Adaptive control of a solar furnace for material testing

IFAC Adaptive Systems in Control and Signal Processing. Glasgow. Scotland. UK. 26/08/1998This paper presents an adaptive control system for controlling the temperature of a solar furnace, which is a high solar concentrating facility made up of heliostats tracking the sun and reflecting solar radiation onto a static parabolic concentrating system at the focal spot of which a high percentage of the solar energy collected by the collector system is concentrated in a small area. A large attenuator (shutter) placed between the collector system and the concentrator serves to control the amount of solar energy used for heating the samples placed at the focal spot. The paper shows the results obtained in the application of adaptive PI controllers to a solar furnace, incorporating feedforward action, anti-windup and slew rate constraint handling mechanisms

Real-time extensive livestock monitoring using lpwan smart wearable and infrastructure

Extensive unsupervised livestock farming is a habitual technique in many places around the globe. Animal release can be done for months, in large areas and with different species packing and behaving very differently. Nevertheless, the farmer’s needs are similar: where livestock is (and where has been) and how healthy they are. The geographical areas involved usually have difficult access with harsh orography and lack of communications infrastructure. This paper presents the design of a solution for extensive livestock monitoring in these areas. Our proposal is based in a wearable equipped with inertial sensors, global positioning system and wireless communications; and a Low-Power Wide Area Network infrastructure that can run with and without internet connection. Using adaptive analysis and data compression, we provide real-time monitoring and logging of cattle’s position and activities. Hardware and firmware design achieve very low energy consumption allowing months of battery life. We have thoroughly tested the devices in different laboratory setups and evaluated the system performance in real scenarios in the mountains and in the forest

Development of an open sensorized platform in a smart agriculture context: A vineyard support system for monitoring mildew disease

In recent years, some official reports, to produce best products regarding quality, quantity and economic conditions, recommend that the farming sector should benefit with new tools and techniques coming from Information and Communications Technology (ICT) realm. In this way, during last decade the deployment of sensing devices has increased considerably in the field of agriculture. This fact has led to a new concept called smart agriculture, and it contemplates activities such as field monitoring, which offer support to make decisions or perform actions, such as irrigation or fertilization. Apart from sensing devices, which use the Internet protocol to transfer data (Internet of Things), there are the so-called crop models, which are able to provide added value over the data provided by the sensors, with the aim of providing recommendations to farmers in decision-making and thus, increase the quality and quantity of their production. In this scenario, the current work uses a low-cost sensorized platform, capable of monitoring meteorological phenomena following the Internet of Things paradigm, with the goal to apply an alert disease model on the cultivation of the vine. The edge computing paradigm is used to achieve this objective; also our work follows some advances from GIScience to increase interoperability. An example of this platform has been deployed in a vineyard parcel located in the municipality of Vilafamés (Castelló Spain)

El papel del Dublin Core en el desarrollo de las infraestructuras de datos espaciales

Las tendencias actuales de caracterización de recursos de información geográfica para su oferta a través de Infraestructuras de Datos Espaciales (IDE) se centran en la información geográfica más tradicional (mapas, coberturas, modelos digitales del terreno, etc.). Para ello han utilizado como soporte de descripción los trabajos del grupo TC 211 de ISO (fundamentalmente ISO 19115). No obstante, todavía queda una ingente cantidad de servicios e información más heterogéneos susceptibles de ser ofrecidos a través de una IDE. El reto que se plantea en estos momentos es la definición de una estrategia que posibilite la incorporación de estas fuentes y servicios de información garantizando la interoperabilidad entre sistemas, sin que ello vaya en detrimento de una descripción o caracterización de recursos, adecuada, completa y suficiente. Es en este contexto donde Dublin Core puede jugar un papel fundamental como norma de metadatos (ISO 15836) de propósito general, fomentando la interoperabilidad en distintos dominios informativos, entre ellos también la información geoespacial. El objetivo de este capítulo es presentar un modelo de utilización del conjunto de elementos y principios de Dublin Core como base para el proceso de asignación de metadatos asociados a todo tipo de recursos en el contexto de una IDE, así como las decisiones técnicas básicas que deberían tomarse para dar soporte a servicios de creación y búsqueda de información sobre este modelo general propuesto.Este trabajo ha sido parcialmente financiado por el proyecto TIC2003-09365-C02-01 del Plan Nacional de Investigación Científica y Desarrollo Tecnológico del Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia de Españ

De lo real a lo imaginario. Aproximación a la flora ibérica durante la Edad del Hierro

“From the real to the imagery” is the translation of the project’s title we present in this paper. Our main goal is the study of the Iberian Iron Age flora from several points of view in order to come close to the use and the simbolism of plants among the ancient societies, specially the Iberian Culture. The method we use is a combination of a paleobotanical approach, based on palinology, anthracology and paleocarpology, together with an iconographic one. Then, we record all the representations of plants on pottery, stone sculpture, metallic objects and coins. All these data are catalogued taking in to account the context and chronology of the archaeological remains we are dealing with. The aim of this research project is to create a database of the used and known plants among the Iberians, to reconstruct the possible uses (“the real”) and the images of plants represented on the artefacts (“the imagery”). This paper offers preliminary results of our method by presenting an analytical example based on two species: the poppy (Papaver sp.) and the palm tree (Phoenix datylifera L.).“De lo real a lo imaginario” es el título de un proyecto cuyo objetivo es hacer un estudio de la flora de los iberos desde distintos puntos de vista con el fin de aproximarnos al uso y simbolismo de las plantas por parte de las sociedades antiguas. Para ello se va a combinar una visión estrictamente paleobotánica, basada en estudios palinológicos, antracológicos y paleocarpológicos, con la iconográfica, recogiendo todas las representaciones de plantas que aparecen en cerámica, escultura en piedra, objetos metálicos y monedas. Todos los datos se catalogan teniendo en cuenta su contexto y cronología. Con ello se pretende elaborar un catálogo de plantas conocidas y utilizadas, en diferentes contextos, con todos los usos posibles (lo real) y las imágenes de plantas recogidas en diversos soportes (lo imaginario). Como ejemplo, se presenta el estudio realizado sobre dos plantas: la adormidera (Papaver sp.) y la palmera (Phoenix datylifera L.)

Role of age and comorbidities in mortality of patients with infective endocarditis

Purpose: The aim of this study was to analyse the characteristics of patients with IE in three groups of age and to assess the ability of age and the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) to predict mortality. Methods: Prospective cohort study of all patients with IE included in the GAMES Spanish database between 2008 and 2015. Patients were stratified into three age groups:<65 years, 65 to 80 years, and = 80 years.The area under the receiver-operating characteristic (AUROC) curve was calculated to quantify the diagnostic accuracy of the CCI to predict mortality risk. Results: A total of 3120 patients with IE (1327 < 65 years;1291 65-80 years;502 = 80 years) were enrolled.Fever and heart failure were the most common presentations of IE, with no differences among age groups.Patients =80 years who underwent surgery were significantly lower compared with other age groups (14.3%, 65 years; 20.5%, 65-79 years; 31.3%, =80 years). In-hospital mortality was lower in the <65-year group (20.3%, <65 years;30.1%, 65-79 years;34.7%, =80 years;p < 0.001) as well as 1-year mortality (3.2%, <65 years; 5.5%, 65-80 years;7.6%, =80 years; p = 0.003).Independent predictors of mortality were age = 80 years (hazard ratio [HR]:2.78;95% confidence interval [CI]:2.32–3.34), CCI = 3 (HR:1.62; 95% CI:1.39–1.88), and non-performed surgery (HR:1.64;95% CI:11.16–1.58).When the three age groups were compared, the AUROC curve for CCI was significantly larger for patients aged <65 years(p < 0.001) for both in-hospital and 1-year mortality. Conclusion: There were no differences in the clinical presentation of IE between the groups. Age = 80 years, high comorbidity (measured by CCI), and non-performance of surgery were independent predictors of mortality in patients with IE.CCI could help to identify those patients with IE and surgical indication who present a lower risk of in-hospital and 1-year mortality after surgery, especially in the <65-year group

Deep-sequencing reveals broad subtype-specific HCV resistance mutations associated with treatment failure

A percentage of hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected patients fail direct acting antiviral (DAA)-based treatment regimens, often because of drug resistance-associated substitutions (RAS). The aim of this study was to characterize the resistance profile of a large cohort of patients failing DAA-based treatments, and investigate the relationship between HCV subtype and failure, as an aid to optimizing management of these patients. A new, standardized HCV-RAS testing protocol based on deep sequencing was designed and applied to 220 previously subtyped samples from patients failing DAA treatment, collected in 39 Spanish hospitals. The majority had received DAA-based interferon (IFN) a-free regimens; 79% had failed sofosbuvir-containing therapy. Genomic regions encoding the nonstructural protein (NS) 3, NS5A, and NS5B (DAA target regions) were analyzed using subtype-specific primers. Viral subtype distribution was as follows: genotype (G) 1, 62.7%; G3a, 21.4%; G4d, 12.3%; G2, 1.8%; and mixed infections 1.8%. Overall, 88.6% of patients carried at least 1 RAS, and 19% carried RAS at frequencies below 20% in the mutant spectrum. There were no differences in RAS selection between treatments with and without ribavirin. Regardless of the treatment received, each HCV subtype showed specific types of RAS. Of note, no RAS were detected in the target proteins of 18.6% of patients failing treatment, and 30.4% of patients had RAS in proteins that were not targets of the inhibitors they received. HCV patients failing DAA therapy showed a high diversity of RAS. Ribavirin use did not influence the type or number of RAS at failure. The subtype-specific pattern of RAS emergence underscores the importance of accurate HCV subtyping. The frequency of “extra-target” RAS suggests the need for RAS screening in all three DAA target regions