Renormalized quark-antiquark Hamiltonian induced by a gluon mass ansatz in heavy-flavor QCD

In response to the growing need for theoretical tools that can be used in QCD to describe and understand the dynamics of gluons in hadrons in the Minkowski space-time, the renormalization group procedure for effective particles (RGPEP) is shown in the simplest available context of heavy quarkonia to exhibit a welcome degree of universality in the first approximation it yields once one assumes that beyond perturbation theory gluons obtain effective mass. Namely, in the second-order terms, the Coulomb potential with Breit-Fermi spin couplings in the effective quark-antiquark component of a heavy quarkonium, is corrected in one-flavor QCD by a spin-independent harmonic oscillator term that does not depend on the assumed effective gluon mass or the choice of the RGPEP generator. The new generator we use here is much simpler than the ones used before and has the advantage of being suitable for studies of the effective gluon dynamics at higher orders than the second and beyond the perturbative expansion.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, journal versio

Electroweak form factors of heavy-light mesons -- a relativistic point-form approach

We present a general relativistic framework for the calculation of the electroweak structure of heavy-light mesons within constituent-quark models. To this aim the physical processes in which the structure is measured, i.e. electron-meson scattering and semileptonic weak decays, are treated in a Poincar\'e invariant way by making use of the point-form of relativistic quantum mechanics. The electromagnetic and weak meson currents are extracted from the 1-$\gamma$ and 1-$W$-exchange amplitudes that result from a Bakamjian-Thomas type mass operator for the respective systems. The covariant decomposition of these currents provides the electromagnetic and weak (transition) form factors. Problems with cluster separability, which are inherent in the Bakamjian-Thomas construction, are discussed and it is shown how to keep them under control. It is proved that the heavy-quark limit of the electroweak form factors leads to one universal function, the Isgur-Wise function, confirming that the requirements of heavy-quark symmetry are satisfied. A simple analytical expression is given for the Isgur-Wise function and its agreement with a corresponding front-form calculation is verified numerically. Electromagnetic form factors for $B^-$ and $D^+$ and weak $B\rightarrow D^{(\ast)}$-decay form factors are calculated with a simple harmonic-oscilllator wave function and heavy-quark symmetry breaking due to finite masses of the heavy quarks is discussed.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figure

Broadband transverse susceptibility in multiferroic Y-type hexaferrite Ba0.5Sr1.5Zn2Fe12O22

Producción CientíficaNoncollinear spin systems with magnetically induced ferroelectricity from changes in spiral magnetic ordering have attracted significant interest in recent research due to their remarkable magnetoelectric effects with promising applications. Single phase multiferroics are of great interest for these new multifunctional devices, being Y-type hexaferrites good candidates, and among them the ZnY compounds due to their ordered magnetic behaviour over room temperature. Polycrystalline Y type hexaferrites with composition Ba0.5Sr1.5Zn2Fe2O22 (BSZFO) were sintered in 1050 °C–1250 °C temperature range. Transverse susceptibility measurements carried out on these BSZFO samples in the temperature range 80–350 K with DC fields up to ± 5000 Oe reveal different behaviour depending on the sintering temperature. Sample sintered at 1250 °C is qualitatively different, suggesting a mixed Y and Z phase like CoY hexaferrites. Sintering at lower temperatures produce single phase Y-type, but the transverse susceptibility behaviour of the sample sintered at 1150 °C is shifted at temperatures 15 K higher. Regarding the DC field sweeps the observed behaviour is a peak that shifts to lower values with increasing temperature, and the samples corresponding to single Y phase exhibit several maxima and minima in the 250 K–330 K range at low DC applied field as a result of the magnetic field induced spin transitions in this compound.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades; Agencia Estatal de Investigación with FEDER (MAT2016-80784-P

Features of non-kinship foster care children with birth family contact in Andalusia

The aim of the presentation is to describe the personal features of non-kinship foster care children who have visits with their birth family in Málaga, Granada and Jaén (provinces of Andalusia, Spain). This study was funded by the research project Application of a psychoeducational intervention program to improve visits between foster children and their biological families (Reference EDU2016 77094-P). SPSS v.21.0 was used to carry out the descriptive and frequency analysis of socio-demographic information collected by the Child File Summary Form designed for this study. There are 212 non-kinship foster care children who have visits with their birth family. Their mean age is 8.09 years old (SD= 4.73). The more frequent types of foster care are both long-term and short-term placement (30.7%, respectively), followed by specialized long-term foster care (20.3%), urgency placement (10.8%) and specialized short-term foster care (7.5%). The period of time they have been into the Child Protection System is on average 4.08 years (SD= 3.88) and into the current placement is on average 2.53 (SD= 2.95). Thus, 44.8% of foster children were in residential care and 30.2% were in previous foster care. The latter could have been with the current foster care family. Also, 41.0% of foster children were placed at least with one sibling. It is important to know the features of foster children in order to apply the main principle of “the best interests of the child” to the whole decision-making process about the child’s protection and welfare. In our project, these decisions concern foster care placement and birth family contact to maintain and strengthen family affective bonds and child’s identity formation. Our findings contribute to develop: (a) initiatives to improve children’s well-being; (b) support and social resources required by families; and (c) socio-educative tools for the social workers.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Features of birth families with foster children in Andalusia

The aim of the presentation is to describe the personal features of biological families whose children are in non-kinship foster care and with whom they have face-to-face contact in Málaga, Granada and Jaén (provinces of Andalusia, Spain). This study was funded by the research project Application of a psychoeducational intervention program to improve visits between foster children and their biological families (Reference EDU2016 77094-P). SPSS v.21.0 was used to carry out the descriptive and frequency analysis of socio-demographic information collected by the Child File Summary Form designed for this study. The results show the difficulties experienced by birth families to deal with the responsibility of parenthood. There is a high percentage of unemployment (54.5% mothers, 46.4% fathers), and a low level of education (61.7% uneducated mothers, 68.8% uneducated fathers). Furthermore, it is necessary to consider their diverse personal problems which undermine their competences to bring up and educate their children: substance abuse, mental health issues, mental disability and prison. Finally, the lack of relation between Social Services and birth families is highlighted. Knowing the circumstances of families at psychosocial risk permits to develop social policies that match with their specific necessities, by providing them the support and resources required, in line with Recommendation Rec(2006)19 of the Committee of Ministers to member states. Moreover, children and families’ rights have to be respected, such as their right to have contact to maintain and strengthen their affective bonds as part of their identity. These findings will contribute to design: (a) family intervention programs which allow parents to acquire the necessary parental skills; (b) support and educational tools for the social workers; and (c) projects to contribute to children’s well-being.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

A Comparison of Front-Ends for Bitstream-Based ASR over IP

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) is called to play a relevant role in the provision of spoken interfaces for IP-based applications. However, as a consequence of the transit of the speech signal over these particular networks, ASR systems need to face two new challenges: the impoverishment of the speech quality due to the compression needed to fit the channel capacity and the inevitable occurrence of packet losses. In this framework, bitstream-based approaches that obtain the ASR feature vectors directly from the coded bitstream, avoiding the speech decoding process, have been proposed ([S.H. Choi, H.K. Kim, H.S. Lee, Speech recognition using quantized LSP parameters and their transformations in digital communications, Speech Commun. 30 (4) (2000) 223–233. A. Gallardo-Antolín, C. Pelàez-Moreno, F. Díaz-de-María, Recognizing GSM digital speech, IEEE Trans. Speech Audio Process., to appear. H.K. Kim, R.V. Cox, R.C. Rose, Performance improvement of a bitstream-based front-end for wireless speech recognition in adverse environments, IEEE Trans. Speech Audio Process. 10 (8) (2002) 591–604. C. Peláez-Moreno, A. Gallardo-Antolín, F. Díaz-de-María, Recognizing voice over IP networks: a robust front-end for speech recognition on the WWW, IEEE Trans. Multimedia 3(2) (2001) 209–218], among others) to improve the robustness of ASR systems. LSP (Line Spectral Pairs) are the preferred set of parameters for the description of the speech spectral envelope in most of the modern speech coders. Nevertheless, LSP have proved to be unsuitable for ASR, and they must be transformed into cepstrum-type parameters. In this paper we comparatively evaluate the robustness of the most significant LSP to cepstrum transformations in a simulated VoIP (voice over IP) environment which includes two of the most popular codecs used in that network (G.723.1 and G.729) and several network conditions. In particular, we compare ‘pseudocepstrum’ [H.K. Kim, S.H. Choi, H.S. Lee, On approximating Line Spectral Frequencies to LPC cepstral coefficients, IEEE Trans. Speech Audio Process. 8 (2) (2000) 195–199], an approximated but straightforward transformation of LSP into LP cepstral coefficients, with a more computationally demanding but exact one. Our results show that pseudocepstrum is preferable when network conditions are good or computational resources low, while the exact procedure is recommended when network conditions become more adverse.Publicad

Changes in the lifestyle and feeding habits that could improve the planet and human health: the reproductive case

There is a link between food systems, environment, and human health. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations-FAO, food production from animal and plant origin, using unsustainable agricultural practices with the excessive use of fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides have adverse effects on the environment and could contaminate water sources and even the soil.1 Also, the production of food from animal origin is one of those responsible for the emission of greenhouse gases, fresh water expenditure, and soil loss. Therefore, with the current food consumption and unsustainable human practices, the future of humanity will be uncertain

Combined Manufacturing Process of Copper Electrodes for Micro Texturing Applications (AMSME)

Surface texturing has brought significant improvements in the functional properties of parts and components. Sinker electro discharge machining (SEDM) is one of the processes which generates great texturing results at different scale. An electrode is needed to reproduce the geometry to be textured. Some geometries are difficult or impossible to achieve on an electrode using conventional and even unconventional machining methods. This work sets out the advances made in the manufacturing of copper electrodes for electro erosion by additive manufacturing, and their subsequent application to the functional texturing of Al-Cu UNS A92024-T3 alloy. A combined procedure of digital light processing (DLP) additive manufacturing, sputtering and micro-electroforming (AMSME), has been used to produce electrodes. Also, a specific laboratory equipment has been developed to reproduce details on a microscopic scale. Shells with outgoing spherical geometries pattern have been manufactured. AMSME process has shown ability to copper electrodes manufacturing. A highly detailed surface on a micrometric scale have been achieved. Copper shells with minimum thickness close to 300 mu m have been tested in sinker electro discharge machining (SEDM) and have been shown very good performance in surface finishing operations. The method has shown great potential for use in surfaces texturing.This work has received financial support from Spanish Government (MINECO/AEI/FEDER, Grant Project DPI2017-84935-R

A theoretical study of the low-lying excited states of thieno[3,4-b]pyrazine

The low-lying electronic excited states of thieno[3,4-b]pyrazine have been studied using the multiconfigurational second-order perturbation CASPT2 theory with extended atomic natural orbital basis sets. The CASPT2 results allow for a full interpretation of the electronic absorption and emission spectra and provide valuable information for the rationalization of the experimental data. The nature, position, and intensity of the spectral bands have been analyzed in detail. A preliminary comparative study of the ground-state geometry of thieno[3,4-b]pyrazine has been performed at the coupled cluster single and doubles and density functional theory levels using a variety of correlation-consistent basis sets. Thieno[3,4-b]pyrazine exhibits a polyene-like structure in the ground state due to the bond localization in the pyrazine moiety. An aromatization of the pyrazine unit is predicted for the lowest-energy electronic excited [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Automated semantic annotation of rare disease cases: a case study

MOTIVATION: As the number of clinical reports in the peer-reviewed medical literature keeps growing, there is an increasing need for online search tools to find and analyze publications on patients with similar clinical characteristics. This problem is especially critical and challenging for rare diseases, where publications of large series are scarce. Through an applied example, we illustrate how to automatically identify new relevant cases and semantically annotate the relevant literature about patient case reports to capture the phenotype of a rare disease named cerebrotendinous xanthomatosis. RESULTS: Our results confirm that it is possible to automatically identify new relevant case reports with a high precision and to annotate them with a satisfactory quality (74% F-measure). Automated annotation with an emphasis to entirely describe all phenotypic abnormalities found in a disease may facilitate curation efforts by supplying phenotype retrieval and assessment of their frequency. Availability and Supplementary information: http://www.usc.es/keam/Phenotype Annotation/. Database URL: http://www.usc.es/keam/PhenotypeAnnotation