Optimizing electron backscatter diffraction of carbonate biominerals—resin type and carbon coating

Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) is becoming a widely used technique to determine crystallographic orientation in biogenic carbonates. Despite this use, there is little information available on preparation for the analysis of biogenic carbonates. EBSD data are compared for biogenic aragonite and calcite in the common blue mussel, <i>Mytilus edulis</i>, using different types of resin and thicknesses of carbon coating. Results indicate that carbonate biomineral samples provide better EBSD results if they are embedded in resin, particularly epoxy resin. A uniform layer of carbon of 2.5 nm thickness provides sufficient conductivity for EBSD analyses of such insulators to avoid charging without masking the diffracted signal. Diffraction intensity decreases with carbon coating thickness of 5 nm or more. This study demonstrates the importance of optimizing sample preparation for EBSD analyses of insulators such as carbonate biominerals

An IoT Platform Based on Microservices and Serverless Paradigms for Smart Farming Purposes

Nowadays, the concept of “Everything is connected to Everything” has spread to reach increasingly diverse scenarios, due to the benefits of constantly being able to know, in real-time, the status of your factory, your city, your health or your smallholding. This wide variety of scenarios creates different challenges such as the heterogeneity of IoT devices, support for large numbers of connected devices, reliable and safe systems, energy efficiency and the possibility of using this system by third-parties in other scenarios. A transversal middleware in all IoT solutions is called an IoT platform. the IoT platform is a piece of software that works like a kind of “glue” to combine platforms and orchestrate capabilities that connect devices, users and applications/services in a “cyber-physical” world. In this way, the IoT platform can help solve the challenges listed above. This paper proposes an IoT agnostic architecture, highlighting the role of the IoT platform, within a broader ecosystem of interconnected tools, aiming at increasing scalability, stability, interoperability and reusability. For that purpose, different paradigms of computing will be used, such as microservices architecture and serverless computing. Additionally, a technological proposal of the architecture, called SEnviro Connect, is presented. This proposal is validated in the IoT scenario of smart farming, where five IoT devices (SEnviro nodes) have been deployed to improve wine production. A comprehensive performance evaluation is carried out to guarantee a scalable and stable platform

Data on records of environmental phenomena using low-cost sensors in vineyard smallholdings

Inadequate weather conditions are one of the main threats to the correct development of sensitive crops, where a bad situation can lead to greater stress on plants and their weakness against various diseases. This statement is especially decisive in the cultivation of the vineyard. Meteorological monitoring of vineyard parcels is vital to detect and prevent possible fungal diseases. The development of new Information and Communication Technologies, linked to the Smart Farming movement, together with the reduced cost of electronic components, have favoured a greater availability of meteorological monitoring stations to get to know first-class hand the state of the vineyard smallholdings. This work provides a set of over 750,000 environmental raw data records collected by low-cost Internet of Things nodes, primarily located within vineyard smallholdings. The published observations were collected between 2018-04-01 and 2018-10-31 and were validated in previous research to determine the data's reliability

Biogas Power Energy Production from a Life Cycle Thinking

The purpose of this chapter is to present a generalized model for the construction of inventories for the production of electricity through biogas. This general framework can be adjusted to any power plant that uses biogas, since it complies with the main material and energy balances. This chapter describes the main technologies used in biogas power energy production, separating them into five main subsystems that integrate the general life cycle inventory, as well as the inputs and outputs considered in the development of the inventories. The life cycle assessment (LCA) of two types of plants is presented as study cases: (i) the biogas power energy generation with organic waste in landfills as substrate and (ii) the biogas power energy generation using dairy cattle manure as substrate. Both systems, in addition to using different types of substrate, present differences in their substages. It is concluded that the generation of studies of life cycle analysis of technologies facilitates decision makers, producers, and government agencies to develop and identify areas of opportunity from life cycle thinking

Efectos agudos de la radioterapia estereotáctica y de la radiocirugía robótica: Experiencia con el Cyberknife en el Hospital de Oncología del CMN SXXI

ResumenObjetivoEn julio de 2012 se iniciaron los tratamientos de radiocirugía y radioterapia intracraneal y extracraneal estereotáctica en la unidad de radiocirugía robótica mediante el uso del equipo Cyberknife (Accuray Incorporated, Sunnyvale, California, EE. UU.). El siguiente trabajo es el reporte de la morbilidad aguda encontrada en el primer año de experiencia.Material y métodosSe analizaron los registros de los primeros 132 pacientes consecutivos con lesiones tanto intra- como extracraneales que fueron tratados en el acelerador lineal robótico no isocéntrico Cyberknife, entre julio de 2012 y junio de 2013. A 81 pacientes con 83 blancos intracraneales se les administraron tratamientos de radiocirugía (SRS) y radioterapia estereotáctica intracraneal, en tanto que 51 pacientes con 57 lesiones extracraneales recibieron tratamientos de radioterapia estereotáctica extracraneal (SBRT). Analizamos la morbilidad registrada durante el tratamiento y dentro de las 2 semanas posteriores. Asimismo, también se evaluó cualquier síntoma adverso que se presentó dentro de las 6 semanas posteriores al tratamiento utilizando para ello la escala de morbilidad aguda de la RTOG.ResultadosEn el grupo de pacientes con blancos intracraneales la lesión más frecuente fue el adenoma hipofisario, seguido por meningiomas, metástasis y schwannomas. El 69% de los pacientes tratados se mantuvieron completamente asintomáticos. El síntoma más frecuentemente reportado fue el mareo, seguido por cefalea; un paciente experimentó hipotensión y astenia, y 3 más una combinación de ambas. La morbilidad grado 2 se presentó en 6/23 pacientes. Un paciente con antecedentes de crisis convulsivas ameritó hospitalización por incremento en la intensidad de los episodios convulsivos. Se administró premedicación a 35 pacientes, 21 de los cuales permanecieron asintomáticos.En el mismo periodo se trató a 51 pacientes con 57 lesiones extracraneales. El diagnóstico más frecuente fue cáncer de próstata y el resto presentaba enfermedad oligometastásica o lesiones primarias en pulmón e hígado. En este grupo de pacientes, el 44% no presentó síntomas asociados al tratamiento, en tanto que 12 requirieron tratamiento sintomático; en 12 pacientes se reportó morbilidad grado 2. No se registró ningún caso de morbilidad grado 3.ConclusionesLa morbilidad aguda encontrada en el primer año de experiencia utilizando radiocirugía o radioterapia estereotáctica intra- y extracraneal es mínima y fácilmente manejable, lo cual confirma la seguridad de estos tratamientos.AbstractPurposeOn July 2012, treatments with both intracranial and extracranial stereotactic radiotherapy, using the Cyberknife system (Accuray Incorporated, Sunnyvale, California, USA), were started at the Robotic Radiosurgery Unit. This work is the report of the acute morbidity found throughout the first year of experience.Material and methodsAn analysis was performed on the records of the first 132 consecutive patients with intra- and extracranial lesions, treated with the robotic non-isocentric linear accelerator between July 2012 and June 2013. Intracranial radiosurgery (SRS) and stereotactic radiotherapy treatments were administered to 81 patients with 83 intracranial targets, and 51 patients with 57 lesions received extracranial stereotactic radiotherapy treatments (SBRT). An analysis was made of acute morbidity occurring during the treatment, and within the 2 subsequent weeks. Additionally, any symptom occurring within 6 weeks after the treatment was also assessed using the RTOG scale for acute morbidityResultsIn the group of patients with intracranial target lesions, the most common tumour was pituitary adenoma, followed by meningioma, metastases, and schwannoma. Sixty-nine percent treated patients remained completely asymptomatic. The most frequently reported symptom was dizziness, followed by headache. One patient experienced hypotension and asthenia, and 3 other patients reported a combination of both these symptoms. Grade 2 morbidity was reported in 6 of the 23 patients. One patient with a history of seizures required hospital admission due to increased severity of the convulsive episodes. Pre-medication was given to 35 patients, out of which 21 remained asymptomatic.During the same period, 51 patients with 57 extracranial lesions were treated. The most common diagnosis was prostate cancer and the rest had oligometastases or primary lung or liver lesions. In this group of patients, 44% had no treatment-associated symptoms, whereas 12 required symptomatic treatment. Grade 2 morbidity was reported in 12 patients. There were no cases of Grade 3 morbidity.ConclusionsAcute morbidity found within the first year of experience using intra- and extracranial stereotactic radiosurgery or radiotherapy is minimal and easily manageable, which demonstrates the safety of both these treatments

Development of an open sensorized platform in a smart agriculture context: A vineyard support system for monitoring mildew disease

In recent years, some offcial reports, to produce best products regarding quality, quantity and economic conditions, recommend that the farming sector should benefit with new tools and techniques coming from Information and Communications Technology (ICT) realm. In this way, during last decade the deployment of sensing devices has increased considerably in the field of agriculture. This fact has led to a new concept called smart agriculture, and it contemplates activities such as field monitoring, which offer support to make decisions or perform actions, such as irrigation or fertilization. Apart from sensing devices, which use the Internet protocol to transfer data (Internet of Things), there are the so-called crop models, which are able to provide added value over the data provided by the sensors, with the aim of providing recommendations to farmers in decision-making and thus, increase the quality and quantity of their production. In this scenario, the current work uses a low-cost sensorized platform, capable of monitoring meteorological phenomena following the Internet of Things paradigm, with the goal to apply an alert disease model on the cultivation of the vine. The edge computing paradigm is used to achieve this objective; also our work follows some advances from GIScience to increase interoperability. An example of this platform has been deployed in a vineyard parcel located in the municipality of Vilafamés (Castelló, Spain)

Selección de Características de Microarreglos de ADN Utilizando una Búsqueda Cuckoo

En este artículo, se propone un método híbrido para la selección y clasificación de datos de microarreglos de AND. Primero, el método combina los subconjuntos de genes relevantes obtenidos de cinco métodos de filtro, después, se implementa un algoritmo basado en una búsqueda cuckoo combinado con un clasificador MSV. El algoritmo híbrido explora dentro del subconjunto obtenido en la etapa anterior y selecciona los genes que alcanzan un alto desempeño al entrenar al clasificador. En los resultados experimentales, el algoritmo obtiene una tasa de clasificación alta seleccionado un número pequeño de genes, los resultados obtenidos son comparados con otros métodos reportados en la literatura

Conceptual Architecture and Service-oriented Implementation of a Regional Geoportal for Rice Monitoring

Agricultural monitoring has greatly benefited from the increased availability of a wide variety of remote-sensed satellite imagery, ground-sensed data (e.g., weather station networks) and crop models, delivering a wealth of actionable information to stakeholders to better streamline and improve agricultural practices. Nevertheless, as the degree of sophistication of agriculture monitoring systems increases, significant challenges arise due to the handling and integration of multi-scale data sources to present information to decision-makers in a way which is useful, understandable and user friendly. To address these issues, in this article we present the conceptual architecture and service-oriented implementation of a regional geoportal, specifically focused on rice crop monitoring in order to perform unified monitoring with a supporting system at regional scale. It is capable of storing, processing, managing, serving and visualizing monitoring and generated data products with different granularity and originating from different data sources. Specifically, we focus on data sources and data flow, and their importance for and in relation to different stakeholders. In the context of an EU-funded research project, we present an implementation of the regional geoportal for rice monitoring, which is currently in use in Europe’s three largest rice-producing countries, Italy, Greece and Spain