Global sensitivity analysis of fuel-type-dependent input variables of a simplified physical fire spread model

A new global sensitivity analysis has been conducted of fuel-type-dependent input variables of the simplified physical fire spread model (PhyFire) to understand how the use of spatial averages, that is, fuel models, influences the results of PhyFire with a view to enhancing its understanding and improving its design. The model’s simplicity, the numerical techniques used, and a recent code optimisation, allow undertaking the analysis with very competitive computational times. The fuel data used correspond to grasslands, shrublands and forest in the Spanish region of Galicia. The analysis results validate the flame length sub-model proposed in the paper, which significantly improves the model’s efficiency

Variaciones anuales y diarias de la concentración de polen de la atmósfera de la ciudad de Orense

En el presente trabajo« reali"" el utudlo >erobioló¡¡jc de la ciudad de Oren· se entre el l de febrero y el 30 de: se:t iernbt ~ eJe 1992, rnedinnlc un CZiptJdor vctumétrico sporc-uap tipo LANZ.ONI VPPS 20C(l, Se presenta 13 ... aria~n anual dd pok:n total y w~ nes mis abundant~ así c:onl() la \'Jriación dmria para Paace..1e y CoJtOJitO dunnle ~U!. j'ICrfO· dos de polinización principal y de polen total de mayo a julio El polen que .llc..mZ3 potccnta· jes mis cluados corresponde a Afmtr, PfalotwJ, Qw:rws. Pimu, Brt1do, Po:~ccac 'i CaSfU· 11 ea.El comportamiento intradiurno de Ctmunca y Po:Keae es similar, y sus ,-,.¡~ miximos se regisrran durante la lilrde-flocheDuring tht rnonths from February to Scptrmber 1992, V.'C CJrr~J out an :.erobiological study of the city uf Orcnse, u5ing vulumetrie LANZO~I VPPS 2000 spuoe-trnps. In lhis work wc rcl'resent the total annu31 ~·3ti:u ion of rollen, p:trl~ularly o( thc mn<J. import:tnt tax:l and likcwtse thc daily hour tu hour vari3tion o Poo.ceac and Custartt'a du ring it'o pollcn scason and the ovcrall vari:uton of polkn total mea~ureU d~u\y and fwm hour 10 hoor. The highc::M pcrtenta,ge or pollcn detccted COrrt~sponds lO AIIWS, Plataffll!, Qurrcu.s, Pmm, Btwla, l"oaceae and Cos1at1U1. l111.: diunul \·:uiation for thc concentrJLion of polleo grains of PG:l· ccac and úutanca prescntli a ¡Jatlcrn wbcrc thc: highc~ pe:tk~ .1rc obta1ncd during thc hale <~fll:rnoon

Effect of an educational intervention in primary care physicians on the compliance of indicators of good clinical practice in the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus [OBTEDIGA project]

[Abstract] Aim. To evaluate the effect of an educational intervention among primary care physicians on several indicators of good clinical practice in diabetes care. Methods. Two groups of physicians were randomly assigned to the intervention or control group (IG and CG). Every physician randomly selected two samples of patients from all type 2 diabetic patients aged 40 years and above and diagnosed more than a year ago. Baseline and final information were collected cross-sectionally 12 months apart, in two independent samples of 30 patients per physician. The educational intervention comprised: distribution of educational materials and physicians' specific bench-marking information, an on-line course and three on-site educational workshops on diabetes. External observers collected information directly from the physicians and from the medical records of the patients on personal and family history of disease and on the evolution and treatment of their disease. Baseline information was collected retrospectively in the control group. Results. Intervention group comprised 53 physicians who included a total of 3018 patients in the baseline and final evaluations. CG comprised 50 physicians who included 2868 patients in the same evaluations. Measurement of micro-albuminuria in the last 12 months (OR = 1.6, 95% CI: 1.1–2.4) and foot examination in the last year (OR = 2.0, 95% CI: 1.1–3.6) were the indicators for which greater improvement was found in the IG. No other indicator considered showed statistically significant improvement between groups. Conclusions. The identification of indicators with very low level of compliance and the implementation of a simple intervention in physicians to correct them is effective in improving the quality of care of diabetic patients

Quality of care of patients with type-2 diabetes in Galicia (NW Spain) [OBTEDIGA project]

[Abstract] Aims:  The aim of this study was to describe the degree of compliance of agreed practices with reference to primary care patients with Type 2 diabetes of 40 years old and older in Galicia (NW Spain). Methods:  A total of 108 primary care physicians were selected at random from the totality of doctors. Each physician selected 30 patients at random from their patients suffering from diabetes of 40 years old or older. External observers gathered information from each patient’s medical record regarding their characteristics, condition and degree of compliance of selected indicators of good practice. Results:  Group of physicians participated in this study had a mean age of 50 years (standard deviation = 3.9); 48% of them were females; and 17.5% involved in medical residents training. A total of 3078 diabetic patients were included in the study: mean age = 69 years (SD = 10.9), 47.6% women, presence of high blood pressure (72%), hypercholesterolaemia (56%), and regular smokers (10.3%). Compliance with selected indicators such as foot examination (14%), ophthalmological examination (30.6%), abdominal circumference measurement (6.1%), measurement of total or LDL-cholesterol (78.1), blood pressure measurement (84.8), glycosylated haemoglobin measurement < 7% (54.3%) was observed. Adequate monitoring in cases of high blood pressure and hypercholesterolaemia were 34.2% and 27.4%, respectively. Variability between physicians differs according to the different indicators, with interquartile range for compliance of between 16.4 and 66%. Conclusions:  There is a wide margin for improvement in the adaptation of clinical practice to recommendations for diabetic patients. The large variation existing in certain indicators would suggest that certain control objectives are less demanding than advisable in those that comply least, while low compliance and low variability in other indicators point to structural problems or unsatisfactory training of doctors

A two-step learning approach for solving full and almost full cold start problems in dyadic prediction

Dyadic prediction methods operate on pairs of objects (dyads), aiming to infer labels for out-of-sample dyads. We consider the full and almost full cold start problem in dyadic prediction, a setting that occurs when both objects in an out-of-sample dyad have not been observed during training, or if one of them has been observed, but very few times. A popular approach for addressing this problem is to train a model that makes predictions based on a pairwise feature representation of the dyads, or, in case of kernel methods, based on a tensor product pairwise kernel. As an alternative to such a kernel approach, we introduce a novel two-step learning algorithm that borrows ideas from the fields of pairwise learning and spectral filtering. We show theoretically that the two-step method is very closely related to the tensor product kernel approach, and experimentally that it yields a slightly better predictive performance. Moreover, unlike existing tensor product kernel methods, the two-step method allows closed-form solutions for training and parameter selection via cross-validation estimates both in the full and almost full cold start settings, making the approach much more efficient and straightforward to implement

An Economic Analysis of An Innovative Floating Offshore Wind Platform Built with Concrete: The SATH® Platform

[Abstract] The goal of this work is to carry out an economic analysis of a novel floating offshore wind structure, of which the main material is concrete: the SATH® platform. It takes a step forward in floating marine wind energy research, in which traditional platforms are mainly composed of steel. The technique to calculate the costs of the platform and the economic parameters to decide if the farm is economically feasible are explained in the paper. This case study analyzes a possible farm of 500 MW located in Portugal and several scenarios considering different electric tariffs and capital costs (Scenario 1: electric tariff of 50 €/MWh and 6% of capital cost; Scenario 2: electric tariff of 50 €/MWh and 8% of capital cost; Scenario 3: electric tariff of 150 €/MWh and 6% of capital cost; Scenario 4: electric tariff of 150 €/MWh and 8% of capital cost). Results show the economic feasibility of a farm with the characteristics of Scenarios 3 and 4. This work is significant in order to provide a new approach to analyzing traditional floating offshore wind structures, which can represent a path towards the future of floating offshore renewable energy technologies.European Commission; EAPA_344/2016This research was funded by EAPA_344/2016 ARCWIND project, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund though the Interreg Atlantic Area Programme

STEMbach Experiences at Higher Education

This work was performed in the scope of the “STEM is inspiring future careers” project (2021-1-ES01-KA220-SCH-000031524), Erasmus + Program.[Abstract]: The aim of this work is to describe several experiences of STEMbach in different areas: engineering, economics, materials, etc. The STEMbach is a program carried out by high school students during their two years of study to obtain their High School Diploma (equivalent to A-levels), designed for both the Humanities and Sciences modalities, and created alongside the Galician strategy for digital education. It encourages the vocation of the scholars towards scientific and technological research and allows a connection directly with the college education. The STEM works explained in this work were developed between the University of A Coruña and several high schools located in the region of Galicia (North-West of Spain). Results were very constructive for promoting STEM careers

On numerical aspects of pseudo-complex powers in R^3

In this paper we consider a particularly important case of 3D monogenic polynomials that are isomorphic to the integer powers of one complex variable (called pseudo-complex powers or pseudo-complex polynomials, PCP). The construction of bases for spaces of monogenic polynomials in the framework of Clifford Analysis has been discussed by several authors and from different points of view. Here our main concern are numerical aspects of the implementation of PCP as bases of monogenic polynomials of homogeneous degree k. The representation of the well known Fueter polynomial basis by a particular PCP-basis is subject to a detailed analysis for showing the numerical effciency of the use of PCP. In this context a modiffcation of the Eisinberg-Fedele algorithm for inverting a Vandermonde matrix is presented.This work was supported by Portuguese funds through the CIDMA - Center for Research and Development in Mathematics and Applications, the Research Centre of Mathematics of the University of Minho and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology ("FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia"), within projects PEst-OE/MAT/UI4106/2014 and PEstOE/MAT/UI0013/2014