Bifurcations and aggregation in large scale systems

This paper deals with the following problem: assume that a qualitative analysis (behaviour modes, bifurcation points, type of atractors .•• ) of a nonlinear dynamical system has been carried out and that afterwards this dynamical system is transformed into a large scale system through a disaggregating process of some (or all) of its variables. The problem at stake is to analyze whether the disagaregation gives rise to new behaviour modes, as a consequence of the appearance of new bifurcations in the disaggregated dynamical system. That leads us to study whether the original system and the disaggregated one are "equivalents" or whether the second one is richer in behaviours than the first one.The paper develops general results for standard disaggregation forms. Furthermore, practical applications of the proposed methodology to urban dynamics models is included .Comisión Asesora de Investigación Científica y Técnica (CAICYT) 1102/8

Adding pharmacogenomics to the development of new marine-derived anticancer agents

Nature has always been a highly productive tool in the development of anticancer therapies. Renewed interest in the potential of this tool has recently been sparked by the realization that the marine ecosystem can be used for the discovery and development of new compounds with clinical potential in advanced resistant tumors. These compounds can be incorporated into combination approaches in a chronic therapy scenario. Our marine anticancer program is using the sea to develop new agents with activity in resistant solid tumors and to identify new cellular targets for therapeutic intervention. This review describes the integration of different pharmacogenomic tools in the development of Yondelis™, Aplidin(® )and Kahalalide F, three marine-derived compounds currently in Phase II or III development. Our results are reinforcing the targeted selectivity of these agents and opening the gates for customized therapies in cancer patients in the near future

Footwear bio-modelling: An industrial approach

There is a growing need within the footwear sector to customise the design of the last from which a specific footwear style is to be produced. This customisation is necessary for user comfort and health reasons, as the user needs to wear a suitable shoe. For this purpose, a relationship must be established between the user foot and the last with which the style will be made; up until now, no model has existed that integrates both elements. On the one hand, traditional customised footwear manufacturing techniques are based on purely artisanal procedures which make the process arduous and complex; on the other hand, geometric models proposed by different authors present the impossibility of implementing them in an industrial environment with limited resources for the acquisition of morphometric and structural data for the foot, apart from the fact that they do not prove to be sufficiently accurate given the non-similarity of the foot and last. In this paper, two interrelated geometric models are defined, the first, a bio-deformable foot model and the second, a deformable last model. The experiments completed show the goodness of the model, with it obtaining satisfactory results in terms of comfort, efficiency and precision, which make it viable for use in the sector

A new methodological approach for shoe sole design and validation

Shoe soles are extremely complex to design and manufacture due to their organically shaped but technically precise nature and their manufacturing constraints. Consequently, there is a need for the increased design process flexibility offered by the use of specific CAD methodologies and techniques, to facilitate the work of expert designers and permit effective construction of the three-dimensional elements comprising the complete structure. Recent advances in additive manufacturing systems have extended the possibilities of shoe sole design. These systems can be used to create the final mould and to incorporate dynamic elements that are of particular value in sports footwear. In this article, we present a new methodology for the design and validation of shoe soles. The methodology assists designers in the design concept process and in transfer of the design to manufacturing. The model incorporates both a structural and a functional approach. To this end, a set of specific tools have been developed that can be used to quantify design quality. For example, the model calculates the coefficient of friction or slip resistance, necessary to comply with international standards concerning safety footwear.The financial support of this study comes from IVACE (Instituto Valenciano de Competitividad Empresarial) project: DIHUCA—complex tread designs for footwear soles (IMDEEA/2015/4)

Stereoscopic human interfaces

This article focuses on the use of stereoscopic video interfaces for telerobotics. Topics concerning human visual perception, binocular image capturing, and stereoscopic devices are described. There is a wide variety of video interfaces for telerobotic systems. Choosing the best video interface depends on the telerobotic application requirements. Simple monoscopic cameras are good enough for watching remote robot movements or for teleprogramming a sequence of commands. However, when operators seek precise robot guidance or wish to manipulate objects, a better perception of the remote environment must be achieved, for which more advanced visual interfaces are required. This implies a higher degree of telepresence, and, therefore, the most suitable visual interface has to be chosen. The aim of this article is to describe the two main aspects using stereoscopic interfaces: the capture of binocular video images, according to the disparity limits in human perception and the proper selection of the visualization interface for stereoscopic images

Cable Driven Robot to Simulate Low Gravity and Its Applications in Underwater Humanoid Robots

[Abstract] This paper addresses the main results obtained during the design and analysis of a cable-driven robot able to simulate the dynamic conditions existing in underwater environment. This work includes the kinematic and dynamic modeling as well as the analysis of the tension of the cables along different trajectories. The low-gravity simulator application is novel in the context of cable-driven robots and it is aimed to be implemented in an underwater humanoid robot. Therefore, this work can be seen as a test case of the complementary research contributions of the group of Robotics and Intelligent Machines at CAR in the recent years.The research leading to these results has received funding from the Spanish Government CICYT project Ref. DPI2014-57220-C2-1-P, DPI2013-49527-EXP, the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid project Ref. AL14-PID-15, and the RoboCity2030-III-CM project (Robótica aplicada a la mejora de la calidad de vida de los ciudadanos. Fase III; S2013/MIT-2748), funded by Programas de Actividades I+D en la Comunidad de Madrid and cofunded by Structural Funds of the EUUniversidad Politécnica de Madrid; AL14-PID-15Comunidad de Madrid; S2013/MIT-2748https://doi.org/10.17979/spudc.978849749808

DNS weighted footprints for web browsing analytics

The monetization of the large amount of data that ISPs have of their users is still in early stages. Specifically, the knowledge of the websites that specific users or aggregates of users visit opens new opportunities of business, after the convenient sanitization. However, the construction of accurate DNS-based web-user profiles on large networks is a challenge not only because the requirements that capturing traffic entails, but also given the use of DNS caches, the proliferation of botnets and the complexity of current websites (i.e., when a user visit a website a set of self-triggered DNS queries for banners, from both same company and third parties services, as well for some preloaded and prefetching contents are in place). In this way, we propose to count the intentional visits users make to websites by means of DNS weighted footprints. Such novel approach consists of considering that a website was actively visited if an empirical-estimated fraction of the DNS queries of both the own website and the set of self-triggered websites are found. This approach has been coded in a final system named DNSprints. After its parameterization (i.e., balancing the importance of a website in a footprint with respect to the total set of footprints), we have measured that our proposal is able to identify visits and their durations with false and true positives rates between 2 and 9% and over 90%, respectively, at throughputs between 800,000 and 1.4 million DNS packets per second in diverse scenarios, thus proving both its refinement and applicabilityThe authors would like to acknowledge funding received through TRAFICA (TEC2015-69417-C2-1-R) grant from the Spanish R&D programme. The authors thank Víctor Uceda for his collaboration in the early stages of this wor

Motion planning of a climbing parallel robot

This paper proposes a novel application of the Stewart–Gough parallel platform as a climbing robot and its kinematics control to climb through long structures describing unknown spatial trajectories, such as palm trunks, tubes, etc. First, the description and design of the climbing parallel robot is presented. Second, the inverse and forward kinematics analysis of a mobile six-degrees-of-freedom parallel robot is described, based on spatial constraint formulation. Finally, the gait pattern and the climbing strategy of the parallel robot is described. The information from this research is being used in an actual climbing parallel robot design at Miguel Hernández University of Elche (Alicante), Spain.This paper was recommended for publication by Associate Editor M. Shoham and Editor I. Walker upon evaluation of the reviewers’ comments. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture under Project 1FD1997-1338

GNG based foot reconstruction for custom footwear manufacturing

Custom shoes manufacturing is one of the major challenges facing the footwear industry today. A shoe for everyone: it is a change in the production model in which each individual’s foot is the main focus, replacing traditional size systems based on population means. This paradigm shift represents a major effort for the industry, for which the design and not production becomes the main bottleneck. It is therefore necessary to accelerate the design process by improving the accuracy of current methods. The starting point for making a shoe that fits the client’s foot anatomy is scanning the surface of the foot. Automated foot model reconstruction is accomplished through the use of the self-organising growing neural gas (GNG) network, which is able to topographically map the low dimension of the network to the high dimension of the manifold of the scanner acquisitions without requiring a priori knowledge of the structure of the input space. The GNG obtains a surface representation adapted to the topology of the foot, is accurate, tolerant to noise, and eliminates outliers. It also improves the reconstruction in “dark” areas where the scanner does not obtain information: the heel and toe areas. The method reconstructs the foot surface 4 times more accurately than other well-known methods. The method is generic and easily extensible to other industrial objects that need to be digitized and reconstructed with accuracy and efficiency requirements.This work was partially funded by the Spanish Government DPI2013-40534-R grant, supported with Feder funds, NILS Mobility Project 012-ABEL-CM-2014A, and Fundación Séneca 18946/JLI/13