Adaptative ECT System Based on Reconfigurable Electronics

In this work we present a novel scheme for the design of electrical capacitance tomography systems that is based on the use of reconfigurable electronics. The objective of this strategy is to generate an adaptable and portable prototype for the processing electronics, i.e., an instrument suitable to be easily transported and applied to different ECT sensors and scenarios with no need of hardware redesign. In order to show the benefits of this approach, a prototype of the processing electronics for the readings of the inter-electrode capacitance values has been implemented using a Programmable System on Chip (PSoC) that allows configuring both analog and digital blocks included in the design. The result is a compact and portable instrument that can work with any ECT sensor up to 8 electrodes. The measurements are sent through a wireless Bluetooth link to an external smart-device such as smartphone, where the permittivity distribution is reconstructed using a custom-developed Android application.Junta de Andalucía (University Professor and Researcher Training Program – FPDI grant)EI BIOTiC under project MPTIC1

Interfacing PDM MEMS Microphones with PFM Spiking Systems: Application for Neuromorphic Auditory Sensors

Neuromorphic computation processes sensors output in the spiking domain, which presents constraints in many cases when converting information to spikes, loosing, as example, temporal accuracy. This paper presents a spike-based system to adapt audio information from low-power pulse-density modulation (PDM) microelectromechanical systems microphones into rate coded spike frequencies. These spikes could be directly used by the neuromorphic auditory sensor (NAS) for frequency decomposition in different bands, avoiding the analog or digital conversion to spike streams. This improves the time response of the NAS, allowing its use in more time restrictive applications. This adaptation was conducted in VHDL as an interface for PDM microphones, converting their pulses into temporal distributed spikes following a pulse-frequency modulation scheme with an accurate inter-spike-interval, known as PDM to spikes interface (PSI). We introduce a new architecture of spike-based band-pass filter to reject DC components and distribute spikes in time. This was tested in two scenarios, first as a stand-alone circuit for its characterization, and then integrated with a NAS for verification. The PSI achieves a total harmonic distortion of −46.18 dB and a signal-to-noise ratio of 63.47 dB, demands less than 1% of the resources of a Spartan-6 FPGA and its power consumption is around 7 mW.Agencia Estatal de Investigación PID2019-105556GB-C33/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 (MINDROB)Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades PCI2019-111841-2 (CHIST-ERA SMALL

Wearable System for Biosignal Acquisition and Monitoring Based on Reconfigurable Technologies

Wearable monitoring devices are now a usual commodity in the market, especially for the monitoring of sports and physical activity. However, specialized wearable devices remain an open field for high-risk professionals, such as military personnel, fire and rescue, law enforcement, etc. In this work, a prototype wearable instrument, based on reconfigurable technologies and capable of monitoring electrocardiogram, oxygen saturation, and motion, is presented. This reconfigurable device allows a wide range of applications in conjunction with mobile devices. As a proof-of-concept, the reconfigurable instrument was been integrated into ad hoc glasses, in order to illustrate the non-invasive monitoring of the user. The performance of the presented prototype was validated against a commercial pulse oximeter, while several alternatives for QRS-complex detection were tested. For this type of scenario, clustering-based classification was found to be a very robust option.This work was funded by Banco Santander and Centro Mixto UGR-MADOC through project SIMMA (code 2/16). The contribution of Víctor Toral was funded by the University of Granada through a grant from the “Iniciación a la investigación 2016” program. The contribution of Antonio García was partially funded by Spain’s Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (Programa Estatal de Promoción del Talento y su Empleabilidad en I+D+i, Subprograma Estatal de Movilidad, within Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2013-2016) under a “Salvador de Madariaga” grant (PRX17/00287). The contribution of Francisco J. Romero was funded by Spain’s Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte under a FPU grant (FPU16/01451). The contribution of Francisco M. Gómez-Campos was funded by Spain’s Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad under Project ENE2016_80944_R

Performance Evaluation of Deep Learning-Based Prostate Cancer Screening Methods in Histopathological Images: Measuring the Impact of the Model’s Complexity on Its Processing Speed

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the second most frequently diagnosed cancer among men worldwide, with almost 1.3 million new cases and 360,000 deaths in 2018. As it has been estimated, its mortality will double by 2040, mostly in countries with limited resources. These numbers suggest that recent trends in deep learning-based computer-aided diagnosis could play an important role, serving as screening methods for PCa detection. These algorithms have already been used with histopathological images in many works, in which authors tend to focus on achieving high accuracy results for classifying between malignant and normal cases. These results are commonly obtained by training very deep and complex convolutional neural networks, which require high computing power and resources not only in this process, but also in the inference step. As the number of cases rises in regions with limited resources, reducing prediction time becomes more important. In this work, we measured the performance of current state-of-the-art models for PCa detection with a novel benchmark and compared the results with PROMETEO, a custom architecture that we proposed. The results of the comprehensive comparison show that using dedicated models for specific applications could be of great importance in the future.Spanish grant and the European Regional Development Fund MIND-ROB PID2019-105556GB-C33EU H2020 project CHISTERA SMALL PCI2019-111841-2Andalusian Regional Project PAIDI2020 with FEDER support PROMETEO AT17-5410-US

Semipresencialidad en tiempos de COVID-19: adaptación de la docencia en el ámbito de Fundamentos de Informática

El mundo ha cambiado desde la aparición del nue vo virus de la familia de los coronavirus (COVID-19), el cual fue declarado pandemia en tan sólo unos po cos meses. El COVID-19 ha tenido un alto impacto en todos los ámbitos conocidos, incluida la docencia. Las medidas de seguridad impartidas por las autorida des sanitarias implicaron una necesaria adaptación de la docencia en general, y más en concreto la univer sitaria. Este artículo se centra en cómo ha afectado la pandemia a la asignatura de Informática en el ámbito del Grado de Ingeniería Química Industrial. En dicha asignatura se introducen a los alumnos los conceptos básicos de la informática, incluyendo sistemas opera tivos, bases de datos y redes de computadores, además de un bloque de sesiones de laboratorio dedicado a la programación en lenguaje C. La situación actual ha dado lugar a la semipresencialidad en la docencia de la asignatura durante el curso 2020/2021, repercutien do tanto a las metodologías de enseñanza como a los contenidos teórico-prácticos. En el presente trabajo se describen los cambios realizados de cara a adaptar el contenido de la asignatura a la semipresencialidad, re portando resultados tanto a nivel de evaluación como a nivel de seguimiento y motivación del alumnad

A Low-power, Reachable, Wearable and Intelligent IoT Device for Animal Activity Monitoring

Along with the proliferation of mobile devices and wireless signal coverage, IoT devices, such as smart wristbands for monitoring its owner’s activity or sleep patterns, get great popularity. Wearable technology in human life has become quite useful due to the information given (sleep hours, heart rate, etc). However, wearables for animals does not give information about behaviour directly: they collect raw data that is sent to a server where, after a post-processing step, the behaviour is known. In this work, we present a smart IoT device that classifies different animal behaviours from the information obtained from on-board sensors using an embedded neural network running in the device. This information is uploaded to a server through a wireless sensor network based on Zigbee communication. The architecture of the device allows an easy assembly in a reduced dimension wearable case. The firmware allows a modular functionality by activating or deactivating modules independently, which improve the power efficiency of the device. The power consumption has been analyzed, allowing the 1Ah battery to work the system during several days. A novel localization and distance estimation technique (for 802.15.4 networks) is presented to recover a lost device in Do˜nana National Park with unidirectional antennas and log-normalization distance estimation over RSSI.Junta de Andalucía P12-TIC-1300Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2016-77785-

In situ synthesis of fluorescent silicon nanodots for determination of total carbohydrates in a paper microfluidic device combined with laser prepared graphene heater

We report a simple, rapid, low-resource and one-step method for formation of fluorescent silicon nanodots (SNDs) in a microfluidic paper-based analytical device (μPAD) incorporated in a reusable, portable and flexible heater for determination of total carbohydrates. The synthesis of SNDs is based on the redox reaction between (3-aminopropyl) triethoxysilane (APTS) reagent and carbohydrates, which act as a reducer. The graphene-based heater was fabricated by laser ablation of Kapton polyimide. Thereby, the developed system heat the μPAD during the synthesis of SNDs at 80 °C for 30 min. The blue emitting SNDs formed have an emission peak wavelength at 475 nm. We used a digital camera and smartphone for the quantitative analysis of total carbohydrates expressed such as index of glucose or fructose with grey scale value as the analytical parameter. Under the optimal conditions, the method has a low detection limit (0.80 μM for glucose and 0.51 μM for fructose, respectively), and a linear response (10–200 μM for glucose and 10–100 μM for fructose). The method has been applied to the determination of glucose in biological fluids (serum and urine samples). In addition, determination of total carbohydrates in commercial juices and teas have been carried outThis work was founded by Spanish “Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad” (Projects PID2019-103938RB-I00 and CTQ2017-86125-P) and Junta de Andalucía (Projects B-FQM-243-UGR18 and P18-RT-2961). The projects were partially supported by European Regional Development Funds (ERDF)

Acceptance of living liver donation among medical students: A multicenter stratified study from Spain

AIM: To analyze the attitude of Spanish medical students toward living liver donation (LLD) and to establish which factors have an influence on this attitude. METHODS: STUDY TYPE: A sociological, interdisciplinary, multicenter and observational study. STUDY POPULATION: Medical students enrolled in Spain (n = 34000) in the university academic year 2010-2011. SAMPLE SIZE: A sample of 9598 students stratified by geographical area and academic year. Instrument used to measure attitude: A validated questionnaire (PCID-DVH RIOS) was self-administered and completed anonymously. Data collection procedure: Randomly selected medical schools. The questionnaire was applied to each academic year at compulsory sessions. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Student´s t test, ?(2) test and logistic regression analysis. RESULTS: The completion rate was 95.7% (n = 9275). 89% (n = 8258) were in favor of related LLD, and 32% (n = 2937) supported unrelated LLD. The following variables were associated with having a more favorable attitude: (1) age (P = 0.008); (2) sex (P < 0.001); (3) academic year (P < 0.001); (4) geographical area (P = 0.013); (5) believing in the possibility of needing a transplant oneself in the future (P < 0.001); (6) attitude toward deceased donation (P < 0.001); (7) attitude toward living kidney donation (P < 0.001); (8) acceptance of a donated liver segment from a family member if one were needed (P < 0.001); (9) having discussed the subject with one's family (P < 0.001) and friends (P < 0.001); (10) a partner's opinion about the subject (P < 0.001); (11) carrying out activities of an altruistic nature; and (12) fear of the possible mutilation of the body after donation (P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Spanish medical students have a favorable attitude toward LLD

Práctica de desarrollo de una red de sensores basada en la programación de microcontroladores para sistemas en tiempo real

Este artículo presenta una práctica de laboratorio impartida mediante una metodología de aprendizaje basado en proyectos cuyo objetivo principal es adqui rir la capacidad de programación de microcontrolado res para el diseño e implantación de una red de co municación inalámbrica de bajo consumo en el ámbi to de las comunicaciones industriales. Este proyecto se desarrolla en las sesiones prácticas de la asignatura Comunicaciones Industriales del Máster Universitario en Sistemas Inteligentes en Energía y Transporte cuyas competencias contemplan la capacidad para planificar la instalación de redes de comunicación en entornos industriales, así como la aplicación de los conocimientos adquiridos en la resolución de proble mas multidisciplinares. El proyecto de laboratorio expuesto en este trabajo abarca ambas competencias, ya que propone establecer una red de control jerár quica en las comunicaciones industriales mediante la programación de microcontroladores, abordando el desarrollo de sistemas empotrados en tiempo real. Los dispositivos empleados para establecer la red de sensores son módulos XBee conectados a un puerto UART de un microcontrolador ARM Cortex-M0 para establecer comunicación serie asíncrona entre el módulo XBee y el microcontrolador. La arquitectura de la red está basada en la topología estrella. El módulo XBee central está conectado a través de un puerto COM Virtual a un PC. En el PC se ejecuta una interfaz de usuario desarrollada en lenguaje C# usan do el entorno Visual Studio basada en la interfaz gráfica Windows Forms