Introductory Chapter: Earthquakes - Impact, Community Vulnerability, and Resilience

This book is a collection of scientific papers on earthquake preparedness, vulnerability, resilience, and risk assessment. Using case studies from various countries, chapters cover topics ranging from early warning systems and risk perception to long-term effects of earthquakes on vulnerable communities and the science of seismology, among others. This volume is a valuable resource for researchers, students, non-governmental organizations, and key decision-makers involved in earthquake disaster management systems at national, regional, and local levels

Colour Contrast Occurrence matrix: a vector and perceptual texture feature

International audienceTexture discrimination was the second more important task studied after colour perception and characterization.Nevertheless, few works explore the colour extension of these works and none for vectorial processing ofthis important visual information. In this work we propose a novel and vector processing for colour texturecharacterization, the color contrast occurrence matrix C2O. This new texture feature is based on the colourdierence assessment. To be link to the human perception, the colour dierence is expressed using a perceptualdistance expressed in CIELab and two angles characterizing the chromaticity and darker or lighter direction.Through this new attribute, we analyze the stability to changes in illumination, viewpoint and spectrum of thelight source in front of dierent texture image databases . Thanks to our construction, we avoid the main limit ofexisting texture features requiring an initial colour quantization or a binarization inside the texture construction.Keeping the small local contrast, we obtain a more accurate texture feature description explaining the obtainedresults. Then we carry out the construction of a features vector by occurrence quantization, keeping the initialideas of Julesz, Haralick and Ojala, for the classication purposes. The results show best correct classicationpercentages in databases that with important spatio-chromatic complexity as ALOT

Optical absorption coefficient of different tortillas by photoacoustic spectroscopy

The color of the tortilla is one of the properties that determine the purchasing decision and acceptance for the consumer. This sensory attribute is altered, when making tortillas with elements to improve digestion and nutrition. Therefore, the objective of this investigation was to determine some information about the color in different types of tortilla found in the commercial market in gEcatepec, Edo de Mexicoh. Optical absorption coefficients (β) were obtained from them by photoacoustic spectroscopy technique of closed cell, one of the photothermal techniques. Optical absorption spectra of each tortilla were recorded by means of photoacoustic spectroscopy (PAS) in the 350 to 700 nm range. Thirteen types of tortillas were evaluated, the experimental unit comprised three tortillas, among which one tortilla was selected at random for each repetition. The β values were determined from the photoacoustic (PA) signals amplitude and using the Rosencwaig and Gersho model. Data was subjected to variance analysis (ANOVA) using the SAS GLM procedures. The ANOVA revealed significant (p . 0.05) differences among tortillas. The results were analyzed statistically and correlated with preferences of a group of people in the same area, when a sensory test was applied; the test evaluated the color attribute by using the hedonic scale.Key words: Tortilla, color, optical absorption coefficient, photoacoustic spectroscopy, sensory evaluation

Análisis de una Red Científica en México

Este artículo muestra los resultados de un análisis cuantitativo en la Red Ambiental (REMA) del Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN), que es la mayor universidad tecnológica en México, utilizando la teoría de redes. Se analizaron tres atributos de centralidad: grado, centralidad de intermediación y coeficiente de agrupamiento. Se estudió la forma de trabajo científico de 231 investigadores miembros de la REMA, considerando co-autorías en la producción científica de los artículos, libros, capítulos de libros y tesis dirigidas desde el periodo de 2009 a 2011. El software que se utilizó fue la versión 2.8.3 de Cytoscape. Se concluye que la red tiene una conformación de islas, lo que significa que no hay trabajo entre los centros de investigación de la supuesta red. Los investigadores con el grado más alto y el más alto nivel de centralidad de intermediación reportan un coeficiente de agrupamiento de “0”, lo que significa que los investigadores trabajan individualmente. Se sugiere que la Institución debe modificar sus políticas de asignación de recursos, con el fin de promover el trabajo colaborativo. Nuestros resultados son similares a otros estudios en México

Biquaternionic Reformulation of a Fractional Monochromatic Maxwell System

In this work we propose a biquaternionic reformulation of a fractional monochromatic Maxwell system. Additionally, some examples are given to illustrate how the quaternionic fractional approach emerges in linear hydrodynamic and elasticity

Equilibrating the recognition of the minority Class in the imbalance context

In pattern recognition, it is well known that the classifier performance depends on the classification rule and the complexities presented in the data sets (such as class overlapping, class imbalance, outliers, high-dimensional data sets among others). In this way, the issue of class imbalance is exhibited when one class is less represented with respect to the other classes. If the classifier is trained with imbalanced data sets, the natural tendency is to recognize the samples included in the majority class, ignoring the minority classes. This situation is not desirable because in real problems it is necessary to recognize the minority class more without sacrificing the precision of the majority class. In this work we analyze the behaviour of four classifiers taking into a count a relative balance among the accuracy classes

Bochner-Martinelli formula in superspace

In a series of recent papers, a harmonic and hypercomplex function theory in superspace has been established and amply developed. In this paper, we address the problem of establishing Cauchy integral formulae in the framework of Hermitian Clifford analysis in superspace. This allows us to obtain a successful extension of the classical Bochner-Martinelli formula to superspace by means of the corresponding projections on the space of spinor-valued superfunctions.Comment: 29 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1804.0096

Bus Rapid Transit Systems Road Safety: A Case Study of Mexico City

The book chapter presents a statistical analysis of historical data of bus rapid transit (BRT) lines A&B accidents that have occurred in Mexico City from 2005 to 2015. Some of the key conclusions are the following: (a) 484 accidents have occurred when considering both lines A and B. The most critical years have been 2008, 2011 and 2012; the least critical year, on the other hand, has been 2010; (b) overall, the frequency of accident occurrence has been decreasing in both lines; (c) the most critical seasons of the year have been the following: autumn (27.7% in line A) and winter (32% in line B); (d) the frequency of accidents increases when approaching the end of the week (Thursday and Friday) and the frequency of accidents decreases sharply at weekends; (e) 48.28 and 54.47% of accidents have occurred at the three peak (i.e. morning, afternoon, evening/night) in lines A and B, respectively; (f) 64.8% (22/73) of pedestrians have been killed when collided with the BRT buses; and (g) the most critical section of the BRT lane has been identified with 38 (11.87%) accidents and for the case of line A. Future work includes statistical significance tests on the data