Concentrated Ground Plane Booster Antenna Technology for Multiband Operation in Handset Devices

The current demand in the handset antenna field requires multiband antennas due to the existence of multiple communication standards and the emergence of new ones. At the same time, antennas with reduced dimensions are strongly required in order to be easily integrated. In this sense, the paper proposes a compact radiating system that uses two non-resonant elements to properly excite the ground plane to solve the abovementioned shortcomings by minimizing the required Printed Circuit Board (PCB) area while ensuring a multiband performance. These non-resonant elements are called here ground plane boosters since they excite an efficient mode of the ground plane. The proposed radiating system comprises two ground plane boosters of small dimensions of 5 mm x 5 mm x 5 mm. One is in charge of the low frequency region (0.824-0.960 GHz) and the other is in charge of the high frequency region (1.710-2.170 GHz). With the aim of achieving a compact configuration, the two boosters are placed close to each other in a corner of the ground plane of a handset device (concentrated architecture). Several experiments related to the coupling between boosters have been carried out in two different platforms (barphone and smartphone), and the best position and the required matching network are presented. The novel proposal achieves multiband performance at GSM850/900/1800/1900 and UMTS

Hydrogen vs. Battery in the long-term operation. A comparative between energy management strategies for hybrid renewable microgrids

The growth of the world’s energy demand over recent decades in relation to energy intensity and demography is clear. At the same time, the use of renewable energy sources is pursued to address decarbonization targets, but the stochasticity of renewable energy systems produces an increasing need for management systems to supply such energy volume while guaranteeing, at the same time, the security and reliability of the microgrids. Locally distributed energy storage systems (ESS) may provide the capacity to temporarily decouple production and demand. In this sense, the most implemented ESS in local energy districts are small–medium-scale electrochemical batteries. However, hydrogen systems are viable for storing larger energy quantities thanks to its intrinsic high mass-energy density. To match generation, demand and storage, energy management systems (EMSs) become crucial. This paper compares two strategies for an energy management system based on hydrogen-priority vs. battery-priority for the operation of a hybrid renewable microgrid. The overall performance of the two mentioned strategies is compared in the long-term operation via a set of evaluation parameters defined by the unmet load, storage efficiency, operating hours and cumulative energy. The results show that the hydrogen-priority strategy allows the microgrid to be led towards island operation because it saves a higher amount of energy, while the battery-priority strategy reduces the energy efficiency in the storage round trip. The main contribution of this work lies in the demonstration that conventional EMS for microgrids’ operation based on battery-priority strategy should turn into hydrogen-priority to keep the reliability and independence of the microgrid in the long-term operation

Ubiquitous Emotion Recognition with Multimodal Mobile Interfaces

In 1997 Rosalind Picard introduced fundamental concepts of affect recognition. Since this time, multimodal interfaces such as Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), RGB and depth cameras, physiological wearables, multimodal facial data and physiological data have been used to study human emotion. Much of the work in this field focuses on a single modality to recognize emotion. However, there is a wealth of information that is available for recognizing emotions when incorporating multimodal data. Considering this, the aim of this workshop is to look at current and future research activities and trends for ubiquitous emotion recognition through the fusion of data from various multimodal, mobile devices

PGAS Model for the Implementation of Scalable Cluster Systems

This paper introduces an extended version of the traditional Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) model, for the implementation of scalable cluster systems, that the HyperTransport Consortium Advanced Technology Group (ATG) is working on. Using the Simics and GEMS simulators, we developed a software module that approximates the behavior of a PGAS cluster. This approach mainly provides the simplest mechanism to evaluate how much the PGAS infrastructure will affect overall the application performance. The aim of this work is to study the feasibility of the ATG’s PGAS model for running applications with high memory requirements. Such a model, will let manufacturers build clusters that enable the execution of these applications, in such a way that it will be impossible to run them in a single processor, or in a multi–processor

Ciencia sobre ruedas en Granada. Una experiencia de actualización científica y tecnológica en el aula

Describimos una experiencia de colaboración entre el Parque de las Ciencias de Granada y el centro educativo Ciencias sobre Ruedas de Puerto Rico para llevar a siete centros educativos de Andalucía la tecnología de experimentación asistida por ordenador, EXAO, conectándola con temas de investigación real en el área de química. El proceso comenzó con la formación del profesorado en el uso de esta tecnología dentro de un enfoque de enseñanza orientado hacia la investigación en el aula. La actividad ha estado a cargo de profesores universitarios de Puerto Rico que desarrollan actualmente sus investigaciones de doctorado. Se ofrece la experiencia como un modelo de actualización y formación del profesorado no universitario de ciencias

Climate Effects and Feedback Structure Determining Weed Population Dynamics in a Long-Term Experiment

Pest control is one of the areas in which population dynamic theory has been successfully applied to solve practical problems. However, the links between population dynamic theory and model construction have been less emphasized in the management and control of weed populations. Most management models of weed population dynamics have emphasized the role of the endogenous process, but the role of exogenous variables such as climate have been ignored in the study of weed populations and their management. Here, we use long-term data (22 years) on two annual weed species from a locality in Central Spain to determine the importance of endogenous and exogenous processes (local and large-scale climate factors). Our modeling study determined two different feedback structures and climate effects in the two weed species analyzed. While Descurainia sophia exhibited a second-order feedback and low climate influence, Veronica hederifolia was characterized by a first-order feedback structure and important effects from temperature and rainfall. Our results strongly suggest the importance of theoretical population dynamics in understanding plant population systems. Moreover, the use of this approach, discerning between the effect of exogenous and endogenous factors, can be fundamental to applying weed management practices in agricultural systems and to controlling invasive weedy species. This is a radical change from most approaches currently used to guide weed and invasive weedy species managements

The blockchain impacts in accounting auditing / Os impactos da cadeia de bloqueios na auditoria contábil

This paper aims to identify the main impacts of Blockchain as accounting audit as well the advantages and disadvantages facing future challenges to auditing. The methodology used was basic qualitative research, and review topics with exploratory aims, such as technical procedures. The data collection was in CAPES (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel) and ICAEW (The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) websites and the data analysis and interpretation consisted in classifying and deducting. It was identified that Blockchain is little related to accounting auditing. Results show that the number of financial institutions and organizations that invest in Blockchain is rising, considering that it is related to a distributed ledger that provides a major transparency in the financial transactions of the organizations, which  suggests that in the very near future financial institutions and organizations will use Blockchain to interact with each other and in this context internal and external auditing might be continuous, having in mind that in Blockchain financial transactions are available in real time for the auditors and available to auditing. In addition, the distributed ledger enables auditors to access information in new formats, and consequently changes in work roles will occur. In this way, corporative reports will have more consistent and reliable information. However, many countries do not know how to regulate Blockchain or do not offer any legal environment to it