Parkinsons Disease Detection by using Isosurfaces with Convolutional Neural Networks

Computer aided diagnosis systems based on brain imaging are an important tool to assist in the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. The ultimate goal would be detec- tion by automatic recognizing of patterns that characterize the disease. In recent times Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have proved to be amazingly useful for that task. The drawback, however, is that 3D brain images contains a huge amount of information that leads to complex CNN architectures. When these architectures become too complex, classification performances often degrades be- cause the limitations of the training algorithm and overfitting. Thus, this paper proposes the use of isosurfaces as a way to reduce such amount of data while keeping the most relevant information. These isosurfaces are then used to im- plement a classification system which uses two of the most well-known CNN architectures to classify DaTScan images with an average accuracy of 95.1% and AUC=97%, obtaining comparable (slightly better) values to those obtained for most of the recently proposed systems. It can be concluded therefore that the computation of isosurfaces reduces the complexity of the inputs significantly, resulting in high classification accuracies with reduced computa- tional burden.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Policies and regulations in Mexico with regard to genetic technology and food security

In 1988 the first application for field trials of a GMO was formally received in Mexico. Since then a Biosafety law, few bylaws and national official standards were enacted in order to regulate the safe use of GMOs and to evaluate, control and avoid adverse effects to human health and the environment. The Law on Biosafety of Genetically Modified Organisms was enacted in 2005 in order to comply with international obligations derived from the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety signed by Mexico in 2000. This law established a biosafety legal framework to regulate the use of GMOs, protect biodiversity, and promote the conservation of organisms which Mexico is center of origin and center of genetic diversity. Since then, 561 permits for the release of GMOs into the environment have been granted between 2005 and 2014. This report gives and overview of the country’s approach to the use of GMOs, the current status of the biosafety legislation in Mexico and the development of policies and regulations since the first introduction of GM crops in the country

Unsupervised Emergence of Egocentric Spatial Structure from Sensorimotor Prediction

Despite its omnipresence in robotics application, the nature of spatial knowledgeand the mechanisms that underlie its emergence in autonomous agents are stillpoorly understood. Recent theoretical works suggest that the Euclidean structure ofspace induces invariants in an agent’s raw sensorimotor experience. We hypothesizethat capturing these invariants is beneficial for sensorimotor prediction and that,under certain exploratory conditions, a motor representation capturing the structureof the external space should emerge as a byproduct of learning to predict futuresensory experiences. We propose a simple sensorimotor predictive scheme, applyit to different agents and types of exploration, and evaluate the pertinence of thesehypotheses. We show that a naive agent can capture the topology and metricregularity of its sensor’s position in an egocentric spatial frame without any a prioriknowledge, nor extraneous supervision

THE ROLE OF GLOBAL RISK AVERSION IN EXPLAINING LATIN AMERICAN SOVEREIGN SPREADS

This paper explores the role of global risk aversion (GRA) and its main determinants, US economic growth and the US government bond yield, in explaining developments in Latin American sovereign spreads. We find that GRA is significant and positively related to Latin American sovereign spreads and that its impact varies across countries and over time. Those countries with the lowest risk, such as Chile, are more affected by GRA. Its relevance has also risen over time, particularly since the sharp change in the perception of risk stemming from the Enron scandal. Finally, an increase in both US economic growth and the US government bond yield are found to reduce sovereign spreads in most Latin American countries, while the opposite is true for US short-term interest rates.GLOBAL RISK AVERSION, SOVEREIGN SPREADS,LATIN AMERICA

THE ROLE OF GLOBAL RISK AVERSION IN EXPLAINING LATIN AMERICAN SOVEREIGN SPREADS

This paper assesses empirically whether global risk aversion (GRA) and some if its determinants (US economic growth and the US long term interest rates) explain developments in Latin American sovereign spreads. We find that GRA is significant and positively related to Latin American sovereign spreads and that its impact varies across countries and over time. Chile, with a lower sovereign risk, is relatively more affected. The opposite is true for Argentina, Ecuador and Venezuela. In addition, the influence of GRA on spreads has risen since the Enron scandal. Finally, both an increase in US economic growth and US long term interest rates are found to reduce spreads while the opposite is true for US short-term interest rates.global risk aversion, sovereign spreads, Latin America