7,696 research outputs found

    System dynamics modelling in systems biology and applications in pharmacology

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    El modelado matemático de sistemas biológicos complejos es uno de los temas clave en la Biología de Sistemas y varios métodos computacionales basados ​​en la simulación computarizada han sido aplicados hasta ahora para determinar el comportamiento de los sistemas no lineales. La Dinamica de Sistemas es una metodología de modelado intuitivo basada en el razonamiento cualitativo por el cual un modelo conceptual se puede describir como un conjunto de relaciones de causa y efecto entre las variables de un sistema. A partir de esta estructura, es posible obtener un conjunto de ecuaciones dinámicas que describan cuantitativamente el comportamiento del sistema. Centrándose en los sistemas farmacológicos, el modelado compartimental a menudo se utiliza para resolver un amplio espectro de problemas relacionados con la distribución de materiales en los sistemas vivos en la investigación, el diagnóstico y la terapia en todo el cuerpo, los órganos y los niveles celulares. En este artículo presentamos la metodología de modelado de Dinámica del Sistema y su aplicación al modelado de un modelo compartimental farmacocinético-farmacodinámico del efecto de profundidad anestésica en pacientes sometidos a intervenciones quirúrgicas, derivando un modelo de simulación en el entorno de simulación orientada a objetos OpenModelica. La Dinamica de Sistemas se puede ver como una herramienta educativa poderosa y fácil de usar y en la enseñanza de Biología de Sistemas.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

    Bank lending, financing constraints and SME investment

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    SME investment opportunities depend on the level of financing constraints that firms face. Earlier research has mainly focused on the controversial argument that cash flow-investment correlations increase with the level of these constraints. We focus on bank loans rather than cash flow. Our results show that investment is sensitive to bank loans for unconstrained firms but not for constrained firms, and trade credit predicts investment, but only for constrained firms. We also find that unconstrained firms use bank loans to finance trade credit provided to other firms. Our results illustrate alternative mechanisms that firms employ both as borrowers and lenders.Bank loans ; Investments

    On the exceptional set in Nevanlinna's second fundamental theorem in the unit disc

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    A general example of an analytic function in the unit disc possessing an exceptional set in Nevanlinna's second fundamental theorem is built. It is used to show that some conditions on the size of the exceptional set are sharp, extending analogous results for meromorphic functions in the plane

    Early forest fire detection by vision-enabled wireless sensor networks

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    Wireless sensor networks constitute a powerful technology particularly suitable for environmental monitoring. With regard to wildfires, they enable low-cost fine-grained surveillance of hazardous locations like wildland-urban interfaces. This paper presents work developed during the last 4 years targeting a vision-enabled wireless sensor network node for the reliable, early on-site detection of forest fires. The tasks carried out ranged from devising a robust vision algorithm for smoke detection to the design and physical implementation of a power-efficient smart imager tailored to the characteristics of such an algorithm. By integrating this smart imager with a commercial wireless platform, we endowed the resulting system with vision capabilities and radio communication. Numerous tests were arranged in different natural scenarios in order to progressively tune all the parameters involved in the autonomous operation of this prototype node. The last test carried out, involving the prescribed burning of a 95 x 20-m shrub plot, confirmed the high degree of reliability of our approach in terms of both successful early detection and a very low false-alarm rate. Journal compilationMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación TEC2009-11812, IPT-2011-1625-430000Office of Naval Research (USA) N000141110312Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico e Industrial IPC-2011100

    Oligodendroglioma anaplásico en el nervio óptico de un perro

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    Los gliomas son tumores no neuronales del tejido nervioso. En el Sistema Nervioso Central (SNC) dependiendo de su origen se clasifican en astrocitomas, oligodendrogliomas, tumores mixtos (oligoastrocitomas), ependimomas y papilomas de plexos coroideos. La retina y el nervio óptico pertenecen al SNC. Aunque las neoplasias primarias de la retina y el nervio óptico son bastante infrecuentes, son los meningiomas los tumores primarios más comunes siendo los gliomas más raros

    Reliability analysis for the quench detection in the LHC machine

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    The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will incorporate a large amount of superconducting elements that require protection in case of a quench. Key elements in the quench protection system are the electronic quench detectors. Their reliability will have an important impact on the down time as well as on the operational cost of the collider. The expected rates of both false and missed quenches have been computed for several redundant detection schemes. The developed model takes account of the maintainability of the system to optimise the frequency of foreseen checks, and evaluate their influence on the performance of different detection topologies. Seen the uncertainty of the failure rate of the components combined with the LHC tunnel environment, the study has been completed with a sensitivity analysis of the results. The chosen detection scheme and the maintainability strategy for each detector family are given

    On a new NBUE property in multivariate sense: an application

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    Since multivariate lifetime data frequently occur in applications, various properties of multivariate distributions have been previously considered to model and describe the main concepts of aging commonly considered in the univariate setting. The generalization of univariate aging notions to the multivariate case involves, among other factors, appropriate definitions of multivariate quantiles and related notions, which are able to correctly describe the intrinsic characteristics of the concepts of aging that should be generalized, and which provide useful tools in the applications. A new multivariate version of the well-known New Better than Used in Expectation univariate aging notion is provided, by means of the concepts of the upper corrected orthant and multivariate excess-wealth function. Some of its properties are described, with particular attention paid to those that can be useful in the analysis of real data sets. Finally, through an example it is illustrated how the new multivariate aging notion influences the final results in the analysis of data on tumor growth from the Comprehensive Cohort Study performed by the German Breast Cancer Study Grou

    Transient Propagation and Scattering of Quasi-Rayleigh Waves in Plates: Quantitative comparison between Pulsed TV-Holography Measurements and FC(Gram) elastodynamic simulations

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    We study the scattering of transient, high-frequency, narrow-band quasi-Rayleigh elastic waves by through-thickness holes in aluminum plates, in the framework of ultrasonic nondestructive testing (NDT) based on full-field optical detection. Sequences of the instantaneous two-dimensional (2-D) out-of-plane displacement scattering maps are measured with a self-developed PTVH system. The corresponding simulated sequences are obtained by means of an FC(Gram) elastodynamic solver introduced recently, which implements a full three-dimensional (3D) vector formulation of the direct linear-elasticity scattering problem. A detailed quantitative comparison between these experimental and numerical sequences, which is presented here for the first time, shows very good agreement both in the amplitude and the phase of the acoustic field in the forward, lateral and backscattering areas. It is thus suggested that the combination of the PTVH system and the FC(Gram) elastodynamic solver provides an effective ultrasonic inspection tool for plate-like structures, with a significant potential for ultrasonic NDT applications.Comment: 46 pages, 16 figures, corresponding author Jos\'e Carlos L\'opez-V\'azquez, [email protected]. Changes: 1st, 4th, 5th paragraphs (intro), 3rd, 4th paragraphs (sec. 4); [59-60] cited only in appendixes; old ref. [52] removed; misprints corrected in the uncertainty of c_L (subsec. 3.1), citation to fig. 10 (sec. 4), size of images (caption fig.15); reference to Lam\'e constants removed in subsec. 3.
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