Improving the structural reliability of steel frames using posttensioned connections

In this paper, various moment-resisting steel frames (MRSFs) are subjected to 30 narrow-band motions scaled at different ground motion intensity levels in terms of spectral acceleration at first mode of vibration in order to perform incremental dynamic analysis for peak and residual interstory drift demands. The results are used to compute the structural reliability of the steel frames by means of hazard curves for peak and residual drifts. It is observed that the structures exceed the threshold residual drift of 0.5%, which is perceptible to human occupants, and it could lead to human discomfort according to recent investigations. For this reason, posttensioned connections (PTCs) are incorporated into the steel frames in order to improve the structural reliability. The results suggest that the annual rate of exceedance of peak and residual interstory drift demands are reduced with the use of PTC. Thus, the structural reliability of the steel frames with PTC is superior to that of the MRSFs. In particular, the residual drift demands tend to be smaller when PTCs are incorporated in the steel structures.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Carnivoran fossils from the Pampean region (Argentina): Santiago Roth collections in Switzerland

Santiago Roth (1850–1924) was a naturalist that collected and sold fossils from the Pampean region (Argentina) in Europe. Much of the specimens collected by Roth are hosted at the Paläontologisches Institut und Museum, Universität Zürich and Muséun D’Histoire Naturelle of Geneva in Switzerland, but were never studied. In this article, we review the specimens of the order Carnivora under a taxonomical and temporal approach. We confirm the presence of 16 specimens of Carnivora collected by Roth between the provinces of Santa Fe and Buenos Aires. We identify felids (Smilodon sp., Panthera onca, and specimens related to these taxa), ursids (Arctotherium sp.), and canids (Dusicyon avus and specimens related, Lycalopex sp., and Caninae indet.). According to the information reported by S. Roth, all materials are from the Pleistocene of the Pampean Formation. However, given the scarcity of data, only the specific age of few specimens could be more accurately established

Performance comparison between multi‑center histopathology datasets of a weakly‑supervised deep learning model for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma detection

Background Pancreatic ductal carcinoma patients have a really poor prognosis given its difficult early detection and the lack of early symptoms. Digital pathology is routinely used by pathologists to diagnose the disease. However, visually inspecting the tissue is a time-consuming task, which slows down the diagnostic procedure. With the advances occurred in the area of artificial intelligence, specifically with deep learning models, and the growing availability of public histology data, clinical decision support systems are being created. However, the generalization capabilities of these systems are not always tested, nor the integration of publicly available datasets for pancreatic ductal carcinoma detection (PDAC). Methods In this work, we explored the performace of two weakly-supervised deep learning models using the two more widely available datasets with pancreatic ductal carcinoma histology images, The Cancer Genome Atlas Project (TCGA) and the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC). In order to have sufficient training data, the TCGA dataset was integrated with the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project dataset, which contains healthy pancreatic samples. Results We showed how the model trained on CPTAC generalizes better than the one trained on the integrated dataset, obtaining an inter-dataset accuracy of 90.62% ± 2.32 and an outer-dataset accuracy of 92.17% when evaluated on TCGA + GTEx. Furthermore, we tested the performance on another dataset formed by tissue micro-arrays, obtaining an accuracy of 98.59%. We showed how the features learned in an integrated dataset do not differentiate between the classes, but between the datasets, noticing that a stronger normalization might be needed when creating clinical decision support systems with datasets obtained from different sources. To mitigate this effect, we proposed to train on the three available datasets, improving the detection performance and generalization capabilities of a model trained only on TCGA + GTEx and achieving a similar performance to the model trained only on CPTAC. Conclusions The integration of datasets where both classes are present can mitigate the batch effect present when integrating datasets, improving the classification performance, and accurately detecting PDAC across different datasets.Spanish Ministry of Sciences, Innovation and Universities under Project PID2021-128317OB-I00Junta de Andalucia P20-0016

The mother-child relationship in the filmography of Xavier Dolan (2009-2016)

El presente trabajo se enmarca en un contexto de auge, popularidad e influencia en públicos jóvenes del cine independiente norteamericano. Específicamente se focaliza en uno de los directores que de forma singular conecta con los nuevos relatos de la contemporaneidad, el canadiense Xavier Dolan. A través del análisis de los personajes principales de las seis películas que hasta ahora ha realizado –Yo maté a mi madre (2009), Los amores imaginarios (2010), Laurence Anyways (2012), Tom en la granja (2013), Mommy (2014) y Solo el fin del mundo (2016)– se determina el comportamiento de éstos en torno a una temática siempre presente en su filmografía: la relación maternofilial. Entre sus principales conclusiones destaca cómo en sus películas aparece muy marcada la mala relación madre e hijo, provocada siempre por alguna de las siguientes variables narrativas: la ausencia de la figura paterna, el ocultamiento de la identidad u orientación sexual y la no aceptación de la familia junto con las conductas antisociales por parte del hijo. Estas variables se encuentran de forma recurrente, en mayor o menor medida, en todos sus filmes, por lo que no se observa una tendencia clara ni evolución a lo largo de los años; todos son temas que obsesionan al director, caracterizan a sus personajes, y construyen un universo ficcional homogéneo.The current study is framed within the context of the rise, influence and popularity with young audiences of the North American independent cinema. It focuses especially on one of the directors who singularly connects with the new stories of contemporary society, the Canadian, Xavier Dolan. Analysis of the main characters of his six previous films – I Killed My Mother (2009), Heartbeats (2010), Laurence Anyways (2012), Tom at the Farm (2013), Mommy (2014) and It's Only the End of the World (2016)- reveals a recurrent behaviour around one topic: the mother and child relationship. Among his main conclusions, the bad relationship between mother and son is remarkable in his films. This is always aroused by one of the following narrative variables: the absence of a father figure, concealment of the sexual identity or orientation and non-acceptance of the family, accompanied by antisocial behaviour carried out by a son. These variables are found repeatedly, to a greater or lesser degree, in all his films. Hence, there is no clear tendency or evolution over the years; all are subjects that engross the director, personify the characters, and create a homogenous fictional universe

Crossbow injuries: a case of suicide

6 p.We are reporting the case of a 65 year-old man who suffered a severe depression and committed suicide using a crossbow. The death happened at his home. The suicide victim was on his knees, with of a crossbow leveled at his thorax and located facing him on the sofa. He shot it by pulling the trigger with the bended end of a ramrod. The arrow entered between the third and the fourth rib on the left side, with a downwards and slightly outwards direction. It went through the lung and the tip of the arrow came out the back. The arrow was removed when the body was lifted, and the wounds had a three-pointed star shape which corresponded to the head of the arrow crossbow. Police enquiry and forensic investigation confirmed a suicidal manner of death. This paper presents different issues of the case, such as the attestation of tears in clothing, the morphology of the wounds or the arrow track. The case is compared with other cases in the medical forensic literature involving the use of crossbows. Finally, it is highlighted how easy it is to purchase these weapons despite their obvious power and accuracy, factors that seriously recommend legislative regulation to be increased and its use more restricted

Exploring the ring-closing metathesis for the construction of the solomonamide macrocyclic core: identification of bioactive precursors

New synthetic strategies directed toward the novel cyclopeptides solomonamides have been explored utilizing an olefin metathesis as the key reaction. In the various strategies investigated, we worked on minimally oxidized systems, and the olefin metathesis reaction demonstrated efficiency and validity for the construction of the macrocyclic core. The described synthetic strategies toward the solomonamides are well suited for the subsequent access to the natural products and represent flexible and diversityoriented routes that allow for the generation of a variety of analogues via oxidative transformations. In addition, preliminary biological evaluations of the generated solomonamide precursors revealed antitumor activity against various tumor cell lines.This work was financially supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) (ref BIO2014-56092-R, CTQ2014-60223-R and CTQ2016-76311-R) and Junta de Andalucía and “Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional-FEDER” (P12 CTS-1507). I.C.-S. thanks Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte for a predoctoral fellowship (FPU programme)

Causas internas del éxito internacional: de la heterogeneidad de los recursos a la construcción de capacidades organizativas

Nuestro estudio tiene por objeto comprobar si las dotaciones heterogéneas de recursos de las empresas son causa suficiente para explicar los diferentes resultados exportadores de las empresas, tal como propone la teoría de recursos y capacidades. Partiendo de las aportaciones de la literatura en recursos y capacidades se diseñan dos espacios multidimensionales para situar a las empresas en el espacio recursos y en el espacio resultado exportador. Cada uno de los espacios está constituido por una serie de ítems que han sido ampliamente considerados y validados en la literatura como puntos relevantes para determinar el compromiso exportador, 53 en el caso de los recursos y 5 en el del compromiso exportador. Posteriormente, tras comprobar la ortonormalidad de los ítems en cada uno de los espacios, se sitúa a las empresas en el espacio definido por sus recursos, y se mide la distancia euclídea existente entre ellas. De modo similar se calcula la distancia existente entre las empresas, en función de los componentes de sus resultados exportadores. Para obtener los datos del estudio se realizaron entrevistas en profundidad a los gerentes de siete empresas del sector del mueble riojano, con el fin determinar la fuente interna de las diferencias en los resultados empresariales, y más concretamente en exportación. Los resultados del estudio muestran que la heterogeneidad en las dotaciones de recursos no explica de forma suficiente las diferencias en los resultados exportadores, ya que no existe una alta correlación de las distancias entre las empresas en ambos espacios. Como aportación final se plantea un mapa de actividad que representa las capacidades organizativas complejas desarrolladas por la empresa de la muestra que ha obtenido mayor éxito exportador. Las capacidades son estudiadas por la complejidad que genera el conjunto de relaciones que se establecen entre los recursos que la integran. Este análisis permite concluir que no son los recursos los que hacen diferentes los resultados exportadores, sino que son las capacidades organizativas distintivas, complejas y particulares que se desarrollan dentro de cada empresa, las que las hacen diferentes a ellas y a sus resultados empresariales.Our paper try to prove if heterogeneity in resources among firms is enough to explain differences in export performance, as Resources Based-View proposes (RBV). Starting from RBV literature’s contribution, two multidimensional spaces are designed to place each firm in the resources-space and in the export performance-space. Each space is made up of a group of items that have been considered and validated in literature as relevant to determine export performance, 53 for resources and 5 for export performance. Then, after to confirm if every item of each space is orthonormal, each firm is placed in the space defined by its resources and the Euclidean distance between them is calculated. In the same way, the distance among firms according to the components of export performance is calculated. The data of the study were obtained through in-depth interviews, made to the managers of seven firms of the furniture industry in La Rioja. The objective was to establish the internal source of differences in results, specifically in export. The results of the study show that heterogeneity in resources does not explain adequately the differences in export performance, because it does not exist a high correlation in distance between firms in both spaces. As a final contribution it is shown an activity map that represents the complex organizational capabilities developed by the firm that has obtained the greatest success among the seven studied. These capabilities are studied due to the complexity generated by the group of relations that make it up. This analysis let us to conclude that resources do not make export performance different, but the distinctive organizational capabilities, complex and particular, that are developed inside firms and that make them different and also their performance

Detection and classification of aircraft fixation elements during manufacturing processes using a convolutional neural network

The aerospace sector is one of the main economic drivers that strengthens our present, constitutes our future and is a source of competitiveness and innovation with great technological development capacity. In particular, the objective of manufacturers on assembly lines is to automate the entire process by using digital technologies as part of the transition toward Industry 4.0. In advanced manufacturing processes, artificial vision systems are interesting because their performance influences the liability and productivity of manufacturing processes. Therefore, developing and validating accurate, reliable and flexible vision systems in uncontrolled industrial environments is a critical issue. This research deals with the detection and classification of fasteners in a real, uncontrolled environment for an aeronautical manufacturing process, using machine learning techniques based on convolutional neural networks. Our system achieves 98.3% accuracy in a processing time of 0.8 ms per image. The results reveal that the machine learning paradigm based on a neural network in an industrial environment is capable of accurately and reliably estimating mechanical parameters to improve the performance and flexibility of advanced manufacturing processing of large parts with structural responsibility.This publication was carried out as part of the project Nuevas Uniones de estructuras aeronáuticas reference number IDI-20180754. This project has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Ciencia e Innovación and Centre for Industrial Technological Development (CDTI)