The Need for Unification and Harmonization in a Maritime Licensing Standard for Recreational Craft

The objective of this document is to make clear the importance of simplifying the transit of pleasure boats and their skippers safely in the European territory with the foreseeable improvement of the functioning of the internal market. In many European countries recreational skippers are required to have specific training and experience in order to demonstrate their maritime competence. These licenses for navigation allow a recreational vessel to be skippered in each national territory. One of the main objectives of these qualifications is to reduce the number of accidents in recreational boating. Generally speaking, in the European Union, as regards the requirements for the management of pleasure craft, both private and professional, the requirements are very different depending on the member state

Esquema de comunicaciones avanzado para convertidores modulares

Los convertidores modulares son una solución competitiva para muchas aplicaciones como la producción de energía que está continuamente creciendo ante una demanda también creciente. Sin embargo, en determinadas condiciones de funcionamiento, principalmente en un comportamiento no balanceado, las técnicas tradicionales de control no son admisibles ya que el resultado no es bueno en aspectos de eficiencia. Es necesario aplicar por tanto, técnicas de control avanzado para lo cual es necesario tomar datos en cada intervalo de funcionamiento de un convertidor, es decir, a una frecuencia muy alta. Además estos datos deben ser transmitidos a un módulo encargado de ejecutar el control y generar una referencia que es devuelta al convertidor. El punto más sensible de este proceso son las comunicaciones, ya que no existe una solución eficiente para comunicaciones tan rápidas como las necesarias. Estudiaremos por tanto, diferentes posibilidades de comunicaciones. Partiremos de un protocolo desarrollado por Abraham Márquez, tutor de este Trabajo de Fin de Grado, en su doctorado y lo adaptaremos a las potenciales soluciones encontradas. Nos centraremos principalmente en los protocolos de bajo nivel SPI y UART que permiten mayor flexibilidad en el mensaje y su cabecera, realizando experimentos al límite superior de velocidad permitida por los microcontroladores. Analizaremos también el hardware necesario para las comunicaciones, partiendo del sistema ideado por A. Márquez, y desarrollaremos diseños de PCBs que hagan posibles las comunicaciones. Como medios físicos tendremos cable plano, cable RJ45 y fibra óptica, cuyos adaptadores a las señales de los microcontroladores diseñaremos, probaremos y evaluaremos. Para estas evaluaciones realizaremos experimentos que repetiremos con las mismas condiciones hasta en 7 ocasiones cada uno con el fin de obtener datos fiables. Además de comparar los diferentes enlaces y protocolos, realizaremos pruebas donde comprobemos diferentes esquemas de comunicaciones, entre dos o más dispositivos que nos permitirán analizar la respuesta del protocolo y los elementos hardware diferentes modos de funcionamiento como pueden ser comunicaciones punto a punto, comunicaciones con múltiples esclavos con pregunta y respuesta y comunicaciones con múltiples esclavos con respuesta multiplexada en el tiempo. Se utilizará también el protocolo I2C para el control de un expansor de pines de entradas y salidas digitales, creando además una librería para facilitar su uso: leer las entradas, escribir las salidas, manejar las interrupciones, configurar los pines... Tras las distintas pruebas veremos como aumentar la frecuencia manteniéndonos por debajo de los 10MHz supone una mejora del comportamiento importante. Sin embargo, a frecuencias altas, subidas similares o mayores en la tasa de datos no producen resultados tan notables, posiblemente porque la frecuencia limitadora en estos casos es la del microcontrolador y no la del periférico. También veremos como la UART es más fiable en primera instancia, pero en determinadas condiciones el SPI puede también tener un comportamiento óptimo.Modular converters are a competitive solution to many applications as power production that is increasing because of an also increasing demand. However, traditional control techniques do not work well in some operational conditions, such as unbalanced ones. Advanced control techniques are needed to be applied. Those control methods require a continuous measurement of electric data of the converter in each working interval. The data should be transmitted to a control module that executes the algorithm and generates a signal that is sent back to the converter. The communications in this proccess must be very fast and efficient. There is not a developed solution to be inmediately applied. So we are going to study different communication possibilities. This document is based on a system developed by Dr. Abraham Márquez in his doctoral thesis, where he designed a general idea about hardware and a software protocol that will be adapted to the proposed solutions. We are going to focus on SPI and UART protocols, that allow us to configure the message and its header, in order to improve efficiency. We will do experiments in which communications frequency will be set at upper limit stablished by microcontrollers. Futhermore, we will analize hardware needed in this communicatios and we will develop different PCB designs to achieve the required speed. Flat cable, RJ45 cable and optic fiber will be used as physic link between communicated devices. We will focus our design on the adapters of this links to the microcontrollers signals. Every experiment will be repeated 7 times at least, so that we can store reliable information. In addition to this test, we are going to make other ones in which different communications schemes will be compared, such as point to point and multislave with two modes: The first one, ask and reply and the second one, broadcast ask and time-multiplexed reply. The I2C protocol will be used to control a digital input-output expansor and a library will be created to give easier ways to read inputs, write outputs, configure pins and handle interrupts. After multiple test, we will see that a frequency increase at low frequencies (less than 10 MHz) result in an important reduction in communication times. However, at high frequencies the result of increasing bit rate is not so noticeable. Maybe, this is due to the microcontroller frequency, which is limiting the peripheral speed. Furthermore, we will see that UART is more reliable but in some cases, SPI is able to behave as well as UART.Universidad de Sevilla. Grado en Ingeniería Electrónica, Robótica y Mecatrónic

Coordinating heterogeneous IoT devices by means of the centralized vision of the SDN controller

The IoT (Internet of Things) has become a reality during recent years. The desire of having everything connected to the Internet results in clearly identified benefits that will impact on socio economic development. However, the exponential growth in the number of IoT devices and their heterogeneity open new challenges that must be carefully studied. Coordination among devices to adapt them to their users' context usually requires high volumes of data to be exchanged with the cloud. In order to reduce unnecessary communications and network overhead, this paper proposes a novel network architecture based on the Software-Defined Networking paradigm that allows IoT devices coordinate and adapt them within the scope of a particular context.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Secondary prevention of atherosclerosis

La aterosclerosis es la principal causa de muerte en los paises desarrollado, por las complicaciones a nivel cardiaco, accidentes vasculocerebrales y enfermedad vascular periférica. Aunque su etiología es desconocida si se ha producido en los últimos años un importante progreso en un mejor conocimiento de los llamados factores de riesgo: Las dislipoproteinemias, hipertensión arterial y tabaquismo son los mas destacados, pero se han implicado otras muchas condiciones y enfermedades, como edad, sexo masculino, factores genéticos, historia personal o familiar de aterosclerosis, niveles bajos de HDL-colesterol, niveles elevados de lipoproteina (a), diabetes, hiperinsulinemia,hipertrofia ventricular izquierda, obesidad, sedentarismo, alcoholismo, estrés-personalidad tipo A, niveles elevados de fibrinógeno, mujer postrnenopaúsica, uso de anticonceptivos orales o microalburninuria. Numerosos estudios han probado recientemente que la aterosclerosis es una enfermedad reversible cuando se hace un control adecuado de los diversos factores de riesgo cardiovascular.Atherosclerosis is responsible for the majority of deaths in the developped countries. This disorder is the underlying cause of heart attacks, strokes and peripheral vascular disease. Although the etioloy is unknown, progress has been made in identifying the risk factors that predispose to it. Thus, a number of conditions are more frequent in the atherosclerotic patients: Hypercholesterolemia, hypertension and cigarette smoking are the most potent, but another conditions has been lmplicated, such as age, male gender, farnily or personal history of cardiovascular disease, low HDL-Cholesterol, high lipoprotein (a), diabetes, hyperinsulinemia, left ventricular hypertrophia, abdominal obesity,physical inactivity, alcoholism, stress-type of personality, high fibrinogen levels , postrnenopausic woman, use of oral contraceptiv or microalburninuria. The regression or interruption of progression of atherosclerotic lesions can be acomplished in humans, as has been demonstrated in an important number of studies

Unificación de comunicaciones entre el vehículo y la central empleando el protocolo IPv6

Las arquitecturas de comunicación presentes actualmente en el campo de la gestión de flotas, hacen uso de diversas conexiones para tratar con los diferentes tipos de comunicaciones que se establecen entre los vehículos y la central, ya sea para transmitir voz, datos o para enviar y recibir faxes. En un intento de solucionar esta situación, el proyecto DAMA estudia la mejor manera de centralizar todas estas comunicaciones en un dispositivo de bajo coste, que actúe como único punto de acceso entre el mundo exterior y el vehículo, utilizando en cada momento la mejor red de acceso disponible. La utilización del protocolo IPV6, y más concretamente el servicio de movilidad a nivel de red que éste proporciona (MIPv6), junto con las técnicas de movilidad a nivel de aplicación proporcionadas por el protocolo de señalización SIP, son los pilares básicos en los que se basa la solución propuesta por DAMA

Depth of almost strictly sign regular matrices

The concept of depth of an almost strictly sign regular matrix is introduced and used to simplify some algorithmic characterizations of these matrices

Revolutionizing Pharmaceuticals: Generative Artificial Intelligence as a bibliographic assistant

[EN]Artificial Generative Intelligence (AGI) has exploded into biomedical and pharmaceutical research, fundamentally transforming the way scientists approach literature review, experiment design, and reagent and antibody selection. This article explores how IAG, supported by advanced machine learning and natural language processing models, has revolutionized these processes. The IAG streamlines literature review, extracting relevant information, identifying emerging patterns and trends in the scientific literature, and generating innovative hypotheses. It also acts as an advanced search tool, allowing researchers to quickly access accurate information in an ocean of data. A prominent example of this application is BenchSci, a platform that uses the IAG to recommend reagents and antibodies based on real experimental data and scientific literature. This integration of IAG into experimental design promises to accelerate research, reduce costs, and improve the precision of experiments. Together, the IAG is presented as a catalyst for discoveries in pharmaceutical and biomedical research, offering unprecedented potential to advance the understanding and treatment of diseases, and improve decision-making in the industry

NGS data analysis: a review of major tools and pipeline frameworks for variant discovery

[EN]The analysis of genetic data has always been a problem due to the large amount of information available and the difficulty in isolating that which is relevant. However, over the years progress in sequencing techniques has been accompanied by a development of computer techniques to the current application of artificial intelligence. We can summarize the phases of sequence analysis in the following: quality assessment, alignment, pre-variant processing, variant calling and variant annotation. In this article we will review and comment on the tools used in each phase of genetic sequencing, and analyze the drawbacks and advantages offered by each of them

Self-Tuning PID controller for autonomous car tracking in urban traffic

In this paper an on line self-tuned PID controller is proposed for the control of a car whose goal is to follow another one, at distances and speeds typical in urban traffic. The bestknown tuning mechanism is perhaps the MIT rule, due to its ease of implementation. However, as it is well known, this method does not guarantee the stability of the system, providing good results only for constant or slowly varying reference signals and in the absence of noise, which are unrealistic conditions. When the reference input varies with an appreciable rate or in presence of noise, eventually it could result in system instability. In this paper an alternative method is proposed that significantly improves the robustness of the system for varying inputs or in the presence of noise, as demonstrated by simulation

Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring in the Elderly

The incidence of hypertension is high in the elderly and is present in 2/3 of the patients older than 65 years. Prevalence can reach 90% in patients older than 80 years. The presence of isolated systolic hypertension (ISH) is characteristic of this population. However, the prevalence of hypertension by ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) is not well known. In this study, we analyzed the special characteristics of hypertension in this population, giving special emphasis on ABPM readings