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Objective: To describe serum levels of calcium, copper, selenium, magnesium, iron and zinc and evaluate their relationship with maternal socio-demographic characteristics and dietary variables in women in the first trimester of pregnancy. Method: Cross-sectional study with 1279 participants from the INMA cohorts. Results: The concentrations of the elements analyzed were within the normal range. Associations with higher levels of these metals were found for calcium with white meat intake (p = 0.026), for cop-per with excess body weight (p < 0.01), low social class (p = 0.03) and being multipara (p < 0.01), for magnesium with being over 35 years old (p = 0.001), high social class (p = 0.044), primiparous status (p = 0.002) and low daily intake of bread (p = 0.009) and legumes (p = 0.020); for zinc with university edu-cation (p = 0.039) and residence in Gipuzkoa (p < 0.01), and for selenium with residence in Valencia (p < 0.01), university education (p = 0.001), vitamin B6 supplementation (p = 0.006), fish intake (> 71 g/day) (p = 0.014) and having been born in Spain (p = 0.001). Further, lower iron levels were associated with being overweight (p = 0.021) or obese (p < 0.001) and vitamin B12 supplementation (p = 0.006). Conclusions: Our results suggest that trace elements in the analyzed cohorts are adequate for this stage of pregnancy. The variability in these elements is mainly linked to socio-demographic and anthropometric variables. This study is part of the INMA (Infancia y Medio Ambiente) project. It was supported by grants from Instituto de Salud Carlos III (FIS-FEDER: 06/0867, 09/00090, 13/1944, 16/1288, 19/1338; Miguel Servet-FEDER: CP15/0025; Miguel Servet-FSE: MS15/0025) , by the Council of Gipuzkoa (DFG15/009) and by the Health Department of the Basque Government.

Introduction and objectives The pocket sized KardiaMobile (KM) is a monitoring device for ECG recording through a smartphone-based application. This system is generally aimed as screening tool to detect alterations in cardiac rhythm but its diagnostic potential for detection of ST changes remains largely unknown. This study sought to assess the diagnostic sensitivity of the KM system for detection of ST changes in patients with ST elevated myocardial infarction (STEMI). Methods Patients admitted with diagnosis of STEMI were consecutively included. Recordings with KM were obtained in leads I, II and anterior precordial. KM recordings were obtained as well from healthy individuals. All recordings were submitted for blinded assessment. Results A total of 112 patients with STEMI and 25 healthy individuals were included. Among those showing ST changes, these consisted mostly in depression (75%). Sensitivity was modest for individual leads (57-58%). The combination of 2-leads, when including the precordial, and the combination of 3-leads markedly increased sensitivity (88-98% and 100% respectively) for both inferior and anterior STEMI. Specificity was very high (96-100%) and the Youden's J statistic was excellent for the 2-leads combinations that included the precordial lead (0.84-0.94) and for the 3-leads combination (0.96). Conclusions The Kardia Mobile system with the combination of 2-leads (I + precordial or II + precordial) or 3-leads shows a very high sensitivity for both anterior and inferior STEMI.

Over the past few years, the task of conceiving effective interventions on complex networks has arisen as different optimization problems. An interesting intervention scheme that has many important real-world applications is to introduce (infiltrate) in a network a certain number of new nodes and connect them to certain existing nodes with the aim of making them as central as possible. The idea is that they should occupy strategic positions in the network to gather a lot of information or to decisively influence others. In this work, we present an optimization problem that concerns the selection of nodes in a network with which to link each of a particular number of infiltrated nodes in order to maximize the lower betweenness centrality value obtained by them. This metric evaluates the participation of the nodes in the communications through the shortest paths of the network and it has been widely used as centrality measure in analyzing social networks. To address the problem, we propose a local search based heuristic whose performance is driven by two search strategies; a constructive greedy procedure that is employed to create an initial solution and a local improvement method that makes use of two neighborhood operators designed for exploring the search space of this problem. It should be noted that the development of metaheuristics for tackling combinatorial problems involving betweenness centrality is very challenging, because this measure is notoriously expensive to compute. That is why we have made two design decisions: firstly, to conceive a very simple metaheuristic approach and secondly, to incorporate in this proposal recent betweenness centrality update techniques that substantially reduce the number of shortest paths which should be re-computed when a network is changed. The performance of our optimizer, with respect to other metaheuristic models from the literature that can be adapted to face this problem, such as a randomized greedy multi-start algorithm and a steady-state genetic algorithm, is empirically shown.

Objective The aim of this study was to identify the most relevant variables defining the dietary, social, and health patterns of elderly populations with disabilities, considering their geographic profile. Methods A cross-sectional study was carried out in a sample of 354 disabled, free-living elderly adults from three different geographic profiles (metropolitan, rural, and mixed profile). The dietary data were obtained through a validated food habit questionnaire. The data regarding health status, cohabitation unit, and social benefits were obtained through the public social services. A standardized principal component analysis was used to select the most relevant variables, by considering their contributions to each principal component and their relation with the geographic factor. Results From 131 variables, we highlighted 27 (57.37% of variability explained). The variables with more contribution are, in order, the calorie intake (especially from lipids), absence of home assistance, and the difference between intake and recommended calories. The procedure was validated by assessing the prediction using a multinomial logistic regression model (88.2% and 66.7% of success rate regarding the metropolitan and rural profiles, respectively). There is a differentiated behavior based on the geographic origin of individuals, specifically regarding caloric intake, number of diseases, and the requirement for home assistance. Conclusions Older adults living in a metropolitan are tend to have a greater number of diseases as well as a lower caloric intake. The increased rural caloric consumption comes from lipids. Better health status in rural areas is associated with a lower need for home assistance.

In this paper we study important and weakly-investigated optimization problem imposed by the fast telecommunication networks development. The problem concerns routing of three types of flows (unicast, anycast, multicast) in survivable Elastic Optical Network (EON). Three types of flows allow to efficiently support cloud-related services while network survivability, provided by dedicated path protection, addresses problem of a single link failure. Since the problem is very challenging, we propose efficient and large-scale optimization method based on the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) framework. Then, we perform extensive numerical experiments to evaluate ABC performance with respect to the reference methods. The results prove high efficiency of the ABC-based algorithm, which finds very good solutions (average gap to optimal result was less than 10% for all studied cases) and outperforms the reference methods for the majority of problem instances.

In this work, we tackle multidimensional two-way number partitioning (MDTWNP) problem by combining GRASP with Exterior Path Relinking. In the last few years, the combination of GRASP with path relinking (PR) has emerged as a highly effective tool for finding high-quality solutions for several difficult problems in reasonable computational time. However, in most of the cases, this hybridisation is limited to the variant known as interior PR. Here, we couple GRASP with the "exterior form" of path relinking and perform extensive experimentation to evaluate this variant. In addition, we enhance our GRASP with PR method with a novel local search method specially designed for the MDTWNP problem. Our computational experiments show the superiority of this approach compared with the previous best method for MDTWNP and with alternative methods for this problem that use other forms of PR. HighlightsThe MDTWNP problem is solved by a GRASP with Exterior Path Relinking (ePR) metaheuristic.We explore the exterior PR variant that remained virtually unexplored up to now.We propose a novel local search procedure for the MDTWNP problem, which provides a smoother descent and a faster performing.The experimental study carried out shows the benefits of the ePR variant and the new local search in the GRASP+ePR method.GRASP+ePR provides high-quality solutions with regards to the state-of-the-art algorithms, especially for large instances.

Over the past few years, the task of conceiving effective attacks to complex networks has arisen as an optimization problem. Attacks are modelled as the process of removing a number k of vertices, from the graph that represents the network, and the goal is to maximise or minimise the value of a predefined metric over the graph. In this work, we present an optimization problem that concerns the selection of nodes to be removed to minimise the maximum betweenness centrality value of the residual graph. This metric evaluates the participation of the nodes in the communications through the shortest paths of the network. To address the problem we propose an artificial bee colony algorithm, which is a swarm intelligence approach inspired in the foraging behaviour of honeybees. In this framework, bees produce new candidate solutions for the problem by exploring the vicinity of previous ones, called food sources. The proposed method exploits useful problem knowledge in this neighbourhood exploration by considering the partial destruction and heuristic reconstruction of selected solutions. The performance of the method, with respect to other models from the literature that can be adapted to face this problem, such as sequential centrality-based attacks, module-based attacks, a genetic algorithm, a simulated annealing approach, and a variable neighbourhood search, is empirically shown.

The biosensor technology has the potential to revolutionize the aquaculture industry, but the selection of tagging method, operational mode (stand-alone vs. wireless systems) and telemetry technology ultimately depends on living species, life stage and research question. In particular, AEFishBIT is a small and stand-alone device composed of a tri-axial accelerometer, a microprocessor, a battery, and a RFID tag that was designed to be externally attached to the operculum. This unique location serves to provide simultaneous measurements of activity patterns (signals of x- and y-axes) and respiratory frequency (z-axis signal) processed by on-board algorithms. The validity of measurements was initially proved in exercised fish in a swim tunnel respirometer, and its use as a reliable tool for the individual monitoring of whole-organism traits in free-swimming gilthead sea bream was tested then in fish facing a wide range of biotic and abiotic stressors. The impact of the tagging method, based on the use of monel piercing fish tags with a flexible heat shrink polyethylene ring, was also evaluated and no signs of growth impairment, operculum damage or gill lamellae haemorrhage were found 10 days post-tagging. The autonomy of the device was 6 hours of continuous recording with re-programmable lag times and recording schedules of 2 min windows at regular intervals along the experimental period (2-8 days). Such procedure underlined a negative linear correlation between fasting weight loss and operculum breaths, becoming respiratory frequency a reliable indicator of basal metabolic rates. Biosensing signals also highlighted the more continuous physical activity and increased respiratory rates of young fish when comparisons were made between one- and three-year old fish. Also, AEFishBIT measurements evidenced a generalized increase of respiratory frequency during severe hypoxia (2-3 ppm), but the individuals classified as proactive fish also shared an increased physical activity for supporting escape reactions in a milieu with low oxygen availability. Likewise, we also observed an overall increase of physical activity with the decrease of tank space availability, which can contribute to establish stricter criteria of welfare in farmed fish. Finally, the reduction of respiratory frequency was a consistent diagnostic marker of the progression of parasitic enteritis in experimentally infected fish with the myxozoan Enteromyxum leei. Altogether, this work constitutes the proof of concept of the use of biosensor technology as a reliable tool for individual fish phenotyping of whole-organism traits in farmed fish, contributing to improve animal welfare and productivity of aquaculture industry., European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No. 652831 (AQUAEXCEL2020, Aquaculture infrastructures for excellence in European fish research towards 2020)., Ramón y Cajal Postdoctoral Research Fellowship RYC2018-024049-I/AEI/10.13039/501100011033

Enniatins (ENs) are emerging mycotoxins produced by Fusarium fungi which are cytotoxic also at low concentrations due to its ionophoric properties. The aim of this study was to evaluate the hepatic toxicity of ENs exposure at different concentrations in Wistar rats through a proteomic approach. Animals were intoxicated by oral gavage with medium (EN A 256, ENA1 353, ENB 540, ENB1 296 μg/mL) and high concentrations (ENA 513, ENA1 706, ENB 1021, ENB1 593 μg/mL) of an ENs mixture and sacrificed after 8 h. Protein extraction was performed using powdered liver. Peptides were analyzed using a liquid chromatography coupled with a quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometer. Proteins were filtered by abundance using Mass Professional Profiler software (Agilent Technologies) and 57 were differentially expressed when compared to the control. In terms of abundance, the liver biomarker Carboamoyl-phosphate synthase showed the highest levels in all conditions employed while actin-1 had the lowest. Bioinformatic analysis using DAVID platform reported acetylation, nucleotide phosphate-binding region:NAD and catalytic activity as the most represented terms. Furthermore, metabolism was the most significant and enriched pathway in Reactome overrepresentation. In conclusion, ENs acute exposure caused protein expression changes related to major cellular processes in rats, hinting its involvement in liver disturbance.

Reconstructing complex network structures from measurable data has become a central issue in contemporary network science and engineering. In this paper, we tackle the reconstruction of the network topology from a set of target betweenness centrality values. This metric evaluates the participation of the vertices in the communication along the shortest paths of the network and it has been widely used as centrality measure in analyzing social networks. In this case, the network reconstruction task is formulated as an optimization problem whose search space consists of all possible subsets of edges linking a given set of vertices. It should be noted that the development of optimization algorithms for tackling combinatorial problems involving betweenness centrality is very challenging, because this measure is notoriously expensive to compute. That is why we have made two innovative design decisions (not explored previously in the literature): firstly, to address the problem by proposing an artificial bee colony algorithm, which is a potent swarm intelligence metaheuristic inspired in the foraging behavior of honeybees and secondly, to incorporate in this proposal recent betweenness centrality update techniques that substantially reduce the number of shortest paths which should be re-computed when a network is changed. Extensive experiments verify that our optimizer can achieve better solution quality than the state-of-the-art metaheuristic for this complex optimization problem and other competing algorithms. We have completed the study of the proposal by evaluating its behavior as tool to reconstruct network topology.

Graphical abstractDisplay Omitted HighlightsWe propose a novel formulation for the MGS problem based on multiple knapsack.The so-conceived MGS problem is solved by a novel GA.The GA embeds an intelligent construction method and specialized crossover operators.We perform a thorough comparison with regards to state-of-the-art algorithms.The proposal proves to be very competitive, specially for large and hard instances. Given a set of positive integers S, the minimum generating set problem consists in finding a set of positive integers T with a minimum cardinality such that every element of S can be expressed as the sum of a subset of elements in T. It constitutes a natural problem in combinatorial number theory and is related to some real-world problems, such as planning radiation therapies.We present a new formulation to this problem (based on the terminology for the multiple knapsack problem) that is used to design an evolutionary approach whose performance is driven by three search strategies; a novel random greedy heuristic scheme that is employed to construct initial solutions, a specialized crossover operator inspired by real-parameter crossovers and a restart mechanism that is incorporated to avoid premature convergence. Computational results for problem instances involving up to 100,000 elements show that our innovative genetic algorithm is a very attractive alternative to the existing approaches.

In this paper, we propose a randomized greedy multi-start algorithm for the minimum common integer partition problem. Given k multisets S 1 , ? , S k of positive integers ( S i = { s i 1 , ? , s ij , ? , s im i } ), the goal is to find the common integer partition T with minimal cardinality, i.e., a unique and reduced multiset T that, for each Si, it can be partitioned into mi multisets Tj so that the elements in Tj sum to sij. This mathematical problem is reported to appear in computational molecular biology, when assigning orthologs on a genome scale or assembling DNA fingerprints in particular. Our proposed metaheuristic approach constitutes the construction of multiple solutions by a new greedy method that embeds a diversification agent to allow diverse and promising solutions to be reached. Furthermore, we formulate an integer programming model for this problem and show that the CPLEX solver can only solve small instances of the problem. However, computational results for problem instances involving up to 1000 multisets (each one with up to 1000 elements) show that our innovative metaheuristic produces very good feasible solutions in reasonable computing times, arising as a very attractive alternative to the existing approaches.

The use of the Hilbert-Huang transform in the analysis of biomedical signals has increased during the past few years, but its use for respiratory sound (RS) analysis is still limited. The technique includes two steps: empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and instantaneous frequency (IF) estimation. Although the mode mixing (MM) problem of EMD has been widely discussed, this technique continues to be used in many RS analysis algorithms.In this study, we analyzed the MM effect in RS signals recorded from 30 asthmatic patients, and studied the performance of ensemble EMD (EEMD) and noise-assisted multivariate EMD (NA-MEMD) as means for preventing this effect. We propose quantitative parameters for measuring the size, reduction of MM, and residual noise level of each method. These parameters showed that EEMD is a good solution for MM, thus outperforming NA-MEMD. After testing different IF estimators, we propose Kay's method to calculate an EEMD-Kay-based Hilbert spectrum that offers high energy concentrations and high time and high frequency resolutions. We also propose an algorithm for the automatic characterization of continuous adventitious sounds (CAS). The tests performed showed that the proposed EEMD-Kay-based Hilbert spectrum makes it possible to determine CAS more precisely than other conventional time-frequency techniques. The performance of the Hilbert-Huang transform for RS analysis is evaluated.EEMD and NA-MEMD are studied as means for preventing mode mixing in RS signals.We propose a number of parameters to assess mode mixing and select EEMD parameters.A high resolution and concentrated EEMD-Kay-based Hilbert spectrum is proposed.The Hilbert spectrum detects CAS more precisely than conventional TFDs.

We address the problem of composing medical crews according to the principles of equity and efficiency.An artificial bee colony algorithm and a local search procedure are proposed for this problem.Bees partially destroy and heuristically construct previous solutions to produce new candidate configurations.The results on three context with increasing difficult levels show the proposal as a tool of choice for the problem. We propose an artificial bee colony algorithm for the problem of composing medical crews with equity and efficiency principles. The objective is to constitute crews of practitioners with different skills and as efficient as possible. The artificial bee colony algorithm is a swarm intelligence model inspired in the foraging behaviour of honeybees. In this framework, bees produce candidate solutions for the problem by exploring the vicinity of food sources. The proposed approach exploits useful knowledge of the problem at this neighbourhood exploration, considering the partial destruction and heuristical reconstruction of selected solutions. We show the effectiveness of our model through an empirical analysis where three different contexts are considered: easy, challenging, and difficult problem cases. The results are compared with those of a genetic algorithm and the current state-of-the-art method for this problem.

The firefighter problem is a deterministic discrete-time model for the spread and containment of fire on a graph. Once the fire breaks out at a set of vertices, the goal addressed in this work is to save as many vertices as possible from burning. Although the problem finds applications in various real-world problems, such as the spread of diseases or hoaxes contention in communication networks, this problem has not been addressed from a practical point of view so far, in the sense of finding a good strategy for the general case. In this work, we develop and compare several integer linear programming techniques and heuristic methods. Random graphs are used for the purpose of comparison. The obtained results shed some light on the challenges for computational tools as caused by graph topology, graph size, and the number of firefighters per iteration, when looking for the best strategy for an a priori unknown graph.

ResumenComo parte del proyecto nacional de Guías de Práctica Clínica (GPC) del Ministerio de Salud, y bajo la coordinación administrativa y financiera del Departamento Administrativo de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (Colciencias), el Grupo desarrollador elaboró una GPC basada en evidencia de novo con base en la más reciente literatura, luego de evaluar la calidad de la evidencia, analizar sus características y formular las mejores recomendaciones para el contexto colombiano. Se utilizó la metodología GRADE, para evaluar los riesgos de sesgos según desenlaces priorizados, y para desarrollar dichas recomendaciones, para dar respuesta a las preguntas prestablecidas y discutidas con el ente financiador. Los miembros del grupo conformaban un multidisciplinario panel, de varias áreas implicadas en la diarrea en niños, y se contó con participación de representante de pacientes y en inclusión de valores y preferencias de madres y padres. En este resumen se presentan las recomendaciones para el diagnóstico y el tratamiento del niño con diarrea en Colombia.AbstractAs part of the Ministry of Health national Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG) project, under the administrative and financial coordination of the of the Administrative Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (Colciencias), the Development Group has prepared a CPG based on the evidence gathered in the most recent literature. The quality of the evidence was then evaluated, along with an analysis of its characteristics, in order to improve the recommendations for the Colombian context. GRADE methodology was used to evaluate the risks and biases according to the prioritised outcomes and to develop these recommendations in order to provide the answers to the questions that were pre-established and discussed with the funding body. The members of the group were professionals from all areas involved in diarrhoea in children. It also included patient representatives also took part, and values and preferences of the parents were taken into account. A summary is presented on the recommendations for the diagnosis and treatment of children with diarrhoea in Colombia.

In this work, we propose a novel constructive method to deal with the unweighted minimum string cover problem. Given a set of strings S, this defiant optimization problem aims to find a minimum set of substrings M from S such that every string in S can be written as a concatenation of the strings in M. This problem has challenging real-world applications, especially in the field of computational biology.The proposed constructive algorithm is composed of two stages that are executed iteratively. The objective of the first stage is to find frequent substrings in S to be included in M. The aim of the second stage is to simplify the set M to try to get a minimal set. Extensive computational experiments reveal that the proposed algorithm is highly effective for solving complex instances involving up to 100 000 strings in S as compared to the current state-of-the-art method.

The ALIBAVA is a compact and portable system for characterization of silicon microstrip radiation detectors. Actually, the ALIBAVA system is conceived to easily characterize multichannel semiconductor detectors, providing high sensitivity to low signals and high speed. The front-end electronics is based on a low noise ASIC with 128 input channels. Beyond its scientific and sensor R&D; applications, the system can also be used in instrumentation lectures at the university teaching laboratories. New features of the system makes it more suitable for its handling by undergraduate and postgraduate students, who will greatly benefit in their instruction by using this system to learn about the properties of microstrip sensors and signal formation in those devices.

AC-coupled silicon strip sensors can be damaged in case of a beam loss due to the possibility of a large charge accumulation in the bulk, developing very high voltages across the coupling capacitors which can destroy them. Punch-through structures are currently used to avoid this problem helping to evacuate the accumulated charge as large voltages are developing. Nevertheless, previous experiments, performed with laser pulses, have shown that these structures can become ineffective in relatively long strips. The large value of the implant resistance can effectively isolate the “far” end of the strip from the punch-through structure leading to large voltages. We present here our developments to fabricate low-resistance strip sensors to avoid this problem. The deposition of a conducting material in contact with the implants drastically reduces the strip resistance, assuring the effectiveness of the punch-through structures. First devices have been fabricated with this new technology. Initial results with laser tests show the expected reduction in peak voltages on the low resistivity implants. Other aspects of the sensor performance, including the signal formation, are not affected by the new technology.

Iterated greedy search is a simple and effective metaheuristic for combinatorial problems. Its flexibility enables the incorporation of components from other metaheuristics with the aim of obtaining effective and powerful hybrid approaches. We propose a tabu-enhanced destruction mechanism for iterated greedy search that records the last removed objects and avoids removing them again in subsequent iterations. The aim is to provide a more diversified and successful search process with regards to the standard destruction mechanism, which selects the solution components for removal completely at random. We have considered the quadratic multiple knapsack problem as the application domain, for which we also propose a novel local search procedure, and have developed experiments in order to assess the benefits of the proposal. The results show that the tabu-enhanced iterated greedy approach, in conjunction with the new local search operator, effectively exploits the problem-knowledge associated with the requirements of the problem considered, attaining competitive results with regard to the corresponding state-of-the-art algorithms.

A test beam telescope has been built using the ALIBAVA system to drive its data acquisition. The basic telescope planes consist of four XYT stations. Each station is built from a detector board with two strip sensors, mounted one in each side (strips crossing at 90°). The ensemble is coupled to an ALIBAVA daughter board. These stations act as reference frame and allow a precise track reconstruction. The system is triggered by the coincidence signal of the two scintillators located up and down stream. The telescope can hold several devices under tests. Each ALIBAVA daughter board is linked to its corresponding mother board. The system can hold up to 16 mother boards. A master board synchronizes and controls all the mother boards and collects their data. The off-line analysis software has been developed to study the charge collection, cluster width, tracking efficiency, resolution, etc., of the devices under test. Moreover, the built-in ALIBAVA TDC allows the analysis of the time profile of the device signal. The ALIBAVA telescope has been successfully operated in two test runs at the DESY and CERN-SPS beam lines.

We propose a hybrid artificial bee colony algorithm for the cyclic antibandwidth problem.We present a computational comparison of different parameter settings.We derive a fine-tuning hybrid artificial bee colony algorithm.The proposal is very competitive with the state-of-the-art algorithm for the cyclic antibandwidth problem. In this paper, we propose a hybrid metaheuristic algorithm to solve the cyclic antibandwidth problem. This hard optimization problem consists of embedding an n-vertex graph into the cycle Cn, such that the minimum distance (measured in the cycle) of adjacent vertices is maximized. It constitutes a natural extension of the well-known antibandwidth problem, and can be viewed as the dual problem of the cyclic bandwidth problem.Our method hybridizes the artificial bee colony methodology with tabu search to obtain high-quality solutions in short computational times. Artificial bee colony is a recent swarm intelligence technique based on the intelligent foraging behavior of honeybees. The performance of this algorithm is basically determined by two search strategies, an initialization scheme that is employed to construct initial solutions and a method for generating neighboring solutions. On the other hand, tabu search is an adaptive memory programming methodology introduced in the eighties to solve hard combinatorial optimization problems. Our hybrid approach adapts some elements of both methodologies, artificial bee colony and tabu search, to the cyclic antibandwidth problem. In addition, it incorporates a fast local search procedure to enhance the local intensification capability. Through the analysis of experimental results, the highly effective performance of the proposed algorithm is shown with respect to the current state-of-the-art algorithm for this problem.

In the current ATLAS tracker modules, sensor bonding pads are placed on their corresponding strips and oriented along the strips. This creates a difference in pitch and orientation between sensor bond pads and readout electronics bond pads. Therefore, a pitch adapter (PA), or “fan-in”, is needed. The purpose of these PA is the electrical interconnection of every channel from the detector bonding pads to the read-out chips, adapting the different pad pitch. Our new approach is to build those PAs inside the sensor; this is what we call Embedded Pitch Adapters. The idea is to use an additional metal layer in order to define a new group of pads, connected to the strips via tracks with the second metal. The embedded PAs have been fabricated on 4-in. prototype sensors for the ATLAS-Upgrade Endcap Tracker to test their performance and suitability. The tests confirm proper fabrication of the second metal tracks, and no effects on detector performance. No indication of cross-talk between first and second metal channels has been observed. A small indication of possible signal pick-up from the bulk has been observed in a few channels, which needs to be further investigated.

Measurement of the Maxwellian-Averaged Cross-Section (MACS) of the Ta ( n , γ ) 181 reaction at kT=30 keV by the activation technique using an innovative method for the generation of Maxwellian neutron spectra is presented. The method is based on the shaping of the proton beam to produce a desired neutron spectrum using the 7Li(p,n) reaction as a neutron source. The characterization of neutron spectra has been performed by combining measured proton distributions, an analytical description of the differential neutron yield in angle and energy of the 7Li(p,n) reaction, and with Monte Carlo simulations of the neutron transport. A measured value equal to 815±73 mbarn is reported for the MACS of the reaction Ta ( n , γ ) 181 at kT=30 keV. The MACS of the reaction Au ( n , γ ) 197 provided by KADoNiS has been used as a reference.

In this work, we tackle the problem of scheduling a set of jobs on a set of unrelated parallel machines with minimising the total weighted completion times as performance criteria. The iterated greedy metaheuristic generates a sequence of solutions by iterating over a constructive heuristic using destruction and construction phases. In the last few years, iterated greedy has been employed to solve a considerable number of problems. This is because it is based on a very simple principle, it is easy to implement, and it often exhibits an excellent performance. Moreover, scalability for high-dimensional problems becomes an essential requirement for modern optimisation algorithms. This paper proposes an iterated greedy model for the above-mentioned scheduling problem to tackle large-size instances. The benefits of our proposal in comparison to existing metaheuristics proposed in the literature are experimentally shown.

In this paper, an artificial bee colony algorithm is proposed to solve the maximally diverse grouping problem. This complex optimisation problem consists of forming maximally diverse groups with restricted sizes from a given set of elements. The artificial bee colony algorithm is a new swarm intelligence technique based on the intelligent foraging behaviour of honeybees. The behaviour of this algorithm is determined by two search strategies: an initialisation scheme employed to construct initial solutions and a method for generating neighbouring solutions. More specifically, the proposed approach employs a greedy constructive method to accomplish the initialisation task and also employs different neighbourhood operators inspired by the iterated greedy algorithm. In addition, it incorporates an improvement procedure to enhance the intensification capability. Through an analysis of the experimental results, the highly effective performance of the proposed algorithm is shown in comparison to the current state-of-the-art algorithms which address the problem.

Charge multiplication in severely irradiated silicon detectors is now a well proven effect that enhances their charge collection and makes them operable up to the doses anticipated for future super-colliders (like the high luminosity LHC at CERN). The effect is well documented but not completely understood. The multiplication is caused by impact ionisation due to hot electrons moving in the high electric field that develops near the junction in the irradiated sensors. The details of the electric field profile in the silicon bulk are not available due to the unknown spatial distribution of the inhomogeneous effective space charge in the hadron irradiated silicon bulk. The gradient of the effective space charge distribution is crucial for the formation of high electric field regions where the multiplication takes place. The electric field might be influenced by the implant forming the n–p junction and by a non-homogenous bulk space charge near the junction. Deep n+ structures (junction) could enhance or reduce the multiplication effect. Also an altered doping gradient (obtainable for example by a graded p-doping between the junction and the p-bulk) could achieve the same results. In order to achieve enhanced charge multiplication in microstrip detectors the junction has been shaped by mean of deep p-doping diffusion and of trenches etched in the silicon bulk and filled with n+ doped polysilicon to create a deep junction. We report here the result obtained with these methods before and after various doses of neutron irradiation.

3D detectors are proposed as an alternative to planar silicon technology to withstand the high radiation environments in planned future high energy physics experiments. Here we review the characterization of double-sided 3D detectors designed and built at CNM and the University of Glasgow. A non-irradiated sensor is characterized in a pion test-beamutilizing the Timepix telescope. The charge collection and detection efficiency across the unit pixel are shown. Area of inefficiency can be found at the columnar electrodes at perpendicular angles of beam incidence while the pixels are shown to be fully efficient at angles greater than ten degrees. A reduction in charge sharing compared to the planar technology is also demonstrated. Charge collection studies on irradiated devices with a Sr-90 source show higher charge collection efficiency for 3D over planar sensors at significantly lower applied bias. The sub-pixel response is probed by a micro-focused laser beam demonstrating areas of charge multiplication at high bias voltages.

This paper shows the simulation results of new p-type strip detectors with trench electrodes to enhance the charge multiplication effect in the irradiated detector. The new design includes baby microstrip detectors (area=1 cm 2 ) with a strip pitch of 80 μm and p-stop isolation structures. The strip has a 5 μm-wide trench along all its length, filled and doped with polysilicon to create a deep N + contact into the material bulk. The trench depth can be varied in order to study the influence of the electric field on the charge multiplication effect in heavily irradiated samples. Some alternative designs have also been studied to establish a comparison between various structures using different technologies. Simulation reproduce the electrical behaviour under different irradiation conditions, taking into account the damage accumulated after irradiation with neutrons and protons with several fluence values. The investigation of these effects provides important indications on the ability of this modified electrode geometry to control and optimise the charge multiplication effect, in order to fully recover the collection efficiency of heavily irradiated microstrip detectors, at reasonable bias voltage compatible with the voltage feed limitation of the CERN SLHC experiments.

Silicon detectors in 3D technology are a candidate for applications in environments requiring an extreme radiation hardness, as in the innermost layers of the detectors at the proposed High-Luminosity LHC. In 3D detectors, the electrodes are made of columns etched into the silicon perpendicular to the surface. This leads to higher electric fields, a smaller depletion voltage and a reduced trapping probability of the charge carriers compared to standard planar detectors. In this article, the signal and the noise of irradiated n-in-p and p-in-n 3D silicon strip detectors are compared. The devices under test have been irradiated up to a fluence of 2×1016 1 MeV neutron equivalent particles per square centimetre (neq/cm2), which corresponds to the fluence expected for the inner pixel detector layers at the High-Luminosity LHC. A relative charge collection efficiency of approximately 70% was obtained even after the highest irradiation fluence with both detector types. The influence of different temperatures on the signal and the noise is investigated and results of annealing measurements are reported.

The problem of choosing a subset of elements with maximum diversity from a given set is known as the maximum diversity problem. Many algorithms and methods have been proposed for this hard combinatorial problem, including several highly sophisticated procedures. By contrast, in this paper we present a simple iterated greedy metaheuristic that generates a sequence of solutions by iterating over a greedy construction heuristic using destruction and construction phases. Extensive computational experiments reveal that the proposed algorithm is highly effective as compared to the best-so-far metaheuristics for the problem under consideration.

Resumen Introduccion Los accidentes de transito ocasionados por conductores que se encuentran bajo el efecto del alcohol constituyen una de las principales causas de accidentalidad y mortalidad vial. Ante este problema, surge la necesidad de definir limites en cuanto al nivel de alcoholemia a partir del cual se pone en riesgo el estado de vigilia necesaria para la conduccion. Objetivos Determinar las concentraciones minimas de alcohol en sangre con las que se altera el estado de vigilia o se genera algun grado de somnolencia que pone en riesgo la habilidad y la destreza al conducir. Metodos Metanalisis de la literatura sobre los articulos publicados entre 1999 y 2009 que evaluaron la conduccion en simuladores despues de la ingesta de diferentes grados de alcohol y en los que se midio la somnolencia que estos grados producen en los conductores. Resultados Se produce mayor somnolencia en los conductores que estan bajo efecto de alcohol. Las diferencias medias estandarizadas (SMD) fueron de 0,81 (IC 95%: 0,54–1,09) para personas con niveles de concentraciones de alcohol en sangre (BAC) menores a 0,05 y de SMD = 1,16 (IC 95 %: 0,93–1,4) para las personas con niveles de BAC mayores a 0,05. En todas las escalas utilizadas para medir somnolencia se corroboro el efecto del alcohol. Conclusiones En todos los desenlaces se evidencio que, independientemente de la cantidad de alcohol en la sangre (niveles mayores y menores de BAC = 0,05), la ingesta de alcohol esta asociada con mayor somnolencia.

Different species of Leishmania are responsible for cutaneous, mucocutaneous or visceral leishmaniasis infections in millions of people around the world [14]. The adverse reactions caused by antileishmanial drugs, emergence of resistance and lack of a vaccine have motivated the search for new therapeutic options to control this disease. Different sources of antimicrobial molecules are under study as antileishmanial agents, including peptides with antimicrobial and/or immunomodulatory activity, which have been considered to be potentially active against diverse species of Leishmania[7,39]. This study evaluated the cytotoxicity on dendritic cells, hemolytic activity, leishmanicidal properties on Leishmania panamensis and Leishmania major promastigotes and effectiveness on parasite intracellular forms (dendritic cells infected with L. panamensis and L. major promastigotes), when each parasite in culture was exposed to different concentrations of a group of synthetic peptides with previously reported antimicrobial properties, which were synthesized based on their naturally occurring reported sequences. Dermaseptin, Pr-2 and Pr-3 showed inhibitory activity on the growth of L. panamensis promastigotes, while Andropin and Cecropin A (with a selectivity index of 4 and 40, respectively) showed specific activity against intracellular forms of this species. The activities of Andropin and Cecropin A were exclusively against the intracellular forms of the parasite, therefore indicating the relevance of these two peptides as potential antileishmanial agents. In the case of L. major promastigotes, Melittin and Dermaseptin showed inhibitory activity, the latter also showed a selectivity index of 8 against intracellular forms. These findings suggest Andropin, Cecropin A and Dermaseptin as potential therapeutic tools to treat New and Old World cutaneous leishmaniasis.

SiGe BiCMOS technologies are one of the proposed options for the front-end readout electronics of the detectors in the middle region of the ATLAS-Upgrade. The radiation hardness of the SiGe bipolar transistors is being assessed for this application through irradiations with different particles. Biasing conditions during irradiation experiments of bipolar transistors or circuits have an influence on the damage and there is a risk of erroneous results. We have performed several irradiation experiments of SiGe devices in different bias conditions. We have observed a systematic trend in gamma irradiations, showing a smaller damage in transistors irradiated biased compared to those irradiated with shorted or floating terminals. These effects have not been observed in neutron irradiations.

Resumen Introduccion Las fracturas costales son muy frecuentes en los traumatismos toracicos cerrados. La mayoria de estos pacientes tienen un dolor importante con los movimientos y con la tos. El objetivo de este estudio es valorar la utilidad de las grapas costales y barras de titanio en la estabilizacion de las fracturas costales. Material y metodos Entre los anos 2008 y 2009, veintidos pacientes con fracturas costales fueron tratados con reduccion abierta y fijacion interna Se definen las indicaciones para el tratamiento. 1) Pacientes con el torax inestable (13 pacientes), 2) Pacientes con dolor o inestabilidad por fracturas costales (6 pacientes), 3) Deformidades traumaticas importantes de la pared toracica (3 pacientes). Los datos se analizaron de forma prospectiva. Se analizaron: edad, mecanismo traumatico, lesiones toracicas y asociadas, datos intraoperatorios, complicaciones y seguimiento. Se describe la tecnica quirurgica. Resultados La mayoria de los pacientes fueron extubados en el postoperatorio inmediato. Todos los pacientes con dolor o inestabilidad mostraron mejoria subjetiva o desaparicion del dolor tras la cirugia. Cuatro pacientes presentaron infeccion de la herida que tuvo que ser drenada. Despues de 3 meses el 55% de los pacientes habia vuelto a su trabajo o a su vida habitual, y a los 6 meses el 91%. Se describen los resultados en cada grupo. Conclusiones La reduccion abierta con fijacion interna de las fracturas costales, en un grupo seleccionado de pacientes, es una buena alternativa. La utilizacion de grapas costales y barras de titanio produce buenos resultados clinicos, su aplicacion es facil y tiene escasas complicaciones.

Nowadays, a promising way to obtain hybrid metaheuristics concerns the combination of several search algorithms with strong specialization in intensification and/or diversification. The flexible architecture of evolutionary algorithms allows specialized models to be obtained with the aim of providing intensification and/or diversification. The outstanding role that is played by evolutionary algorithms at present justifies the choice of their specialist approaches as suitable ingredients to build hybrid metaheuristics. This paper focuses on hybrid metaheuristics with evolutionary algorithms specializing in intensification and diversification. We first give an overview of the existing research on this topic, describing several instances grouped into three categories that were identified after reviewing specialized literature. Then, with the aim of complementing the overview and providing additional results and insights on this line of research, we present an instance that consists of an iterated local search algorithm with an evolutionary perturbation technique. The benefits of the proposal in comparison to other iterated local search algorithms proposed in the literature to deal with binary optimization problems are experimentally shown. The good performance of the reviewed approaches and the suitable results shown by our instance allow an important conclusion to be achieved: the use of evolutionary algorithms specializing in intensification and diversification for building hybrid metaheuristics becomes a prospective line of research for obtaining effective search algorithms.

Resumen Introduccion La accidentalidad vial debe una importante cuota al alcohol. El alcohol no solo altera la capacidad para conducir y reaccionar al trafico, sino que incrementa los riesgos de danos a otros pasajeros y a otros vehiculos, los danos en propiedades, las perdidas en horas laborables, la calidad de vida y las reparaciones. Metodo Revision sistematica de la literatura para evaluar los estudios descriptivos y experimentales que miden el impacto del consumo, la efectividad de las diferentes medidas de limitacion al consumo y las alteraciones producidas por el alcohol en el conductor. Resultados Los accidentes de trafico asociados con el alcohol (ATRA) son la causa aislada mas importante de muertes relacionadas con alcohol en muchos paises. Cada aumento de 0,02% en las concentraciones de alcohol duplica el riesgo de un accidente fatal. La mayoria de accidentes en Colombia ocurren en areas urbanas (75%) y el 53,3% de los muertos son peatones. Se ha mostrado que, adicionalmente, la educacion tiene un impacto enorme en la prevencion de accidentes. Conclusiones Para reducir la accidentalidad relacionada con el alcohol es claro que las restricciones legales tienen impacto, asi como los programas de educacion e informacion. Debe generalizarse el concepto de alteracion en la capacidad para conducir de manera segura y debe pedirse a las autoridades que busquen implementar los conceptos de limitacion legal a la conduccion bajo efectos del alcohol.

Introduction Rib fractures are very common in closed chest injuries. The majority of these patients suffer significant pain with movement and cough. The purpose of this study is to assess the usefulness of titanium rib bars and clips in stabilising rib fractures.