A Cholinergic Synaptically Triggered Event Participates in the Generation of Persistent Activity Necessary for Eye Fixation

An exciting topic regarding integrative properties of the nervous system is how transient motor commands or brief sensory stimuli are able to evoke persistent neuronal changes, mainly as a sustained, tonic action potential firing. A persisting firing seems to be necessary for postural maintenance after a previous movement. We have studied in vitro and in vivo the generation of the persistent neuronal activity responsible for eye fixation after spontaneous eye movements. Rat sagittal brainstem slices were used for the intracellular recording of prepositus hypoglossi (PH) neurons and their synaptic activation from nearby paramedian pontine reticular formation (PPRF) neurons. Single electrical pulses applied to the PPRF showed a monosynaptic glutamatergic projection on PH neurons, acting on AMPA-kainate receptors. Train stimulation of the PPRF area evoked a sustained depolarization of PH neurons exceeding (by hundreds of milliseconds) stimulus duration. Both duration and amplitude of this sustained depolarization were linearly related to train frequency. The train-evoked sustained depolarization was the result of interaction between glutamatergic excitatory burst neurons and cholinergic mesopontine reticular fibers projecting onto PH neurons, because it was prevented by slice superfusion with cholinergic antagonists and mimicked by cholinergic agonists. As expected, microinjections of cholinergic antagonists in the PH nucleus of alert behaving cats evoked a gaze-holding deficit consisting of a re-centering drift of the eye after each saccade. These findings suggest that a slow, cholinergic, synaptically triggered event participates in the generation of persistent activity characteristic of PH neurons carrying eye position signals.Unión Europea Grants BI04-CT98-0546España, Ministerio de Ciencia PB98-0011, BFI2000-00936, BFI2000-1190, y BFI2002-0137

Fully Discrete Approximations to the Time-Dependent Navier–Stokes Equations with a Projection Method in Time and Grad-Div Stabilization

This paper studies fully discrete approximations to the evolutionary Navier{ Stokes equations by means of inf-sup stable H1-conforming mixed nite elements with a grad-div type stabilization and the Euler incremental projection method in time. We get error bounds where the constants do not depend on negative powers of the viscosity. We get the optimal rate of convergence in time of the projection method. For the spatial error we get a bound O(hk) for the L2 error of the velocity, k being the degree of the polynomials in the velocity approximation. We prove numerically that this bound is sharp for this method.MINECO grant MTM2016-78995-P (AEI)Junta de Castilla y León grant VA024P17Junta de Castilla y León grant VA105G18MINECO grant MTM2015-65608-

Fully Discrete Approximations to the Time-Dependent Navier–Stokes Equations with a Projection Method in Time and Grad-Div Stabilization

This paper studies fully discrete approximations to the evolutionary Navier{ Stokes equations by means of inf-sup stable H1-conforming mixed nite elements with a grad-div type stabilization and the Euler incremental projection method in time. We get error bounds where the constants do not depend on negative powers of the viscosity. We get the optimal rate of convergence in time of the projection method. For the spatial error we get a bound O(hk) for the L2 error of the velocity, k being the degree of the polynomials in the velocity approximation. We prove numerically that this bound is sharp for this method.MINECO grant MTM2016-78995-P (AEI)Junta de Castilla y León grant VA024P17Junta de Castilla y León grant VA105G18MINECO grant MTM2015-65608-

Grad-div stabilization for the time-dependent Boussinesq equations with inf-sup stable finite elements

In this paper we consider inf-sup stable nite element discretizations of the evolutionary Boussinesq equations with a grad-div type stabilization. We prove error bounds for the method with constants independent on the Rayleigh numbersMINECO grant MTM2016-78995-P (AEI)Junta de Castilla y León grant VA024P17Junta de Castilla y León grant VA105G18MINECO grant MTM2015-65608-

Signals and Systems Students trainer.

Higher education students demand fast feedback about their assignments and the opportunity to repeat them in case they do in a wrong way. Here a computer based trainer for Signals and Systems students is presented. An application, that automatically generates and assesses thousands of numerically different versions of several Signals and Systems problems have been developed. This applet guides the students to find the solution and automatically assesses and grades the students proposed solution. The students can use the application to practice in solving several types of Signals and Systems basic problems. After selecting the problem type, the student introduces a seed and the application generates a numerical version of the selected problem. Then the application presents a sequence of questions that the students must solve and the application automatically assess their answers. After solving a given problem, the students can repeat the same numerical variation of the problem by introducing the same seed to the application. In this way, they can review their solution with the help of the hints given by the application for wrong solutions. This application can also be used as an automatic assessment tool by the instructor. When the assessment is made in a controlled environment (examination classroom or laboratory) the instructor can use the same seed for all students. Otherwise, different seeds can be assigned to different students and in this way they solve different numerical variation of the proposed problem, so cheating becomes an arduous task. Given a problem type, the mathematical or conceptual difficulty of the problem can vary depending on the numerical values of the parameters of the problem. The application permits to easily select groups of seeds that yield to numerical variations with similar mathematical or conceptual difficulty. This represents an advantage over a randomised task assignment where students are asked to solve tasks with different difficulty

Model Based Development of Quality-Aware Software Services

Modelling languages and development frameworks give support for functional and structural description of software architectures. But quality-aware applications require languages which allow expressing QoS as a first-class concept during architecture design and service composition, and to extend existing tools and infrastructures adding support for modelling, evaluating, managing and monitoring QoS aspects. In addition to its functional behaviour and internal structure, the developer of each service must consider the fulfilment of its quality requirements. If the service is flexible, the output quality depends both on input quality and available resources (e.g., amounts of CPU execution time and memory). From the software engineering point of view, modelling of quality-aware requirements and architectures require modelling support for the description of quality concepts, support for the analysis of quality properties (e.g. model checking and consistencies of quality constraints, assembly of quality), tool support for the transition from quality requirements to quality-aware architectures, and from quality-aware architecture to service run-time infrastructures. Quality management in run-time service infrastructures must give support for handling quality concepts dynamically. QoS-aware modeling frameworks and QoS-aware runtime management infrastructures require a common evolution to get their integration

Vigilancia global y formas de resistencia

Depto. de Sociología: Metodología y TeoríaFac. de Ciencias Políticas y SociologíaTRUEpu

Automatic Lesser Kestrel’s Gender Identification using Video Processing

Traditionally, animal surveillance is a common task for biologists. However, this task is often accompanied by the inspection of huge amounts of video. In this sense, this paper proposes an automatic video processing algorithm to identify the gender of a kestrel species. It is based on optical flow and texture analysis. This algorithm makes it possible to identify the important information and therefore, minimizing the analysis time for biologists. Finally, to validate this algorithm, it has been tested against a set of videos, getting good classification results.Junta de Andalucía P10-TIC-570