Basic operations and preliminary results on the growth and survival rates of tench (Tinca tinca L.) and lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) in an aquaponic prototype

Este trabajo presenta el manejo básico de un prototipo acuapónico así como resultados preliminares sobre el crecimiento de tencas y lechugas en dicho prototipo. El sistema consta de una instalación de recirculación de agua con cuatro elementos en el siguiente orden de dirección del agua: depósito de peces, del que parten dos ramas: una de ellas hacia un biofiltro, zona de hidropónicos en NFT (“Nutrient Film Technique”) y colector; y la otra hacia la zona de hidropónicos en raíz flotante, que desemboca igualmente en el colector. Los resultados obtenidos durante 66 días de ensayo, criando las tencas a densidades entre 0,68 kg/m3 y 1,19 kg/m3, con raciones diarias entre el 0,8 y 1,23% de la biomasa, un volumen total de la instalación de 2.800 litros con tasa media diaria de recambio de agua del 1,26% y parámetros variables de la misma, con máximos y mínimos, respectivamente, de temperaturas, entre 15 y 25ºC; de nitratos, entre 32 y 105 ppm; y de pH entre 7,3 y 8,25, muestran una elevada supervivencia de las tencas (99,32%) y las lechugas (98%); y la finalización del ciclo de estas últimas alcanzando tamaños comerciales. El control de los parámetros citados, más los niveles de oxígeno, y una instalación sencilla de baja densidad de peces sin dispositivos de separación de sólidos, permitió la regulación óptima del sistema.This paper presents the basic operations of an aquaponic prototype and preliminary results on the growth of tench and lettuce. This prototype consisting in a water recirculating system made up of: fish rearing tank with two outlet pipes, one of this connected to a biofilter, NFT hydroponics device and sump; and the other one, to a raft hydroponic device draining to the same sump. Results showed a high survival rate of tenchs (99,32%) and lettuces (98%), and finalization of vegetative cycle of lettuce with commercial sizes, under the following assay conditions: tench stock densities between 0,68 kg/m3 and 1,19 kg/m3, with daily food rates between 0,88 y 1,23% of fishes biomass, a total system water volume of 2,8 m3 and 1,26% of water reposition daily rate, and water variables parameters between 15 and 25ºC temperature; 32 and 105 ppm of nitrate levels; and 8,25 and 7,3 pH values. Control of the above mentioned parameters, plus oxygen levels in water, maintaining fish at low densities and without solids removal devices, reached the optimum regulation syste

Multi-view gait recognition on curved

Appearance changes due to viewing angle changes cause difficulties for most of the gait recognition methods. In this paper, we propose a new approach for multi-view recognition, which allows to recognize people walking on curved paths. The recognition is based on 3D angular analysis of the movement of the walking human. A coarse-to-fine gait signature represents local variations on the angular measurements along time. A Support Vector Machine is used for classifying, and a sliding temporal window for majority vote policy is used to smooth and reinforce the classification results. The proposed approach has been experimentally validated on the publicly available “Kyushu University 4D Gait Database”

Performance Evaluation of Distributed Mobility Management Protocols: Limitations and Solutions for Future Mobile Networks

Mobile Internet data traffic has experienced an exponential growth over the last few years due to the rise of demanding multimedia content and the increasing number of mobile devices. Seamless mobility support at the IP level is envisioned as a key architectural requirement in order to deal with the ever-increasing demand for data and to efficiently utilize a plethora of different wireless access networks. Current efforts from both industry and academia aim to evolve the mobility management protocols towards a more distributed operation to tackle shortcomings of fully centralized approaches. However, distributed solutions face several challenges that can result in lower performance which might affect real-time and multimedia applications. In this paper, we conduct an analytical and simulated evaluation of the main centralized and proposed Distributed Mobility Management (DMM) solutions. Our results show that, in some scenarios, when users move at high speed and/or when the mobile node is running long-lasting applications, the DMM approaches incur high signaling cost and long handover latency.This work was supported by the Government of Extremadura under Grant no. GR15099 and by the European Regional Development Fund Programme (2014–2020) and the Regional Fund, through Computing and Advanced Technologies Foundation of Extremadura (COMPUTAEX)

The AVA Multi-View Dataset for Gait Recognition

In this paper, we introduce a new multi-view dataset for gait recognition. The dataset was recorded in an indoor scenario, using six convergent cameras setup to produce multi-view videos, where each video depicts a walking human. Each sequence contains at least 3 complete gait cycles. The dataset contains videos of 20 walking persons with a large variety of body size, who walk along straight and curved paths. The multi-view videos have been processed to produce foreground silhouettes. To validate our dataset, we have extended some appearance-based 2D gait recognition methods to work with 3D data, obtaining very encouraging results. The dataset, as well as camera calibration information, is freely available for research purpose

Entropy Volumes for Viewpoint Independent Gait Recognition

Gait as biometrics has been widely used for human identi cation. However, direction changes cause di culties for most of the gait recognition systems, due to appearance changes. This study presents an e cient multi-view gait recognition method that allows curved trajectories on completely unconstrained paths for in- door environments. Our method is based on volumet- ric reconstructions of humans, aligned along their way. A new gait descriptor, termed as Gait Entropy Vol- ume (GEnV), is also proposed. GEnV focuses on cap- turing 3D dynamical information of walking humans through the concept of entropy. Our approach does not require the sequence to be split into gait cycles. A GEnV based signature is computed on the basis of the previous 3D gait volumes. Each signature is clas- si ed by a Support Vector Machine, and a majority voting policy is used to smooth and reinforce the clas- si cations results. The proposed approach is experimen- tally validated on the \AVA Multi-View Gait Dataset (AVAMVG)" and on the \Kyushu University 4D Gait Database (KY4D)". The results show that this new ap- proach achieves promising results in the problem of gait recognition on unconstrained paths

Sistema digital de catalogación y consulta de documentos académicos: Tesis, Tesinas, Proyectos de Fin de Carrera

A digital system has been developed on order to catalogue and consult academic documents: Theses, First Degree Dissertations and Technical Degree Final Projects. The system uses a listing of bibliographical subjects which makes easy the catalogue and search of theses documents. The system guarantees the copyright because the document can be consulted, but they can not be printed or copied on external devices. In addition, a cataloguing and search protocol is proposed in order to the system can be correctly used. This system is available to be integrated in the Web information system of the Library of Córdoba University.Se ha desarrollado un sistema digital de catalogación y consulta de documentos académicos: Tesis, Tesinas y Proyectos de fin de carrera. El sistema incorpora un listado de materias bibliográficas que facilitan la catalogación y búsqueda de los documentos. El sistema garantiza la propiedad intelectual de los autores, porque permite que los documentos sean consultados, pero impiden que sean impresos o copiados en dispositivos externos. Además, se propone un protocolo de catalogación y consulta de estos documentos académicos para que el sistema pueda ser correctamente utilizado. Este sistema está disponible para ser integrado en la página Web de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Córdoba

Expansion of different subpopulations of CD26 −/low T cells in allergic and non-allergic asthmatics

CD26 displays variable levels between effector (TH ≫ TH > TH > Treg) and naïve/memory (memory > naïve) CD4 T lymphocytes. Besides, IL-6/IL 6R is associated with TH -differentiation and asthma severity. Allergic/atopic asthma (AA) is dominated by TH responses, while TH immunity might either modulate the TH -dependent inflammation in AA or be an important mechanism boosting non-allergic asthma (NAA). Therefore, in this work we have compared the expression of CD26 and CD126 (IL-6Rα) in lymphocytes from different groups of donors: allergic (AA) and non-allergic (NAA) asthma, rhinitis, and healthy subjects. For this purpose, flow cytometry, haematological/biochemical, and in vitro proliferation assays were performed. Our results show a strong CD26-CD126 correlation and an over-representation of CD26 subsets with a highly-differentiated effector phenotype in AA (CD4 CD26 T cells) and NAA (CD4 CD26 γδ-T cells). In addition, we found that circulating levels of CD26 (sCD26) were reduced in both AA and NAA, while loss of CD126 expression on different leukocytes correlated with higher disease severity. Finally, selective inhibition of CD26-mRNA translation led to enhanced T cell proliferation in vitro. These findings support that CD26 down-modulation could play a role in facilitating the expansion of highly-differentiated effector T cell subsets in asthma