Band-pass filtering of the time sequences of spectral parameters for robust wireless speech recognition

In this paper we address the problem of automatic speech recognition when wireless speech communication systems are involved. In this context, three main sources of distortion should be considered: acoustic environment, speech coding and transmission errors. Whilst the first one has already received a lot of attention, the last two deserve further investigation in our opinion. We have found out that band-pass filtering of the recognition features improves ASR performance when distortions due to these particular communication systems are present. Furthermore, we have evaluated two alternative configurations at different bit error rates (BER) typical of these channels: band-pass filtering the LP-MFCC parameters or a modification of the RASTA-PLP using a sharper low-pass section perform consistently better than LP-MFCC and RASTA-PLP, respectively.Publicad

Maximal functions and the control of weighted inequalities for the fractional integral operator

We study weak-type (1, 1) weighted inequalities for the fractional integral operator Iα. We show that the fractional maximal operator Mα controls these inequalities when the weight is radially decreasing. However, we exhibit some counterexamples which show that Mα is not appropriate for this control on general weights. We do provide, nevertheless, some positive results related to this problem by considering other suitable maximal functions

Fusion Based Safety Application for Pedestrian Detection with Danger Estimation

Proceedings of: 14th International Conference on Information Fusion (FUSION 2011). Chicago, Illinois, USA 5-8 July 2011.Road safety applications require the most reliable data. In recent years data fusion is becoming one of the main technologies for Advance Driver Assistant Systems (ADAS) to overcome the limitations of isolated use of the available sensors and to fulfil demanding safety requirements. In this paper a real application of data fusion for road safety for pedestrian detection is presented. Two sets of automobile-emplaced sensors are used to detect pedestrians in urban environments, a laser scanner and a stereovision system. Both systems are mounted in the automobile research platform IVVI 2.0 to test the algorithms in real situations. The different safety issues necessary to develop this fusion application are described. Context information such as velocity and GPS information is also used to provide danger estimation for the detected pedestrians.This work was supported by the Spanish Government through the Cicyt projects FEDORA (GRANT TRA2010- 20225-C03-01 ) , VIDAS-Driver (GRANT TRA2010-21371-C03-02 ).Publicad

“External and total hip rotation range of motion predispose to low back pain in elite Spanish inline hockey player”

Low back pain (LBP) is a common ailment in competitive athletes. Although the association between limited range of motion (ROM) and prevalence of LBP has been widely investigated in other sports, there is no research about this topic in inline hockey (IH). The main purposes of this study in IH players were (1) to analyze the association between hip ROM and LBP and (2) to establish a diagnostic cuto for ROM of high risk of LBP. Twenty elite IH players from the two Spanish National Teams (male and female) were assessed for passive maximum hip ROMs; the movement evaluated were the hip external [HER] and internal [HIR] rotation, hip flexion with flexed [HF-KF] and extended [HF-KE] knee, hip adduction with flexed hip [HAD-HF], hip abduction with neutral [HAB] and flexed [HAB-HF] hip, and hip extension [HE]. LBP was retrospectively monitored for the last 12 months before the date of ROM assessment by using a questionnaire. The data were analyzed via a binary logistic regression and receiver operating characteristic curves. The 70% of players had developed LBP during the retrospective study period. Significant dierences between LBP group and asymptomatic group for HER (p = 0.013, d [Cohen’s eect size] = 1.17) and hip total rotation [HTR] (p = 0.032, d [Cohen’s eect size] = 1.05) were observed. The cuto points with the greatest discriminatory capacity were 56.5 for HER and 93 for HTR ROMs

Improving the Performance of a Named Entity Extractor by Applying a Stacking Scheme

In this paper we investigate the way of improving the performance of a Named Entity Extraction (NEE) system by applying machine learning techniques and corpus transformation. The main resources used in our experiments are the publicly available tagger TnT and a corpus of Spanish texts in which named entities occurrences are tagged with BIO tags. We split the NEE task into two subtasks 1) Named Entity Recognition (NER) that involves the identification of the group of words that make up the name of an entity and 2) Named Entity Classification (NEC) that determines the category of a named entity. We have focused our work on the improvement of the NER task, generating four different taggers with the same training corpus and combining them using a stacking scheme. We improve the baseline of the NER task (Fβ=1 value of 81.84) up to a value of 88.37. When a NEC module is added to the NER system the performance of the whole NEE task is also improved. A value of 70.47 is achieved from a baseline of 66.07

Sistemas de aseguramiento y provisión de servicios sanitarios en el territorio español

El modelo empleado en otros países industrializados sirve para analizar las posibles alternativas a la hora de afrontar los diferentes retos de los sistemas sanitarios actuales con el fin de garantizar su eficiencia y sostenibilidad. La intensidad del control público sobre el sistema sanitario difiere según los países, desde modelos dirigidos por los gobiernos, sistemas mixtos o seguros privados. Dentro del marco de la economía de mercado y de la globalización y teniendo en cuenta la influencia de las organizaciones ligadas a los trabajadores y defensoras de un sector publico fuerte, se realiza una aproximación la modelo español y su Sistema Nacional de Salud.The model used in other industrialized countries is used to analyze the possible alternatives and models in existing health systems to ensure their efficiency and sustainability. The intensity of public control over the health system differs between countries, from models controlled by governments, private insurance, or mixed systems. Within the framework of the market economy and globalization we have to take into account the influence of organizations linked to workers to make an approach to the Spanish model and its National Health System

Estudio del modelamiento de la calidad del agua del Río Sinú, Colombia.

En este estudio se presenta la modelación de la calidad del agua en el río Sinú, Colombia, en el tramo central entre la central hidroeléctrica de Urrá y la desembocadura al mar Caribe, usando el modelo QUAL2KW que incorpora el algoritmo genético PIKAIA, que permite la calibración de las constantes cinéticas. Específicamente, se presenta la metodología usada para la caracterización hidráulica, la segmentación de la corriente y el uso del método de muestreo Monte-Carlo para determinar los parámetros de calidad de agua de mayor sensibilidad, y demostrar que el modelo QUAL2KW no pudo ser calibrado para el río Sinú con la información de campo disponible, debido a que varias combinaciones de los parámetros producen soluciones igualmente óptimas

Context aided pedestrian detection for danger estimation based on laser scanner and computer vision

Road safety applications demand the most reliable sensor systems. In recent years, the advances in information technologies have led to more complex road safety applications able to cope with a high variety of situations. These applications have strong sensing requirements that a single sensor, with the available technology, cannot attain. Recent researches in Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) try to overcome the limitations of the sensors by combining them. But not only sensor information is crucial to give a good and robust representation of the road environment; context information has a key role for reliable safety applications to provide reliable detection and complete situation assessment. This paper presents a novel approach for pedestrian detection using sensor fusion of laser scanner and computer vision. The application also takes advantage of context information, providing danger estimation for the pedestrians detected. Closing the loop, the danger estimation is later used, together with context information, as feedback to enhance the pedestrian detection process.This work was supported by the Spanish Government through the Cicyt projects (GRANT TRA2010-20225-C03-01), (TEC2011-28626-C02-02) and (GRANT TRA 2011-29454-C03-02), CAM through SEGVAUTO-II (S2009/DPI-1509) and mobility program of ‘‘Fundación Caja Madrid’’.Publicad

Primer registro de la comadreja (Mustela frenata) en el estado de Campeche, México

In this paper, we report three different records of the long tail weasel (Mustela frenata) using camera traps in the western portion of Campeche; thus confirming the presence of the species in this Mexican state

Enfermedad ganulomatosa sistémica: Sarcoidosis

Se describe el caso de un paciente varón de 65 años de edad con tiempo de enfermedad de 18 meses caracterizado por lesiones dérmicas maculo papulares en miembros inferiores, lesiones nodulares pulmonares y compromiso intersticial pulmonar, lesiones nodulares hepáticas y en bazo, extensa masa retroperitoneal y flanco, ascitis cero hemática de gran volumen. Los estudios anatomopatológicos de biopsias revelaron la presencia de proceso granulomatoso crónico no caseificante, cuyo diagnóstico final fue Sarcoidosis sistémica