Solving Sudoku with Membrane Computing

Sudoku is a very popular puzzle which consists on placing several numbers in a squared grid according to some simple rules. In this paper we present an efficient family of P systems which solve sudokus of any order verifying a specific property. The solution is searched by using a simple human-style method. If the sudoku cannot be solved by using this strategy, the P system detects this drawback and then the computations stops and returns No. Otherwise, the P system encodes the solution and returns Yes in the last computation step.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2008-04487-EMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2009–13192Junta de Andalucía P08-TIC-0420

Monitorización continua de la función cardiaca con “parches Ecocardiográficos”: el doctor Spock ya está aquí

In this editorial we review the surprising concept of the "echocardiographic wearable" as a portable device capable of continuously monitoring cardiac function, the technical advances made in this field and the possible clinical applications.En este editorial revisamos el sorprendente concepto de "wearable ecocardiográfico" como dispositivo portable capaz de monitorizar de forma contínua la función cardíaca, los avances técnicos realizados en este campo y las posibles aplicaciones en clínic

Dos sociedades y una sola revista. Ante una nueva etapa

Professors Miguel Ángel García Fernández on behalf of the Spanish Cardiac Imaging Society and Salvador Spina on behalf of the Cardiovascular Imaging Society of the Inter-American Society of Cardiology present the new stage of the RETIC journal with the renewal of the editorial team and the new plans for the magazine.Los profesores Miguel Ángel García Fernández en representación de la Sociedad Española de Imagen Cardíaca y Salvador Spina en representación de la  Sociedad de Imágenes Cardiovasculares de la Sociedad Interamericana de Cardiología presentan la nueva etapa de la revista RETIC con la renovación del equipo editorial y los nuevos planes para la revista

Preoperative airway ultrasound assessment in the sniffing position: a prospective observational study.

BACKGROUND Clinical airway screening tests intend to predict difficult airways, but none have a high predictive value. Recent systematic reviews correlate ultrasound with difficult laryngoscopy. This study aimed primarily to correlate ultrasound measurements of anatomical upper airway structures in the sniffing position with difficult direct laryngoscopy. The secondary aim was to observe gender-based differences. METHODS This prospective, cross-sectional, single-center observational study included 209 patients requiring general anesthesia for elective surgery. Preoperatively, we performed six clinical airway assessments and three ultrasound measurements, which were the Distance from Skin to the Hyoid Bone (DSHB), to the Epiglottis (DSE), and to the anterior commissure of the vocal cords (DSAC) in a sniffing position. Benumof's criteria for the "best view at the first attempt" for direct laryngoscopy assessed the difficulty of laryngoscopy. RESULTS The distance from skin to the epiglottis was the best predictor of direct difficult laryngoscopy (defined as Cormack-Lehane grade ≥ 2b) with a minimum thickness cut-off at 2.70 ± 0.19 cm (sensitivity 91.3%; specificity 96.9%). The skin to the hyoid bone distance cut-off was 1.41 ± 0.30 cm with moderate correlation (sensitivity 80.4%; specificity 60.1%). No correlation was found for the distance to the anterior commissure of the vocal cords. In women compared to men, the skin to the epiglottis distance was more sensitive (92.3% vs. 90.9%) and specific (98.8% vs. 95.2%). CONCLUSIONS DSE in the sniffing position is the most reliable parameter for preoperative airway ultrasound assessment in the Caucasian population, with higher sensitivity and specificity in women, and might be considered as an independent predictor for direct difficult laryngoscopy

Exposición de una cabeza humana a radiofrecuencia

En esta contribución, un plano coronal de cabeza humana es expuesto a 125 mW de potencia radiada por un dipolo de media onda a 1800 MHz. Se proporcionan tanto la TAE (Tasa de Absorción Específica) como los incrementos de temperatura asociados a la exposición electromagnética, para distintos escenarios. Se evalúa el efecto en el confort térmico de los procesos termorregulatorios humanos. Se presenta un importante efecto de adaptación entre el dipolo y la cabeza humana, así como al cráneo como protector del encéfalo ante tensiones térmicas debidas a exposición a campo EM. Como resultado del estudio, se podrían derivar restricciones básicas más precisas combinando los límites de TAE con la respuesta térmica asociada.Esta investigación ha sido financiada parcialmente por la Fundación Séneca, Agencia de Ciencia y Tecnología de la Región de Murcia, a través de una ayuda del Programa Séneca

Generalized sampling in U-invariant subspaces

In this work we carry out some results in sampling theory for U-invariant subspaces of a separable Hilbert space H, also called atomic subspaces. These spaces are a generalization of the well-known shift- invariant subspaces in L2 (R); here the space L2 (R) is replaced by H, and the shift operator by U. Having as data the samples of some related operators, we derive frame expansions allowing the recovery of the elements in Aa. Moreover, we include a frame perturbation-type result whenever the samples are affected with a jitter error

Robust people detection by fusion of evidence from multiple methods

Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. V. Fernández-Carbajales, M. A. García, and J. M. Martínez, "Robust People Detection by Fusion of Evidence from Multiple Methods", in Ninth International Workshop on Image Analysis for Multimedia Interactive Services, 2008. WIAMIS 2008, p. 55-58.This paper describes and evaluates an algorithm for real-time people detection in video sequences based on the fusion of evidence provided by three simple independent people detectors. Experiments with real video sequences show that the proposed integration-based approach is effective, robust and fast by combining simple algorithms.This work is supported by Cátedra Infoglobal-UAM para “Nuevas tecnologías de vídeo aplicadas a la seguridad”, the Spanish Government (TEC2007- 65400 SemanticVideo) and the Comunidad de Madrid (S-050/TIC-0223 - ProMultiDis-CM)