Refrigeration Capacity and Effect of Ageing on the Operation of Cellulose Evaporative Cooling Pads, by Wind Tunnel Analysis

This study investigates the temperature reduction capacity and water consumption of a fan-pad system installed in a greenhouse located in the coastal regions of Almería. The suitability of this system for coastal zones with high environmental humidity during the summer is analyzed. Historical temperature and relative humidity series are studied, obtaining the thermal difference and maximum, medium, and minimum monthly water consumption of the pads based on the operation data of the pads. Despite the high relative humidity of the air in the hottest hours of the day, a decrease of 5.92 ºC in the mean temperature and a water consumption of 13.55 l/h per square meter of an evaporative cooling pad are obtained in the month of August. Additionally, the operation of a cellulose evaporative cooling pad installed for 3 years in a greenhouse is analyzed in a wind tunnel and compared with that of a new pad of the same model. Over time and with low maintenance, the porosity of the pad decreases due to salt incrustation. The salt incrustation makes airflow more difficult in the pad, increasing the pressure drop by 170.04%; however, the air saturation efficiency of the pad increases by 6.6% due to the greater contact time between the air and the waterMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad de España AGL2015-68050-RUnión Europea (FEDER) AGL2015-68050-

Combining heterogeneous sources in an interactive multimedia content retrieval model

Interactive multimodal information retrieval systems (IMIR) increase the capabilities of traditional search systems, by adding the ability to retrieve information of different types (modes) and from different sources. This article describes a formal model for interactive multimodal information retrieval. This model includes formal and widespread definitions of each component of an IMIR system. A use case that focuses on information retrieval regarding sports validates the model, by developing a prototype that implements a subset of the features of the model. Adaptive techniques applied to the retrieval functionality of IMIR systems have been defined by analysing past interactions using decision trees, neural networks, and clustering techniques. This model includes a strategy for selecting sources and combining the results obtained from every source. After modifying the strategy of the prototype for selecting sources, the system is reevaluated using classification techniques.This work was partially supported by eGovernAbility-Access project (TIN2014-52665-C2-2-R)

Energy Efficiency in Greenhouse Evaporative Cooling Techniques: Cooling Boxes versus Cellulose Pads

Evaporative cooling systems using a combination of evaporative pads and extractor fans require greenhouses to be hermetic. The greatest concentration of greenhouses in the world is located in southeast Spain, but these tend not to be hermetic structures and consequently can only rely on fogging systems as evaporative cooling techniques. Evaporative cooling boxes provide an alternative to such systems. Using a low-speed wind tunnel, the present work has compared the performance of this system with four pads of differing geometry and thickness manufactured by two different companies. The results obtained show that the plastic packing in the cooling unit produces a pressure drop of 11.05 Pa at 2 m·s−1, which is between 51.27% and 94.87% lower than that produced by the cellulose pads. This pressure drop was not influenced by increases in the water flow. The evaporative cooling boxes presented greater saturation efficiency at the same flow, namely 82.63%, as opposed to an average figure of 65% for the cellulose pads; and also had a lower specific consumption of water, at around 3.05 L·h−1·m−2·°C−1. Consequently, we conclude that evaporative cooling boxes are a good option for cooling non-hermetic greenhouses such as those most frequently used in the Mediterranean basin

Thermography and Sonic Anemometry to Analyze Air Heaters in Mediterranean Greenhouses

The present work has developed a methodology based on thermography and sonic anemometry for studying the microclimate in Mediterranean greenhouses equipped with air heaters and polyethylene distribution ducts to distribute the warm air. Sonic anemometry allows us to identify the airflow pattern generated by the heaters and to analyze the temperature distribution inside the greenhouse, while thermography provides accurate crop temperature data. Air distribution by means of perforated polyethylene ducts at ground level, widely used in Mediterranean-type greenhouses, can generate heterogeneous temperature distributions inside the greenhouse when the system is not correctly designed. The system analyzed in this work used a polyethylene duct with a row of hot air outlet holes (all of equal diameter) that expel warm air toward the ground to avoid plant damage. We have observed that this design (the most widely used in Almería’s greenhouses) produces stagnation of hot air in the highest part of the structure, reducing the heating of the crop zone. Using 88 kW heating power (146.7 W∙m−2) the temperature inside the greenhouse is maintained 7.2 to 11.2 °C above the outside temperature. The crop temperature (17.6 to 19.9 °C) was maintained above the minimum recommended value of 10 °C

TrendMiner: Large-scale Cross-lingual Trend Mining Summarization of Real-time Media Streams

El reciente crecimiento masivo de medios on-line y el incremento de los contenidos generados por los usuarios (por ejemplo, weblogs, Twitter, Facebook) plantea retos en el acceso e interpretación de datos multilingües de manera eficiente, rápida y asequible. El objetivo del proyecto TredMiner es desarrollar métodos innovadores, portables, de código abierto y que funcionen en tiempo real para generación de resúmenes y minería cross-lingüe de medios sociales a gran escala. Los resultados se están validando en tres casos de uso: soporte a la decisión en el dominio financiero (con analistas, empresarios, reguladores y economistas), monitorización y análisis político (con periodistas, economistas y políticos) y monitorización de medios sociales sobre salud con el fin de detectar información sobre efectos adversos a medicamentos.The recent massive growth in online media and the rise of user-authored content (e.g weblogs, Twitter, Facebook) has led to challenges of how to access and interpret the strongly multilingual data, in a timely, efficient, and affordable manner. The goal of this project is to deliver innovative, portable open-source real-time methods for cross-lingual mining and summarization of large-scale stream media. Results are validated in three high-profile case studies: financial decision support (with analysts, traders, regulators, and economists), political analysis and monitoring (with politicians, economists, and political journalists) and monitoring patient postings in the health domain to detect adverse drug reactions.FP7-ICT28786

Analysis of power converters with devices of SiC for applications in electric traction systems

This article presents the analysis of two topologies of power converters. Voltage Source Inverter (VSI) and Current Source Inverter (CSI) proposals for traction system applications, these topologies are implemented with silicon carbide devices. The use of SiC semiconductors allow working at high switching frequency (100KHz), increase the working temperature range and decreasing power losses during conduction and activation of the semiconductors. The objective is analyze these topologies and select the one that provides the best performance and behavior at high frequency to improve it on a electric traction system.Postprint (author's final draft

Experiences in evaluating multilingual and text-image information retrieval

23 pages, 8 figures.One important step during the development of information retrieval (IR) processes is the evaluation of the output regarding the information needs of the user. The "high quality" of the output is related to the integration of different methods to be applied in the IR process and the information included in the retrieved documents, but how can "quality" be measured? Although some of these methods can be tested in a stand-alone way, it is not always clear what will happen when several methods are integrated. For this reason, much effort has been put into establishing a good combination of several methods or to correctly tuning some of the algorithms involved. The current approach is to measure the precision and recall figures yielded when different combinations of methods are included in an IR process. In this article, a short description of the current techniques and methods included in an IR system is given, paying special attention to the multilingual aspect of the problem. Also a discussion of their influence on the final performance of the IR process is presented by explaining previous experiences in the evaluation process followed in two projects (MIRACLE and OmniPaper) related to multilingual information retrieval.This work has been partially supported by the projects OmniPaper (European Union, 5th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, IST-2001-32174), NEDINE (E-Content project Ref.: 22225), and GPS Project—Software Process Management Platform: modeling, reuse, and measurement (National Research Plan, TIN2004-07083).Publicad

A Proof-of-Concept for Orthographic Named Entity Correction in Spanish Voice Queries

Proceedings of: 10th International Workshop on Adaptive Multimedia Retrieval. Took place October 24-25, 2012, in Copenhaguen (Denmark).Automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems are not able to recognize entities that are not present in its vocabulary. The problem considered in this paper is the misrecognition of named entities in Spanish voice queries introducing a proof-of-concept for named entity correction that provides alternative entities to the ones incorrectly recognized or misrecognized by retrieving entities phonetically similar from a dictionary. This system is domain-dependent, using sports news, especially football news, regardless of the automatic speech recognition system used. The correction process exploits the query structure and its semantic information to detect where a named entity appears. The system finds the most suitable alternative entity from a dictionary previously generated with the existing named entities.This work has been partially supported by the Regional Government of Madrid under the Research Network MA2VICMR (S2009/TIC-1542) and by the Spanish Center for Industry Technological Development (CDTI, Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade) through the BUSCAMEDIA Project (CEN-20091026).Publicad