Deep Neural Networks for the Recognition and Classification of Heart Murmurs Using Neuromorphic Auditory Sensors

Auscultation is one of the most used techniques for detecting cardiovascular diseases, which is one of the main causes of death in the world. Heart murmurs are the most common abnormal finding when a patient visits the physician for auscultation. These heart sounds can either be innocent, which are harmless, or abnormal, which may be a sign of a more serious heart condition. However, the accuracy rate of primary care physicians and expert cardiologists when auscultating is not good enough to avoid most of both type-I (healthy patients are sent for echocardiogram) and type-II (pathological patients are sent home without medication or treatment) errors made. In this paper, the authors present a novel convolutional neural network based tool for classifying between healthy people and pathological patients using a neuromorphic auditory sensor for FPGA that is able to decompose the audio into frequency bands in real time. For this purpose, different networks have been trained with the heart murmur information contained in heart sound recordings obtained from nine different heart sound databases sourced from multiple research groups. These samples are segmented and preprocessed using the neuromorphic auditory sensor to decompose their audio information into frequency bands and, after that, sonogram images with the same size are generated. These images have been used to train and test different convolutional neural network architectures. The best results have been obtained with a modified version of the AlexNet model, achieving 97% accuracy (specificity: 95.12%, sensitivity: 93.20%, PhysioNet/CinC Challenge 2016 score: 0.9416). This tool could aid cardiologists and primary care physicians in the auscultation process, improving the decision making task and reducing type-I and type-II errors.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2016-77785-

NAVIS: Neuromorphic Auditory VISualizer Tool

This software presents diverse utilities to perform the first post-processing layer taking the neuromorphic auditory sensors (NAS) information. The used NAS implements in FPGA a cascade filters architecture, imitating the behavior of the basilar membrane and inner hair cells and working with the sound information decomposed into its frequency components as spike streams. The well-known neuromorphic hardware interface Address-Event-Representation (AER) is used to propagate auditory information out of the NAS, emulating the auditory vestibular nerve. Using the information packetized into aedat files, which are generated through the jAER software plus an AER to USB computer interface, NAVIS implements a set of graphs that allows to represent the auditory information as cochleograms, histograms, sonograms, etc. It can also split the auditory information into different sets depending on the activity level of the spike streams. The main contribution of this software tool is that it allows complex audio post-processing treatments and representations, which is a novelty for spike-based systems in the neuromorphic community and it will help neuromorphic engineers to build sets for training spiking neural networks (SNN).Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2012-37868-C04-0

El vocabulari que marca el procés de reforma i aprovació del text de l'Estatut d'autonomia de Catalunya (2006)

L'any 2006, després d'un llarg iter parlamentari, s'aprova l'Estatut d'autonomia de Catalunya (EAC), que la Sentència 31/2010 del Tribunal Constitucional declara parcialment inconstitucional. Tot i que a Morales (2008) s'hi estudiaren les bases estatutàries elaborades pels partits, aquest article presenta l'estudi de les tres versions de l'EAC consensuades en seu parlamentària. Aquests textos presenten característiques discursives pròpies del discurs jurídic i del discurs polític, i s'inscriuen dins d'un gènere — el discurs normatiu— poc caracteritzat des de la lingüística catalana en els darrers temps. La metodologia emprada parteix de l'estadística textual. L'anàlisi lexicomètrica de Lexico3 ens ha permès identificar el vocabulari que canvia al llarg d'aquest procés. Així doncs, aquesta anàlisi discursiva, basada en criteris lexicomètrics, caracteritza el vocabulari utilitzat durant el procés de reforma de l'EAC 2006. En aquest article presentem les línies teòriques i metodològiques generals del nostre treball i caracteritzem els quatre tipus d'esmenes identificats.In 2006, after a drawn-out parliamentary process, the Autonomy Statute of Catalonia (ASC) was approved. The Spanish Constitutional Court Ruling 31/2010 would later declare it partly unconstitutional. Morales (2008) already examined the statutory frameworks drafted by the parliamentary groups and this paper now presents a study of the three versions of the ASC agreed on in the Catalan Parliament. These texts are marked by discursive characteristics typically found in legal and political discourse and belong to a genre – legislative discourse – which has remained under- researched in Catalan linguistics in recent years. Using textual statistics and a lexicometric analysis conducted with Lexico3, this study demonstrates how lexical choices shifted over the course of the process of drafting and approving the ASC of 2006. Based on lexicometric criteria and discursive analysis, this paper describes the vocabulary used in this process. It also puts forward the theoretical and methodological approaches used for this research and describes the four types of amendments identified

Música-Persona: un binomio inseparable. La importancia de la música en el desarrollo infantil/humano

Treball Final de Grau en Mestre o Mestra d'Educació Infantil. Codi: MI1040. Curs acadèmic: 2017/2018Persona y música constituyen un binomio inseparable, no se entiende la existencia de uno sin el otro. El propósito de este trabajo es conocer las posibilidades de la música y la musicoterapia en la persona y su desarrollo ya desde la etapa infantil. Se pretende contrastar la teoría con la experiencia profesional y personal del musicoterapeuta Patxi del Campo y, por otra parte, indagar acerca de la situación actual de la música en las aulas de infantil. Para lograr estos objetivos, se ha realizado la siguiente metodología: por un lado, una entrevista a del Campo y, por otro lado, una encuesta a maestras que ejercen en la etapa de Educación Infantil (3-6 años). Los resultados de la entrevista han concretado la diferencia entre la aplicación de la música y de la musicoterapia. También nos han mostrado que las principales funciones de la musicoterapia son facilitar la relación persona-mundo, así como hacer sentir viva a la persona. La última parte de esta, nos ha permitido conocer su punto de vista respecto a la situación de la música en las aulas. Todo ello, englobado dentro del hecho importante, para el entrevistado, de no separar música y persona. Los resultados de la encuesta han reflejado que, pese a que los encuestados son conscientes de los beneficios de la música, manifiestan ciertas dudas en cuanto a si la trabajaban correcta y suficientemente. Se puede concluir que, aunque la música es esencial e inseparable de la persona, esta no ocupa el lugar que debiera en las aulas de Educación Infantil, siendo una posible causa de ello la insuficiente formación del profesorado.Person and music constitute an inseparable binomial, the existence of one without the other is not understood. The objective of this work is to know the possibilities of music and musictherapy in the person and its development right from childhood stage. The aim is to contrast the theory with the professional and personal experience of music therapist Patxi del Campo and, on the other hand, to inquire about the current situation of music in children's classrooms. To achieve these objectives, the following methodology has been carried out: first of all, an interview with Del Campo and, moreover, a survey of teachers who practice in the early childhood education stage (3-6 years old). The results of the interview showed the difference between the use of music and musictherapy. They have also showed us that the main functions of music therapy are to facilitate the personworld relationship, as well as to make a person feel alive. The last part of this interview, has allowed us to know his point of view about the situation of music in the classroom. All this, encompassed within the important fact, for the interviewee, of no separating music and person. The results of the survey have shown the respondents are aware of the benefits of music, but they express doubts about they are working music correctly and sufficiently. It can be concluded that, although music is essential and inseparable from the person, it does not occupy the place it should in the classrooms of early childhood education, one possible cause of this, is the insufficient teacher trainin

Enhancing organizational performance with social media use: the catalysing effect of corporate entrepreneurship

Social Media use has become pervasive and firms are increasingly relying on it, not only to relate to customers, but also to leverage internal processes like innovation. The strategic use of these tools can facilitate also the entrepreneurial orientation of the firm, as it provides useful knowledge which can make the firm more entrepreneurial, stimulating it to find new opportunities or innovative ideas where other companies do not recognize them. However, despite the relevance of the phenomenon in current hyper-competitive environments, empirical research on the topic remains scarce. To shed some light on the issue, the main purpose of the paper is to examine how Social Media use impacts the different dimensions of corporate entrepreneurship (new business venturing, innovativeness, proactiveness and self-renewal), enhancing also organizational performance. The study is intended to extend knowledge on this topic, by providing understanding of the path firms should take to benefit from Social Media use to become more entrepreneurial and achieve higher organizational performance, developing and nurturing competitive advantages. The paper analyses data obtained from a sample of 201 technological firms located in Spain. The methodology used is Structural equation modelling with LISREL analysis. Findings confirms how the use of Social Media tools positively impacted all the different dimensions of corporate entrepreneurship, translating also in enhanced performance. This paper contributes to the literature by empirically confirming in a structural model how Social Media use helps to create business value, by enhancing proactive behaviours, promoting strategic renewal inside the firm and increasing innovativeness and new business venturing and displaying the internal and sequential relationships among these dimensions.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Experimental and analytical study of cracks under biaxial fatigue

Most mechanical components experience multi-axial cyclic loading conditions during service. Experimental analysis of fatigue cracks under such conditions is not easy and most works tend to focus more on the simpler but less realistic case of uni-axial loading. Consequently, there are many uncertainties related to the load sequence effect that are now well known and are not normally incorporated into the growth models. The current work presents a new methodology for evaluating overload effect in biaxial fatigue cracks. The methodology includes evaluation of mixed-mode (KI and KII) stress intensity factor and the Crack Opening Displacement for samples with and without overload cycle under biaxial loading. The methodology is tested under a range of crack lengths. All crack-tip information is obtained with a hybrid methodology that combines experimental full-field digital image correlation data and Williams' elastic model describing the crack-tip field.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Stereo Matching in Address-Event-Representation (AER) Bio-Inspired Binocular Systems in a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)

In stereo-vision processing, the image-matching step is essential for results, although it involves a very high computational cost. Moreover, the more information is processed, the more time is spent by the matching algorithm, and the more ine cient it is. Spike-based processing is a relatively new approach that implements processing methods by manipulating spikes one by one at the time they are transmitted, like a human brain. The mammal nervous system can solve much more complex problems, such as visual recognition by manipulating neuron spikes. The spike-based philosophy for visual information processing based on the neuro-inspired address-event-representation (AER) is currently achieving very high performance. The aim of this work was to study the viability of a matching mechanism in stereo-vision systems, using AER codification and its implementation in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Some studies have been done before in an AER system with monitored data using a computer; however, this kind of mechanism has not been implemented directly on hardware. To this end, an epipolar geometry basis applied to AER systems was studied and implemented, with other restrictions, in order to achieve good results in a real-time scenario. The results and conclusions are shown, and the viability of its implementation is proven.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2016-77785-

Some experimental observations of crack-tip mechanics with displacement data

Estudio de la mecánica en el vértice de la grieta mediante datos de desplazamiento.In the past two decades, crack-tip mechanics has been increasingly studied with full-field techniques. Within these techniques, Digital Image Correlation (DIC) has been most widely used due to its many advantages, to extract important crack-tip information, including Stress Intensity Factor (SIF), Crack Opening Displacement, J-integral, T-stress, closure level, plastic zone size, etc. However, little information is given in the literature about the experimental setup that provides best estimations for the different parameters. The current work aims at understanding how the experimental conditions used in DIC influence the crack-tip information extracted experimentally. The influence of parameters such as magnification factor, size of the images, position of the images with respect the crack-tip and size of the subset used in the correlation is studied. The influence is studied in terms of SIF and T-stress by using Williams’ model. The concept of determination of the K-dominance zone from experimental data has also explored. In this regard, cyclic loading on a fatigue crack in a compact tension (CT) specimen, made of aluminium 2024-T351 alloy, has been applied and the surface deformation ahead of the crack tip has been examined. The comparison between theoretical and experimental values of KI showed that the effect of subset size on the measured KI is negligible compared to the effect of size of the image.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech