A comparative study of image processing thresholding algorithms on residual oxide scale detection in stainless steel production lines

The present work is intended for residual oxide scale detection and classification through the application of image processing techniques. This is a defect that can remain in the surface of stainless steel coils after an incomplete pickling process in a production line. From a previous detailed study over reflectance of residual oxide defect, we present a comparative study of algorithms for image segmentation based on thresholding methods. In particular, two computational models based on multi-linear regression and neural networks will be proposed. A system based on conventional area camera with a special lighting was installed and fully integrated in an annealing and pickling line for model testing purposes. Finally, model approaches will be compared and evaluated their performance..Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Influencia del género en el tromboembolismo venoso asociado al cáncer.

El tromboembolismo venoso (TEV), que engloba tanto a la trombosis venosa profunda (TVP) como al embolismo pulmonar (PE), es una patología frecuente con una significativa morbimortalidad, particularmente en pacientes con cáncer; el riesgo trombótico varía en función del tipo de cáncer, el estadio tumoral y las comorbilidades. El comportamiento de los pacientes con cáncer y tromboembolismo venoso agudo puede diferir según el género y las diferentes localizaciones del tumor primario. Objetivos y métodos: Se utilizó la base de datos RIETE (registro internacional de pacientes con tromboembolismo venoso) para comparar la tasa de recurrencias de TEV, hemorragia mayor y mortalidad durante el curso de la anticoagulación, según género. En un segundo análisis, ya que algunas diferencias podrían atribuirse a las diversas localizaciones del cáncer, se evaluó la tasa de recidivas de TEV, sangrado mayor o muerte durante el curso de la anticoagulación en pacientes con 5 cánceres comunes: pulmón, colorrectal, páncreas, hematológico o estómago. Resultados: Hasta agosto de 2014, 11.055 pacientes con cáncer activo estaban inscritos en RIETE, de los cuales 5.104 (46%) eran mujeres. Durante el curso de la anticoagulación (media: 142 días), 505 pacientes desarrollaron TEV recurrente, 429 sangrados y 2730 fallecieron. En comparación con los hombres, las mujeres tuvieron una tasa significativamente menor de hemorragia fatal (riesgo relativo [RR]: 0,69; IC del 95%: 0,47-0,99) y muerte (RR: 0,90; IC del 95%: 0,83-0,97) y una tasa menor de recurrencias de EP (RR 0,83; IC del 95%: 0,65-1,06) y sangrado mayor (RR: 0,89; IC del 95%: 0,74-1,08) de forma no significativa. El análisis llegó hasta principios de 2016. Hasta enero de 2016, se registraron 12.793 pacientes con cáncer activo: 1.727 tenían cáncer de pulmón, 1.592 colorrectal, 840 hematológicos, 517 pancreáticos y 459 tenían cáncer gástrico. En comparación con los hombres (N = 3,130), las mujeres (N = 2,005) tenían más probabilidades de tener cáncer colorrectal, pancreático o hematológico, y menos probabilidades de tener cáncer de pulmón. La mayoría de los pacientes (91%) fueron inicialmente tratados con heparina de bajo peso molecular (HBPM), pero las mujeres recibieron dosis diarias más altas por peso corporal; el 66% recibió HBPM como tratamiento a largo plazo. Durante el curso de la anticoagulación, 302 pacientes desarrollaron TEV recurrente, 220 sangraron y 1.749 fallecieron. En comparación con los hombres, las mujeres presentaron una tasa similar de recurrencias de TEV o sangrado mayor, y una menor mortalidad (RR: 0,90; IC del 95%: 0,82-0,99). Las mujeres con cáncer de pulmón tenían una tasa inferior de mortalidad (RR: 0,79; IC del 95%: 0,70-0,92), una tasa superior de mortalidad para el caso del cáncer colorrectal (RR: 1,25; IC del 95%: 1,02- 1,54) y aquellas con cáncer gástrico poseían una mayor tasa de recidivas de TEV que los hombres (RR: 2,47; IC del 95%: 1,04-5,89). Discusiones y conclusiones: Nuestros datos, obtenidos de una gran serie de pacientes consecutivos con cáncer activo y TEV agudo, revelan la frecuencia y gravedad de las recidivas en forma de TEV y hemorragias importantes que aparecen durante el curso de la terapia anticoagulante en la vida real. Durante el curso de la anticoagulación, las mujeres con cáncer y TEV tuvieron un mejor resultado que los hombres debido a que las mujeres con TEV asociado a cáncer experimentaron una tasa significativamente menor de hemorragia fatal, muerte por todas las causas y sangrado urinario, y una tasa menor de recurrencias de EP y de sangrado mayor de forma no significativa. Cuando analizamos sólo cinco cánceres comunes, las mujeres con TEV con cáncer de pulmón, colorrectal, pancreático, hematológico o gástrico experimentaron un resultado similar durante el curso de la terapia con anticoagulantes que los hombres con cánceres similares.Medicin

Guide for the implementation of operational control procedures in underwater cutting and welding activities.

Professional diving is an occupation that includes a wide spectrum of different activities, but with the same common denominator: its performance underwater. It is carried out in both fresh and salt waters and encompasses such disparate tasks that professional diving is currently present in numerous productive sectors: hydrocarbon extraction, offshore platforms, port maintenance, public works, civil engineering, infrastructure hydraulic, power plants (hydroelectric, thermal and nuclear), shipbuilding, underwater construction, aquaculture, ship and boat salvage, NDT filming and reporting, teaching and training, and scientific research (geological, biological, archaeological, etc.). It is also characterized by being one of the most dangerous professions and presenting very specific risks, derived from the workplace in a hyperbaric environment, combined with to other hazards of the work activity similar to those of the ground workers. The objective of this study is to analyze procedural models based on the UNE_EN_ISO 45001:2018 Standard, applied to the execution of thermal cutting and underwater welding works. In order to carry out this work safely and in the most effective way, it must be systematically analyzed, generating procedures and work instructions based on the tasks considered critical, and essential knowledge for all personnel who perform them. Such procedures and instructions should be based on a systematic analysis of the steps taken to perform each task, including the risks involved and the safety measures to be taken to control, reduce or, where appropriate, eliminate them.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Identification by proximity labeling of novel lipidic and proteinaceous potential partners of the dopamine transporter

Dopamine (DA) transporters (DATs) are regulated by trafficking and modulatory processes that probably rely on stable and transient interactions with neighboring proteins and lipids. Using proximity-dependent biotin identification (BioID), we found novel potential partners for DAT, including several membrane proteins, such as the transmembrane chaperone 4F2hc, the proteolipid M6a and a potential membrane receptor for progesterone (PGRMC2). We also detected two cytoplasmic proteins: a component of the Cullin1-dependent ubiquitination machinery termed F-box/LRR-repeat protein 2 (FBXL2), and the enzyme inositol 5-phosphatase 2 (SHIP2). Immunoprecipitation (IP) and immunofluorescence studies confirmed either a physical association or a close spatial proximity between these proteins and DAT. M6a, SHIP2 and the Cullin1 system were shown to increase DAT activity in coexpression experiments, suggesting a functional role for their association. Deeper analysis revealed that M6a, which is enriched in neuronal protrusions (filopodia or dendritic spines), colocalized with DAT in these structures. In addition, the product of SHIP2 enzymatic activity (phosphatidylinositol 3,4-bisphosphate [PI(3,4)P2]) was tightly associated with DAT, as shown by co-IP and by colocalization of mCherry-DAT with a specific biosensor for this phospholipid. PI(3,4)P2 strongly stimulated transport activity in electrophysiological recordings, and conversely, inhibition of SHIP2 reduced DA uptake in several experimental systems including striatal synaptosomes and the dopaminergic cell line SH-SY5Y. In summary, here we report several potential new partners for DAT and a novel regulatory lipid, which may represent new pharmacological targets for DAT, a pivotal protein in dopaminergic function of the brainOpen Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. This work was supported by grants from the Spanish MINECO (RTI2018-098712-B-100) and the “Fundación Ramón Areces”, the latter also providing an institutional grant to CBMS

Anomaly Detection in Predictive Maintenance: A New Evaluation Framework for Temporal Unsupervised Anomaly Detection Algorithms

This work has been partially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology under project TIN2017-89517-P, the Contract UGR-AM OTRI-4260 and the Andalusian Excellence project P18-FR-4961. J. Carrasco was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science under the FPU Programme 998758-2016. D. Garcia-Gil holds a contract co-financed by the European Social Fund and the Administration of the Junta de Andalucia, reference DOC_01137.The research in anomaly detection lacks a unified definition of what represents an anomalous instance. Discrepancies in the nature itself of an anomaly lead to multiple paradigms of algorithms design and experimentation. Predictive maintenance is a special case, where the anomaly represents a failure that must be prevented. Related time series research as outlier and novelty detection or time series classification does not apply to the concept of an anomaly in this field, because they are not single points which have not been seen previously and may not be precisely annotated. Moreover, due to the lack of annotated anomalous data, many benchmarks are adapted from supervised scenarios. To address these issues, we generalise the concept of positive and negative instances to intervals to be able to evaluate unsupervised anomaly detection algorithms. We also preserve the imbalance scheme for evaluation through the proposal of the Preceding Window ROC, a generalisation for the calculation of ROC curves for time series scenarios. We also adapt the mechanism from a established time series anomaly detection benchmark to the proposed generalisations to reward early detection. Therefore, the proposal represents a flexible evaluation framework for the different scenarios. To show the usefulness of this definition, we include a case study of Big Data algorithms with a real-world time series problem provided by the company ArcelorMittal, and compare the proposal with an evaluation method.Ministry of Science and Technology TIN2017-89517-PContract UGR-AM OTRI-4260Andalusian Excellence project P18-FR-4961Spanish Government 998758-2016European Social Fund (ESF)Junta de Andalucia DOC_0113

Effect of temperature and time on oxygen consumption by olive fruit: Empirical study and simulation in a non-ventilated container

Fermentation processes within olive fruit jeopardize the quality of the extracted oil. Aera-tion, temperature, and time play a crucial role in attaining the critical threshold at which an aerobic respiration shifts towards anaerobic. In this work, the O2 consumption and CO2 production of olive fruit kept in a closed container at different temperatures (5–45◦ C) were measured over 7 h. The data allowed us to describe the relationship between the temperature and the respiration rate as an Arrhenius function and simulate the oxygen consumption in the inner part of a container full of fruit with low aeration, considering the generated respiration heat over time. The simulation revealed that olives risk shifting to anaerobic respiration after 3 h at 25◦ C and less than 2 h at 35◦ C when kept in a non-ventilated environment. The results underline the irreversible damage that high day temperatures can produce during the time before fruit processing, especially during transport. Lowering, as soon as possible, the field temperature thus comes to the fore as a necessary strategy to guarantee the quality of the olives before their processing, like most of the fruit that is harvested at excessive temperatures

TSFEDL: A python library for time series spatio-temporal feature extraction and prediction using deep learning

The combination of convolutional and recurrent neural networks is a promising framework. This arrangement allows the extraction of high-quality spatio-temporal features together with their temporal dependencies. This fact is key for time series prediction problems such as forecasting, classification or anomaly detection, amongst others. In this paper, the TSFEDL library is introduced. It compiles 22 state-of-the-art methods for both time series feature extraction and prediction, employing convolutional and recurrent deep neural networks for its use in several data mining tasks. The library is built upon a set of Tensorflow + Keras and PyTorch modules under the AGPLv3 license. The performance validation of the architectures included in this proposal confirms the usefulness of this Python package.This work has been partially supported by the Contract UGRAM OTRI-4260 and the Regional Government of Andalusia, under the program ‘‘Personal Investigador Doctor”, reference DOC_00235. This work was also supported by project PID2020-119478 GB-I00 granted by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, and projects P18-FR-4961 and P18-FR-4262 by Proyectos I + D+i Junta de Andalucia 2018

Modelado de las colisiones de partículas primarias de hollín dentro de la cámara de combustión de un motor diesel

En la formación de los aglomerados de hollín dentro de la cámara de combustión de un motor diésel se pueden distinguir tres fases predominantes. La primera es la de formación de las partículas primarias, la segunda la del crecimiento neto de estas partículas y la última es la de la aglomeración de las partículas primarias, dando como resultado el aglomerado que es expulsado por el tubo de escape. Este trabajo solo analiza esta última fase. El modelo planteado utiliza como semilla un delta de Dirac de la función de tamaños de partículas, en la que sólo hay partículas primarias completamente formadas con igual tamaño característico. El resultado del modelo es la obtención de la evolución temporal de la función de distribución de tamaños medios de aglomerados. Se han analizado los fenómenos fluidodinámicos que más afectan a la función de frecuencia de colisiones de los aglomerados en formación. Se observa que los fenómenos más predominantes son el derivado del movimiento browniano y el del movimiento turbulento inercial. El modelo es de tipo semi-experimental, ya que utiliza como variables de entrada, datos experimentales obtenidos en banco de ensayo de motores, y resultados de modelos de diagnóstico de la combustión

Do the lower body strength assessment tests in the Spanish navy really measure what they purport to measure?

The main objective of this research was to analyse the efficacy of lower body strength assessment tests in the Armed Forces Physical Assessment System. Secondly, it was to determine what relationship exists between the physical evaluation system of the Spanish Armed forces and standardized evaluation protocols (Gold standard). A total of 905 students enrolled in the military/civil bachelor’s degree (813 male and 92 female) participated in this study. The influence of the sex of the participants was studied through the student’s t-test for independent data, and the degree of association between variables was defined by Pearson’s correlation coefficient. The results present moderate correlations (r = 0.67, r = 0.66; p < 0.001) between the vertical jump test used by the Army and the power or elastic force tests commonly used in practice and in research. The results obtained reflect a moderate relationship between the gold standard tests and the tests used by the Army, which suggests that the tests currently used to assess lower body strength should be adapted to more objective measurement tools which would allow a better comparison between samples from different armed forces

Multi-step histogram based outlier scores for unsupervised anomaly detection: ArcelorMittal engineering dataset case of study

Anomaly detection is the task of detecting samples that behave differently from the rest of the data or that include abnormal values. Unsupervised anomaly detection is the most common scenario, which implies that the algorithms cannot train with a labeled input and do not know the anomaly behavior beforehand. Histogram-based methods are one of the most approaches in unsupervised anomaly detection, remarking a good performance and a low runtime. Despite the good performance, histogram-based anomaly detectors are not capable of processing data flows while updating their knowledge and cannot deal with a high amount of samples. In this paper, we propose a new histogram-based approach for addressing the aforementioned problems by introducing the ability to update the information inside a histogram. We have applied these strategies to design a new algorithm called Multi-step Histogram Based Outlier Scores (MHBOS), including five new histogram update mechanisms. The results have shown the performance and validity of MHBOS as well as the proposed strategies in terms of performance and computing times.Ministry of Science and Technology under project PID2020-119478 GB-I00Contract UGR-AM OTRI-426Andalusian Excellence project P18-FR-496Spanish Ministry of Science under the FPU Programme 998758-201