Application of the Wavelet Transform to the Digital Image Processing of Electron Micrographs and of Backreflection Electron Diffraction Patterns

In this work we explore the use of the so-called wavelet transform in the digital image processing of micrographs. The wavelet transform of an image f(x,y) is defined as: Wf(s,u,v) = f(x,y) s Ψ(s(x-u),s(y-v)) dxdy where Ψ is an analyzing function called wavelet and which is in our examples always taken to be the Mexican hat given by Ψ(x)=(2-(x2+y2))exp(-(x2+y2)/2) Some synthetic images are shown in which it can be clearly seen how the wavelet transform can be useful to reveal edges and to emphasize the boundaries of the clusters. The technique is applied in the case of the CoMoS catalysts, in which the wavelet transform can be used to emphasize the hexagonal domains while filtering the noise quite effectively. The technique is next applied to electron backreflection patterns where substantial noise reduction and emphasis of the lines are achieved. Several examples of the application of this processing tool to high resolution images of metallic particles and to quasicrystals are presented

Measuring the evolution of contemporary western popular music

Popular music is a key cultural expression that has captured listeners' attention for ages. Many of the structural regularities underlying musical discourse are yet to be discovered and, accordingly, their historical evolution remains formally unknown. Here we unveil a number of patterns and metrics characterizing the generic usage of primary musical facets such as pitch, timbre, and loudness in contemporary western popular music. Many of these patterns and metrics have been consistently stable for a period of more than fifty years, thus pointing towards a great degree of conventionalism. Nonetheless, we prove important changes or trends related to the restriction of pitch transitions, the homogenization of the timbral palette, and the growing loudness levels. This suggests that our perception of the new would be rooted on these changing characteristics. Hence, an old tune could perfectly sound novel and fashionable, provided that it consisted of common harmonic progressions, changed the instrumentation, and increased the average loudness.Comment: Supplementary materials not included. Please see the journal reference or contact the author

A flow cytometry-based neutralization assay for simultaneous evaluation of blocking antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants

Vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 have alleviated infection rates, hospitalization and deaths associated with COVID-19. In order to monitor humoral immunity, several serology tests have been developed, but the recent emergence of variants of concern has revealed the need for assays that predict the neutralizing capacity of antibodies in a fast and adaptable manner. Sensitive and fast neutralization assays would allow a timely evaluation of immunity against emerging variants and support drug and vaccine discovery efforts. Here we describe a simple, fast, and cell-free multiplexed flow cytometry assay to interrogate the ability of antibodies to prevent the interaction of Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) and the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the original Wuhan-1 SARS-CoV-2 strain and emerging variants simultaneously, as a surrogate neutralization assay. Using this method, we demonstrate that serum antibodies collected from representative individuals at different time-points during the pandemic present variable neutralizing activity against emerging variants, such as Omicron BA.1 and South African B.1.351. Importantly, antibodies present in samples collected during 2021, before the third dose of the vaccine was administered, do not confer complete neutralization against Omicron BA.1, as opposed to samples collected in 2022 which show significant neutralizing activity. The proposed approach has a comparable performance to other established surrogate methods such as cell-based assays using pseudotyped lentiviral particles expressing the spike of SARS-CoV-2, as demonstrated by the assessment of the blocking activity of therapeutic antibodies (i.e. Imdevimab) and serum samples. This method offers a scalable, cost effective and adaptable platform for the dynamic evaluation of antibody protection in affected populations against variants of SARS-CoV-2.Funding: This research was supported by the SPRI I+D COVID-19 fund (Basque Government, bG-COVID-19), BIOEF EITB Maratoia (BIO21/COV/037 to AP), the European Research Council (ERC) (ERC-2018-StG 804236-NEXTGEN-IO to AP), the Instituto de Salud Carlos iii (ISCiii, DTS21/00094 to AP and DTS20/00138 to MM-C), Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MICINN, PID2019-107956RA-I00 and TED2021-129433B-C21 to AP; PID2020-117116RB-I00 and RTC2019-007125-1 to MM-C) and the FERO Foundation to AP. Personal fellowships: EP-F (Juan de la Cierva-Formación, FJC2018-035449-I), ABo (AECC Bizkaia Scientific Foundation, PRDVZ19003BOSC), AG (Programa Bikaintek from the Basque Government, 48-AF-W1-2019-00012), AA-V (La Caixa Inphinit, LCF/BQ/DR20/11790022), BJ-L (Basque Government, PRE_2019_1_0320), ABl (AECC Bizkaia Scientific Foundation, PRDVZ21640DEBL), PV-B (Proyectos I +D+I, PRE2020-092342) and AP (Ramón y Cajal, RYC2018- 024183-I; and Ikerbasque Research Associate). Acknowledgments: The plasmids for the generation of pseudotyped lentiviral particles were kindly provided by Dr Jesse D. Bloom (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center) and Dr Jean-Philippe Julien (The Hospital for Sick Children). HEK293T-ACE2 cells were kindly provided by Dr. June Ereño-Orbea (CIC bioGUNE) and Dr. Jean-Philippe Julien (The Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, Toronto)

Zipf's Law in Short-Time Timbral Codings of Speech, Music, and Environmental Sound Signals

Timbre is a key perceptual feature that allows discrimination between different sounds. Timbral sensations are highly dependent on the temporal evolution of the power spectrum of an audio signal. In order to quantitatively characterize such sensations, the shape of the power spectrum has to be encoded in a way that preserves certain physical and perceptual properties. Therefore, it is common practice to encode short-time power spectra using psychoacoustical frequency scales. In this paper, we study and characterize the statistical properties of such encodings, here called timbral code-words. In particular, we report on rank-frequency distributions of timbral code-words extracted from 740 hours of audio coming from disparate sources such as speech, music, and environmental sounds. Analogously to text corpora, we find a heavy-tailed Zipfian distribution with exponent close to one. Importantly, this distribution is found independently of different encoding decisions and regardless of the audio source. Further analysis on the intrinsic characteristics of most and least frequent code-words reveals that the most frequent code-words tend to have a more homogeneous structure. We also find that speech and music databases have specific, distinctive code-words while, in the case of the environmental sounds, this database-specific code-words are not present. Finally, we find that a Yule-Simon process with memory provides a reasonable quantitative approximation for our data, suggesting the existence of a common simple generative mechanism for all considered sound sources

Outcomes from elective colorectal cancer surgery during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

This study aimed to describe the change in surgical practice and the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on mortality after surgical resection of colorectal cancer during the initial phases of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

Gamificación en Iberoamérica. Experiencias desde la comunicación y la educación

La presente obra capitular es el resultado de las investigaciones sobre las aplicaciones de la gamificación en contextos múltiples, emergentes provenientes de las comunicaciones presentadas en el Simposio 06 del III Congreso Internacional Comunicación y Pensamiento (Sevilla, España), así como de aquellas presentadas por los miembros del Gamelab UPS, del Proyecto I+D+i Coordinado “Competencias mediáticas de la ciudadanía en medios digitales emergentes (smartphones y tablets): Prácticas innovadoras y estrategias educomunicativas en contextos múltiples” (EDU2015-64015-C3-1-R) (MINECO/FEDER), de la “Red de Educación Mediática” del Programa Estatal de Investigación Científica-Técnica de Excelencia, Subprograma Estatal de Generación de Conocimiento (EDU2016-81772-REDT), financiados por el Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) y Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad de España. En este sentido se busca construir, desde una mirada dual desde Europa y América Latina el primer libro iberoamericano de gamificación, avalado por el Gamelab de la Universidad Politécnica Salesiana (Ecuador), el Proyecto I+D+i EDU2015-64015-C3-1-R, la Red Interuniversitaria Euroamericana de Investigación sobre Competencias Mediáticas para la Ciudadanía (Alfamed), el Laboratorio de Estudios en Comunicación (Ladecom) y el Grupo de Investigación Ágora (PAI-HUM-648) de la Universidad de Huelva (España) y el Grupo de Investigación Estructura, Historia y Contenidos de la Comunicación GREHCCO

4to. Congreso Internacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación para la Sociedad. Memoria académica

Este volumen acoge la memoria académica de la Cuarta edición del Congreso Internacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación para la Sociedad, CITIS 2017, desarrollado entre el 29 de noviembre y el 1 de diciembre de 2017 y organizado por la Universidad Politécnica Salesiana (UPS) en su sede de Guayaquil. El Congreso ofreció un espacio para la presentación, difusión e intercambio de importantes investigaciones nacionales e internacionales ante la comunidad universitaria que se dio cita en el encuentro. El uso de herramientas tecnológicas para la gestión de los trabajos de investigación como la plataforma Open Conference Systems y la web de presentación del Congreso http://citis.blog.ups.edu.ec/, hicieron de CITIS 2017 un verdadero referente entre los congresos que se desarrollaron en el país. La preocupación de nuestra Universidad, de presentar espacios que ayuden a generar nuevos y mejores cambios en la dimensión humana y social de nuestro entorno, hace que se persiga en cada edición del evento la presentación de trabajos con calidad creciente en cuanto a su producción científica. Quienes estuvimos al frente de la organización, dejamos plasmado en estas memorias académicas el intenso y prolífico trabajo de los días de realización del Congreso Internacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación para la Sociedad al alcance de todos y todas

Implicaciones nutricionales de las dietas de eliminación

Introducción: La piedra angular del tratamiento de alergia alimentaria es la eliminación de los alimentos causantes. Sin embargo, los niños que restringen el consumo de alimentos básicos tienen un mayor riesgo de desnutrición. El objetivo del estudio fue identificar el estado nutricional de pacientes con dieta de eliminación e identificar la proporción de pacientes del grupo con verdadera alergia alimentaria. Métodos: Se realizó un estudio transversal de enero a octubre de 2014 en el Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez. Se incluyeron pacientes de 1 a 11 años con historia de eliminación de, al menos, uno de cinco alimentos (huevo, leche, trigo, maíz, soya) por un mínimo de 6 meses. Se realizó la valoración nutricional completa y se compararon los índices antropométricos con tablas de Z score para la edad. Se analizaron los datos por medio de estadística descriptiva, y posteriormente con prueba de Kruskal-Wallis y correlación de Spearman. Resultados: Los alimentos más frecuentemente eliminados fueron leche, soya, huevo, maíz y trigo. Al comparar el número de alimentos eliminados de la dieta con los distintos índices antropométricos evaluados, se encontró que entre mayor cantidad de alimentos eliminados, el score Z de peso para la edad (PE) y talla para la edad (TE), así como peso para la talla (PT) fueron menores, y el más afectado fue la reserva grasa. Solamente en el 5% de los niños se corroboró alergia alimentaria. Conclusiones: Nuestro estudio confirma la necesidad de una correcta asesoría nutricional en aquellos pacientes que cuenten con dietas de eliminación, así como el sobrediagnóstico que existe de alergia alimentaria

Complex Networks of Harmonic Structure in Classical Music

Music is a ubiquitous, complex and defining phenomenon of human culture. We create and analyze complex networks representing harmonic transitions in eight selected compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. While all resulting networks exhibit the typical ‘small-world’-characteristics, they clearly differ in their degree distributions. Some of the degree distributions are well fit by a power-law, others by an exponential, and some by neither. This seems to preclude the necessity of a scale-free degree distribution for music to be appealing. To obtain a quality measure for the network representation, we design a simple algorithm that generates artificial polyphonic music, which also exhibits the different styles of composition underlying the various pieces