Computing the Component-Labeling and the Adjacency Tree of a Binary Digital Image in Near Logarithmic-Time

Connected component labeling (CCL) of binary images is one of the fundamental operations in real time applications. The adjacency tree (AdjT) of the connected components offers a region-based representation where each node represents a region which is surrounded by another region of the opposite color. In this paper, a fully parallel algorithm for computing the CCL and AdjT of a binary digital image is described and implemented, without the need of using any geometric information. The time complexity order for an image of m × n pixels under the assumption that a processing element exists for each pixel is near O(log(m+ n)). Results for a multicore processor show a very good scalability until the so-called memory bandwidth bottleneck is reached. The inherent parallelism of our approach points to the direction that even better results will be obtained in other less classical computing architectures.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MTM2016-81030-PMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2012-37868-C04-0

Tripod-shaped penta (p-phenylene)s for the functionalization of silicon surfaces

In order to obtain nanostructured thin films to be used in biosensor devices, several chemical functionalization methods have been developed, such as Click chemistry or Suzuki carbon-carbon coupling reactions on surfaces.1 With the aim to control the orientation and spacing between grafted functional groups on a surface, tripodal oligo (p-phenylene)s have become the ideal anisotropic adsorbates due to their shape-persistent and self-standing characteristics.2 Here we report the synthesis and characterization of several tripod-shaped oligo(p-phenylene)s molecules with legs composed of five phenylene units, compounds 1, 2 and 3. In these structures, each leg is end-capped with an NH-Boc, NH2 and N3 group, respectively. The functional arm contains an acetylene group. The presented synthesis has as key step the Pd-catalyzed Suzuki cross-coupling reaction. In particular, a iodine derivative from the silicon core molecule reacts with the appropriate tetra(p-phenylene) boron derivative, thus generating the final tripod-shaped structure. The azide end-capped leg in 3 is specifically designed for its covalent incorporation on alkynyl terminated silicon surfaces by an easy and reproducible way. As a preliminary study, we present the alkynyl-functionalized silicon wafers nanostructuration with tripod 3 through the cooper catalyzed alkyne-azide cycloaddition (CuAAC) click reaction.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Pharmacological Treatment of Giardiasis

Giardiasis is a disease caused for a myoflagellate protozoan known as Giardia duodenalis, of which varieties have been described and whose morphological characteristics are identical to other species such as G. lamblia and G. intestinalis; considered for various authors as the same species, this protozoan parasites several domestic species including man, but has important relevance in the canine and feline species, due to their zoonotic potential. In recent years, the number of cases of canine and feline giardiasis has increased, not only because it is treated of a cosmopolitan parasite, which is closely related to unsanitary conditions, but also because the conventional treatments for its control and eradication have shown resistance phenomena. It is for this reason and being a parasite of potential zoonotic risk that at present pharmacological tests have been developed in the search for new alternatives for the treatment of giardiasis, especially in the canine and feline species as mentioned earlier

Enhanced Parallel Generation of Tree Structures for the Recognition of 3D Images

Segmentations of a digital object based on a connectivity criterion at n-xel or sub-n-xel level are useful tools in image topological analysis and recognition. Working with cell complex analogous of digital objects, an example of this kind of segmentation is that obtained from the combinatorial representation so called Homological Spanning Forest (HSF, for short) which, informally, classifies the cells of the complex as belonging to regions containing the maximal number of cells sharing the same homological (algebraic homology with coefficient in a field) information. We design here a parallel method for computing a HSF (using homology with coefficients in Z/2Z) of a 3D digital object. If this object is included in a 3D image of m1 × m2 × m3 voxels, its theoretical time complexity order is near O(log(m1 + m2 + m3)), under the assumption that a processing element is available for each voxel. A prototype implementation validating our results has been written and several synthetic, random and medical tridimensional images have been used for testing. The experiments allow us to assert that the number of iterations in which the homological information is found varies only to a small extent from the theoretical computational time.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MTM2016-81030-

On finding widest empty curved corridors

Open archive-ElsevierAn α-siphon of width w is the locus of points in the plane that are at the same distance w from a 1-corner polygonal chain C such that α is the interior angle of C. Given a set P of n points in the plane and a fixed angle α, we want to compute the widest empty α-siphon that splits P into two non-empty sets.We present an efficient O(n log3 n)-time algorithm for computing the widest oriented α-siphon through P such that the orientation of a half-line of C is known.We also propose an O(n3 log2 n)-time algorithm for the widest arbitrarily-oriented version and an (nlog n)-time algorithm for the widest arbitrarily-oriented α-siphon anchored at a given point

Generating Second Order (Co)homological Information within AT-Model Context

In this paper we design a new family of relations between (co)homology classes, working with coefficients in a field and starting from an AT-model (Algebraic Topological Model) AT(C) of a finite cell complex C These relations are induced by elementary relations of type “to be in the (co)boundary of” between cells. This high-order connectivity information is embedded into a graph-based representation model, called Second Order AT-Region-Incidence Graph (or AT-RIG) of C. This graph, having as nodes the different homology classes of C, is in turn, computed from two generalized abstract cell complexes, called primal and dual AT-segmentations of C. The respective cells of these two complexes are connected regions (set of cells) of the original cell complex C, which are specified by the integral operator of AT(C). In this work in progress, we successfully use this model (a) in experiments for discriminating topologically different 3D digital objects, having the same Euler characteristic and (b) in designing a parallel algorithm for computing potentially significant (co)homological information of 3D digital objects.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MTM2016-81030-PMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2012-37868-C04-0

Homological Region Adjacency Tree for a 3D Binary Digital Image via HSF Model

Given a 3D binary digital image I, we define and compute an edge-weighted tree, called Homological Region Tree (or Hom-Tree, for short). It coincides, as unweighted graph, with the classical Region Adjacency Tree of black 6-connected components (CCs) and white 26- connected components of I. In addition, we define the weight of an edge (R, S) as the number of tunnels that the CCs R and S “share”. The Hom-Tree structure is still an isotopic invariant of I. Thus, it provides information about how the different homology groups interact between them, while preserving the duality of black and white CCs. An experimentation with a set of synthetic images showing different shapes and different complexity of connected component nesting is performed for numerically validating the method.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MTM2016-81030-

Exploration and Exploitation in Latin American Firms: The Determinants of Organizational Ambidexterity and The Country Effect

In this article, we explore the determinants of organizational ambidexterity across Latin American countries -Chile, Ecuador, and Peru- from innovation surveys of 2,786 manufacturing companies. The study introduces valuable information on ambidextrous organizations in emerging economies, contrasting to traditional literature frequently focusing on developed countries. Findings confirm the importance to measure ambidexterity in a multidimensional perspective, relating exploration to radical innovation, and breaking down exploitation into incremental exploitation, related to incremental innovation and repetitive exploitation related to operational efficiency. This work also finds that higher GDP per capita relates to higher exploration and exploitation ability of firms and supported our hypotheses that political and economic uncertainty of each country impact on organizational ambidexterity. Additionally, we expand on Diaz-Molina´s model (2018), on the relationship between strategic and operational absorptive capacity on ambidexterity by validating his findings across several countries and uncovering a positive interaction term between strategic and operational absorptive capacity when both impact on ambidexterity

The Role of Absorptive Capacity in Innovation and Productivity in Chilean Companies: An Adapted CDM Model Across Industries

Drawing on an adapted CDM model, we present evidence on the role of strategic and operational absorptive capacity on innovation and productivity across industries in developing economies. Using a pooled cross-sectional sample from Chilean innovation surveys, we find that greater absorptive capacity (ACAP) helps firms to increase their innovative investment and the probability of producing technological innovations, which then increases firms’ labor productivity. Additionally, the effect of the strategic dimension is stronger than the operational dimension aspect, which means that the strategy of reaching these external sources might be more important than the skill of a firm´ internal units to acquire and transform external information. We find that while strategic ACAP is a stronger predictor of investment and technological innovation in both manufacturing and services companies, but operational ACAP has differing effects

Potentialities and limitations of blockchain technologies in the governance of social enterprise collectives: the case of Smart Ibérica

Depto. de Ingeniería de Software e Inteligencia Artificial (ISIA)Fac. de InformáticaTRUEUnión Europea. Horizonte 2020pu