Integrated Geomatics Surveying and Data Management in the Investigation of Slope and Fluvial Dynamics

In mountain environments, slope and fluvial dynamics often interact, and their relationship can be investigated through an integrated methodological approach. Landslides are a source of supplying sediments into riverbeds and can interact or interrupt the water course. Water courses can trigger or re-activate slope movements. The complexity of investigating the interaction between the two dynamics needs a complementarity of methods and techniques, combining remote and proximal sensing, geotechnical in situ surveys, and repositories and catalogue datasets. This leads to a synergistic use of all the heterogeneous data from different fields and formats. The present paper provides a literature review on the approaches and surveying procedures adopted in the investigation of slope and fluvial dynamics and highlights the need to improve the integrated management of geospatial information complemented by quality information. In this regard, we outline a geodatabase structure capable of handling the variety of geoscientific data available at different spatial and temporal scales, with derived products that are useful in integrated monitoring tasks. Indeed, the future adoption of a shared physical structure would allow the merging and synergistic use of data provided by different surveyors as well as the effective storing and sharing of datasets from a monitoring perspective

Evaluación y comparación de sistemas de planificación de navegación de robots en entornos dinámicos

Este trabajo aborda un análisis comparativo de diferentes técnicas de planificación de movimientos en entornos dinámicos. Se basa en trabajos anteriores, en los que se desarrollaron dos técnicas de planificación de movimientos para un robot que se mueve en un entorno dinámico. Se trata de técnicas de navegación robocéntricas en las que el modelo del entorno dinámico se basa en el espacio de velocidad-tiempo del robot, donde se representan tanto los objetos estáticos como dinámicos. La primera técnica trabaja sobre un espacio de velocidades bidimensional (velocidad lineal-velocidad angular). Explota la idea de identificar la mejor estrategia en función de la situación en la que se encuentra el robot. La segunda técnica optimiza una función objetivo en el espacio de velocidad-tiempo para obtener comandos óptimos y trayectorias seguras. Además, incorpora la técnica desarrollada en el primer trabajo como heurística para mejorar la toma de decisiones, dando lugar a Strategies-Optimization. Para evaluar el rendimiento de la navegación con dichas técnicas se define una serie de métricas, que permiten seleccionar los mejores parámetros de optimización para cada tipo de escenario. Estas métricas evalúan y comparan los comportamientos en diferentes escenarios, lo que permite tener una evaluación completa de todas las técnicas. Además, en aplicaciones reales los robots tienen que moverse en escenarios tanto de interior como de exterior. Sin embargo, para que los robots construyan un mapa del entorno, se localicen y naveguen utilizan diferentes sensores, debido al tipo de información disponible y a la incertidumbre de cada sensor en cada momento. Esto provoca discontinuidades en localización o incluso pérdida de ello, lo que debe evitarse. En este trabajo se presenta una técnica de localización unificada para entornos de interior-exterior que permite una transición continua entre una zona de la que se dispone un mapa construido con los sensores láser a bordo del robot y una zona que utiliza el GPS para la localización del robot

Cognición y representación interna de entornos dinámicos en el cerebro de los mamíferos

Tesis inédita de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, leída el 07/05/2021El tiempo es una de las dimensiones fundamentales de la realidad. Paradójicamente, los fenómenos temporales del mundo natural contienen ingentes cantidades de información redundante, y a pesar de ello, codificar internamente el tiempo en el cerebro es imprescindible para anticiparse a peligros en ambientes dinámicos. No obstante, dedicar grandes cantidades de recursos cognitivos a procesar las características espacio-temporales de entornos complejos debería ser incompatible con la supervivencia, que requiere respuestas rápidas. Aun así, los animales son capaces de tomar decisiones en intervalos de tiempo muy estrechos. ¿Cómo consigue hacer esto el cerebro? Como respuesta al balance entre complejidad y velocidad, la hipótesis de la compactación del tiempo propone que el cerebro no codifica el tiempo explícitamente, sino que lo integra en el espacio. En teoría, la compactación del tiempo simplifica las representaciones internas del entorno, reduciendo significativamente la carga de trabajo dedicada a la planificación y la toma de decisiones. La compactación del tiempo proporciona un marco operativo que pretende explicar cómo las situaciones dinámicas, percibidas o producidas, se representan cognitivamente en forma de predicciones espaciales o representaciones internas compactas (CIR), que pueden almacenarse en la memoria y recuperarse más adelante para generar respuestas. Aunque la compactación del tiempo ya ha sido implementada en robots, hasta ahora no se había comprobado su existencia como mecanismo biológico y cognitivo en el cerebro...Time is one of the most prominent dimensions that organize reality. Paradoxically, there are loads of redundant information contained within the temporal features of the natural world, and yet internal coding of time in the brain seems to be crucial for anticipating time-changing, dynamic hazards. Allocating such significant brain resources to process spatiotemporal aspects of complex environments should apparently be incompatible with survival, which requires fast and accurate responses. Nonetheless, animals make decisions under pressure and in narrow time windows. How does the brain achieve this? An effort to resolve the complexity-velocity trade-off led to a hypothesis called time compaction, which states the brain does not encode time explicitly but embeds it into space. Theoretically, time compaction can significantly simplify internal representations of the environment and hence ease the brain workload devoted to planning and decision-making. Time compaction also provides an operational framework that aims to explain how perceived and produced dynamic situations are cognitively represented, in the form of spatial predictions or compact internal representations (CIRs) that can be stored in memory and be used later on to guide behaviour and generate action. Although successfully implemented in robots, time compaction still lacked assessment of its biological soundness as an actual cognitive mechanism in the brain...Fac. de Ciencias BiológicasTRUEunpu

Mechatronic Systems

Mechatronics, the synergistic blend of mechanics, electronics, and computer science, has evolved over the past twenty five years, leading to a novel stage of engineering design. By integrating the best design practices with the most advanced technologies, mechatronics aims at realizing high-quality products, guaranteeing at the same time a substantial reduction of time and costs of manufacturing. Mechatronic systems are manifold and range from machine components, motion generators, and power producing machines to more complex devices, such as robotic systems and transportation vehicles. With its twenty chapters, which collect contributions from many researchers worldwide, this book provides an excellent survey of recent work in the field of mechatronics with applications in various fields, like robotics, medical and assistive technology, human-machine interaction, unmanned vehicles, manufacturing, and education. We would like to thank all the authors who have invested a great deal of time to write such interesting chapters, which we are sure will be valuable to the readers. Chapters 1 to 6 deal with applications of mechatronics for the development of robotic systems. Medical and assistive technologies and human-machine interaction systems are the topic of chapters 7 to 13.Chapters 14 and 15 concern mechatronic systems for autonomous vehicles. Chapters 16-19 deal with mechatronics in manufacturing contexts. Chapter 20 concludes the book, describing a method for the installation of mechatronics education in schools

Surface Plasmon Resonance for Biosensing

The rise of photonics technologies has driven an extremely fast evolution in biosensing applications. Such rapid progress has created a gap of understanding and insight capability in the general public about advanced sensing systems that have been made progressively available by these new technologies. Thus, there is currently a clear need for moving the meaning of some keywords, such as plasmonic, into the daily vocabulary of a general audience with a reasonable degree of education. The selection of the scientific works reported in this book is carefully balanced between reviews and research papers and has the purpose of presenting a set of applications and case studies sufficiently broad enough to enlighten the reader attention toward the great potential of plasmonic biosensing and the great impact that can be expected in the near future for supporting disease screening and stratification

Book of abstracts of the 24th Euro Working Group on Transportation Meeting

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G-Quadruplex Aptamer Beacon for Detection of Prostate Cancer Biomarker

The prostate is the major male reproductive gland involved in male fertility and plays an important role in triggering of molecular pathways relevant to fertility success. Unfortunately, in Portugal prostate cancer is the most common cancer type among men, being asymptomatic in earlier stages. Thus, is important early detection of disease. NCL is a multifunctional protein involved in multiple biological processes under both physiological and pathological processes and can have several cellular localizations. Cell surface protein overexpression was found restricted to cancer cells, namely in prostate cancer cells. Thus, we can consider NCL as a potential biomarker for cancer diagnosis and a target for cancer treatment. The AS1411 is an aptamer capable to recognise and binds specifically NCL and have a therapeutic effect on cancer cells through of induction of antiproliferative activity. Beyond its therapeutic use, AS1411 can be used in imaging and diagnostic, particularly on aptasensors development. One of the most relevant characteristics of this aptamer is the ability to fold in a G4 conformation, a secondary structure of nucleic acids. G4 structure confers stabilization to sequence and availability to bind NCL. Thus, in this work is presented the first approach of use AS1411 aptamer to prostate cancer diagnosis, namely through the design of molecular beacon (MB) designated by AS1411N5. Initially, biophysical characterization of AS1411-N5 was done by circular dichroism, nuclear magnetic resonance or fluorometric spectroscopies. Additionally, it was performed microfluidic experiments, to detect NCL using AS1411-N5 in biological samples. The results demonstrated that the proposed AS1411-N5 adopt a G4 structure and it is capable to bind with specificity and selectivity NCL, even in plasma of human patients with prostate cancer.A próstata é a maior glândula reprodutiva masculina e tem um papel importante nas vias moleculares relevantes para o sucesso da fertilização. Infelizmente, em Portugal o cancro da próstata é o cancro mais comum entre os homens, sendo assintomático em estadios iniciais. Assim é imperativo a deteção precoce da doença. A nucleolina (NCL) é uma proteína multifuncional envolvida em múltiplos processos biológicos sob condições fisiológicas e patológicas, podendo ter várias localizações celulares. A sobre-expressão da proteína na superfície das células é apenas encontrada em células cancerosas, nomeadamente as do cancro da próstata. Assim a NCL pode ser considerada como um potencial biomarcador para o diagnóstico e tratamento do cancro da próstata. O AS411 é um aptamero capaz de reconhecer e ligar especificamente a esta proteína, e de ter um efeito terapêutico nas células cancerosas ao induzir atividade antiproliferativa. Além do uso terapêutico, a sequência pode ser utilizada na imagiologia e diagnóstico, particularmente através do desenvolvimento de aptasensores. Uma das características mais relevantes do aptamero AS1411 é a capacidade de adotar a configuração de G-quadruplex (G4), uma estrutura secundária dos ácidos nucleicos. As estruturas G4 conferem estabilização à sequência e capacidade de ligar à NCL quando adota esta estrutura. Assim, neste trabalho é apresentada uma primeira abordagem do uso do AS1411 no diagnóstico do cancro da próstata, nomeadamente através da construção de uma sonda a partir da sequência deste aptamero designado por AS1411N5. Inicialmente foi efetuada a caracterização biofísica do AS1411-N5 a nível da estrutura e interação com o alvo, recorrendo às espectroscopias dicroísmo circular e ressonância magnética nuclear, e ensaios fluorométricos. Adicionalmente foram efetuadas experiências de microfluídica, para o uso do AS1411N5 como sonda de deteção da NCL. Estes resultados demonstraram, que o AS1411-N5adota a estrutura G4 e é capaz de ligar especificamente e com seletividade com a NCL, mesmo em amostras biológicas

Self-care expressions, patterns, and practices of Latinos/Hispanics for the management of Type 2 diabetes

The purpose of this cross-sectional, correlational study was to explore the use of traditional, complementary, and alternative (TCA) self-care expressions, patterns, and practices of Latinos/Hispanics for the management of type 2 diabetes. The target population was adult men and women living in a nonborder, emerging Latino/Hispanic area. Specifically, this study explored the use of herbal remedies, faith-based interventions, consulting traditional healers, and self-medication/self-prescription practices and assessed their association to glycemic control. Leininger's culture care diversity and universality theory and sunrise enabler were used as the conceptual framework. A total of 75 Latino/Hispanic immigrants living in central and western North Carolina were enrolled. Approximately 67% of participants were female and the mean age was 47 years. High levels of hypertension, overweight/obesity, and diabetes-related comorbidities were reported. Glycemic control was poor, as measured by A1C. Limited financial resources and low acculturation levels were reported by the men and women. Sixty-nine percent of the sample reported using herbal/plant products on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis for diabetes self-care. Forty-nine different products were used. The most frequently used herbal remedies were prickly pear cactus (nopale), aloe vera (salvia or sábila), celery (apio), vegetable pear (chayote), cinnamon (canela), cat's claw (uña de gato), Herbalife, beets (betabel), bitter gourd/melon (cundeamor or yerba mora), nin, horsetail (la cola de caballo), and oats (aveno). Forty-one percent of the sample reported using faith-based interventions, such as personal prayer or going to mass/church. Eight percent of the sample consulted with traditional healers, and approximately 15% used self-medication/self-prescription to manage diabetes. Participants reported not communicating the use of TCA modalities with their health care provider. Persons identified reasons for not disclosing this information as: beliefs that American healthcare providers do not believe in or lack knowledge of Latino/Hispanic natural medicine; "it's not relevant"; a translator was required to explain TCA practices; and prior experiences with healthcare providers "being in a hurry" and "not asking questions" of patients. Multiple linear regression analyses were used to examine the association of individual characteristics, cultural and social structure dimensions, and environmental context factors with the use of TCA modalities and with glycemic control (A1C level). The effect of herbal remedies, faith-based interventions, consulting traditional healers, and self-medication/self-prescription on A1C level was examined. Predictors of TCA usage and glycemic control were not found. New knowledge of the emic practices of Latinos/Hispanics for the management of type 2 diabetes was developed. Understanding self-care practices of Latinos/Hispanics and improving provider cultural competency are critical for alleviating diabetes-related health disparities of this population. Study findings inform implications in the areas of practice, education, healthcare systems and policy, and future research to alleviate disparities in access, care, and health outcomes for Latinos/Hispanics with diabetes

Estimating Rayleigh wave particle motion from three-component array analysis of ambient vibrations

Several methods have been proposed in the past years to extract the Rayleigh wave ellipticity from horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratios of single station ambient noise recordings. The disadvantage of this set of techniques is the difficulty in clearly identifying and separating the contribution of higher modes. In most cases, only the fundamental mode of ellipticity can be identified. Moreover, it is generally difficult to correct for the energy of SH and Love waves present in the horizontal components of the ambient vibration wavefield. We introduce a new methodology to retrieve Rayleigh wave ellipticity using high-resolution frequency-wavenumber array analysis. The technique is applied to the three components of motion and is based on the assumption that an amplitude maximum in the f-k cross-spectrum must represent the true power amplitude of the corresponding signal. In the case of Rayleigh waves, therefore, the ratio between maxima obtained from the horizontal (radial-polarized) and vertical components of motion will also represent the frequency-dependent ellipticity function. Consequently, if we can identify the Rayleigh dispersion curves of several modes on the f-k plane, then the corresponding modal ellipticity patterns can also be separated and extracted. To test the approach, synthetic and real data sets were processed. In all tested cases, a reliable estimation of segments of the fundamental mode ellipticity was obtained. The identification of higher modes is possible in most cases. The quality of results depends on the selected array geometry and the signal-to-noise ratio, with a major improvement achieved by increasing the number of receivers employed during the survey. An experiment conducted in the town of Visp (Switzerland) allowed the retrieval of portions of ellipticity curves up to the second Rayleigh higher mode, using two concentric circular array configurations of 14 and 11 receivers eac

Robot Manipulators

Robot manipulators are developing more in the direction of industrial robots than of human workers. Recently, the applications of robot manipulators are spreading their focus, for example Da Vinci as a medical robot, ASIMO as a humanoid robot and so on. There are many research topics within the field of robot manipulators, e.g. motion planning, cooperation with a human, and fusion with external sensors like vision, haptic and force, etc. Moreover, these include both technical problems in the industry and theoretical problems in the academic fields. This book is a collection of papers presenting the latest research issues from around the world