Excitatory-inhibitory branching process: A parsimonious view of cortical asynchronous states, excitability, and criticality

We acknowledge the Spanish Ministry and Agencia Estatal de investigación (AEI) through Project of I + D+i Ref. PID2020-113681GB-I00, financed by MICIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and FEDER “A way to make Europe,” as well as the Consejería de Conocimiento, Investigación Universidad, Junta de Andalucía and European Regional Development Fund, Project references A-FQM-175-UGR18 and P20-00173, for financial support. R.C.L. acknowledges funding from the Spanish Ministry and AEI, Grant No. FPU19/03887. This work was partially supported by a Sofja Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, endowed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (V.B.). We also thank H. C. Piuvezam, J. Pretel, G. B. Morales, P. Moretti, O. Vinogradov, and E. Giannakakis for valuable discussions.The branching process is the minimal model for propagation dynamics, avalanches, and criticality, broadly used in neuroscience. A simple extension of it, adding inhibitory nodes, induces a much-richer phenomenology, including an intermediate phase, between quiescence and saturation, that exhibits the key features of “asynchronous states” in cortical networks. Remarkably, in the inhibition-dominated case, it exhibits an extremely rich phase diagram that captures a wealth of nontrivial features of spontaneous brain activity, such as collective excitability, hysteresis, tilted avalanche shapes, and partial synchronization, allowing us to rationalize striking empirical findings within a common and parsimonious framework.Alexander von Humboldt-StiftungBundesministerium für Bildung und ForschungFEDEREuropean Regional Development Fund A-FQM-175-UGR18, FPU19/03887, P20-00173 ERDFAgencia Estatal de Investigación MICIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, PID2020-113681GB-I0

Soft trade-offs and the stochastic emergence of diversification in E. coli evolution experiments

Laboratory experiments of bacterial colonies (e.g., \emph{Escherichia coli}) under well-controlled conditions often lead to evolutionary diversification in which (at least) two ecotypes, each one specialized in the consumption of a different set of metabolic resources, branch out from an initially monomorphic population. Empirical evidence suggests that, even under fixed and stable conditions, such an ``evolutionary branching'' occurs in a stochastic way, meaning that: (i) it is observed in a significant fraction, but not all, of the experimental repetitions, (ii) it may emerge at broadly diverse times, and (iii) the relative abundances of the resulting subpopulations are variable across experiments. Theoretical approaches shedding light on the possible emergence of evolutionary branching in this type of conditions have been previously developed within the theory of ``adaptive dynamics''. Such approaches are typically deterministic -- or incorporate at most demographic or finite-size fluctuations which become negligible for the extremely large populations of these experiments -- and, thus, do not permit to reproduce the empirically observed large degree of variability. Here, we make further progress and shed new light on the stochastic nature of evolutionary outcomes by introducing the idea of ``soft'' trade-offs (as opposed to ``hard'' ones). This introduces a natural new source of stochasticity which allows one to account for the empirically observed variability as well as to make predictions for the likelihood of evolutionary branching to be observed, thus helping to bridge the gap between theory and experiments

A Reversible Hydropump–Turbine System

Water-pumped storage systems have become an ideal alternative to regulate the intermittent power delivered by renewable energy sources. For small-scale operations, a type of centrifugal pump coupled to asynchronous machines represents an adequate solution due to their techno-economic feasibility in addition to their ability to operate as reversible systems. This work provides a novel port-Hamiltonian modelling approach to an integrated reversible hydropump–turbine system, that can be switched from motor pump to turbine-generator by employing a conventional hydraulic switch. Our modelling strategy provides a clear physical interpretation of the energy flow from the mechanical to electrical domains. Then, the model was built with multi-domain storing and dissipating elements and the interconnection of well-defined input–output port pairs. The system’s internal energy, i.e., Hamiltonian function, can be exploited for energy-shaping control strategies. The performance of our modelling approach is validated via numerical simulations

Glottal-Source Spectral Biometry for Voice Characterization

The biometric signature derived from the estimation of the power spectral density singularities of a speaker’s glottal source is described in the present work. This consists in the collection of peak-trough profiles found in the spectral density, as related to the biomechanics of the vocal folds. Samples of parameter estimations from a set of 100 normophonic (pathology-free) speakers are produced. Mapping the set of speaker’s samples to a manifold defined by Principal Component Analysis and clustering them by k-means in terms of the most relevant principal components shows the separation of speakers by gender. This means that the proposed signature conveys relevant speaker’s metainformation, which may be useful in security and forensic applications for which contextual side information is considered relevant

Bio-inspired Dynamic Formant Tracking for Phonetic Labelling

It is a known fact that phonetic labeling may be relevant in helping current Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) when combined with classical parsing systems as HMM's by reducing the search space. Through the present paper a method for Phonetic Broad-Class Labeling (PCL) based on speech perception in the high auditory centers is described. The methodology is based in the operation of CF (Characteristic Frequency) and FM (Frequency Modulation) neurons in the cochlear nucleus and cortical complex of the human auditory apparatus in the automatic detection of formants and formant dynamics on speech. Results obtained informant detection and dynamic formant tracking are given and the applicability of the method to Speech Processing is discussed

A Hybrid Parameterization Technique for Speaker Identification

Classical parameterization techniques for Speaker Identification use the codification of the power spectral density of raw speech, not discriminating between articulatory features produced by vocal tract dynamics (acoustic-phonetics) from glottal source biometry. Through the present paper a study is conducted to separate voicing fragments of speech into vocal and glottal components, dominated respectively by the vocal tract transfer function estimated adaptively to track the acoustic-phonetic sequence of the message, and by the glottal characteristics of the speaker and the phonation gesture. The separation methodology is based in Joint Process Estimation under the un-correlation hypothesis between vocal and glottal spectral distributions. Its application on voiced speech is presented in the time and frequency domains. The parameterization methodology is also described. Speaker Identification experiments conducted on 245 speakers are shown comparing different parameterization strategies. The results confirm the better performance of decoupled parameterization compared against approaches based on plain speech parameterization

“Back‐to‐Front” Indole and Carbazole Synthesis from N,N‐Bis‐(2‐bromoallyl)amines by Combining Carbolithiation Reactions with Gold‐Catalysis

The combination of organolithium chemistry with gold catalysis has enabled the development of a synthetic strategy for accessing polysubstituted indoles and carbazoles from readily available starting materials. This method is based on a “back-to-front” approach from ketopyrroles, generated by intramolecular carbolithiation of N,N-bis-(2-lithioallyl)amines that evolve into 3,4-bis(lithiomethyl)dihydropyrrole intermediates capable of reacting with carboxylic esters and Weinreb amides. These ketopyrroles have demonstrated to be excellent precursors of mono or bis(alkynols)pyrroles that, under gold-catalysis, experience a benzannulation reaction providing access to regioselectively substituted indoles or carbazoles.We gratefully acknowledge Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 (PID2020-115789GBC21), and Junta de Castilla y León and FEDER (BU049P20) for financial support. The project leading to these results has received funding from “la Caixa” Foundation, under the Agreement LCF/PR/PR18/51130007> (CAIXA-UBU001). M.A.M., F.M.-L., M.S. and S.S.-P. thank Junta de Castilla y León (Consejería de Educación) and Fondo Social Europeo for predoctoral (M.A.M, F.M.-L. and M.S.) and postdoctoral (S.S.- P.) contracts, respectively

Transferencia de mentoreo de emprendedores de ingeniería en sistemas de información a estudiantes del nivel medio

Contexto: Desde el año 2017 el Departamento de Ingeniería en Sistemas de Información de la Universidad Tecnológica Nacional - Facultad Regional Córdoba realizó talleres de transferencia a estudiantes del último año de un Centro Educativo de modalidad para adultos, en el marco del espacio curricular llamado “Espacio de Vinculación con el Sector de la Orientación Economía y Administración”. Objetivo: Extensión del programa universitario “Mentoreo de Emprendedores ISI”, utilizando el Taller como dispositivo de vinculación entre espacios académicos. Método: Transferencia de conocimientos y experiencias mediante talleres organizados por la Universidad, partícipe del programa “Científicos con Voz y Vos” del Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología del Gobierno de la Provincia de Córdoba. Resultados: Formación de sesenta estudiantes de nivel medio con evaluación positiva, justificando la continuidad de la experiencia a futuro. Conclusiones: El taller es un instrumento de vinculación eficaz entre los actores educativos, propiciando procesos de enseñanza y aprendizajes significativos.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

Transferencia de mentoreo de emprendedores de ingeniería en sistemas de información a estudiantes del nivel medio

Contexto: Desde el año 2017 el Departamento de Ingeniería en Sistemas de Información de la Universidad Tecnológica Nacional - Facultad Regional Córdoba realizó talleres de transferencia a estudiantes del último año de un Centro Educativo de modalidad para adultos, en el marco del espacio curricular llamado “Espacio de Vinculación con el Sector de la Orientación Economía y Administración”. Objetivo: Extensión del programa universitario “Mentoreo de Emprendedores ISI”, utilizando el Taller como dispositivo de vinculación entre espacios académicos. Método: Transferencia de conocimientos y experiencias mediante talleres organizados por la Universidad, partícipe del programa “Científicos con Voz y Vos” del Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología del Gobierno de la Provincia de Córdoba. Resultados: Formación de sesenta estudiantes de nivel medio con evaluación positiva, justificando la continuidad de la experiencia a futuro. Conclusiones: El taller es un instrumento de vinculación eficaz entre los actores educativos, propiciando procesos de enseñanza y aprendizajes significativos.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

Transferencia de mentoreo de emprendedores de ingeniería en sistemas de información a estudiantes del nivel medio

Contexto: Desde el año 2017 el Departamento de Ingeniería en Sistemas de Información de la Universidad Tecnológica Nacional - Facultad Regional Córdoba realizó talleres de transferencia a estudiantes del último año de un Centro Educativo de modalidad para adultos, en el marco del espacio curricular llamado “Espacio de Vinculación con el Sector de la Orientación Economía y Administración”. Objetivo: Extensión del programa universitario “Mentoreo de Emprendedores ISI”, utilizando el Taller como dispositivo de vinculación entre espacios académicos. Método: Transferencia de conocimientos y experiencias mediante talleres organizados por la Universidad, partícipe del programa “Científicos con Voz y Vos” del Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología del Gobierno de la Provincia de Córdoba. Resultados: Formación de sesenta estudiantes de nivel medio con evaluación positiva, justificando la continuidad de la experiencia a futuro. Conclusiones: El taller es un instrumento de vinculación eficaz entre los actores educativos, propiciando procesos de enseñanza y aprendizajes significativos.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ