Analysing musical performance through functional data analysis: rhythmic structure in Schumann's Träumerei

Functional data analysis (FDA) is a relatively new branch of statistics devoted to describing and modelling data that are complete functions. Many relevant aspects of musical performance and perception can be understood and quantified as dynamic processes evolving as functions of time. In this paper, we show that FDA is a statistical methodology well suited for research into the field of quantitative musical performance analysis. To demonstrate this suitability, we consider tempo data for 28 performances of Schumann's Träumerei and analyse them by means of functional principal component analysis (one of the most powerful descriptive tools included in FDA). Specifically, we investigate the commonalities and differences between different performances regarding (expressive) timing, and we cluster similar performances together. We conclude that musical data considered as functional data reveal performance structures that might otherwise go unnoticed.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Seismic vulnerability analysis of steel buildings in Bogotá, Colombia

A number of mid-height steel buildings have been erected recently in Bogotá. Their seismic risk might be high, given the new microzonation of Bogotá and the lack of previous studies; remarkably, the response reduction factors were commonly obtained from general recommendations. The objective of this work is to investigate the seismic performance of these buildings. This study is carried out on eighteen representative buildings. All these edifices have plan symmetry and are uniform along their height. Span-length: 6 ¿ 8 m; number of floors: 5, 10, 15. Earthquake-resistant systems: moment-resistant frames, concentrically-braced frames and eccentricallybraced frames (using chevron braces). For each building, eight seismic zones have been considered. The vulnerability has been evaluated by “push-over” analyses. In the moment-resistant frames and in the eccentrically-braced frames the nonlinearities are concentrated in the plastic hinges near the connections; in the concentrically-braced frames the nonlinearities are allocated in the braces.Postprint (published version

Would RC wide-beam buildings in Spain have survived Lorca earthquake (11-05-2011)?

Lorca earthquake (11-05-2011) is most destructive event recorded in Spain, causing nine fatalities and other severe consequences. Its important intensity was rather unexpected, and serious concern arose regarding risk of building stock in Spain. This paper analyzes performance, under Lorca earthquake, of RC buildings with one-way slabs with wide beams. This construction type is chosen for its high vulnerability and for being vastly widespread in Spain. This study is conducted on 3 and 6-story prototype representative buildings. These buildings are designed for three major seismic zones in Spain: low seismicity, moderate seismicity (as Lorca) and medium seismicity (as Granada). Seismic performance under Lorca earthquake is numerically investigated through nonlinear time-history analyses. Results show that buildings designed without any seismic provision (i.e. those in low seismicity zones) do not survive Lorca record, even with cooperation of masonry infill walls. Buildings with seismic design (i.e. those in Lorca and Granada zones) can survive Lorca earthquake only with collaboration of infill walls. To raise reliability of these conclusions, a sensitivity analysis to most influencing parameters is conducted.Postprint (author's final draft

Proyecto TIC en Software Libre : 'Cor-Edux'

"Del Lápiz al Ratón" es el eslogan del Proyecto "Cor-Edux". En este artículo se detalla el Desarrollo del Proyecto llevado a cabo en el Centro de Educación Infantil "Corazón de María" de Palencia, con él se pretende llevar pedagógicamente el ordenador al aula de Infantil

New methodology for calculating damage variables evolution in Plastic Damage Model for RC structures

The behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) structures under severe demands, as strong ground motions, is highly complex; this is mainly due to joint operation of concrete and steel, with several coupled failure modes. Furthermore, given the increasing awareness and concern for the important seismic worldwide risk, new developments have arisen in earthquake engineering. Nonetheless, simplified numerical models are widely used (given their moderate computational cost), and many developments rely mainly on them. The authors have started a long-term research whose final objective is to provide, by using advanced numerical models, solid basis for these developments. Those models are based on continuum mechanics, and consider Plastic Damage Model to simulate concrete behavior. Within this context, this paper presents a new methodology to calculate damage variables evolution; the proposed approach is based in the Lubliner/Lee/Fenves formulation and provides closed-form expressions of the compressive and tensile damage variables in terms of the corresponding strains. This methodology does not require calibration with experimental results and incorporates a strategy to avoid mesh-sensitivity. A particular algorithm, suitable for implementation in Abaqus, is described. Mesh-insensitivity is validated in a simple tension example. Accuracy and reliability are verified by simulating a cyclic experiment on a plain concrete specimen. Two laboratory experiments consisting in pushing until failure two 2-D RC frames are simulated with the proposed approach to investigate its ability to reproduce actual monotonic behavior of RC structures; the obtained results are also compared with the aforementioned simplified models that are commonly employed in earthquake engineering.Postprint (published version

A Bayesian Hyperprior Approach for Joint Image Denoising and Interpolation, with an Application to HDR Imaging

Recently, impressive denoising results have been achieved by Bayesian approaches which assume Gaussian models for the image patches. This improvement in performance can be attributed to the use of per-patch models. Unfortunately such an approach is particularly unstable for most inverse problems beyond denoising. In this work, we propose the use of a hyperprior to model image patches, in order to stabilize the estimation procedure. There are two main advantages to the proposed restoration scheme: Firstly it is adapted to diagonal degradation matrices, and in particular to missing data problems (e.g. inpainting of missing pixels or zooming). Secondly it can deal with signal dependent noise models, particularly suited to digital cameras. As such, the scheme is especially adapted to computational photography. In order to illustrate this point, we provide an application to high dynamic range imaging from a single image taken with a modified sensor, which shows the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.Comment: Some figures are reduced to comply with arxiv's size constraints. Full size images are available as HAL technical report hal-01107519v5, IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging, 201

Relaciones públicas y gabinetes de comunicación

Los gabinetes de comunicación han proliferado por toda la geografía española en los últimos años y han incrementado sus funciones, aproximándose cada vez más al ámbito de las relaciones públicas. Así, los gabinetes se ocupan en la actualidad de las relaciones informativas con los medios de comunicación y, también, de las relaciones institucionales, la organización de eventos, las relaciones con la sociedad en general, la comunicación interna, etc. En definitiva, se trata de satisfacer las demandas de todos los públicos de la organización para la que trabaja el gabinete de comunicación.Offices of communication have proliferated all over Spain in the past years, increasing the range of their functions, until they come closer and closer to the area of public relations. As a matter of fact, these offices deal at present with the informative relations with the mass media apart from the institutional relations, the organization of events, the relations with the society in general or the internal communication, etc. In short, they are in charge of satisfying the demands of the different publics of the organization for which the office works