Fractura vertebral torácica en espondilitis anquilosante: importancia de la cuarta columna y consideraciones terapéuticas

Las fracturas por cizallamiento de la columna torácica con afectación de las tres columnas son altamente inestables y requieren fijación quirúrgica para evitar deterioro neurológico. Los pacientes con espondilitis anquilosante (EA) son susceptibles a este tipo de fracturas con traumatismos mínimos. Presentamos el caso de un varón de 72 años con EA que sufrió una fractura de la columna torácica por cizallamiento afectando a las tres columnas. La fractura paso desapercibida y el paciente estuvo durante dos meses sin ningún tratamiento. Sorprendentemente no se produjo lesión neurológica en este tiempo a pesar de realizar deambulación sin ortesis externa. Se propone el concepto de cuarta columna como posible estabilizador en este caso y se discuten las características del manejo diagnóstico y tratamiento terapéuticoShear fractures affecting the three columns at the thoracic spine are highly instable and require surgical stabilization to avoid neurological injury. Patients with Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS) are at risk to sustain this type of fracture even with minor trauma. We present the case of a 72 years old male with AS who suffered a shear fracture of the thoracic spine involving all three columns. The injury was overlooked and the patient did not receive any treatment for two months. Surprisingly the patient did not develop neurological injury although he maintained his daily activities without external support. We propose the concept of fourth column as a stabilizer frame in this particular case and the management aspects concerning diagnosis and therapeutic treatment are discussed

Improved determination of the 1(0)-0(0) rotational frequency of NH3D+ from the high resolution spectrum of the v4 infrared band

The high resolution spectrum of the v4 band of NH3D+ has been measured by difference frequency IR laser spectroscopy in a multipass hollow cathode discharge cell. From the set of molecular constants obtained from the analysis of the spectrum, a value of 262817(6) MHz (3sigma) has been derived for the frequency of the 1(0)-0(0) rotational transition. This value supports the assignment to NH3D+ of lines at 262816.7 MHz recorded in radio astronomy observations in Orion-IRc2 and the cold prestellar core B1-bS.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters 04 June 201

A Rational Expectations Model for Simulation and Policy Evaluation of the Spanish Economy

This paper describes a Rational Expectations Model of the Spanish economy, REMS, which is in the tradition of small open economy dynamic general equilibrium models, with a strongly microfounded system of equations. The model is built on standard elements, but incorporates some distinctive features to provide an accurate description of the Spanish economy. We contribute to the existing models of the Spanish economy by adding search and matching rigidities to a small open economy framework. Our model also incorporates habits in consumption and rule-of-thumb households. As Spain is a member of EMU, we model the interaction between a small open economy and monetary policy in a monetary union. The model is primarily constructed to serve as a simulation tool at the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance. As such, it provides a great deal of information regarding the transmission of policy shocks to economic outcomes. The paper describes the structure of the model in detail, as well as the estimation and calibration technique and some examples of simulations.general equilibrium, rigidities, policy simulations

Generation of new power processing structures exploiting genetic programming

This paper describes the use of genetic algorithms to generate power processing circuits. In order to speed up the algorithm, the fitness of the circuits is evaluated using an explicit integration method based on the 4th order Adams–Bashforth formula. Different combinations of genetic primitives for the crossover and mutation processes have been tested. The algorithm is demonstrated by generating new structures of voltage multipliers, which specifically focus on energy harvesting systems. These systems require low input voltages, usually under the diode threshold value. The Adams–Bashforth method allows to achieve a simulation time that is about five times faster than that of SPICE-based simulations.This work was partially funded by Spanish government project TEC2015-66878-C3-2-R (MINECO/FEDER, UE)

Extending the applicability of an open-ring trap to perform experiments with a single laser-cooled ion

An open-ring ion trap, also referred to as transparent trap was initially built up to perform $\beta$-$\nu$ correlation experiments with radioactive ions. This trap geometry is also well suited to perform experiments with laser-cooled ions, serving for the development of a new type of Penning trap, in the framework of the project TRAPSENSOR at the University of Granada. The goal of this project is to use a single $^{40}$Ca$^+$ ion as detector for single-ion mass spectrometry. Within this project and without any modification to the initial electrode configuration, it was possible to perform Doppler cooling on $^{40}$Ca$^+$ ions, starting from large clouds and reaching single ion sensitivity. This new feature of the trap might be important also for other experiments with ions produced at Radioactive Ion Beam (RIB) facilities. In this publication, the trap and the laser system will be described, together with their performance with respect to laser cooling applied to large ion clouds down to a single ion.Comment: 9 pages, 13 figure

High-speed analog simulation of CMOS vision chips using explicit integration techniques on many-core processors

This work describes a high-speed simulation technique of analog circuits which is based on the use of statespace equations and an explicit integration method parallelised on a multiprocessor architecture. The integration step of such method is smaller than the one required by an implicit simulation technique based on Newton–Raphson iterations. However, given that explicit methods do not require the computation of time-consuming matrix factorizations, the overall simulation time is reduced. The technique described in this work has been implemented on a NVIDIA general purpose GPU and has been tested simulating the Gaussian filtering operation performed by a smart CMOS image sensor. Such devices are used to perform computation on the edge and include built-in image processing functions. Among those, the Gaussian filtering is one of the most common functions, since it is a basic task for early vision processing. These smart sensors are increasingly complex and hence the time required to simulate them during their design cycle is also larger and larger. From a certain imager size, the proposed simulation method yields simulation times two order of magnitude faster that an implicit method based tool such us SPICEThis work has been partially funded by Spanish government through project RTI2018-097088-B-C33 (MINECO/FEDER, UE) and by EPSRC (the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) under grant EP/N0317681/1. The research stay at University of Southampton (UK) has been supported by Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte within the “Programa Estatal de Promoción del Talento y su Empleabilidad en I+D+i, Subprograma Estatal de Movilidad, del Plan Estatal de I+D+I” under grant PRX18/00565