloques, dedicamos al menos un capítulo (excepto filtrado) donde los analizamos con mayor profundidad. Como resultado se obtienen los métodos más adecuados a utilizar en cada uno de estos bloques, lográndose automatizar completamente la tarea del procesamiento. Se emplearon métodos tan discímiles como la diferenciación numérica o métodos para el entrenamiento de modelos de aprendizaje automático. Para cumplir con el segundo objetivo, presentamos el desarrollo de un equipo de bajo costo que utiliza electrooculografía para registrar los movimientos oculares. La parte hardware de este equipo está basada en la placa OpenBCI Cyton, pero con nuestro propio firmware personalizado al que llamamos OpenEOG. Para registrar y visualizar las señales obtenidas por el OpenEOG desarrollamos un software llamado Saccade Recorder. El software incluye un estimulador visual que nos permite registrar los movimientos oculares sacádicos de forma controlada, para poder utilizarlos en entornos clínicos. El sistema se probó analizando los datos registrados en 10 voluntarios sanos y comparándolos con datos de equipos profesionales y resultados en la literatura. Este trabajo presenta el desarrollo de una tecnología que procesa los registros de movimiento del ojo humano de forma totalmente automática. También tiene un fuerte enfoque en los registros de sujetos que sufren Ataxia Espinocerebelosa tipo 2 (SCA2). La SCA2 es una enfermedad que tiene una prevalencia muy alta en mi Cuba natal. Aquí, el Centro de Investigación y Rehabilitación de Ataxias Hereditarias (CIRAH) es la principal institución encargada de la investigación de esta enfermedad y muchas otras similares. El proceso que hoy en día realizan los especialistas del CIRAH para extraer la información relevante de los registros de movimientos oculares es semiautomático. Partes del proceso de identificación de movimientos sacádicos se realizan anotando manualmente dónde comienza y dónde termina el movimiento sacádico. Además, se utiliza un equipo antiguo y costoso que ocasionalmente introduce ruido de línea eléctrica en las señales. Debido a la situación actual del CIRAH con respecto al procesamiento de registros de movimientos oculares, nos propusimos como principales objetivos diseñar un método totalmente automático para extraer los datos médicos relevantes de los registros de movimientos oculares sacádicos, y diseñar y probar un dispositivo de bajo costo para registrar movimientos oculares. movimientos con fines clínicos.

[SPA] Crear lo "nuevo" para resolver problemas es una hazaña incierta. Aun así, el ser humano ha innovado y aplicado el ingenio durante milenios, llegando a crear nuevas herramientas, puentes y empresas, a pesar de la falta de recursos o de claridad en los objetivos. En este sentido, el problema de la asimetría de información (cómo se desplegará el futuro) y de la asimetría de recursos (de qué medios se dispondrá) motivó esta tesis. En particular, el problema de cómo los emprendedores crean nuevos emprendimientos e innovan bajo la incertidumbre y sin objetivos iniciales claros. Esta tesis pretende contribuir a la comprensión de la innovación y la creación de nuevos emprendimientos utilizando una lógica no predictiva (effectuation) y métodos ágiles (utilizados por las aceleradoras de startups) como principios orientadores de esta discusión. Effectuation es una lógica común aplicada por los emprendedores expertos para resolver los problemas típicos de la innovación y creación de nuevas empresas. Se trata de una heurística de control no predictiva que los emprendedores ponen en práctica a través de cinco principios de acción effectual al abordar las incertidumbres y sorpresas en la creación de nuevos productos, servicios o mercados: 1) Principio de "pájaro en mano": construyen un nuevo emprendimiento no necesariamente con un objetivo en mente, sino partiendo de sus propios medios y recursos (quiénes son, qué saben, a quienes conocen), 2) Principio de "pérdida asequible": no hacen grandes apuestas con la expectativa de obtener grandes beneficios, sino que evalúan las oportunidades en función de las desventajas aceptables, 3) Principio de "colcha loca": reducen la incertidumbre formando asociaciones y obteniendo compromisos iniciales en las primeras fases de sus nuevas empresas, 4) Principio de la “limonada”: aprovechan las contingencias en lugar de rechazarlas, permaneciendo flexibles y adaptando sus proyectos según sea necesario, 5) Principio del “piloto en el avión”: se centran en controlar lo que sea controlable en su entorno, entendiendo que el futuro no se encuentra ni se predice, sino que se hace a través de la acción humana. Las aceleradoras y los métodos ágiles activan los principios effectual a través de herramientas y prescripciones que reducen sistemáticamente las inversiones mientras se crea un nuevo emprendimiento. Las aceleradoras promueven ampliamente los métodos ágiles (por ejemplo, el modelo de desarrollo de clientes, los sprints de diseño, el ciclo de innovación rápida) para construir prototipos y primeras versiones de productos y servicios mientras se descubren los clientes y partners iniciales. Además, reduce el riesgo para los inversores en todas las fases de crecimiento de las startups al validar la idea del emprendimiento y aclarar qué recursos serán necesarios. En este sentido, esta tesis examinó si, y en qué medida, los emprendedores construyen nuevas empresas utilizando effectuation y métodos ágiles mediante la creación de tres innovaciones reales con aplicaciones en el mundo real. Los tres casos eran pruebas de concepto implementadas en contextos del mundo real con el objetivo explícito de lanzar Productos Mínimos Viables (Minimum Viable Products, MVP) pero bajo incertidumbre y con ambigüedad de objetivos sobre su funcionalidad. Las tres aplicaciones eran soluciones tecnológicas a problemas de congestión del tráfico, pandemias y confianza en las transacciones digitales. La aplicación 1, "Lemur", es una aplicación edge para el control del tráfico; la aplicación 2, "Dolphin", un sistema de geolocalización basado en sensores e Internet de las Cosas (Internet of Things, IoT) aplicado para el control de pandemias y la aplicación 3, "Crypto Degrees", una solución basada en blockchain para verificar títulos universitarios. En todas las etapas del desarrollo de cada aplicación, los equipos implicados la abordaron de forma emprendedora/eficaz, afrontando las incertidumbres y emprendiendo acciones para comprometerse con múltiples partes interesadas al tiempo que apalancaban las contingencias. Tras implementar las tres soluciones y analizar sus resultados e impacto, los tres casos validaron las predicciones teóricas de que, aplicando principios effectual de forma ágil, se pueden crear nuevos emprendimientos de forma emprendedora e innovadora. [ENG] Creating the "new" to solve problems is an uncertain feat. Still, humans have innovated and applied Ingenium for millennia, eventually creating new tools, bridges, and ventures, despite a lack of resources or clarity of objectives. In this sense, the problem of information asymmetry (how the future will deploy) and resource asymmetry (what means will be available) motivated this thesis. In particular, the problem of how entrepreneurs create new ventures and innovate under uncertainty and without clear initial goals. This thesis aims to contribute to understanding innovation and the creation of new ventures using a non-predictive logic (effectuation) and agile methods (used by startup accelerators) as guiding principles of this discussion. Effectuation is a common logic applied by expert entrepreneurs to solve the typical problems of starting new ventures and innovating. It is a non-predictive control heuristics entrepreneurs operationalize through five principles of effectual action while addressing the uncertainties and contingencies in creating new products, services or markets: 1) Bird-in-hand principle: they build a new venture not necessarily with a goal in mind, but starting with their own means and resources (who they are, what they know, who they know), 2) Affordable loss principle: they do not place large bets with the expectation of high returns, but rather assess opportunities based on acceptable downsides, 3) Crazy quilt principle: they reduce uncertainty by forming partnerships and gaining initial commitments early in their new ventures, 4) Lemonade principle: they leverage contingencies instead of rejecting them, remaining flexible and adapting their projects as required, 5) Pilot in the plane principle: they focus on controlling whatever is controllable in their environment, understanding that the future is not found or predicted, but it is made through human action. Accelerators and agile methods activate the effectual principles through tools and prescriptions that systematically reduce investments while creating a new venture. Accelerators extensively promote "agile" methods (e.g., customer development model, design sprints, rapid innovation cycle) to build prototypes and early versions Effectuation is a common logic applied by expert entrepreneurs to solve the typical problems of starting new ventures and innovating. It is a non-predictive control heuristics entrepreneurs operationalize through five principles of effectual action while addressing the uncertainties and contingencies in creating new products, services or markets: 1) Bird-in-hand principle: they build a new venture not necessarily with a goal in mind, but starting with their own means and resources (who they are, what they know, who they know), 2) Affordable loss principle: they do not place large bets with the expectation of high returns, but rather assess opportunities based on acceptable downsides, 3) Crazy quilt principle: they reduce uncertainty by forming partnerships and gaining initial commitments early in their new ventures, 4) Lemonade principle: they leverage contingencies instead of rejecting them, remaining flexible and adapting their projects as required, 5) Pilot in the plane principle: they focus on controlling whatever is controllable in their environment, understanding that the future is not found or predicted, but it is made through human action. Accelerators and agile methods activate the effectual principles through tools and prescriptions that systematically reduce investments while creating a new venture. Accelerators extensively promote "agile" methods (e.g., customer development model, design sprints, rapid innovation cycle) to build prototypes and early versions of products and services while discovering the initial customers and partners. Additionally, it reduces the risk for investors across all startup growth phases by validating the venture idea and clarifying what resources will be required. In this sense, this thesis examined whether and to what extent entrepreneurs build new ventures using effectuation and agile methods by creating three actual innovations with real-world applications. The three cases were proofs of concept implemented in real-world contexts with the explicit goal of launching Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) but under uncertainty and with ambiguity of objectives about its functionality. The three applications were technological solutions to problems of traffic congestion, pandemics, and trust in digital transactions. Application 1, "Lemur," is an edge application for traffic control; application 2, "Dolphin," an Internet of Things (IoT)-based geolocation system applied for pandemic control and application 3, "Crypto Degrees," a blockchainbased solution to verify university degrees. In all stages of each application development, the teams involved approached it in an entrepreneurial/effectual way, facing uncertainties and engaging in actions to engage with multiple stakeholders while leveraging contingencies. After implementing the three solutions and analyzing their results and impact, the three cases validated the theoretical predictions that by applying effectual principles in an agile form, new ventures can be created in an entrepreneurial, innovative way. Escuela Internacional de Doctorado de la Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena Programa Doctorado en Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones

Este proyecto tiene como objetivo el diseño de una fuente conmutada tipo Flyback para que actúe de manera auxiliar de un convertidor DC/AC conectado a la red principal de una vivienda. El diseño que va a llevarse a cabo tendrá dos fases, una primera fase donde se elabore la fuente simplificada, con los componentes necesarios para llevar a cabo la conversión de la corriente tal y como se espera, y una segunda fase donde además de tener el diseño básico de la fuente, se le incluirá un circuito de realimentación especialmente diseñado para esta fuente para que pueda trabajar a pesar de las sobretensiones y otras perturbaciones que puedan variar el valor de voltaje a la salida Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Industrial Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena

La resistencia electrica de los composites basados en grafeno es muy alta. Aunque dicha resistencia depende de la cantidad de grafeno añadido (entre otros parámetros) siguen siendo materiales principalmente "aislantes". Esto requiere la medida de corrientes del orden de pico amperios y la aplicación de tensiónes relativamente altas. En este trabajo se analizarán los requisitos del sistema de medida necesario: tensión a aplicar y corriente a medir; y se diseñará la electrónica necesaria para realizar la medida. Desde el punto de vista de la medida de corriente se analizarán los amplificadores de transimpedancia y se evaluarán para la aplicación diferentes opciones de amplificadores operacionales existentes apropiados para la realización de picoamperímetros. Dicho análisis incluirá el estudio de la estabilidad, ruido y precisión que puede obtenerse. Desde el punto de vista de la tensión a aplicar se propondrá un circuito capaz de generar la tensión necesaria y se evaluarán los criterios de seguridad que debe cumplir para su uso por parte de personal "no cualificado". Diseño de un equipo capaz de medir resistencia de alto valor, del orden de Gigaohmios. Para ello, deberá diseñarse un amplificador de transimpedancia de altas prestaciones y un generador de tensión del valor apropiado. La tensión generada será tanto menor cuanto mejor sea el amplificador de transimpedancia, es interesante disponer de un producto que no necesite aplicar tensiones superiores a 100V. Por ejemplo, si somos capaces de medir 1uA y aplicamos 100V la resistencia máxima que podemos medir es de 100MegaOhmios. Para medir 10GigaOhmios se debería medir "con precisión" una corriente de 0,01uA Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Industrial Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena

Las redes inalámbricas de sensores corporales se están aplicando con éxito en diversas disciplinas. Un ejemplo de ello, sería el registro de los movimientos realizados por deportistas profesionales, con objeto de analizar la información y optimizar los entrenamientos. En este trabajo, se propone diseñar y desarrollar un sistema empotrado para monitorizar los movimientos realizados. El sistema consistirá en un dispositivo de reducidas dimensiones y peso, alimentado por batería, de manera que resulte sencillo colocarlo en cualquier parte del cuerpo. También será necesario diseñar y desarrollar el hub del sistema, con objeto de poder almacenar y estudiar la información en una segunda fase. El sistema desarrollado se probará en el ámbito de e-health, y se realizarán pruebas en pacientes con espasticidad, así como en pacientes con Parkinson. En este último caso, es bien sabido que la enfermedad de Parkinson es un trastorno neurodegenerativo que afecta al sistema nervioso de manera crónica y progresiva. Es la segunda enfermedad más prevalente en la actualidad después del Alzhéimer, y pertenece a los llamados Trastornos del Movimiento, de modo que el sistema propuesto podrá ayudar a analizar la evolución de los pacientes. Los objetivos de este TFM son: Proponer una arquitectura hardware y software para registrar parámetros biomecánicos mediante una red de sensores corporal. Diseño y desarrollo de un dispositivo empotrado inalámbrico, basado en un acelerómetro, para registrar las trayectorias realizadas. Diseño y desarrollo del hub del sistema encargado de interactuar con los dispositivos, así como almacenar de forma apropiada la información Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Industrial Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena

[EN] Hyperthermia is a technique used in treatments against cancer, consisting in heating the cancerous tissue to 40-44 ºC to produce apoptosis. The addition of noble metal nanoparticles would suppose a great progress in this technique development, due to their ability to produce heat or release drugs in or near the cancer cells when irradiated at a certain wavelength. This paper presents the validation of a prototype automated system for the basic experimentation of hyperthermia mediated by nanoparticles on cell cultures. It consists of a laser beam irradiating the samples placed in a 2D moving mechanism, an ambient temperature control to keep the samples in an incubation temperature range, and a thermographic camera to measure the temperature achieved. The system is controlled from a computer by a graphical user interface. The validation is done first in a suspension of gold nanostars and water to validate the temperature ranges, and then in SK-Mel and HeLa cell cultures, with varying concentrations and exposure times and measuring the cell viability 24 h after. These experiments showed that the treatment is possible and will cause cell death within a certain range of the variables to be applied. Also, an in-silico model of gold nanoparticle and its suspension in water was developed to try to predict the temperatures achieved during the treatment. The results of this model simulations are compared with the experiment results., We thank the financial support from the Spanish Government (projects RTI2018-100910-B-C41, RTI2018-100910-B-C43 and FPU17/03800) and the Generalitat Valenciana (project PROMETEO 2018/024). Funding for open access charge: CRUE-Universitat Politecnica de Valencia.

[EN] Virtual Reality (VR) is a technology that has been used to provide the Mirror Visual Feedback (MVF) illusion to patients with promising results. In the present work, the goal is to design, develop and test a portable VR-based MVF system that monitors behavioral information about the performance of a simple motor task. The developed application runs in a stand-alone VR system and allows the researcher to select the real and virtual hands used to perform the motor task. The system was evaluated with a group of twenty healthy volunteers (12 men and 8 women) with ages between 18 and 66 years. Participants had to repetitively perform a motor task in four different experimental conditions: two mirror conditions (performing real movements with the dominant and with the non-dominant hand) and two non-mirror conditions. A significant effect of the experimental condition on embodiment score (p < 0.001), response time (p < 0.001), performance time (p < 0.001), trajectory length (p < 0.004) and trajectory maximum horizontal deviation (p < 0.001) was observed. Furthermore, a significant effect of the experimental moment (initial, middle and final parts of the training) on the performance time was observed (p < 0.001). These results show that the monitored parameters provide relevant information to evaluate the participant's task performance in different experimental conditions., This research was funded by Conselleria de Innovacion, Universidades, Ciencia y Sociedad Digital, Comunitat Valenciana, Spain, grant number AICO/2019/029, and by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033, Spain, grant PID2020-114967GA-I00.

[EN] Hypertension is a major risk factor for many cardiovascular diseases, which are the leading cause of death worldwide. Regular monitoring is essential to provide early diagnosis since most patients with elevated blood pressure (BP) have asymptomatic hypertension. This work presents a method for BP classification using simultaneous electrocardiographic (ECG), photoplethysmographic (PPG) and BP signals. 86 recordings were used, being 35 normotensive, 26 prehypertensive and 25 hypertensive. It has been proposed 23 novel features to improve the discrimination between healthy and hypertensive individuals based on pulse arrival times (PAT) and morphological features from PPG, VPG and APG signal. Moreover, alternative classification models as Support Vector Machines (SVM), Naive Bayes or Coarse Trees were trained with the defined features to compare the classification performance. The classifier that provided the highest results comparing normotensive with prehypertensive and hypertensive subjects were Coarse Tree, providing an F1 score of 85.44% (Se of 86.27% and Sp of 77.14%). The use of new PPG and ECG features has successfully improved the discrimination between healthy and hypertensive individuals, around 7% of F1 score, so this machine learning methodology would be of high interest to detect HT introducing these techniques in wearable devices., Research supported by grants DPI2017-83952-C3 from MINECO/AEI/FEDER UE, SBPLY/17/180501/000411 from JCCLM and AICO/2021/286 from GVA.

[SPA] Los mares del mundo son un recurso valioso, así como un elemento clave en la ecología y sostenibilidad del medio ambiente, que necesitan protección como una fuente importante de alimentos, riqueza y vida. El manejo exitoso de los recursos marinos se consigue mediante el monitoreo de los parámetros físico-químicos relacionados con la calidad del agua, como la salinidad, la temperatura, el oxígeno disuelto, los nitratos, los fosfatos, la densidad, el pH y los niveles de clorofila, entre otros. Para monitorizar correctamente los parámetros de la calidad del agua del medio marino, se propone en esta tesis una arquitectura de control para un vehículo autónomo de superficie ASV para realizar misiones de larga duración que se puede anclar sobre fondos someros y comportarse como boya fija para optimizar la energía de la misión, lo que se ha llamado en esta tesis comportamiento híbrido ASV-Boya. Este vehículo se autoabastece con energía solar fotovoltaica e incorpora sistemas de detección especializados para medir la calidad del agua. A este sistema robótico conjunto se la ha llamado observatorio oceanográfico robótico. El sistema es una combinación de vehículo autónomo y boya fija, cuya energía y autonomía de navegación se gestionan gracias a una arquitectura de software capaz de tomar decisiones de forma inteligente y autónoma. Esta embarcación altamente especializada es novedosa porque tiene la capacidad de anclarse al lecho marino y convertirse en una “boya”, ya sea para tomar medidas en puntos específicos o para recargar sus baterías y navegar explorando una determinada área tomando muestras del entorno. La arquitectura de control diseñada es de tipo híbrida, que combina una capa deliberativa dividida en dos niveles, el Nivel Estratégico y el Nivel Táctico, que son los que toman las decisiones y una capa reactiva, el Nivel Operativo, donde se ejecutan los comportamientos reactivos. De los estudios de los vehículos autónomos que han sido descritos en la literatura, como los vehículos operados a distancia (ROV), los vehículos autónomos subacuáticos (AUV) y los vehículos autónomos de superficie (ASV), todos tienen una autonomía de suministro energético limitada, debido a la capacidad de sus baterías, por tanto, el área que pueden cubrir también lo es. No disponen de sistemas de producción y gestión inteligente de su energía, que permitan optimizar su empleo en misiones de larga duración, y planificar adecuadamente las zonas a monitorear. Este ASV-Boya proporciona una solución novedosa y logra una presencia autónoma permanente en lagos o aguas costeras poco profundas. Esto mejora la autonomía en el monitoreo de los parámetros de calidad del agua y evita los problemas asociados con el despliegue de un gran número de sistemas de observación marina basados en boyas fijas, que influyen y afectan al tráfico marítimo, al medio ambiente, al turismo y el costo involucrado. Todas las operaciones de la embarcación son gestionadas por la arquitectura de control implementada en el vehículo. El sistema de toma de decisiones calcula la ruta a la siguiente área que se explorará teniendo en cuenta una serie de parámetros, que incluyen: la posición del vehículo, los parámetros físico-químicos del agua, la distancia a la siguiente área de exploración, la radiación solar, la energía disponible en sus baterías, la velocidad del viento y dirección, corrientes de agua, etc. La tesis contempla el diseño y simulación del modelo de arquitectura de control mediante el software Matlab/Simulink, para verificar la viabilidad del mismo, introduciendo datos similares a los obtenidos en el mundo real. Se propone una estrategia de clasificación de zonas georreferenciadas de exploración que facilitan la toma de decisiones en la viabilidad de la ruta de exploración. Para ello se divide la zona de exploración (en esta tesis el Mar Menor) en cuadrículas georreferenciadas, estableciendo una base de datos de las coordenadas de cada zona, al objeto de tener claramente diferenciados y ordenados los valores de los parámetros físico-químicos de cada zona, cuando se realizan las exploraciones. También se describe una misión de monitoreo permanente en el Mar Menor, con una combinación de energía solar y una estrategia de toma de decisiones con respecto a la ruta óptima a seguir. Al final se incluyen los resultados de la simulación de la misión y de la energía, así como una descripción de las misiones de monitoreo reales obtenidas en el experimento realizado. Se propone para futuras investigaciones el despliegue de varios de estos robots para explorar una determinada zona marina. [ENG] The world's seas are a valuable resource, as well as a key element in the ecology and sustainability of the environment, needing protection as an important source of food, wealth and life. The successful management of marine resources is achieved by monitoring the physical-chemical parameters related to water quality, such as salinity, temperature, dissolved oxygen, nitrates, phosphates, density, pH and levels. chlorophyll, among others. To correctly monitor the parameters of the water quality of the marine environment, a control architecture for an autonomous surface vehicle ASV is proposed in this thesis to carry out long-duration missions that can be anchored on shallow waters and behave as a fixed buoy to optimize the energy of the mission, what has been called in this thesis hybrid behavior ASV-Buoy. This vehicle is self-sufficient with photovoltaic solar energy and incorporates specialized detection systems to measure water quality. This joint robotic system has been called the robotic oceanographic observatory. The system is a combination of an autonomous vehicle and a fixed buoy, whose energy and navigation autonomy are managed thanks to a software architecture capable of making intelligent and autonomous decisions. This highly specialized vessel is novel because it has the ability to anchor itself to the seabed and become a "buoy", either to take measurements at specific points or to recharge its batteries and navigate exploring a certain area taking samples of the environment. The control architecture designed is of a hybrid type, which combines a deliberative layer divided into two levels, the Strategic Level and the Tactical Level, which are the decision-makers, and a reactive layer, the Operational Level, where reactive behaviors are executed. Of the studies of autonomous vehicles that have been described in the literature, such as remotely operated vehicles (ROV), autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) and autonomous surface vehicles (ASV), all have limited autonomy of energy supply Due to the capacity of their batteries, therefore, the area that they can cover is also important. They do not have systems for the production and intelligent management of their energy, which make it possible to optimize their use in long-term missions, and to adequately plan the areas to be monitored. This ASV-Buoy provides a novel solution and achieves a permanent autonomous presence in lakes or shallow coastal waters. This improves autonomy in the monitoring of water quality parameters and avoids the problems associated with the deployment of a large number of marine observation systems based on fixed buoys, which influence and affect maritime traffic, the environment, tourism. and the cost involved. All vessel operations are managed by the control architecture implemented in the vehicle. The decision-making system calculates the route to the next area to be explored taking into account a series of parameters, including: the position of the vehicle, the physico-chemical parameters of the water, the distance to the next exploration area, the solar radiation, the energy available in its batteries, wind speed and direction, water currents, etc. The thesis contemplates the design and simulation of the control architecture model using Matlab / Simulink software, to verify its viability, introducing data similar to those obtained in the real world. A strategy for classifying georeferenced exploration zones is proposed to facilitate decision-making on the viability of the exploration route. For this purpose, the exploration area (in this thesis the Mar Menor) is divided into georeferenced grids, establishing a database of the coordinates of each area, in order to have clearly differentiated and ordered the values of the physical-chemical parameters of each area, when the scans are carried out. A permanent monitoring mission in the Mar Menor is also described, with a combination of photovoltaic harvesting solar-power and a decision-making strategy regarding the optimal route to follow. At the end, the results of the mission and energy simulation are included, as well as a description of the actual monitoring missions obtained in the experiment carried out. The deployment of several of these robots to explore a certain marine area is proposed for future research. Escuela Internacional de Doctorado de la Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena Programa de Doctorado en Energías Renovables y Eficiencia Energética

[EN] The measurement of blood pressure (BP) in an uninterrupted and comfortable way for the subject is essential for early diagnosis and monitoring of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). In fact, hypertension is the main risk factor for CVD because, being a hidden health problem with no symptoms until late stages of the disease are reached. This work investigates whether deep neural network models are able to discriminate between healthy and hypertensive subjects based on photoplethysmographic (PPG) recordings, without the need of electrocardiographic (ECG) recordings as well as avoiding manual morphological feature extraction, as has been popularly used in many previous studies. Recordings analyzed consisted of 635 simultaneous PPG and arterial blood pressure (ABP) signals from 50 different patients. The classification was performed with GoogLeNet, ResNet-18 and ResNet-50 pretrained convolutional neural networks (CNN) using as input images the scalogram of PPG segments obtained by continuous wavelet transformation (CWT). Additionally, Adam and SGDM training solvers were used to compare classification performance. After applying early stopping to avoid overfitting, training was performed with more than half of the epochs using Adam optimizer. ResNet-18 CNN provided the highest classification performance with sensitivity of 95.68%, specificity of 93.65%, F1-score of 95.61% an Area under the Roc area of 98.77%. Hence, the application of deep neural network classification models using time frequency transformation of PPG recordings has been able to provide outstanding results in blood pressure classification without requiring neither morphological feature extraction nor ECG features., Research supported by grants DPI2017-83952-C3 from MINECO/AEI/FEDER UE, SBPLY/17/180501/000411 from JCCLM and AICO/2021/286 from GVA.

[EN] Catheter ablation (CA) is the star treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF). However, important issues regarding its procedure have only been superficially explored. While universal CA effect is assessed, the role of right (RPVI) and left pulmonary vein isolation (LPVI) is ignored. Although coronary sinus (CS) is the prevailing CA reference, how CS itself is modified by CA is unknown. This work evaluates the effect of each ablation step on the atrial substrate and CS funtion. Five-minute lead II and bipolar CS recordings of 29 patients undergoing paroxysmal AF CA were acquired before CA, after LPVI and after RPVI (end of CA). Separate lead II and CS analysis was performed. Duration, amplitude, area and slope rate were calculated for each surface and invasive activation, then signal-averaged. Dispersion, morphology variability (MV) and time-domain heart-rate variability (HRV) features were also calculated. Non-parametric tests were recruited to compare each feature among all and in pairs of different ablation steps with Bonferroni correction. Variation of each feature was calculated in percentages. In surface recordings, duration was significantly shortened after LPVI (¿= -13%, p=0.001) and HRV showed a trend for attenuation (¿< -25%, p< 0.069) after RPVI. In CS recordings, HRV showed an increasing trend after LPVI (¿>+73%, p, Research supported by grants DPI2017-83952-C3 from MINECO/AEI/FEDER UE, SBPLY/17/180501/000411 from JCCLM and AICO/2021/286 from GVA.

[EN] Induction of labour (IOL) is one of the most widespread practices to promote the onset of labour when maternal-fetal well-being is compromised. Currently, the monitoring of this procedure in clinical practice is performed with subjective and poorly reproducible techniques such as tocography and cervical assessment, without taking into account other obstetric variables of special relevance as parity. Electrohysterography (EHG) has emerged as a promising alternative due to its usefulness and non-invasiveness. Traditionally, EHG has been characterized by analyzing the EHG-bursts (EBA) associated with uterine contractions and computing temporal, spectral and nonlinear parameters. Recent studies characterize the EHG by considering both EHG-burst and basal activity (WEWA). The first objective of this study was to discern which analysis technique presented the best performance for EHG characterization during IOL. Subsequently, differences in uterine myoelectric response to IOL drugs in nulliparous and parous women were analyzed and compared. EHG recordings were performed during the first 4 hours of IOL in 15 nulliparous and 10 parous women. EBA results showed a greater number of parameters with significant differences with their corresponding baseline ones than WEWA, as well as a greater slope in both parity groups. Parous women presented greater amplitude and more pronounced downward trends for nonlinear parameters than nulliparous, especially for Sample and Spectral Entropy, which is associated with a greater predisposition to achieve APL that is corroborated by obstetric variables. Moreover, future efforts seem necessary to study in depth the differences between parity groups in order to correctly characterize and interpret their evolution., The collaboration of the HUP La Fe has been fundamental for the development of this work. In addition, the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, the European Regional Development Fund (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, EU RTI2018- 094449-A-I00-AR) and the Generalitat Valenciana (AICO/2019/220) have supported it.

[EN] While P-wave duration (PWD) is primarily employed to observe the atrial substrate alterations after pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) on atrial fibrillation (AF) patients, the acquired information corresponds to the entire atria. Left (LA) and right atrium (RA), though, may be differently affected by PVI, implying the need for different after-PVI handling. In order to clarify this assumption, five-minute lead II recordings from 29 paroxysmal AF patients undergoing first-ever PVI were recruited before and after PVI. PWD was analyzed integrally and in parts, with the first part (PWD1) from the onset to the peak corresponding to RA and the second part (PWD2) to LA depolarization. Time from P-wave onset or offset to the R peak were also calculated (P-on - R and P-off - R, respectively). Normalization (N) to mitigate heart-rate effect was applied. Results before and after PVI were compared with Mann-Whitney U-test (MWU). Median values and variations due to PVI were calculated for all features and compared between PWD and the remaining features via Pearson correlation. After PVI, PWD (-9.84%, p = 0.0085, N : -17.96%, p = 0.0442) and PWD2 (-22.03% p = 0.0250, N : -27.77%; p = 0.0268) were significantly decreased. PWD1 did not shorten significantly (up to -8.96%, p > 0.05 at either cases). PWD - PWD1 (rho > 74.5%; p < 0.0001) showed higher correlation than PWD - PWD2 (rho > 41.9%; p < 0.0001) in before and after PVI analysis but not for PVI-related variation (rho(PWD - PWD1) = 54.0%; p = 0.0114 and rho(PWD - PWD2) = 61.4%; p = 0.0031). While RA depolarization time is more in line with PWD analysis, the effect of PVI in PWD is more coherent with LA's findings. Additionally, PWD shortening is only observed in the LA. Therefore, LA is crucial for the assessment of the atrial substrate alteration after PVI and its analysis should be considered by future studies., Research supported by grants DPI2017-83952-C3 from MINECO/AEI/FEDER UE, SBPLY/17/180501/000411 from JCCLM and AICO/2021/286 from GVA.

[EN] A technique for designing bandpass filters with very flat amplitude response is presented in this paper. The approach is based on the use of non-uniform-Q resonators implemented in coaxial substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technology. An important unloaded Q-factor ratio can be obtained by adequately controlling several layout parameters of the basic resonator cell, thus enabling to optimize the in-band response of the filter. The approach is experimentally demonstrated at X-band frequencies by designing two resonators in Rogers RO4003C (¿ r = 3.55, tan ¿ = 0.0027) with unloaded Q-factors going from 53 to 270. Then, a 4th-order filter example with 2 transmission zeros is designed, fabricated and measured based on the former results. The filter is centered at 10 GHz with a 280 MHz bandwidth showing a in-band flatness better than 1 dB-pp, which would require an unloaded Q-factor about 600 for a uniform-Q implementation, therefore showing the advantages of the proposed approach for implementing bandpass filters for high-end RF and microwave applications.

[EN] Background and objectives: To study temperature distribution and lesion size during two repeated radiofrequency (RF) pulses applied at the same point in the context of RF cardiac ablation (RFCA). Methods: An in-silico RFCA model accounting for reversible and irreversible changes in myocardium electrical properties due to RF-induced heating. Arrhenius damage model to estimate lesion size during the application of two 20 W pulses at intervals (INT) of from 5 to 70 s. We considered two pulse durations: 20 s and 30 s. Results: INT has a significant effect on lesion size and maximum tissue temperature (TMAX). The shorter the INT the greater the increase in lesion size after the second pulse but also the greater the TMAX. If the second pulse is applied almost immediately (INT = 5 s), depth increases 1.4 mm and 1.5 mm for pulses of 20 s and 30 s, respectively. If INT is longer than 30 s it increases 1.1 mm and 1.3 mm for pulses of 20 s and 30 s, respectively. While a single 20 s pulse causes T MAX = 79 4C, a second pulse produces values of from 92 to 96 4C (the higher the temperature the shorter the INT). For 30 s pulses, T MAX = 93 4C for a single pulse, and varied from 98 to 104 4C for a second pulse. Conclusions: Applying a second RF pulse at the same ablation site increases lesion depth by 1 - 1.5 mm more than a single pulse and could lead to higher temperatures (up to 17 4C). Both lesion depth and maximum tissue temperature increased at shorter inter-pulse intervals, which could cause clinical complications from overheating such as steam pops., Grant RTI2018-094357-B-C21 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/50110 0 011033 (Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades/Agencia Estatal de Investigacion) .

[EN] To demonstrate the efficacy of radiofrequency for pancreatic stump closure in reducing the incidence of postoperative pancreatic fistula (POPF) in distal pancreatectomy (DP) compared with mechanical transection methods. Despite all the different techniques of pancreatic stump closure proposed for DP, best practice for avoiding POPF remains an unresolved issue, with an incidence of up to 30% regardless of center volume or surgical expertise. DP was performed in a cohort of patients by applying radiofrequency to stump closure (RF Group) and compared with mechanical closure (Control Group). A propensity score (PS) matched cohort study was carried out to minimize bias from nonrandomized treatment assignment. Cohorts were matched by PS accounting for factors significantly associated with either undergoing RF transection or mechanical closure through logistic regression analysis. The primary end-point was the incidence of clinically relevant POPF (CR-POPF). Of 89 patients included in the whole cohort, 13 case patients from the RF-Group were 1:1 matched to 13 control patients. In both the first independent analysis of unmatched data and subsequent adjustment to the overall propensity score-matched cohort, a higher rate of CR-POPF in the Control Group compared with the RF-Group was detected (25.4% vs 5.3%, p = 0.049 and 53.8% vs 0%; p = 0.016 respectively). The RF Group showed better outcomes in terms of readmission rate (46.2% vs 0%, p = 0.031). No significant differences were observed in terms of mortality, major complications (30.8% vs 0%, p = 0.063) or length of hospital stay (5.7 vs 5.2 days, p = 0.89). Findings suggest that the RF-assisted technique is more efficacious in reducing CR-POPF than mechanical pancreatic stump closure., This work was supported completely by a grant for medical research from the Catalan Surgery Society. Project PI20/00008, funded by Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) and co-funded by the European Union

[EN] Atrial fibrillation (AF) is characterized by complex and irregular propagation patterns, and AF onset locations and drivers responsible for its perpetuation are main targets for ablation procedures. Several Deep Learningbased methods have proposed to detect AF, but the estimation of the atrial area where the drivers are found is a topic where further research is needed. In this work, we propose to estimate the zone where AF drivers are found from body surface potentials (BSPs) and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), modeling a supervised classification problem. Accuracy in the test set was 0.89 when using noisy BSPs (SNR=20dB), while the Cohen¿s Kappa was 0.85. Therefore, the proposed method could help to identify target regions for ablation using a non-invasive procedure, and avoiding the use of ECG Imaging (ECGI)., This work has been partially supported by: Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (PID2019-105032GB-I00), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, and Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades (supported by FEDER Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional PI17/01106 and RYC2018-024346B-750), Consejeria de Ciencia, Universidades e Innovacion of the Comunidad de Madrid through the program RIS3 (S-2020/L2-622), EIT Health (Activity code 19600, EIT Health is supported by EIT, a body of the European Union) and the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 860974.

[EN] Quality assessment of ECG signals acquired with wearable devices is essential to avoid misdiagnosis of some cardiac disorders. For that purpose, novel deep learning algorithms have been recently proposed. However, training of these methods require large amount of data and public databases with annotated ECG samples are limited. Hence, the present work aims at validating the usefulness of a well-known data augmentation approach in this context of ECG quality assessment. Precisely, classification between high- and low-quality ECG excerpts achieved by a common convolutional neural network (CNN) trained on two databases has been compared. On the one hand, 2,000 5 second-length ECG excerpts were initially selected from a freely available database. Half of the segments were extracted from noisy ECG recordings and the other half from high-quality signals. On the other hand, using a data augmentation approach based on time-scale modification, noise addition, and pitch shifting of the original noisy ECG experts, 1,000 additional low-quality intervals were generated. These surrogate noisy signals and the original highquality ones formed the second dataset. The results for both cases were compared using a McNemar test and no statistically significant differences were noticed, thus suggesting that the synthesized noisy signals could be used for reliable training of CNN-based ECG quality indices.

[EN] Purpose:Most modeling studies on radiofrequency cardiac ablation (RFCA) are based on limited-domain models, which means the computational domain is restricted to a few centimeters of myocardium and blood around the active electrode. When mimicking constant power RFCA procedures (e.g., atrial fibrillation ablation) it is important to know how much power is absorbed around the active electrode and how much in the rest of the tissues before reaching the dispersive electrode. Methods:3D thorax full models were built by progressively incorporating different organs and tissues with simplified geometries (cardiac chamber, cardiac wall, subcutaneous tissue and skin, spine, lungs and aorta). Other 2D limited-domain models were also built based on fragments of myocardium and blood. The electrical problem was solved for each model to estimate the spatial power distribution around the active electrode. Results:From 79 to 82% of the power was absorbed in a 4 cm-radius sphere around the active electrode in the full thorax model at active electrode insertion depths of between 0.5 and 2.5 mm, while the impedance values ranged from 104 to 118 omega, which were consistent with those found (from 83 to 103 omega) in a 4 cm radius cylindrical limited domain model. Conclusion:The applied power in limited-domain RFCA models is approximately 80% of that applied in full thorax models, which is equivalent to the power programed in a clinical setting., This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad under `Plan Estatal de Investigacion, Desarrollo e Innovacion Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad', Grant No [RTI2018094357-B-C21], by the Universidad Nacional Arturo Jauretche Argentina 'UNAJ Investiga' [80020170100019UJ], and by `Agencia Nacional de Promocion Cientifica y Tecnologica de Argentina' [PICT2016-2303].

[EN] Porous materials have demonstrated to be ideal candidates for the creation of optical sensors with very high sensitivities. This is due both to the possibility of infiltrating the target substances into them and to their notable surfaceto-volume ratio that provides a larger biosensing area. Among porous structures, polymeric nanofibers (NFs) layers fabricated by electrospinning have emerged as a very promising alternative for the creation of low-cost and easy-to-produce high performance optical sensors, for example, based on Fabry-Pérot (FP) interferometers. However, the sensing performance of these polymeric NFs sensors is limited by the low refractive index contrast between the NFs porous structure and the target medium when performing in-liquid sensing experiments, which determines a very low amplitude of the FP interference fringes appearing in the spectrum. This problem has been solved with the deposition of a thin metal layer ( 3 nm) over the NFs sensing layer. We have successfully used these metal-coated FP NFs sensors to perform several real-time and in-flow refractive index sensing experiments. From these sensing experiments, we have also determined that the sponge-like structure of the NFs layer suffers an expansion/compression process that is dependent of the viscosity of the analyzed sample, what thus gives the possibility to perform a simultaneous dual sensing of refractive index and viscosity of a fluid., This work was supported by the Spanish government through the project TEC2015-63838-C3-1-R-OPTONANOSENS and from the Basque government through the KK-2019/00101-mu 4FINDUSTRY.

[EN] Purpose: To systematically review evidence regarding the association of multi-parametric biomarkers with clinical outcomes and their capacity to explain relevant subcompartments of gliomas. Materials and Methods: Scopus database was searched for original journal papers from January 1st, 2007 to February 20th , 2017 according to PRISMA. Four hundred forty-nine abstracts of papers were reviewed and scored independently by two out of six authors. Based on those papers we analyzed associations between biomarkers, subcompartments within the tumor lesion, and clinical outcomes. From all the articles analyzed, the twenty-seven papers with the highest scores were highlighted to represent the evidence about MR imaging biomarkers associated with clinical outcomes. Similarly, eighteen studies defining subcompartments within the tumor region were also highlighted to represent the evidence of MR imaging biomarkers. Their reports were critically appraised according to the QUADAS-2 criteria. Results: It has been demonstrated that multi-parametric biomarkers are prepared for surrogating diagnosis, grading, segmentation, overall survival, progression-free survival, recurrence, molecular profiling and response to treatment in gliomas. Quantifications and radiomics features obtained from morphological exams (T1, T2, FLAIR, T1c), PWI (including DSC and DCE), diffusion (DWI, DTI) and chemical shift imaging (CSI) are the preferred MR biomarkers associated to clinical outcomes. Subcompartments relative to the peritumoral region, invasion, infiltration, proliferation, mass effect and pseudo flush, relapse compartments, gross tumor volumes, and high-risk regions have been defined to characterize the heterogeneity. For the majority of pairwise cooccurrences, we found no evidence to assert that observed co-occurrences were significantly different from their expected co-occurrences (Binomial test with False Discovery Rate correction, alpha=0.05). The co-occurrence among terms in the studied papers was found to be driven by their individual prevalence and trends in the literature. Conclusion: Combinations of MR imaging biomarkers from morphological, PWI, DWI and CSI exams have demonstrated their capability to predict clinical outcomes in different management moments of gliomas. Whereas morphologic-derived compartments have been mostly studied during the last ten years, new multi-parametric MRI approaches have also been proposed to discover specific subcompartments of the tumors. MR biomarkers from those subcompartments show the local behavior within the heterogeneous tumor and may quantify the prognosis and response to treatment of gliomas., This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry for Investigation, Development and Innovation project with identification number DPI2016-80054-R.

[EN] Pharmacological agents are often used to induce labor. Failed inductions are associated with unnecessarily long waits and greater maternal-fetal risks, as well as higher costs. No reliable models are currently able to predict the induction outcome from common obstetric data (area under the ROC curve (AUC) between 0.6 and 0.7). The aim of this study was to design an early success-predictor system by extracting temporal, spectral, and complexity parameters from the uterine electromyogram (electrohysterogram (EHG)). Different types of feature sets were used to design and train artificial neural networks: Set_1: obstetrical features, Set_2: EHG features, and Set_3: EHG+obstetrical features. Predictor systems were built to classify three scenarios: (1) induced women who reached active phase of labor (APL) vs. women who did not achieve APL (non-APL), (2) APL and vaginal delivery vs. APL and cesarean section delivery, and (3) vaginal vs. cesarean delivery. For Scenario 3, we also proposed 2-step predictor systems consisting of the cascading predictor systems from Scenarios 1 and 2. EHG features outperformed traditional obstetrical features in all the scenarios. Little improvement was obtained by combining them (Set_3). The results show that the EHG can potentially be used to predict successful labor induction and outperforms the traditional obstetric features. Clinical use of this prediction system would help to improve maternal-fetal well-being and optimize hospital resources., This work received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, the European Regional Development Fund (DPI2015-68397-R and RTI2018-094449-A-I00), Universitat Politècnica de València VLC/Campus (UPV-FE-2018-B02), Generalitat Valenciana (GV/2018/104), and Bial S.A.

[EN] Microgrids are moving towards large-scale smart distributed networks which demand an efficient and reliable communication infrastructure to manage, control and monitor energy resources. With regard to this, publisher/subscriber eventbased middleware has become relevant for large-scale distributed time applications because it allows decouple time and space between senders and receivers. Particularly the content publish/subscribe systems over structured peer-to-peer (P2P) networks has emerged to enhance scalability and dynamism of notification middleware systems. However, this type of systems use multicast routing schemes that still generate much network traffic and as a consequence an overload of the communication channel is produced. This results in inefficient network utilization and rapid depletion of network resources leading to unreliable operations, degradation of system performance and even instability of the microgrid. In this paper, a new content-based publish/subscribe notification middleware over structured P2P systems is proposed, such that smart microgrid communication requirements are met. This proposed system organizes the publications and subscriptions in a one dimensional representation using the Hilbert space filling curve. Through this representation, an innovative routing and matching algorithms are developed. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed publisher/subscribe system significantly enhance efficiency of the system, network performance and the use of computational resources., This work is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under Grant ENE2015- 64087- C2- 2 R. This work is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under BES- 2013- 064539.

[EN] This paper presents a low-complexity chase (LCC) decoder for Reed-Solomon (RS) codes, which uses a novel method for the selection of test vectors that is based on the analysis of the symbol error probabilities derived from simulations. Our results show that the same performance as the classical LCC is achieved with a lower number of test vectors. For example, the amount of test vectors is reduced by half and by 1/16 for the RS(255,239) and RS(255,129) codes, respectively. We provide an evidence that the proposed method is suitable for RS codes with different rates and Galois fields. In order to demonstrate that the proposed method results in a reduction of the complexity of the decoder, we also present a hardware architecture for an RS(255,239) decoder that uses 16 test vectors. This decoder achieves a coding gain of 0.56 dB at the frame error rate that is equal to 10(-6) compared with hard-decision decoding, which is higher than that of an eta = 5 LCC. The implementation results in ASIC show that a throughput of 3.6 Gb/s can be reached in a 90-nm process and 29.1XORs are required. The implementation results in Virtex-7 FPGA devices show that the decoder reaches 2.5 Gb/s and requires 5085 LUTs., This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad and FEDER under Grant TEC2015-70858-C2-2-R. This paper was recommended by Associate Editor M. Boukadoum.

[EN] By studying platonic crystals based on lattices of cavities containing N-beam resonators, we conclude that crystals made of 1-beam resonators easily produce low-frequency omnidirectional bandgaps. Based on this favorable property, hardly obtained for resonant cavities containing a higher number of beams N >= 2, we have designed single-phase metamaterial plates for the suppression of low frequency flexural waves in a broad range of frequencies. These metamaterials are obtained by using resonant cavities containing a multiple number M of identical 1-beam resonators uniformly distributed in the cavity. Square lattices of this type of resonators have been studied by using the impedance matrix approach and the multiple scattering method. This semi-analytical method has been employed to show the existence of complete bandgaps whose width can be optimized by increasing M. For the case M = 4, the largest number of resonators studied here, three complete bandgaps separated by two narrow passbands appear in the band structure. The formation of these complete bandgaps originates from the dynamic interaction between different local resonators as well as their interaction with the propagating waves in the host plate. By using composite structures consisting of platonic crystal slabs with complementary bandgaps, these separated bandgaps easily merge into a broadband wave attenuation region. The normalized width, defined as the percentage of the bandwidth to its central frequency, reaches 95.3%, representing an enhancement of about one order of magnitude compared with the absolute bandwidth obtained for the case of a single 1-beam resonator in the cavity. It is shown that the gaps can be easily tuned to lower frequencies by changing the geometrical parameters, such as the length of the beam, the radius and thickness of the smaller circular plate. Since the metamaterial is made of a single-phase material without attaching heavy masses, the work reported here provides a simple approach to construct low-cost structures with potential applications in aeronautic and astronautic industries for broadband vibration suppression at low frequencies. (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd., This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad of the Spanish government and the European Union Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) [Grant No. TEC2014-53088-C3-1-R], and the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant Nos. 11432004 and 11421091]. Penglin Gao acknowledges a scholarship provided by China Scholarship Council [Grant No. 201606120070].

[EN] Microalgae play a fundamental role in aquatic primary production and the food chain. They are a recognized source of fatty acids and fatty acid-based lipids of potential interest in the preparation of functional health products, biofuels and renewable chemicals. The exploitation of this bioresource requires a fine monitoring of each production stage. The aim of this work is the microalgae degradation follow up after the concentration stage at the end of the production process by voltammetric electronic tongue, impedance spectroscopy and H-1 NMR spectroscopy. Microalgae samples were allowed to progress along time (from 1 to 23 days). At scheduled selected times, voltammetry, impedance spectroscopy and H-1 NMR measurements were performed. Multivariate analysis was carried out on these data by PLSR. A model calculated in a training set was then applied to a set of validation to predict the time of evolution. For the three techniques good results in prediction for the validation set were obtained (R-2/RMSEP of 0.961/1.51, 0.956/1.67 and 0.969/1.25 respectively for impedance, voltammetry and NMR spectroscopy). The three techniques were sensitive to the evolution of the microalgae samples. The detection of metabolical changes in the H-1 NMR spectra is also included. This proof of concept could be the basis for future development of rapid and robust strategies for quality control on microalgae production plants., Authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of MAT2015-64139-C4-1-R and MAT2015-64139-C4-3-R (MINECO/FEDER, UE) and PROMETEOII/2014/047 projects. BUGGYPOWER, S.L. is acknowledged for the financial support and for providing the samples. U26 Nanbiosis is acknowledged by the NMR measurements.

[EN] Bladder cancer (BC) is the sixth leading cause of death by cancer. Depending on the invasiveness of tumors, patients with BC will undergo surgery and surveillance lifelong, owing the high rate of recurrence and progression. In this context, the development of strategies to support non-invasive BC diagnosis is focusing attention. Voltammetric electronic tongue (VET) has been demonstrated to be of use in the analysis of biofluids. Here, we present the implementation of a VET to study 207 urines to discriminate BC and non-BC for diagnosis and surveillance to detect recurrences. Special attention has been paid to the experimental setup to improve reproducibility in the measurements. PLSDA analysis together with variable selection provided a model with high sensitivity, specificity, and area under the ROC curve AUC (0.844, 0.882, and 0.917, respectively). These results pave the way for the development of non-invasive low- cost and easy-touse strategies to support BC diagnosis and follow-up., This research was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities via a doctoral grant to the first author (FPU17/03239). Authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of RTI2018-100910-B-C41 and RTI2018-100910-B-C43 (funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/and FEDER A way to make Europe) and PROMETEO/2018/024 (the Generalitat Valenciana) projects. Authors also gratefully acknowledge CIBER-BBN.