RNTuple performance: Status and Outlook

Upcoming HEP experiments, e.g. at the HL-LHC, are expected to increase the volume of generated data by at least one order of magnitude. In order to retain the ability to analyze the influx of data, full exploitation of modern storage hardware and systems, such as low-latency high-bandwidth NVMe devices and distributed object stores, becomes critical. To this end, the ROOT RNTuple I/O subsystem has been designed to address performance bottlenecks and shortcomings of ROOT's current state of the art TTree I/O subsystem. RNTuple provides a backwards-incompatible redesign of the TTree binary format and access API that evolves the ROOT event data I/O for the challenges of the upcoming decades. It focuses on a compact data format, on performance engineering for modern storage hardware, for instance through making parallel and asynchronous I/O calls by default, and on robust interfaces that are easy to use correctly. In this contribution, we evaluate the RNTuple performance for typical HEP analysis tasks. We compare the throughput delivered by RNTuple to popular I/O libraries outside HEP, such as HDF5 and Apache Parquet. We demonstrate the advantages of RNTuple for HEP analysis workflows and provide an outlook on the road to its use in production.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures; submitted to proceedings of 20th International Workshop on Advanced Computing and Analysis Techniques in Physics Research (ACAT 2021

Training a Convolutional Neural Network for Appearance-Invariant Place Recognition

Place recognition is one of the most challenging problems in computer vision, and has become a key part in mobile robotics and autonomous driving applications for performing loop closure in visual SLAM systems. Moreover, the difficulty of recognizing a revisited location increases with appearance changes caused, for instance, by weather or illumination variations, which hinders the long-term application of such algorithms in real environments. In this paper we present a convolutional neural network (CNN), trained for the first time with the purpose of recognizing revisited locations under severe appearance changes, which maps images to a low dimensional space where Euclidean distances represent place dissimilarity. In order for the network to learn the desired invariances, we train it with triplets of images selected from datasets which present a challenging variability in visual appearance. The triplets are selected in such way that two samples are from the same location and the third one is taken from a different place. We validate our system through extensive experimentation, where we demonstrate better performance than state-of-art algorithms in a number of popular datasets

MOSAIX: a tool to built large mosaics from GALEX images

Large sky surveys are providing a huge amount of information for studies of the interstellar medium, the galactic structure or the cosmic web. Setting into a common frame information coming from different wavelengths, over large fields of view, is needed for this kind of research. GALEX is the only nearly all-sky survey at ultraviolet wavelengths and contains fundamental information for all types of studies. GALEX field of view is circular embedded in a squared matrix of 3840 x 3840 pixels. This fact makes it hard to get GALEX images properly overlapped with the existing astronomical tools such as Aladin or Montage. We developed our own software for this purpose. In this article, we describe this software and makes it available to the community.Comment: 7 pages, including 8 figures, accepted by Astrophysics and Space Scienc

Variation of the ultraviolet extinction law across the Taurus-Auriga star forming complex. A GALEX based study

The Taurus-Auriga molecular complex (TMC) is the main laboratory for the study of low mass star formation. The density and properties of interstellar dust are expected to vary across the TMC. These variations trace important processes such as dust nucleation or the magnetic field coupling with the cloud. In this article, we show how the combination of near ultraviolet (NUV) and infrared (IR) photometry can be used to derive the strength of the 2175 \AA\ bump and thus any enhancement in the abundance of small dust grains and PAHs in the dust grains size distribution. This technique is applied to the envelope of the TMC, mapped by the GALEX All Sky Survey (AIS). UV and IR photometric data have been retrieved from the GALEX-AIS and the 2MASS catalogues. NUV and K-band star counts have been used to identify the areas in the cloud envelope where the 2175 \AA\ bump is weaker than in the diffuse ISM namely, the low column density extensions of L1495, L1498 and L1524 in Taurus, L1545, L1548, L1519, L1513 in Auriga and L1482-83 in the California region. This finding agrees with previous results on dust evolution derived from Spitzer data and suggests that dust grains begin to decouple from the environmental galactic magnetic field already in the envelope.Comment: Accepted in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Societ

Sobre las funciones y reglas de agregación

En este artículo se analiza la definición actualmente al uso de función de agregación,haciendo hincapié en que, a pesar de considerar el problema de la variabilidad de la dimensión de la información a agregar, dicha definición no cierra la posibilidad de disfuncionalidades obvias, subyaciendo en su concepción un potencial abuso del formalismo matemático que, junto con las necesarias consideraciones de implementación práctica pueden llevar a reducir a una simple fórmula lo que es un complejo concepto. En este trabajo propondremos las bases para una definición alternativa que tenga en cuenta los objetivos y las limitaciones que se observan en las aplicaciones de las funciones de agregación dentro del contexto difuso

Mexican Organizations: Alignment, ICTs and Leadership

Regardless of their classification and size, organizations face challenges that require the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in order to overcome them. Once organizations identify and create their strategy, organization’s strategy alignment with ICTs becomes a necessity. Organizations’ management has different leadership styles that impact their outcomes; in addition, could influence such alignment. Mexican organizations, like their counterparts in other countries, implement controls for their operations. These controls demand strong support of tools that involve ICTs. Consequently, a strong differentiator is the adoption of ICTs that support their substantive work, regardless of its size. What does impact these organizations is the destination given to the investment in ICTs to support their processes. Past research in the strategic alignment of ICTs has made significant progress since the emergence of the Strategic Alignment Model (Henderson and Venkatraman 1993). Talon et al. (2016) proposed an approach, in which the alignment between the ICTs and the organizations’ objectives is given at the process level: lack of ICT support for critical activities in a specific process (ICT Deficit), ICTs fully support the key processes/macroprocesses (Alignment of ICTs), and finally surplus ICT resources (ICT surplus). The latter approach is what the present study uses for alignment measurement Goleman (2000) proposes six styles of leadership, coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting and coaching. He argues that, taken individually, they seem to have a unique and direct impact on the work climate of a company, division or team and, in turn, on financial performance. Furthermore, he believes that leaders who used styles that positively affected the climate had markedly better financial outcomes than those who did not. The main argument underlying the studies discussed previously is that organizations will function well when the key ICT resources, infrastructure, associated technical/administrative skills, and knowledge assets are aligned with the organizations’ strategy. The main objective of the present research is to identify whether such alignment is oriented to the macroprocesses/key processes of the organization. Those that are key to the type of strategy defined by the organization, and measure its deficit, alignment or surplus, whether they are applicable. In addition, intends to identify whether the leadership style in the organization influences the degree of alignment and execution of such strategy

Fiber Bragg Gratings, IT Techniques and Strain Gauge Validation for Strain Calculation on Aged Metal Specimens

This paper studies the feasibility of calculating strains in aged F114 steel specimens with Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors and infrared thermography (IT) techniques. Two specimens have been conditioned under extreme temperature and relative humidity conditions making comparative tests of stress before and after aging using different adhesives. Moreover, a comparison has been made with IT techniques and conventional methods for calculating stresses in F114 steel. Implementation of Structural Health Monitoring techniques on real aircraft during their life cycle requires a study of the behaviour of FBG sensors and their wiring under real conditions, before using them for a long time. To simulate aging, specimens were stored in a climate chamber at 70 °C and 90% RH for 60 days. This study is framed within the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Non Destructuve Evaluation (NDE) research lines, integrated into the avionics area maintained by the Aeronautical Technologies Centre (CTA) and the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)