Blockchain-Enabled Platforms: Challenges and Recommendations

Not even a tenth of blockchain-enabled platforms survive their first anniversary. The volatility of cryptomarkets has brought negative attention and led some to question the applicability of blockchain technology. This paper argues that the challenges for startups and incumbents behind these platforms are numerous, and that the speculative bubble around cryptocurrencies is only one of them. Blockchain still needs to demonstrate fully its disruptive potential and so far, entrepreneurs have not managed to significantly impact incumbents’ market shares. This transitory period requires incumbents to let go of traditional control mechanisms, and startups to scale down their global decentralised hopes. Indeed, whilst the technology can indeed scale fast, starting in a controlled market and managing growth is a counterintuitive but essential strategy for blockchain-enabled platforms to implement. Given the diverging nature of the technology, at present at least, the combined shortage of skills in blockchain and security, and the trust blockchain is built on, rushing to the global market is high risk. Nonetheless, given the potential returns, the risk appetite is high and both entrepreneurs and corporate executives share unrealistic expectations about a technology they cannot fully understand since it has not yet converged. In light of the above, this article identifies the main challenges faced when building blockchainenabled platforms and provides recommendations for startups and incumbents to overcome these. In order to reach these conclusions, the information obtained from twenty semi-structured interviews with leading actors in the field has been fundamental

Houses for repentant women and the post-Tridentine seclusion: female rebellion as a form of dissenting expression

A la luz del origen común y similar evolución que presentan las casas de recogidas y arrepentidas se pretende ofrecer la visión de aquellas mujeres que procedentes de los sectores más pobres y marginales de la sociedad se vieron forzadas por sus propias circunstancias o por sentencia judicial a la reclusión y clausura decretada por el Concilio de Trento. Sujetas a un proceso de reelaboración de la propia identidad, de disciplina del cuerpo y de remodelación del alma, muchas de ellas mostraron su rebeldía y disconformidad. Las aportaciones documentales procedentes de instituciones españolas, francesas e italianas constituyen la base para analizar los aspectos emocionales, afectivos y espirituales de estas mujeres, así como sus posibilidades de reintegración social o profesión religiosa.Considering the common origin and similar evolution of houses for repentant women, it is intended to offer the vision of those women who, coming from the poorest and marginal sectors of society, were forced by their own circumstances or by judicial sentence to the seclusion ordered by the Council of Trent. Subject to a process of re-elaboration of one’s own identity, body discipline and soul remodelling, many of them showed their rebelliousness and disagreement. The documentary contributions coming from Spanish, French and Italian institutions constitute the basis to analyse the emotional, affective and spiritual aspects of these women, as well as their possibilities of social reintegration or religious profession

Costos de Transacción y de Producción en Explotaciones Bovinas de la VII Región del Maule

The objective of this study was to determine the transaction and total cost at the beef cattle farms from Region Maule. The questionary was applied to 154 farmers with calf-beef cow system located at Curico, Talca, Parral, Longavi, Linares, Curepto, San Clemente and San Javier in April of 2008, considering aspects such us: human resources, infraestructure, farm resources, productive management, technical assistanship and trading. A conglomerated analisys was applied, with the idea to generate homogenized groups, were the farmers became distributed in 3 groups: Group 1 called beef-farmers because were totally dedicated to the cattle activity; the Group 2 dedicated bellow 50% to beef cattle and the Group 3 having simmilar proportions of beff cattle and cereal crops. The total cost of production for kg of live weight was $301 for Group 1,$250 for Group 2 and $337 for Group 3. The transactional costs represented 29$301 para los productores del conglomerado ganadero, de $250 para los productores del conglomerado no ganadero y de$337 para los productores del conglomerado mixto. Referente a los Costos Totales estos están compuestos en un 59% de los Costos Directos de Producción, los Costos de Transacción representan un 29% y los Costos Indirectos de Producción son un 12% en la composición de los Costos Totales.  

Stability metrics for multi-source biomedical data based on simplicial projections from probability distribution distances

[EN] Biomedical data may be composed of individuals generated from distinct, meaningful sources. Due to possible contextual biases in the processes that generate data, there may exist an undesirable and unexpected variability among the probability distribution functions (PDFs) of the source subsamples, which, when uncontrolled, may lead to inaccurate or unreproducible research results. Classical statistical methods may have difficulties to undercover such variabilities when dealing with multi-modal, multi-type, multi-variate data. This work proposes two metrics for the analysis of stability among multiple data sources, robust to the aforementioned conditions, and defined in the context of data quality assessment. Specifically, a global probabilistic deviation (GPD) and a source probabilistic outlyingness (SPO) metrics are proposed. The first provides a bounded degree of the global multi-source variability, designed as an estimator equivalent to the notion of normalized standard deviation of PDFs. The second provides a bounded degree of the dissimilarity of each source to a latent central distribution. The metrics are based on the projection of a simplex geometrical structure constructed from the Jensen-Shannon distances among the sources PDFs. The metrics have been evaluated and demonstrated their correct behaviour on a simulated benchmark and with real multi-source biomedical data using the UCI Heart Disease dataset. The biomedical data quality assessment based on the proposed stability metrics may improve the efficiency and effectiveness of biomedical data exploitation and research.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by own IBIME funds under the UPV project Servicio de evaluacion y rating de la calidad de repositorios de datos biomedicos [UPV-2014-872] and the EU FP7 Project Help4Mood - A Computational Distributed System to Support the Treatment of Patients with Major Depression [ICT-248765].Sáez Silvestre, C.; Robles Viejo, M.; García Gómez, JM. (2014). Stability metrics for multi-source biomedical data based on simplicial projections from probability distribution distances. Statistical Methods in Medical Research. 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1177/0962280214545122S12

Randomized pilot study and qualitative evaluation of a clinical decision support system for brain tumour diagnosis based on SV 1H MRS: Evaluation as an additional information procedure for novice radiologists

The results of a randomized pilot study and qualitative evaluation of the clinical decision support system Curiam BT are reported. We evaluated the system's feasibility and potential value as a radiological information procedure complementary to magnetic resonance (MR) imaging to assist novice radiologists in diagnosing brain tumours using MR spectroscopy (1.5 and 3.0T). Fifty-five cases were analysed at three hospitals according to four non-exclusive diagnostic questions. Our results show that Curiam BT improved the diagnostic accuracy in all the four questions. Additionally, we discuss the findings of the users' feedback about the system, and the further work to optimize it for real environments and to conduct a large clinical trial. & 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation - Institut de Salud Carlos III - FIS Contract PI09/90177; and Universitat Politecnica de Valencia - INNOVA UPV 2008 2 1834. We specially thank Miguel Angel Edo, Maria Vano, Carmen Barber, Ana Catala-Gregori, Enrique Molla and Cecilio Poyatos, for their collaboration in the development of this study.Sáez Silvestre, C.; Martí-Bonmatí, L.; Alberich Bayarri, Á.; Robles Viejo, M.; García Gómez, JM. (2014). Randomized pilot study and qualitative evaluation of a clinical decision support system for brain tumour diagnosis based on SV 1H MRS: Evaluation as an additional information procedure for novice radiologists. Computers in Biology and Medicine. 45:26-33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2013.11.009S26334

Membrane disintegration caused by the steroid saponin digitonin is related to the presence of cholesterol

In the present investigation we studied the molecular mechanisms of the monodesmosidic saponin digitonin on natural and artificial membranes. We measured the hemolytic activity of digitonin on red blood cells (RBCs). Also different lipid membrane models (large unilamellar vesicles, LUVs, and giant unilamellar vesicles, GUVs) in the presence and absence of cholesterol were employed. The stability and permeability of the different vesicle systems were studied by using calcein release assay, GUVs membrane permeability assay using confocal microscopy (CM) and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) and vesicle size measurement by dynamic light scattering (DLS). The results support the essential role of cholesterol in explaining how digitonin can disintegrate biological and artificial membranes. Digitonin induces membrane permeability or causes membrane rupturing only in the presence of cholesterol in an all-or-none mechanism. This effect depends on the concentrations of both digitonin and cholesterol. At low concentrations, digitonin induces membrane permeability while keeping the membrane intact. When digitonin is combined with other drugs, a synergistic potentiation can be observed because it facilitates their uptake

Visual behavior influence on decision in volleyball blocking

El objetivo del presente estudio fue conocer la influencia del comportamiento visual (localización, número y duración de las fijaciones visuales) sobre la toma de decisiones en la acción del bloqueo en voleibol. Se analizó el comportamiento visual de 38 jugadoras de voleibol (23.9 4.2 años), que competían de manera federada, mediante el sistema de registro de movimientos oculares (Mobile Eye) durante la visualización de secuencias de video proyectadas a tamaño real. Los modelos de regresión obtenidos muestran que se obtienen mayores porcentajes de acierto cuando la duración de las fijaciones es reducida en las zonas HC y CB, y cuando aumenta el número de fijaciones en la zona BM y disminuye en la zona CBThe purpose of this study was to determine the influence of visual behaviour (visual fixation location, number and duration) on decision-making in volleyball blocking. The visual behavior of 38 volleyball players (23.9 4.2 years), who took part in federated competition, was analyzed with the eye tracking system (Mobile Eye) during visualization of real size video sequences. Regression models show that higher success percentages were obtained when the duration of fixations is low in HC and CB areas, and when the number of fixations increases in BM zone and decreases in CB zon

The effects of energy consumption of alumina production in the environmental impacts using life cycle assessment

Purpose Aluminium industry emits around 1–2% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Up to one-third of those are linked to the thermal energy consumed during its initial process: the alumina refining (Bayer process). Previous studies consider the Bayer process a single stage despite its being made of several reaction stages. This work presents a disaggregated energy analysis of the Bayer process that facilitates to find relationships between the main variables in regular alumina production and the environmental impacts. Methods Two different thermodynamic simulations of the Bayer process were carried out using Aspen V11 software. The results of these simulations were validated with referenced data, and afterwards, they were used to perform a life cycle assessment. ISO 14040 and 14,044 standards were followed during the analysis. LCA was implemented on SimaPro 9.0, and ReCiPe 2016 Midpoint (H) method was used to calculate environmental impacts. The influence of bauxite mineral form, type of fuel (energy input), and the distance from the mine to the plant was analysed throughout the study. Results and discussion As expected, the type of fuel was revealed as the most crucial factor in the environmental impact of alumina production, with potential savings of up to 75.5% of CO2-equivalent emissions. Nonetheless, the tendency is diverse for other indicators, such as marine eutrophication or terrestrial acidification. On the other hand, while bauxite transportation always has the same impact on the different environmental indicators, bauxite mineral form affects differently depending on the fuel, causing variations in the CO2-eq emissions from 7.7 to 51.3%. Conclusions Results indicated that the electrification of heat-demanding processes and the use of renewable power is the most effective approach for reducing environmental impacts. This strategy, however, must be considered in combination with others, as interdependent effects exist on the type of mineral used. These results provide strong evidence of the potential for environmentally friendly strategies in the metal industry, including new processes, alternative fuels, or mineral switching to promote more sustainable aluminium production

Ovoid amphorae in the Mediterranean (2nd century BC- early 1st century AD). State of the play and future research perspectives

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An anti-islanding protection based on RoCoF compliant with ENTSO-E and IEC 62116

In case of unintentional islanding, distributed generation units must be able to detect it and disconnect from the grid in less than 2 seconds. In this work, a Rate of Change of Frequency (RoCoF) method has been developed for islanding detection. Since these algorithms are conditioned by the requirements of grid codes, ENTSO-E network code and IEC 62116 have been taken into account. The RoCoF anti-islanding algorithm has been developed in MATLAB-Simulink and implemented through rapid prototyping techniques in an FPGA ALTERA Cyclone V. To check the proposed protection algorithm, simulation tests have been carried out. Finally, the RoCoF anti-islanding protection has been validated using FPGA in the loop and experimentally in a real 20-kW inverter. © 2022, European Association for the Development of Renewable Energy, Environment and Power Quality (EA4EPQ). All rights reserved