Performance of a day/night water heat storage system for heating and cooling of semi-closed greenhouses in mild winter climate

A novel system for heating/cooling greenhouses based on air/water heat exchangers connected to a thermally stratified water storage tank was tested in a small greenhouse compartment at the Experimental Station of the Cajamar Foundation in Almería, Spain. The system maintained a closed greenhouse (no natural ventilation) throughout the winter and spring during which a truss tomato crop was grown. Atmospheric CO2 concentration could be maintained during the daytime allowing for greater net photosynthesis in relation to a reference greenhouse in which traditional natural ventilation was used to control temperature and humidity. Three fine wire heat exchangers (Fiwihex®) were installed 1 m above the crop when at full development. The heat exchangers allowed for a very efficient transfer of the sensible and latent heat accumulated in the compartment. During the winter, the daytime temperatures were maintained below the ventilation set point (30°C). During the night, the system was able to maintain temperatures above the heating set point (12°C), with stored warm water temperatures between 15 and 17°C after clear days. After cloudy days, with water temperatures between 11 and 13°C, the system could always keep a temperature gradient with the exterior of 4-6°C, enough to maintain greenhouse air temperatures above 8°C the entire night. When seasonal night air temperatures exceeded the heating set point, the hot water at the top of the tank was cooled to the wet bulb temperature by means of an open cooling tower. The cooled water was used for cooling the greenhouse, which allowed for closing the greenhouse for a longer period. The water condensate during the cooling mode, allowed for a high water saving and maintained the relative humidity very constant during the day (around 80%). During the night, humidity was kept at 90% without ever reaching saturation

Radio frequency and DC high voltage breakdown of high pressure helium, argon, and xenon

Motivated by the possibility of guiding daughter ions from double beta decay events to single-ion sensors for barium tagging, the NEXT collaboration is developing a program of R&D to test radio frequency (RF) carpets for ion transport in high pressure xenon gas. This would require carpet functionality in regimes at higher pressures than have been previously reported, implying correspondingly larger electrode voltages than in existing systems. This mode of operation appears plausible for contemporary RF-carpet geometries due to the higher predicted breakdown strength of high pressure xenon relative to low pressure helium, the working medium in most existing RF carpet devices. In this paper we present the first measurements of the high voltage dielectric strength of xenon gas at high pressure and at the relevant RF frequencies for ion transport (in the 10 MHz range), as well as new DC and RF measurements of the dielectric strengths of high pressure argon and helium gases at small gap sizes. We find breakdown voltages that are compatible with stable RF carpet operation given the gas, pressure, voltage, materials and geometry of interest

CIBERER : Spanish national network for research on rare diseases: A highly productive collaborative initiative

Altres ajuts: Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII); Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.CIBER (Center for Biomedical Network Research; Centro de Investigación Biomédica En Red) is a public national consortium created in 2006 under the umbrella of the Spanish National Institute of Health Carlos III (ISCIII). This innovative research structure comprises 11 different specific areas dedicated to the main public health priorities in the National Health System. CIBERER, the thematic area of CIBER focused on rare diseases (RDs) currently consists of 75 research groups belonging to universities, research centers, and hospitals of the entire country. CIBERER's mission is to be a center prioritizing and favoring collaboration and cooperation between biomedical and clinical research groups, with special emphasis on the aspects of genetic, molecular, biochemical, and cellular research of RDs. This research is the basis for providing new tools for the diagnosis and therapy of low-prevalence diseases, in line with the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium (IRDiRC) objectives, thus favoring translational research between the scientific environment of the laboratory and the clinical setting of health centers. In this article, we intend to review CIBERER's 15-year journey and summarize the main results obtained in terms of internationalization, scientific production, contributions toward the discovery of new therapies and novel genes associated to diseases, cooperation with patients' associations and many other topics related to RD research

Seguimiento de las guías españolas para el manejo del asma por el médico de atención primaria: un estudio observacional ambispectivo

Objetivo Evaluar el grado de seguimiento de las recomendaciones de las versiones de la Guía española para el manejo del asma (GEMA 2009 y 2015) y su repercusión en el control de la enfermedad. Material y métodos Estudio observacional y ambispectivo realizado entre septiembre del 2015 y abril del 2016, en el que participaron 314 médicos de atención primaria y 2.864 pacientes. Resultados Utilizando datos retrospectivos, 81 de los 314 médicos (25, 8% [IC del 95%, 21, 3 a 30, 9]) comunicaron seguir las recomendaciones de la GEMA 2009. Al inicio del estudio, 88 de los 314 médicos (28, 0% [IC del 95%, 23, 4 a 33, 2]) seguían las recomendaciones de la GEMA 2015. El tener un asma mal controlada (OR 0, 19, IC del 95%, 0, 13 a 0, 28) y presentar un asma persistente grave al inicio del estudio (OR 0, 20, IC del 95%, 0, 12 a 0, 34) se asociaron negativamente con tener un asma bien controlada al final del seguimiento. Por el contrario, el seguimiento de las recomendaciones de la GEMA 2015 se asoció de manera positiva con una mayor posibilidad de que el paciente tuviera un asma bien controlada al final del periodo de seguimiento (OR 1, 70, IC del 95%, 1, 40 a 2, 06). Conclusiones El escaso seguimiento de las guías clínicas para el manejo del asma constituye un problema común entre los médicos de atención primaria. Un seguimiento de estas guías se asocia con un control mejor del asma. Existe la necesidad de actuaciones que puedan mejorar el seguimiento por parte de los médicos de atención primaria de las guías para el manejo del asma. Objective: To assess the degree of compliance with the recommendations of the 2009 and 2015 versions of the Spanish guidelines for managing asthma (Guía Española para el Manejo del Asma [GEMA]) and the effect of this compliance on controlling the disease. Material and methods: We conducted an observational ambispective study between September 2015 and April 2016 in which 314 primary care physicians and 2864 patients participated. Results: Using retrospective data, we found that 81 of the 314 physicians (25.8%; 95% CI 21.3–30.9) stated that they complied with the GEMA2009 recommendations. At the start of the study, 88 of the 314 physicians (28.0%; 95% CI 23.4–33.2) complied with the GEMA2015 recommendations. Poorly controlled asthma (OR, 0.19; 95% CI 0.13–0.28) and persistent severe asthma at the start of the study (OR, 0.20; 95% CI 0.12–0.34) were negatively associated with having well-controlled asthma by the end of the follow-up. In contrast, compliance with the GEMA2015 recommendations was positively associated with a greater likelihood that the patient would have well-controlled asthma by the end of the follow-up (OR, 1.70; 95% CI 1.40–2.06). Conclusions: Low compliance with the clinical guidelines for managing asthma is a common problem among primary care physicians. Compliance with these guidelines is associated with better asthma control. Actions need to be taken to improve primary care physician compliance with the asthma management guidelines

Searching for Music Using Natural Language Queries and Relevance Feedback

Abstract. We extend an approach to search inside large-scale music collections by enabling the user to give feedback on the retrieved music pieces. In the original approach, a search engine that can be queried through free-form natural language text is automatically built upon audio-based and Web-based similarity measures. Features for music pieces in the collection are derived automatically by retrieving relevant Web pages via Google queries and using the contents of these pages to construct term vectors. The additional use of information about acoustic similarity allows for reduction of the dimensionality of the vector space and characterization of audio pieces with no associated Web information. With the incorporation of relevance feedback, the retrieval of pieces can be adapted according to the preferences of the user and thus compensate for inadequately represented initial queries. The approach is evaluated on a collection comprising about 12,000 pieces by using semantic tags provided by Audioscrobbler and a user study which also gives further insights into users search behaviors.

An Approach to Integrating Query Refinement in SQL

With the emergence of applications that require contentbased similarity retrieval, techniques to support such a retrieval paradigm over database systems have emerged as a critical area of research. User subjectivity is an important aspect of such queries, i.e., which objects are relevant to the user and which are not depends on the perception of the user. Query refinement is used to handle user subjectivity in similarity search systems. This paper explores how to enhance database systems with query refinement for content-based (similarity) searches in object-relational databases. Query refinement is achieved through relevance feedback where the user judges individual result tuples and the system adapts and restructures the query to better reflect the users information need. We present a query refinement framework and an array of strategies for refinement that address different aspects of the problem

Determination of energy and exergy of waste heat in the industry of the Basque Country

The fuel costs and the impacts of energy use on the local environment make it necessary to reduce the consumption of energy of industrial processes. The use of waste heat recovery technologies is an effective way of achieving energy saving and therefore a reduction in energy consumption. In order to assess accurately the potential of waste heat recovery, it is necessary to know in detail the characteristics of the process streams. It is also necessary to examine in depth the different recovery technologies, to be able to integrate the set: waste heat-recovery technology-useful flow. Using the Basque Country industrial database and thermodynamic properties databases, the energy and exergy of waste heat have been determined for 10 industrial sectors of the Basque Country. The sectors have been classified according to their type into gases, liquid effluents and solid product streams, and also according to the temperature levels associated with them. In accordance with available data, energy content of waste heats amounts to 40% of total energy consumption in the industrial sectors of the Basque Country. Making a breakdown for types, we found that 33% of the energy of waste heat appears in the gas streams from combustion equipment, 27% is sensible heat of solid products, 16% is vapour, 11% liquid effluents and the rest appears as radiation, gases or by-products. More than half of this energy content appears at temperatures higher than 523 K. © 1997 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd