Morphology of the larval stages of Macropodia czernjawskii (Brandt, 1880) (Decapoda, Brachyura, Inachidae) reared in the laboratory

The complete larval development of Macropodia czernjawskii (Brandt, 1880), is described and illustrated for the first time. Larvae were reared in the laboratory and development consisted of two zoeal stages and a megalopa. The main difference in the zoeal stages is the absence of lateral spines on the telson furcae, which allow it to be distinguished from the remaining species of Macropodia as well as from the zoeae of most majoids.This study was funded by the Spanish “Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Plan Nacional I+D” and the European FEDER funds through project MEGALOPADN (CGL2009–11225).Peer reviewe

Soil-Structure Interaction Simulations Taking into Account the Transient Propagation of Seismic Waves

In this contribution we present a strategy to investigate the vibrations of build­ ings subjected to a transient seismic excitation, including the soil-structure inte ract ion . The proposed simulation method can be helpful during the design of earthquake-resistant structures in seismic active areas as well as for the design of vibration reduction measures for buildings subjected to surrounding emissions like vibrations induced by traffic or ma­ chine foundations. The structures and their foundation as well as parts of the soil arc modeled by Finite Element Method (FEM). The far field is idealized as an infinite half­ space and modeled with the Scaled Boundary Finite Element Method (SBFEM). Both methods arc coupled at the common inter face. This approach fulfills exactly the Sommer­ feld radiation condition. The seismic excitation is idealized as a plane wave propagating toward the structure with an arbitrary angle with respect to the soil surface. The 3D seismic wave field, caused by the wave passage at the near field boundary, is transformed into boundary tractions , which arc then applied at the interface between the near and far fields. We present an application of the proposed method for a group of three buildings, which interact with each other through the soil during the propagation of the transient seismic waves. Although not shown here, the proposed method can handle nonlinear material properties assigned to any clement of FEM part

Assessing Single Upconverting Nanoparticle Luminescence by Optical Tweezers

We report on stable, long-term immobilization and localization of a single colloidal Er3+/Yb3+ codoped upconverting fluorescent nanoparticle (UCNP) by optical trapping with a single infrared laser beam. Contrary to expectations, the single UCNP emission differs from that generated by an assembly of UCNPs. The experimental data reveal that the differences can be explained in terms of modulations caused by radiation-trapping, a phenomenon not considered before but that this work reveals to be of great relevanceThis work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (MAT2010–16161 and MAT2013–47395-C4–1-R). P.H.G. thanks the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) for the Juan de la Cierva program. P.R.S thanks the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) for the “Promoción 14 del talento y su Empleabilidad en I+D+i” statal program. Fondazione Cariverona (Verona, Italy) is gratefully acknowledged for financial support in the frame of the project “Verona Nanomedicine Initiative

Inter-channel Granger Causality for Estimating EEG Phase Connectivity Patterns in Dyslexia

Methods like Electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalogram (MEG) record brain oscillations and provide an invaluable insight into healthy and pathological brain function. These signals are helpful to study and achieve an objective and early diagnosis of neural disorders as Developmental Dyslexia (DD). An atypical oscillatory sampling could cause the characteristic phonological difficulties of dyslexia at one or more temporal rates; in this sense, measuring the EEG signal can help to make an early diagnosis of DD. The LEEDUCA study conducted a series of EEG experiments on children listening to amplitude modulated (AM) noise with slow-rhythmic prosodic (0.5–1 Hz) to detect differences in perception of oscillatory ampling that could be associated with dyslexia. The evolution of each EEG channel has been studied in the frequency domain, obtaining the analytical phase using the Hilbert transform. Subsequently, the cause-effect relationships between channels in ach subject have been reflected thanks to Granger causality, obtaining matrices that reflect the interaction between the different parts of the brain. Hence, each subject was classified as belonging or not to the control group or the experimental group. For this purpose, two ensemble classification algorithms were compared, showing that both can reach acceptable classifying erformance in delta band with an accuracy up to 0.77, recall of 0.91 and AUC of 0.97 using Gradient Boosting classifier.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

¿Pueden los ordenadores aproximarnos al mundo físico? : análisis cualitativo de la integración de la computación creativa y la computación física en áreas no puramente tecnológicas

Treballs finals del Màster en Ensenyament i Aprenentatge en Entorns Digitals, Facultat de Pedagogia, Universitat de Barcelona, Any: 2015, Tutor: José Luis Rodríguez IlleraLa enseñanza de la programación en los centros escolares está ligada al desarrollo del pensamiento computacional, de la capacidad de abstracción, de la algorítmica y de la resolución de problemas. Pero la integración transversal de esta habilidad como medio para expresar la creatividad, comunicar ideas e interaccionar tanto socialmente como con otros ámbitos del conocimiento, es una aplicación a emergente de esta disciplina. Este trabajo analiza a modo exploratorio algunos casos donde se utiliza la computación creativa y la computación física como medio para conseguir aprendizajes de otras disciplinas

Adiciones al catálogo pteridológico gallego

Se comenta la localización y ecología de las poblaciones de diversas especies de helechos del género Isoetes que constituyen novedades para el catálogo florístico gallego así como nuevas localidades de otros pteridófitos de distribución fragmentada o inclRomero M. I., Rodríguez Guitián M. A. & Rubinos M. 2004. Addenda to the pteridophyte catalogue of Galicia (NW of Iberian Peninsula). Bot. Complut. 28: 51-55 (2004). This paper comments on the distribution and ecology of six species of rare/threatened ferns in the northwest Iberian Peninsula, including two species of the genus Isoetes not previously recorded from this region. New locations are also reported for other pteridophytes with fragmented distribution or listed in the Habitats Directive 92/43/EEC (Annex II), namely Stegnogramma pozoi, Vandenboschia speciosa, and Culcita macrocarpa

Temperature dependence and temporal dynamics of Mn2+ upconversion luminescence sensitized by Yb3+ in codoped LaMgAl11O19

A detailed spectroscopic study of the upconversion properties in Mn2+-Yb3+ codoped LaMgAl11O19 is presented. Pulsed and continuous-wave infrared excitation in the 2F7/2--2F5/2 Yb3+ absorption peaks induces broad Mn2+ green emission at 19450 cm-1, which is assigned to the 4T1--6A1 transition in tetrahedral Mn2+ and sharp peaks associated with Yb3+-pairs luminescence. Both emissions have very different temporal evolution and can be separated by time-resolved spectroscopy. Among the different concentrations under investigation, the 2%Mn2+-5%Yb3+ codoped system presents the highest upconversion efficiency. The corresponding emission remains visible to the naked eye up to 650 K. The time dependence of the Mn2+ luminescence upon Yb3+ excitation shows distinct behaviors for different doping concentrations. The temporal evolution of the intensity for the diluted system doped with 2%Mn2+ and 5%Yb3+ together with the pure manganese compound doped with 1%Yb3+, as well as the temperature dependence of the upconversion emission intensity and lifetime are relevant to identify the underlying upconversion mechanisms. We show that the main processes responsible for upconversion in this doubly transition-metal rare-earth doped oxide are both ground-state absorption (GSA)/excited-state absorption and GSA/energy-transfer upconversion. An analysis of these processes yielding highly efficient luminescence is discussed on the basis of crystal structure and dopants.This work was financially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Project No. MAT2008- 06873-C02-01/MAT) and the MALTA-Consolider Ingenio 2010 (Reference No. CSD2007-00045). R.M.-R. thanks the Spanish MEC for a FPI research grant (Reference No. BES-2006-13359)

The orientation of lugdunum conuenarum and the celtic feasts marking the start of the seasons in ancient gaul

There is a long-lasting debate, started in the nineteenth century by d‟Arbois de Jubainville and Jullian, among others, regarding the pan-Celtic nature of the mid-season (or rather, start of season) feasts known from the Mediaeval Ireland (set on 1st November, February, May and August). D‟Arbois indicated that one of these feasts coincided with the festival celebrated during Roman times at Lugdunum (Lyon) on August 1st from 12 BC onwards. We recently verified that the orientation of the earlier parts of this Roman colony were laid out facing the sunrise on this date since its foundation in 43 BC, prior to any possible link with Augustus. This fact prompted us to investigate the orientation of other Roman cities in Gaul, particularly those named Lugdunum which still contain Roman buildings capable of being measured. The most complex of these is Lugdunum Conuerarum (present-day Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges). With a Celtic name and mixed Aquitaine-Latin culture, it is oriented towards the sunrise on February 1st. Other cities in Gaul and Hispania have also been considered, which have similar orientations. We therefore verify the pan-Celtic character of the mid-season feasts. Finally, we present the hypothesis that the conversion of these feasts from a luni-solar calendar to the solar Julian calendar took place in the centre of Gaul at some time between the reigns of Caesar and Augustus. At a later stage, this model would be exported by early Christianity into Ireland, then serving as an interpretative inspiration for scholars such as d‟Arbois de Jubainville and othersS

A nonlinear population Monte Carlo scheme for the Bayesian estimation of parameters of alpha-stable distributions

The class of alpha-stable distributions enjoys multiple practical applications in signal processing, finance, biology and other areas because it allows to describe interesting and complex data patterns, such as asymmetry or heavy tails, in contrast with the simpler and widely used Gaussian distribution. The density associated with a general alpha-stable distribution cannot be obtained in closed form, which hinders the process of estimating its parameters. A nonlinear population Monte Carlo (NPMC) scheme is applied in order to approximate the posterior probability distribution of the parameters of an alpha-stable random variable given a set of random realizations of the latter. The approximate posterior distribution is computed by way of an iterative algorithm and it consists of a collection of samples in the parameter space with associated nonlinearly-transformed importance weights. A numerical comparison of the main existing methods to estimate the alpha-stable parameters is provided, including the traditional frequentist techniques as well as a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and a likelihood-free Bayesian approach. It is shown by means of computer simulations that the NPMC method outperforms the existing techniques in terms of parameter estimation error and failure rate for the whole range of values of a, including the smaller values for which most existing methods fail to work properly. Furthermore, it is shown that accurate parameter estimates can often be computed based on a low number of observations. Additionally, numerical results based on a set of real fish displacement data are providedE.K. acknowledges the support of Ministerio de Educación of Spain (Programa de Formación de Profesorado Universitario, Ref. AP2008-00469). J.M. acknowledges the partial support of Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain (program Consolider-Ingenio 2010 CSD2008-00010 COMONSENS and project COMPREHENSION TEC2012-38883-C02-01) and the Office of Naval Research Global (award no. N62909-15-1-2011). At the time of the original submission of this paper, J.M. was with the Department of Signal Theory and Communications, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain). M.A acknowledges the financial support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (Discovery Grant 138680), the Coordenação de Apoioao Pessoal do Ensino Superior (grant No.1351/11-7) and the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisado Estado do Rio de Janeiro (grant No.E-26/110.864/2012), and thanks J. Nolan for providing a free copy of the STABLE software. A.M.S. acknowledges the financial support from Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico(grant No. 308016/2014-9) and Coordenação de Apoio ao Pessoal do Ensino Superior, DGU Program (grant No. 257/12)