Smart pill dispenser for dependent people

Many medical errors are due to the fact that people in charge of patient or elder’s medication have to deal with sorting huge amounts of pills each day. This paper consists on the conception, design and creation of a pillbox prototype intended to solve this deficiency in the medical area as it has the ability of sorting out the pills by itself as well as many other advanced features, with this device being intended to be used by hospitals or retirement homes. For the design of this device open-source based technologies will be used when possible including 3D design software and software IDE, and the prototype will be created using 3D printed plastic parts.Ingeniería en Tecnologías de Telecomunicació

Double-descent curves in neural networks: a new perspective using Gaussian processes

Double-descent curves in neural networks describe the phenomenon that the generalisation error initially descends with increasing parameters, then grows after reaching an optimal number of parameters which is less than the number of data points, but then descends again in the overparameterised regime. Here we use a neural network Gaussian process (NNGP) which maps exactly to a fully connected network (FCN) in the infinite width limit, combined with techniques from random matrix theory, to calculate this generalisation behaviour, with a particular focus on the overparameterised regime. An advantage of our NNGP approach is that the analytical calculations are easier to interpret. We argue that neural network generalization performance improves in the overparameterised regime precisely because that is where they converge to their equivalent Gaussian process

Double-descent curves in neural networks: a new perspective using Gaussian processes

Double-descent curves in neural networks describe the phenomenon that the generalisation error initially descends with increasing parameters, then grows after reaching an optimal number of parameters which is less than the number of data points, but then descends again in the overparameterized regime. In this paper, we use techniques from random matrix theory to characterize the spectral distribution of the empirical feature covariance matrix as a width-dependent perturbation of the spectrum of the neural network Gaussian process (NNGP) kernel, thus establishing a novel connection between the NNGP literature and the random matrix theory literature in the context of neural networks. Our analytical expressions allow us to explore the generalisation behavior of the corresponding kernel and GP regression. Furthermore, they offer a new interpretation of double-descent in terms of the discrepancy between the width-dependent empirical kernel and the width-independent NNGP kernel

Skanderbeg, Tirana. Una sección llena de nada (plano fijo)

Las imágenes del fotógrafo belga Maxime Delvaux de la plaza de Skanderbeg en Tirana completada por el despacho de arquitectura belga 51N4E y el artista albanés Anri Sala en 2017 tienen al menos tres lecturas. Su contenido nos permite acceder a la compleja historia del proyecto, revelando las conexiones entre las decisiones de diseño, las políticas de transformación urbana de la ciudad y sus dirigentes, e incluso, en algunos casos, la imaginación política de Albania frente a la Unión Europea. Su formato, a medio camino entre fotografías tradicionales y videos de plano fijo, nos ayuda a entender como 51N4E trata de explicar no solo sus proyectos sino sus los procesos de diseño y la reorganización de la oficina. Finalmente, como fotografía de arquitectura, nos desvelan los efectos que la irrupción de la fotografía digital ha tenido en la documentación de proyectos arquitectónicos

Reusing Treated Waste-Water from a Circular Economy Perspective. The Case of the Real Acequia de Moncada in Valencia (Spain)

One of the most important challenges that agriculture faces is sustainable water management and its adaptation to climate change. This adaptation is more important in regions where recurrent draughts and overexploitation of water resources happen. However, historical irrigation systems, such as the Real Acequia de Moncada (RAM) in Valencia, have found innovative approaches to deal with this phenomenon. This paper analyzes the case of Massamagrell and Puçol, which reused the treated waste-water of the closest waste-water treatment plant (WWTP). The study focused from a circular economy perspective on the technological, agronomical, and social implications of this decision. Results show that there are clear benefits for both farmers and WWTP managers. On the one hand, additional nutrients and regularity in their water supply benefit farmers. On the other, WWTP managers can reuse the treated effluent in the system, contributing to the closure of the water cycle and avoiding pumping the treated water into the sea. However, more detailed information and coordination is needed among the different stakeholders. Questions regarding the illegal connection of waste pipes with the traditional irrigation or the payment of pumping costs for reuse have gone unanswered, and there is a need for better reflection from all stakeholders.Ciencias del Ma

Single paternal dexamethasone challenge programs offspring metabolism and reveals multiple candidates in RNA-mediated inheritance.

Single traumatic events that elicit an exaggerated stress response can lead to the development of neuropsychiatric conditions. Rodent studies suggested germline RNA as a mediator of effects of chronic environmental exposures to the progeny. The effects of an acute paternal stress exposure on the germline and their potential consequences on offspring remain to be seen. We find that acute administration of an agonist for the stress-sensitive Glucocorticoid receptor, using the common corticosteroid dexamethasone, affects the RNA payload of mature sperm as soon as 3 hr after exposure. It further impacts early embryonic transcriptional trajectories, as determined by single-embryo sequencing, and metabolism in the offspring. We show persistent regulation of tRNA fragments in sperm and descendant 2-cell embryos, suggesting transmission from sperm to embryo. Lastly, we unravel environmentally induced alterations in sperm circRNAs and their targets in the early embryo, highlighting this class as an additional candidate in RNA-mediated inheritance of disease risk.KG was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation early postdoc and advanced postdoc mobility a SPARK and Novartis foundation grant. Some of this work was supported by Cancer Research UK (C13474/A18583, C6946/A14492) and Wellcome (104640/Z/14/Z, 092096/Z/10/Z) to EAM. GP and MH were supported by a core grant from the Wellcome Trust. The lab of JB is currently funded by the ETH Zurich, SNSF Project Grant 310030_172889/1, ETH Research Grant ETH-20 19-1, the Kurt und Senta Herrmann-Stiftung, the Botnar Research Center for Child Health and a 3R Competence Center Project Grant. JK was supported by a Swiss-european mobility programme scholarship

Integrative Metabolomic and Transcriptomic Analysis for the Study of Bladder Cancer

[EN] Metabolism reprogramming is considered a hallmark of cancer. The study of bladder cancer (BC) metabolism could be the key to developing new strategies for diagnosis and therapy. This work aimed to identify tissue and urinary metabolic signatures as biomarkers of BC and get further insight into BC tumor biology through the study of gene-metabolite networks and the integration of metabolomics and transcriptomics data. BC and control tissue samples (n = 44) from the same patients were analyzed by High-Resolution Magic Angle Spinning Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and microarrays techniques. Besides, urinary profiling study (n = 35) was performed in the same patients to identify a metabolomic profile, linked with BC tissue hallmarks, as a potential non-invasive approach for BC diagnosis. The metabolic profile allowed for the classification of BC tissue samples with a sensitivity and specificity of 100%. The most discriminant metabolites for BC tissue samples reflected alterations in amino acids, glutathione, and taurine metabolic pathways. Transcriptomic data supported metabolomic results and revealed a predominant downregulation of metabolic genes belonging to phosphorylative oxidation, tricarboxylic acid cycle, and amino acid metabolism. The urinary profiling study showed a relation with taurine and other amino acids perturbed pathways observed in BC tissue samples, and classified BC from non-tumor urine samples with good sensitivities (91%) and specificities (77%). This urinary profile could be used as a non-invasive tool for BC diagnosis and follow-up.This research was funded by FEDER cofounded MINECO grant SAF2015-66015-R, MAT2015-64139-C4-1-R, MAT2015-64139-C4-3-R, ISCIII-RETICRD12/0036/0009, PIE 15/00076, CB/16/00228, CTQ2016-79561-P; and the PROMETEO II/2014/047 and PROMETEO 2018/24 projects.Loras, A.; Suárez-Cabrera, C.; Martínez-Bisbal, M.; Quintás, G.; Paramio, JM.; Martínez-Máñez, R.; Gil Grau, S.... (2019). Integrative Metabolomic and Transcriptomic Analysis for the Study of Bladder Cancer. Cancers. 11(5):1-19. https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers1105068611911

Evaluación y comparación de las respuestas fenológicas, morfológicas y ecofisiológicas de 4 especies de Quercus típicas de los bosques del trópico seco (Paisaje Terrestre Protegido Miraflor-Moropotente – Nicaragua

Para este estudio se han analizado las variables fenológicas, morfológicas y ecofisiológicas de 4 especies de Quercus sp que se encuentran en el Paisaje Terrestre Protegido Miraflor de Miraflor-Moropotente (Estelí, Nicaragua), en invierno (estación seca) y en verano (estación húmeda). Cada especie presenta un diferente rango altitudinal de distribución, y para cada especie se han elegido dos poblaciones, ubicadas respectivamente en la zona baja y en la zona alta de dicha área. Todos los parámetros analizados varían significativamente entre especies, poblaciones y estaciones, con la especie como principal factor discriminante. En especifico, las especies que ocupan altitudes menores presentan estrategias de adaptación típicas de regímenes hídricos más escasos, como la caída de hojas más prolongada en el tiempo y menores densidades estomáticas; este patrón se observa también entre poblaciones de altitudes diferentes dentro de cada especie, aunque menos marcado. Se puede concluir que los factores climáticos relacionados con la altitud afectan significativamente las respuestas de estos árboles típicos del trópico seco, y que dichas respuestas varían entre especies como resultado de diferentes estrategias de adaptación. Estas estrategias están a la base de la estructura, composición y biodiversidad de los bosques del trópico seco, e influencian los patrones de distribución de las especies. La mejor comprensión de dichas estrategias es una herramienta crucial para la gestión forestal de estos delicados ecosistemas en el marco del cambio climático en curso