Quantum-information engines with many-body states attaining optimal extractable work with quantum control

We introduce quantum information engines that extract work from quantum states and a single thermal reservoir. They may operate under three general conditions—(1) unitarily steered evolution (US), driven by a restricted set of available Hamiltonians; (2) irreversible thermalization (IT), and (3) isothermal relaxation (IR)—and hence are called USITIR machines. They include novel engines without traditional feedback control mechanisms, as well as versions which also include them. Explicit constructions of USITIR engines are presented for oneand two-qubit states and their maximum extractable work is computed, which is optimal. Optimality is achieved when the notions of controllable thermalizability and density matrix controllability are fulfilled. Then many-body extensions of USITIR engines are also analyzed and conditions for optimal work extraction are identified. When they are not met, we measure their lack of optimality by means of newly defined uncontrollable entropies, which are explicitly computed for some selected examples. This includes cases of distinguishable and indistinguishable particles

Effects of dietary beef tallow on performance, rumen fermentation, carcass traits and meat quality of growing lambs

Growing lambs were evaluated for the effect of increasing dietary levels of beef tallow (BT) on performance, rumen fermentation, and carcass and meat characteristics. Twenty-one 5-month-old male Rambouillet lambs were assigned randomly to one of three diets with 0, 20, and 40 g BT/kg dry matter (DM) and similar energy and protein contents. Lambs were adapted to the diets for 15 days, followed by a 45-day evaluation trial. Data were analysed using a mixed model. Growth, feed intake and ruminal fermentation were not affected by the dietary level of BT. Daily metabolizable energy intake (MEI), carcass yield and degree of fatness, increased linearly as the BT level increased. Carcass classification and muscle conformation were not affected by BT. Most meat characteristics (texture, pH, myoglobin, protein content, colour, cathepsins, and chemical composition) five and eight days post-mortem were not affected, except for fat content in meat, which increased linearly as diet BT level increased. Fatty acid (FA) profiles of the meat from lambs fed the three diets were similar. In conclusion, addition of BT at 20 and 40 g/kg DM to diets for growing lambs allowed reduced grain usage and increased forage levels (from 0 to 270 g/kg DM), increasing energy intake, carcass yield and fatness, and intramuscular fat without causing harmful effects on growth, feed intake or ruminal fermentation characteristics. Keywords: dietary fat, fatty acids, meat colour, shee

Bioactivities and extract dereplication of actinomycetales isolated from marine sponges

In the beginning of the twenty-first century, humanity faces great challenges regarding diseases and health-related quality of life. A drastic rise in bacterial antibiotic resistance, in the number of cancer patients, in the obesity epidemics and in chronic diseases due to life expectation extension are some of these challenges. The discovery of novel therapeutics is fundamental and it may come from underexplored environments, like marine habitats, and microbial origin. Actinobacteria are well-known as treasure chests for the discovery of novel natural compounds. In this study, eighteen Actinomycetales isolated from marine sponges of three Erylus genera collected in Portuguese waters were tested for bioactivities with the main goal of isolating and characterizing the responsible bioactive metabolites. The screening comprehended antimicrobial, anti-fungal, anti-parasitic, anti-cancer and anti-obesity properties. Fermentations of the selected strains were prepared using ten different culturing media. Several bioactivities against the fungus Aspergillus fumigatus, the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus methicillin-resistant (MRSA) and the human liver cancer cell line HepG2 were obtained in small volume cultures. Screening in higher volumes showed consistent anti-fungal activity by strain Dermacoccus sp. #91-17 and Micrococcus luteus Berg02-26. Gordonia sp. Berg02-22.2 showed anti-parasitic (Trypanosoma cruzi) and anti-cancer activity against several cell lines (melanoma A2058, liver HepG2, colon HT29, breast MCF7 and pancreatic MiaPaca). For the anti-obesity assay, Microbacterium foliorum #91-29 and #91-40 induced lipid reduction on the larvae of zebrafish (Danio rerio). Dereplication of the extracts from several bacteria showed the existence of a variety of secondary metabolites, with some undiscovered molecules. This work showed that Actinomycetales are indeed good candidates for drug discovery.This research was partially supported by the Strategic Funding UID/Multi/04423/2013 through national funds provided by FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), in the framework of the programme PT2020, the EU H2020-TWINN-2015, BLUEandGREEN – Boosting scientific excellence and innovation capacity in biorefineries based on marine resources (Project No. 692419) and the European ERA-NET Marine Biotechnology project CYANOBESITY (ERA-MBT/0001/2015), financed by national funds through FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology, Portugal). Ralph Urbatzka was supported by a FCT postdoc grant (SFRH/BPD/112287/2015). The MEDINA authors disclosed the receipt of financial support from Fundación MEDINA, a public-private partnership of Merck Sharp & Dohme de España S.A./Universidad de Granada/Junta de Andalucía. Moreover, some of the equipment used in this work was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación and the European Union (Grant INP-2011-0016-PCT-010000-ACT6)

Modeling and simulation of a gas distribution pipeline network

This research study focuses on the modeling and simulation of a gas distribution pipeline network with a special emphasis on gas ducts. Gas ducts are the most important components of such kind of systems since they define the major dynamic characteristics. Isothermal, unidirectional flow is usually assumed when modeling the gas flow through a gas duct. This paper presents two simplified models derived from the set of partial differential equations governing the dynamics of the process. These models include the inclination term, neglected in most related papers. Moreover, two numerical schemes are presented for the integration of such models. Also, it is shown how the pressure drop along the pipe has a strong dependency with the inclination term. To solve the system dynamics through the proposed numerical schemes a based MATLAB-Simulink library was built. With this library it is possible to simulate the behavior of a gas distribution network from the individual simulation of each component. Finally, the library is tested through three application examples, and results are compared with the existing ones in the literature

A Laser Frequency Comb System for Absolute Calibration of the VTT Echelle Spectrograph

A wavelength calibration system based on a laser frequency comb (LFC) was developed in a co-operation between the Kiepenheuer-Institut f\"ur Sonnenphysik, Freiburg, Germany and the Max-Planck-Institut f\"ur Quantenoptik, Garching, Germany for permanent installation at the German Vacuum Tower Telescope (VTT) on Tenerife, Canary Islands. The system was installed successfully in October 2011. By simultaneously recording the spectra from the Sun and the LFC, for each exposure a calibration curve can be derived from the known frequencies of the comb modes that is suitable for absolute calibration at the meters per second level. We briefly summarize some topics in solar physics that benefit from absolute spectroscopy and point out the advantages of LFC compared to traditional calibration techniques. We also sketch the basic setup of the VTT calibration system and its integration with the existing echelle spectrograph.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures; Solar Physics 277 (2012

Construir con Madera

Guía divulgativa ‘Construir con madera’, elaborada por la Cátedra Madera de la Universidad de Navarra y el Gobierno de Navarra. La publicación pretende explicar de forma sencilla los beneficios y posibilidades de este material en la construcción, tanto en lo que respecta a su resistencia, comportamiento frente al fuego, durabilidad, capacidad de aislamiento, propiedades acústicas, estética, respeto al medio ambiente y sostenibilidad como fuente de energía. A modo de ejemplo, en la guía se incluyen numerosas fotografías de diversas construcciones en Navarra en las que se ha empleado madera, así como ilustraciones de otros edificios del mundo

Magnetostriction reveals orthorhombic distortion in tetragonal Gd compounds

We report detailed thermal expansion and magnetostriction experiments on GdCoIn5 and GdRh(In1-xCdx)5 (x=0 and 0.025) single-crystal samples that show a sudden change in the dilation at a field Bâ for temperatures below the Néel transition temperature TN. We present a first-principles model including crystal-field effects, dipolar and exchange interactions, and the dependence of the latter with lattice distortions in order to fully account for the magnetostriction and magnetic susceptibility data. The mean-field solution of the model shows that a transition between metastable states occurs at the field Bâ. It also indicates that two degenerate phases should coexist at temperatures below TN, which may explain the lack of observation, in high-resolution x-ray experiments, of an orthorhombic distortion at the Néel transition, even though the experimentally determined magnetic structure breaks the tetragonal symmetry and the magnetoelastic coupling from our model is significant. These conclusions could be extended to other tetragonal Gd-based compounds that present the same phenomenology.Fil: Betancourth Giraldo, Diana Maria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; ArgentinaFil: Correa, Víctor Félix. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; ArgentinaFil: Facio, Jorge Ismael. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; ArgentinaFil: Fernández, J.. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; ArgentinaFil: Vildosola, Veronica Laura. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica; ArgentinaFil: Lora Serrano, R.. Universidade Federal de Uberlandia; Brasil. University of New South Wales; AustraliaFil: Cadogan, J.M.. University of New South Wales; AustraliaFil: Aligia, Armando Ángel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; ArgentinaFil: Cornaglia de la Cruz, Pablo Sebastian. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; ArgentinaFil: Garcia, Daniel Julio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentin

A Ground Control Station for Collaborative Unmanned Surface Vehicles

[ES] El Centro de Control de Tierra (CCT) es uno de los elementos imprescindibles para la supervisión y control de vehículos autónomos que realizan misiones complejas. En la actualidad cada vez hay más aplicaciones donde se utilizan múltiples vehículos autónomos y el tradicional Centro de Control está evolucionando para ser capaz de gestionar diversos vehículos y operadores. Este artículo presenta las características más relevantes de un CCT adaptable y versátil, especialmente diseñado para que un equipo heterogéneo de operadores puedan monitorizar y supervisar el funcionamiento colaborativo de un conjunto heterogéneo de vehículos autónomos. Entre estas características destacan la posibilidad de, según las necesidades de los operadores y de la misión, 1) reconfigurar cuál (y cómo) es la información que se muestra de cada vehículo a cada operador, 2) definir alarmas que atraigan la atención de los operadores ante determinados eventos (y liberen su carga de trabajo mientras estos no se den) y 3) re-asignar en tiempo real la gestión de los vehículos a los diferentes operadores. Para alcanzarlas, se ha realizado un cuidadoso diseño de la arquitectura software del CCT, que se detalla en el artículo y que se encuentra formada por: un módulo de comunicaciones; un módulo planificador de alto nivel; un módulo (replicable en tantos equipos como se desee) de monitorización y supervisión de vehículos; y tantos módulos comandadores como vehículos diferentes existan en la misión. Este CCT ha sido desarrollado dentro del proyecto de investigación SALACOM (Sistema Autónomo de Localización y Actuación ante Contaminantes en el Mar), en el que dos barcos autónomos maniobran de forma colaborativa para desplegar una barrera para la contención de un vertido contaminante en el mar ydonde la incorporación del operador en la supervisión y control de las maniobras de los vehículos es un requisito imprescindible para dar seguridad y confianza a la operación realizada. Finalmente, se presenta un caso de uso del Centro de Control de Tierra donde se realiza una maniobra de seguimiento entre dos vehículos autónomos de superficie.[EN] The Ground Control Station (GCS) is one of the essential elements to supervise and control autonomous vehicles performing complex missions. The increasing number of systems that involve multiple autonomous vehicles is making traditional GCSs evolve to let them handle dierent vehicles and operators. In this article, we present the more relevant properties of a versatile adaptable GCS that has been especially designed to let multiple operators, each using a dierent computer equipment, be in charge of controlling a heterogeneous team of autonomous vehicles. Its main properties are the possibility of 1) reconfiguring which information is displayed to each operator, 2) defining alarms to draw the operators attention when required, and 3) re-assigning, in real-time, the vehicles to dierent operators. These properties are supported by a distributed design of the GCS software architecture, presented in the paper and consistent of: a communication module, a high level planner, replicable monitoring and supervising units, and as many commanders as vehicles within each mission. This GCS has been developed within SALACOM (an autonomous system for locating and acting against sea spills), where two Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) cooperate to collect a sea spill under the supervision of several operators that are responsible of the security of the mission. Finally, this paper also presents a case of use of the GCS within a real-world experiment involving two USVs performing leader-follower formation maneouvres.Los autores del art´ıculo quieren agradecer al Ministerio de Econom´ıa y Competitividad español su apoyo a través del proyecto SALACOM (DPI2013-46665-C2-1-R).Bonache Seco, J.; Dormido Canto, J.; Montalvo Martinez, M.; López-Orozco, J.; Besada Portas, E.; De La Cruz Garcia, J. (2017). Centro de Control de Tierra para Colaboración de Vehículos Autónomos Marinos. Revista Iberoamericana de Automática e Informática industrial. 15(1):1-11. https://doi.org/10.4995/riai.2017.8737OJS111151ASTM, 2017. Committee F41 on unmanned maritime vehicle systems (umvs). [Online] https://www.astm.org/COMMITTEE/F41.htm.ASV, 2017. Asview control system. [Online] http://asvglobal.com/asviewcontrol-system/.Besada-Portas, E., Lopez-Orozco, J. A., Besada, J., Jesus, M., 2011. Multisensor fusion for linear control systems with asynchronous, out-of-sequence and erroneous data. Automatica 47 (7), 1399-1408. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.automatica.2011.02.030Besada-Portas, E., Lopez-Orozco, J. A., de la Cruz, J., 2002. Unified fusion system based on bayesian networks for autonomous mobile robots. In: Information Fusion, 2002. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on. Vol. 2. IEEE, pp. 873-880. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICIF.2002.1020900Bonache Seco, J. A., López Orozco, J. A., Besada Portas, E., de la Cruz, J. M., 2016. Centro de control versátil: Estado actual y evolución hacia la adaptabilidad. CEA, pp. 979-986.Bürkle, A., Segor, F., Kollmann, M., Sch¨onbein, R., 2011. Universal ground control station for heterogeneous sensors. Journal On Advances in Telecommunications, IARIA 3 (3), 152-161.Burmeister, H.-C., Bruhn, W., Rødseth, Ø. J., Porathe, T., 2014. Autonomous unmanned merchant vessel and its contribution towards the e-navigation implementation: The munin perspective. International Journal of e-Navigation and Maritime Economy 1, 1-13.Cummings, M. L., How, J. P., Whitten, A., Toupet, O., 2012. The impact of human-automation collaboration in decentralized multiple unmanned vehicle control. Proceedings of the IEEE 100 (3), 660-671. https://doi.org/10.1109/JPROC.2011.2174104de la Cruz, J. M., Lopez-Orozco, A, J., Besada Portas, E., Aranda Almansa, J., 2016. Control de formaciones de vehículos marinos de superficie con restricciones de entrada. CEA, pp. 1044-1051.de la Cruz, J. M., Lopez-Orozco, A, J., Besada Portas, E., Moreno Salinas, D., Aranda Almansa, J., 2014. Seguimiento de caminos para formaciones de vehículos marinos de superficie.de la Cruz, J. M., Lopez-Orozco, J. A., Besada-Portas, E., Aranda-Almansa, J., 2015. A streamlined nonlinear path following kinematic controller. In: 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). IEEE, pp. 6394-6401. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRA.2015.7140097Heo, J., Kim, S., Kwon, Y., 2016. Design of ground control station for operation of multiple combat entities. Journal of Computer and Communications 4, 66-71. https://doi.org/10.4236/jcc.2016.45010Lalish, E., Morgansen, K. A., 2008. Decentralized reactive collision avoidance for multivehicle systems. In: Proceedings of the 47th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control. IEEE, pp. 1218-1224. https://doi.org/10.1109/CDC.2008.4738894Lapierre, L., Soetanto, D., 2007. Nonlinear path-following control of an auv. Ocean engineering 34 (11), 1734-1744. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oceaneng.2006.10.019LibrePilot, 2015. Software suite to control multicopter and other rc-models. [Online] https://www.librepilot.org/site/index.html, accedido en marzo de 2017.Lindemuth, M., Murphy, R., Steimle, E., Armitage, W., Dreger, K., Elliot, T., Hall, M., Kalyadin, D., Kramer, J., Palankar, M., et al., 2011. Sea robot assisted inspection. IEEE robotics & automation magazine 18 (2), 96-107. https://doi.org/10.1109/MRA.2011.940994MAVLINK, 2017. Micro air vehicle communication protocol. [Online] http://qgroundcontrol.org/mavlink/start, accedido en Marzo, 2017.Moreno-Salinas, D., Besada-Portas, E., López-Orozco, J., Chaos, D., de la Cruz, J., Aranda, J., 2015. Symbolic regression for marine vehicles identification. IFAC-PapersOnLine 48 (16), 210-216. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ifacol.2015.10.282Mupparapu, S. S., Chappell, S. G., Komerska, R. J., Blidberg, D. R., Nitzel, R., Benton, C., Popa, D. O., Sanderson, A. C., 2004. Autonomous systems monitoring and control (asmac)-an auv fleet controller. In: Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, 2004 IEEE/OES. IEEE, pp. 119-126.Murphy, R. R., Steimle, E., Griffin, C., Cullins, C., Hall, M., Pratt, K., 2008. Cooperative use of unmanned sea surface and micro aerial vehicles at hurricane wilma. Journal of Field Robotics 25 (3), 164-180. https://doi.org/10.1002/rob.20235Park, S., Deyst, J., How, J. P., 2007. Performance and lyapunov stability of a nonlinear path following guidance method. Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics 30 (6), 1718-1728. https://doi.org/10.2514/1.28957Patterson, M. C., Mulligan, A., Boiteux, F., 2013. Safety and security applications for micro-unmanned surface vessels. In: 2013 OCEANS-San Diego. IEEE, pp. 1-6.QGroundControl, 2017. A uav control station. [Online] http://qgroundcontrol.com/, accedido en Marzo de 2017.Ribas, D., Palomeras, N., Ridao, P., Carreras, M., Mallios, A., 2012. Girona 500 auv: From survey to intervention. IEEE ASME Transactions on Mechatronics 17 (1), 46-53. https://doi.org/10.1109/TMECH.2011.2174065STANAG4586, 2012. Standard interfaces of uav control system (ucs) for nato uav interoperability, ed. 3. NATO standardization agency (nsa). [Online] http://nso.nato.int/nso/nsdd/listpromulg.html.Sutton, R., Sharma, S., Xao, T., 2011. Adaptive navigation systems for an unmanned surface vehicle. Journal of Marine Engineering & Technology 10 (3), 3-20.Walter, B. E., Knutzon, J. S., Sannier, A. V., Oliver, J. H., 2004. Virtual uav ground control station. In: AIAA 3rd Unmanned Unlimited Technical Conference, Workshop and Exhibit. https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2004-6320WGSM, 2017. Wave glider management system. [Online] https://www.liquidrobotics.com/platform/software/

Joint association of the Mediterranean diet and smoking with all-cause mortality in the Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra (SUN) cohort

Objectives: Although low-quality diets and smoking are independently associated with higher mortality risk, a joint analysis of both risk factors in relation to mortality has not been sufficiently studied. The aim of this study was to explore the effect modification between level of adherence to a Mediterranean dietary pattern (MedDiet) and smoking status on all-cause, cancer, and cardiovascular mortality.Methods: We conducted a prospective analysis to assess the association between diet and smoking status in the SUN (Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra) cohort study. Deaths were confirmed by review of the National Death Index. Participants were classified into six categories according to the MedDiet (adherence/non-adherence) and their exposure to smoking (never/former/current smoker). Multivariate-adjusted Cox regression models were fitted to estimate hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for mortality. During a mean follow-up of 11.5 y (SD 4.5), we observed 18 948 participants (mean age 38.4 y; SD 12.4) and 431 deaths (51.3% cancer deaths). Results: A higher risk for death was found among smokers with a low adherence to the MedDiet (HR, 2.20; 95% CI, 1.45-3.34) compared with never smokers with high adherence to the MedDiet. The P value for supra-multiplicative effect modification was not statistically significant, meaning that the effect of both factors is multiplicative. A higher risk for premature death from cancer was found in smokers and in those nonadherent with the MedDiet.Conclusion: Smoking and poor adherence to the MedDiet exerted a multiplicative effect in increasing allcause mortality and cancer-related mortality in a Spanish population of university graduates.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Diseño y validación de contenido de un cuestionario sobre Pérdida de Peso en Deportes de Combate (PPDC)

El sistema de categorías por peso que rige los deportes de comba- te fomenta en estos atletas la puesta en práctica de determinados métodos y estrategias para reducir su masa corporal antes del pesaje ocial, así como otros hábitos y protocolos de rápida rehidratación y rellenado de las reser- vas energéticas en el lapso de tiempo (6-20 h) que separa este pesaje ocial del comienzo del torneo. El objetivo de este trabajo fue diseñar y validar por primera vez un instrumento que permita estudiar los hábitos que están llevando a cabo los deportistas de combate durante las fases de pérdida de peso y su posterior recuperación antes del torneo. Tras el diseño original del cuestionario, se vericó la validez de contenido y la validez estructural del instrumento a través del acuerdo y consenso de 12 jueces expertos. En segundo lugar, se realizó un estudio de la validez de compresión de los ítems que compone el instrumento con una muestra de 46 deportistas de combate experimentados. Así mismo, se calculó la abilidad mediante la aplicación de la prueba test-retest en una muestra de 28 deportistas. Los resultados indicaron que el cuestionario sobre pérdida de peso en deportes de combate presenta óptimos niveles de validez de contenido así como de re- producibilidad en las respuestas para identicar y monitorizar los métodos, las frecuencias y las estrategias con las que estos deportistas acometen las fases de pérdida de peso antes del pesaje y su posterior recuperación antes del comienzo del torneo.