Field experimental study of traffic-induced turbulence on highways

This paper is focused on traffic-induced turbulence (TIT) analysis from a field campaign performed in 2011, using ultrasonic anemometers deployed in the M-12 Highways, Madrid (Spain). The study attempts to improve knowledge about the influence of traffic-related parameters on turbulence. Linear relationships between vehicle speed and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) values are found with coefficients of determination (R2) of 0.75 and 0.55 for the lorry and van respectively. The vehicle-induced fluctuations in the wind components (u', v' and w') showed the highest values for the longitudinal component (v) because of the wake-passing effect. In the analysis of wake produced by moving vehicles it is indicated how the turbulence dissipates in relation to a distance d and height h. The TKE values were found to be higher at the measuring points closer to the surface during the wake analysis.This work was supported by the OASIS Research Project that was co financed by CDTI (Spanish Science and Innovation Ministry) and developed with the Spanish companies: Iridium, OHL Concesiones, Abertis, Sice, Indra, Dragados, OHL, Geocisa, GMV, Asfaltos Augusta, Hidrofersa, Eipsa, PyG, CPS, AEC and Torre de Comares Arquitectos s.l and 16 research centres

Análisis de la relación entre el patrimonio de los fondos de inversión y los depósitos en entidades financieras

Los fondos de inversión se han constituido en los últimos años como uno de los principales productos financieros en nuestro país (Tabla 1: series utilizadas) y en la Unión Europea. (Tabla 2: Datos internacionales de Fondos de inversión). Tradicionalmente, se han apuntado desde diversos sectores que los fondos de inversión habían ido incrementando sus patrimonios en detrimento de otros instrumentos, tales como los depósitos. Parece evidente y adecuado analizar y cuantificar el posible impacto real de la competencia entre ambos productos. Por todo ello, hemos abordado la tarea de acometer el presente trabajo como una investigación que debe centrarse en el estudio estadístico y financiero de la relación que puede existir entre los fondos de inversión y los depósitos de entidades financieras. El objetivo de la realización de este estudio ha sido tratar de verificar de qué forma la evolución de los fondos ha condicionado el desarrollo y volumen de los depósitos. A medida que hemos avanzado en nuestro estudio, la relación entre ambos instrumentos, se ha ido poniendo de manifiesto las distintas influencias que sobre las diferentes clases de depósitos ha tenido el crecimiento exponencial del volumen patrimonial de fondos. En este estudio, se ha abordado, desde una perspectiva empírica, no suficientemente investigada, una relación que ha marcado y marca una de las claves para el conocimiento de los flujos que afectan a nuestro sistema financiero y a las instituciones de inversión colectiva. Por todo ello, creemos haber aportado unos elementos de reflexión sobre uno de los aspectos menos estudiados en materia de instituciones de inversión colectiva (la relación entre estas instituciones de inversión colectiva y las entidades de crédito y depósito en su captación de fondos), abriendo nuevos cauces de desarrollo en el entorno de la financiación y de nuestro sistema financiero.

Anatomical and functional brain approach along short abrupt changes in G-levels

To conduct experiments under abrupt changes in g-levels, a single-engine aerobatic aircraft has been used, providing 6-8 seconds of reduced gravity, preceded and followed by 5-7 seconds of hypergravity periods. Due to the specific conditions of the flight and previous findings [1], the hypothesis of the present work lies on the idea that some sensory inputs could have a notorious effect on brain final responses when gravity is altered. Therefore, this study focuses on the evaluation of such hypothesis, based on the analysis of the evolution in time of intracranial activity of limbic, visual and auditory cortices. Five subjects (N=5, age 41¿14 years) have flown in parabolic flight with their eyes both open and closed. Electroencephalogram signals were recorded with an Emotive Epoc headset, synchronized with a triaxial accelerometer. The intracranial brain bioelectric activity (standardized current density) throughout the parabola, was calculated by applying Standard Low Resolution Brain Electromagnetic Tomography, and it was analyzed for the limbic, visual and auditory cortices. Intracranial activity of the Temporal, Parietal and Occipital lobes were carried out as well in order to compare the different periods/phases of the flight. Results detected a lower brain activity during the hypogravity phase in all lobes and cortices, only in the case of open eyes. The bioelectrical brain activity along the parabola showed similar patterns in all lobes and cortices, when visual inputs are highlighted. Suppressing the sight, two major behaviors were detected in brain activity: one for temporal lobe and auditory cortex, and second one for the rest of the lobes and visual cortex. It Seemed that, flying with closed eyes, other sensory stimuli were enhanced, in this case the auditory cortex. To confirm the validity of the results two-way ANOVA (factors lobe/phases) and Fisher post hoc test have been applied on mean intracranial activity values in all cases. Spectral entropy evolution in time has been considered as a fast indicator of the sudden extracranial brain activity variation during short g-changes. For open eyes, spectral entropy values indicated a slight decrease at the onset of the hypogravity phase, whereas in case of closed eyes, this change was detected in the last seconds of the parabola, even though these fluctuations were statistically non-significant. Results suggest that some of the sensory inputs can indeed have an impact on brain final response, when gravity conditions are altered.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Tests of Usability Guidelines About Response to User Actions. Importance, Compliance, and Application of the Guidelines

Usability is a quality that a web page can have due to its simple use. Many recommendations aim to improve the web user experience, but there is no standardization of them. This study is part of a saga, which aims to order existing recommendations and guidelines by analyzing the behavior of 20 Information Technology (IT) developers. This publication analyzes the set of guidelines that determine "user responses" when they interact with a website. It is intended to group these guidelines and obtain data on the application of each of them. The test is carried out with 20 web developers without training or experience in web usability. The objective is to know if there are "user response" guidelines that a developer with no training or usability experience applies innate. Since web developers are also users, it is believed that there may be innate behavior that is not necessarily learned. The purposes of the work are: 1) Enumerate the most forgotten recommendations by web developers. This can help to think about the importance of offering specific training in this field. 2) Know the most important recommendations and guidelines, according to the web developers themselves. The investigation is carried out as follows: First, IT engineers were asked to develop a website; Second, user tests were performed and the most neglected and most applied guidelines were evaluated. The level of compliance was also analyzed, as developers lack experience in web usability and could be applying a guideline, but not correctly; Third, web developers are interviewed to find out what guidelines they consider necessary. The results are intended to help us understand if a web developer without training or experience in web usability can innately apply guidelines on "user responses". The objective of the study is to determine that there are guidelines that are applied intuitively and others that are not, and to know the reason for each situation. The results determine that the guidelines considered essential and those that are most applied innately have something in common. The results reveal that the essential guidelines and those that are most commonly implemented inherently share certain commonalities

Performance assessment of time–frequency RFI mitigation techniques in microwave radiometry

©2017 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Radio–frequency interference (RFI) signals are a well-known threat for microwave radiometry (MWR) applications. In order to alleviate this problem, different approaches for RFI detection and mitigation are currently under development. Since RFI signals are man made, they tend to have their power more concentrated in the time–frequency (TF) space as compared to naturally emitted noise. The aim of this paper is to perform an assessment of different TF RFI mitigation techniques in terms of probability of detection, resolution loss (RL), and mitigation performance. In this assessment, six different kinds of RFI signals have been considered: a glitch, a burst of pulses, a wide-band chirp, a narrow-band chirp, a continuous wave, and a wide-band modulation. The results show that the best performance occurs when the transform basis has a similar shape as compared to the RFI signal. For the best case performance, the maximum residual RFI temperature is 14.8 K, and the worst RL is 8.4%. Moreover, the multiresolution Fourier transform technique appears as a good tradeoff solution among all other techniques since it can mitigate all RFI signals under evaluation with a maximum residual RFI temperature of 21 K, and a worst RL of 26.3%. Although the obtained results are still far from an acceptable bias Misplaced < 1 K for MWR applications, there is still work to do in a combined test using the information gathered simultaneously by all mitigation techniques, which could improve the overall performance of RFI mitigation.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

SNR degradation in GNSS-R measurements under the effects of radio-frequency interference

©2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Radio-frequency interference (RFI) is a serious threat for systems working with low power signals such as those coming from the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). The spectral separation coefficient (SSC) is the standard figure of merit to evaluate the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) degradation due to the RFI. However, an in-depth assessment in the field of GNSS-Reflectometry (GNSS-R) has not been performed yet, and particularly, about which is the influence of the RFI on the so-called delay-Doppler map (DDM). This paper develops a model that evaluates the contribution of intra-/inter-GNSS and external RFI effects to the degradation of the SNR in the DDM for both conventional and interferometric GNSS-R techniques. Moreover, a generalized SSC is defined to account for the effects of nonstationary RFI signals. The results show that highly directive antennas are necessary to avoid interference from other GNSS satellites, whereas mitigation techniques are essential to keep GNSS-R instruments working under external RFI degradation.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Rapid warning microanalyzer for heavy metals monitoring in natural waters

Acord transformatiu CRUE-CSICA warning microanalyzer for the rapid monitoring of different heavy metals in water using Carbon Dots (CDs) as selective optical reagents is presented. The synthesized CDs have different surface functionalization and exhibit selective fluorescence quenching by heavy metal ions, that combined with the use of microfluidics, provide sensitivity, ease of automation and reproducibility to the method. Moreover, they present maximum excitation wavelengths around 350 nm, allowing multiparametric analysis with a single light source. Although quantum yields range from 16 % to 78 % depending on the type of CDs, enough sensitivity is achieved for each heavy metal using the same measurement conditions of the optical detection system (lock-in modulating frequency, signal amplitude and measurement frequency). The microanalyzer is composed of a Cyclic Olefin Copolymer (COC) analytical microsystem, a flow management system, and a miniaturized customized optical detection system. In this paper, we demonstrate that our proposed system can be used as a toxicity control system by selectively measuring five different heavy metal ions (Co, Cu, Hg, Ni, and Pb) with detection limits ranging from 2 to 12 ppb. Spiked tap water samples were analyzed, giving recoveries from 98 % to 134 %. Polluted samples containing four of the five heavy metal ions studied (Co, Cu, Ni, and Pb) were also analyzed with no significant differences observed between both methods, the proposed microanalyzer and the reference method (ICP-OES)

Cross-talk statistics and impact in interferometric GNSS-R

©2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.This paper presents a statistical analysis of the crosstalk phenomenon in interferometric Global Navigation Satellite Systems Reflectometry (iGNSS-R). Crosstalk occurs when the Delay-Doppler Map (DDM) of a tracked satellite overlaps others fromundesired satellites. This study is performed for ground-based and airborne receivers and for a receiver onboard the International Space Station (ISS) such as the upcoming GNSS Reflectometry, Radio Occultation and Scatterometry onboard ISS experiment. Its impact on ocean altimetry retrievals is analyzed for different antenna arrays. Results show that for elevation angles higher than 60 degrees, crosstalk can be almost permanent from ground, up to 61% from airborne receivers at 2-km height, and up to similar to 10% at the ISS. Crosstalk can only be mitigated using highly directive antennas with narrow beamwidths. Crosstalk impact using a seven-element hexagonal array still induces large errors on ground, but reduces to centimeter level on airborne receivers, and is negligible from the ISS.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Sistema de ejecución y coordinación de CPUs en el modelo Controller de programación paralela heterogénea

Actualmente, la programación paralela basa sus soluciones sobre todos los tipos de hardware existentes. Esto da lugar a plataformas heterogéneas que hacen uso de coprocesadores. Esta tendencia se puede ver claramente en los supercomputadores más potentes del mundo en el TOP500. Uno de los desafíos que tiene gestionar y obtener eficiencia de una aplicación ejecutada en estos sistemas es la gestión de memoria. Los coprocesadores tienen su propio espacio de memoria, separado de la memoria de la máquina donde están instalados. En este contexto, surgen diversas propuestas para facilitar al programador el uso de estos recursos. Una de estas propuestas es el modelo Controllers del grupo de investigación Trasgo, que permite el solapamiento de operaciones de comunicación y computación en aceleradores hardware así como gestión automática de las transferencias de memoria entre el host y el acelerador hardware. En la actualidad, el modelo Controllers soporta el uso de los modelos de programación paralelos CUDA y OpenCL con dispositivos GPU (Graphic Processing Unit). Este trabajo propone una extensión del modelo de programación Controllers a través de un nuevo backend que permita que uno o varios núcleos de uno o varios procesadores, se utilicen como unidades de cómputo de forma transparente al usuario. También se realiza un estudio experimental para medir el rendimiento del nuevo backend.Currently, parallel programming bases its solutions on all types of existing hardware. This results in heterogeneous platforms that make use of coprocessors. This trend can be clearly seen in the world's most powerful supercomputers in the TOP500. These systems present a series of challenges when developing applications using these devices efficiently, one of them is memory management. Coprocessors have their own memory space, separate from the memory of the machine where they are installed. In this context, various proposals arise to make it easier for the programmer to use these resources. One of these proposals is the Controllers model developed by Trasgo research group which allows the overlapping of communication and computing operations in hardware accelerators as well as automatic management of memory transfers between the host and the accelerator. Currently, the Controller model supports the use of CUDA and OpenCL with GPU (Graphic Processing Unit) devices. This work proposes an extension of the Controllers programming model in the form of a new backend that allows one or more cores of one or more processors to be used as computing units in a transparent way to the user. An experimental study is also done to measure the performance of the new backend.Grado en Ingeniería Informátic

Educar en valores para los derechos humanos: El lenguaje poético y la música como recursos didácticos en la materia de Valores Éticos, 3º ESO

Cuando tratamos el tema de los Derechos Humanos en la educación, generalmente encontramos listas de Derechos que hay que aprender y que, posiblemente, con el paso del tiempo se olvidarán. Con esto conseguimos que los alumnos vean los Derechos de esa forma, como una simple lista, como un código teórico. En este trabajo queremos ir más allá. Planteamos otro tipo de educación con respecto a los Derechos Humanos. Consideramos que la enseñanza en Derechos Humanos requiere conciencia y empatía. De nada nos sirve aprender una lista con Derechos si luego no podemos reconocer sus violaciones en el mundo que nos rodea. Necesitamos un conocimiento práctico. Consideramos que en la educación, en muchas ocasiones se ignora el aspecto emocional del ser humano, aspecto que tendrá un papel importante en nuestro trabajo. Mediante las emociones conectamos con los otros y precisamente esto es lo que pretendemos en nuestra concepción de enseñanza en Derechos Humanos. Podemos saber que algo está bien o está mal, pero también sentimos con ello agrado y rechazo. Teniendo en cuenta esto, el ser humano es razón y emoción y ambas juegan un papel importante en el desarrollo moral del individuo.Departamento de Filosofía (Filosofía, Lógica y Filosofía de la Ciencia, Teoría e Historia de la Educación, Filosofía Moral, Estética y Teoría de las Artes)Máster en Profesor de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria y Bachillerato, Formación Profesional y Enseñanzas de Idioma