A Study of Human Balance and Coordination Using a Head Mounted Display

Virtual Reality (VR) is growing with new technologies and applications. The new technologies help the user to feel more immersed in virtual environments, but interaction and immersion is an area that has not been well studied. Immersion is the feeling and reaction of users while they are in a virtual environment. This investigation is focused on the study of the human balance and coordination when human subjects are inside a virtual environment. Over 60 subjects are studied under an experiment, where their trajectory is captured and analyzed to identify possible differences or similitudes between male and female subjects

Video design adaptation to youtube advertising formats

Este trabajo en curso analiza cómo diferentes diseños publicitarios en términos de arousal (intensidad emocional) pueden contribuir a mejorar la efectividad de la video publicidad online. La literatura previa sugiere que un final con alto arousal puede incrementar la efectividad publicitaria. Para comprobar esta proposición, nuestra investigación combina diferentes metodologías: neurociencia aplicada al comportamiento del consumidor; un estudio de campo basado en una campaña publicitaria en YouTube y un estudio final. Los primeros resultados sugieren que el diseño publicitario ha de adaptarse a los nuevos formatos de video publicidad interactiva en función de los objetivos de los anunciantes.This work in progress analyzes how different arousal advertising design may enhance online video advertising effectiveness. Previous research suggests that arousing ending designs could increase ad effectiveness. To test this proposition, our research combines different methodologies: a consumer neuroscience pretest is used to identify high and low arousal sequences; a field study based on a YouTube ad campaign is used as an exploratory study which helps to determine the experimental scenarios to be used in the final study with a large sample size. Preliminary results suggest that ad design need to be adapted to new formats of interactive advertising depending on the advertisers’ goals

Characterization of the TiSiO4 structure and its pressure-induced phase transformations: density functional theory study

Theoretical investigations concerning the possible titanium silicate polymorphs have been performed using density functional theory at B3LYP level. Total-energy calculations and geometry optimizations have been carried out for all phases involved. The following sequence of pressure-driven structural transitions has been found: CrVO4 -type, Cmcm in parenthesis the transition pressure , → zircon-type, I41 / amd 0.8 GPa , → scheelite-type, I41 / a 3.8 GPa . At higher pressure the last phase is found to be stable at least up to 25 GPa. The equation of state of the different polymorphs is also reported. We found that the highest bulk modulus corresponds to the zircon and scheelite phases with values of 248 and 238 GPa, respectively. The orthorhombic Cmcm phase is the most compressible of all the studied structures with a bulk modulus of 124 GPa, being also the most stable phase at ambient pressure. Finally, calculations of the electronic structure, vibrational and dielectric properties of TiSiO4 are also reporte

CTZS Thin Films Grown by a Sequential Deposition of Precursors

A comparative study of the structural, optical and morphological properties of Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) thin films prepared by two different techniques was performed. One consists of sequential evaporation of the elemental metallic precursors under a flux of sulphur supplied by evaporation from an effusion cell (physical vapor deposition-PVD) and the second one is a solution-based chemical route where thin layers of CuS, SnS and ZnS are deposited sequentially by diffusion membrane- assisted chemical bath deposition techniques; the membranes are used to optimize the kinetic growth through a moderate control of the release of the metal into CBD solution by osmosis. The present comparative study is helpful to the synthesis of kesterite nanostructured thin films.Comment: Published 201

The size distribution of employment centers within the US Metropolitan Areas

This study tackles the description of the size distribution of urban employment centers or, in other words, the size of areas within cities with significantly high densities of workers. Certainly, there exists a branch of urban economics that has paid substantial attention to urban employment centers, but the efforts have been focused on identification methodologies. In this paper we build on such body of research and combine it with insights from the latest contributions in the sister subfield of city size distributions to push the agenda forward in terms of the understanding of these phenomena. We consider the 359 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the United States in the year 2000 and reach three main conclusions: First, employment center sizes are more unevenly distributed than city sizes; second, the two functions that best describe city size distributions, namely the lognormal and the double Pareto-lognormal, also offer a good fit for the case of centers, particularly the latter; and third, several interesting statistically significant relationships (correlations) between variables related to centers and MSAs are deduced. Further experiments with a different technique of center identification suggest that the results are fairly robust to the method of choice. </jats:p

Efficient online update of model predictive control in embedded systems using first-order methods

Model Predictive Control (MPC) is typically characterized for being computationally demanding, as it requires solving optimization problems online; a particularly relevant point when considering its implementation in embedded systems. To reduce the computational burden of the optimization algorithm, most solvers perform as many offline operations as possible, typically performing the computation and factorization of its expensive matrices offline and then storing them in the embedded system. This improves the efficiency of the solver, with the disadvantage that online changes on some of the ingredients of the MPC formulation require performing these expensive computations online. This article presents an efficient algorithm for the factorization of the key matrix used in several first-order optimization methods applied to linear MPC formulations, allowing its prediction model and cost function matrices to be updated online at the expense of a small computational cost. We show results comparing the proposed approach with other solvers from the literature applied to a linear time-varying system.Comment: (6 pages, 2 figures

CVD and oxidative stress

Nowadays, it is known that oxidative stress plays at least two roles within the cell, the generation of cellular damage and the involvement in several signaling pathways in its balanced normal state. So far, a substantial amount of time and effort has been expended in the search for a clear link between cardiovascular disease (CVD) and the effects of oxidative stress. Here, we present an overview of the different sources and types of reactive oxygen species in CVD, highlight the relationship between CVD and oxidative stress and discuss the most prominent molecules that play an important role in CVD pathophysiology. Details are given regarding common pharmacological treatments used for cardiovascular distress and how some of them are acting upon ROS-related pathways and molecules. Novel therapies, recently proposed ROS biomarkers, as well as future challenges in the field are addressed. It is apparent that the search for a better understanding of how ROS are contributing to the pathophysiology of CVD is far from over, and new approaches and more suitable biomarkers are needed for the latter to be accomplished

Efficient implementation of MPC for tracking using ADMM by decoupling its semi-banded structure

Model Predictive Control (MPC) for tracking formulation presents numerous advantages compared to standard MPC, such as a larger domain of attraction and recursive feasibility even when abrupt changes in the reference are produced. As a drawback, it includes some extra decision variables in its related optimization problem, leading to a semi-banded structure that differs from the banded structure encountered in standard MPC. This semi-banded structure prevents the direct use of the efficient algorithms available for banded problems. To address this issue, we present an algorithm based on the alternating direction method of multipliers that explicitly takes advantage of the underlying semi-banded structure of the MPC for tracking