The fruit of discord? Saba senegalensis use by chimpanzees and local people in southeastern Senegal

Western Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) is facing local extinction in Senegal, with less than 400 individuals. •More than 56% of Senegal’s human population lives in rural areas, where they rely on forest products. •Chimpanzees are threatened by competition with humans over access to natural resources, including Saba senegalensis fruit. •The Jane Goodall Institute Spain runs a programme to conserve chimpanzees in the Dindefelo Community Nature Reserve (RNCD), Kedougou region, southeastern Senegal

Smart control of a thermopile heat flux sensor

Nowadays, much of the research that humans carry out is dedicated to discovering the universe that surrounds us. One of these investigations is based on obtaining Venus heat flux. This planet has very high thermal conditions and therefore, any measure must be able to be achieved quickly. This thesis develops an experiment based on a previous study on how to take this measure by means of thermopiles, heat flux sensors. First simulations are presented, the slowness of the open loop system and the controls proposed to speed up the process. In order to corroborate the correct functioning of these controls, two scenarios have been generated where to do the corresponding tests. The results obtained confirm that the response time of the closed loop system decreases by a factor 100. Therefore, the use of a control that maintains the constant thermopile gradient and a second control that ensures that thermopile average temperature is equal to surface temperature where to measure is sufficient to obtain a short time of stabilization and measure.Hoy en día, gran parte de la investigación que los humanos llevamos a cabo se dedica a descubrir el universo que nos rodea. Una de estas investigaciones se basa en la obtención del flujo de calor de Venus. Este planeta tiene unas condiciones térmicas muy elevadas y por lo tanto, cualquier medida debe poder conseguirse de forma rápida. En esta tesis se desarrolla un experimento basado en el estudio previo sobre cómo tomar esta medida mediante termopilas, sensores de flujo de calor. Se exponen las primeras simulaciones, la lentitud del sistema en lazo abierto y los controles propuestos para agilizar el proceso. Con el fin de corroborar el correcto funcionamiento de estos controles se han generado dos escenarios dónde hacer las correspondientes pruebas. Los resultados obtenidos confirman que el tiempo de respuesta del sistema en lazo cerrado disminuye en un factor 100. Por tanto, el uso de un control que mantenga el gradiente de la termopila constante y un segundo control que asegure que la temperatura media de la termopila sea igual a la temperatura de la superficie dónde hacer la medida son suficiente para obtener un tiempo de estabilización y medida corto.Avui en dia, gran part de la recerca que els humans duem a terme es dedica a descobrir l'univers que ens envolta. Una d'aquestes investigacions es basa en l'obtenció del flux de calor de Venus. Aquest planeta té unes condicions tèrmiques molt elevades i per tant, qualsevol mesura s'ha de poder aconseguir de forma ràpida. En aquesta tesi es desenvolupa un experiment basat en l'estudi previ sobre com prendre aquesta mesura mitjançant termopiles, sensors de flux de calor. S'exposen les primeres simulacions, la lentitud del sistema en llaç obert i els controls proposats per agilitzar el procés. Per tal de corroborar el correcte funcionament d'aquests controls s'han generat dos escenaris on fer les corresponents proves. Els resultats obtinguts confirmen que el temps de resposta del sistema en llaç tancat disminueix en un factor 100. Per tant, l'ús d'un control que mantingui el gradient de la termopila constant i un segon control que asseguri que la temperatura mitjana de la termopila sigui igual a la temperatura de la superfície on fer la mesura són suficient per obtenir un temps d'estabilització i mesura curt

iMOVE: Development of a hybrid control interface based on sEMG and movement signals for an assistive robotic manipulator

For many people with upper limb disabilities, simple activities of daily living such as drinking, opening a door, or pushing an elevator button require the assistance of a caregiver; which reduces the independence of the individual. Assistive robotic systems controlled via human-robot interface could enable these people to perform this kind of tasks autonomously again and thereby increase their independence and quality of life. Moreover, this interface could encourage rehabilitation of motor functions because the individual would require to perform its remaining body movements and muscle activity to provide control signals. This project aims at developing a novel hybrid control interface that combines remaining movements and muscle activity of the upper body to control position and impedance of a robotic manipulator. This thesis presents a Cartesian position control system for KINOVA Gen3 robotic arm, which performs a proportional-derivative control low based to the Jacobian transpose method, that does not require inverse kinematics. A second control is proposed to change the robot’s rigidity in real-time based on measurements of muscle activity (sEMG). This control allows the user to modulate the robot’s impedance while performing a task. Moreover, it presents a body-machine interface that maps the motions of the upper body (head and shoulders) to the space of robot control signals. Its uses the principal component analysis algorithm for dimensionality reduction. The results demonstrate that combining the three methods presented above, the user can control robot positions with head and shoulders movements, while also adapting the robot’s impedance depending on its muscle activation. In the future work the performance of this system is going to be tested in patients with severe movement impairments

Stakeholders participation in the Innovation Process

Master's thesis in Business InnovationThis master thesis aims to study the stages in which startups include relevant stakeholders in their innovation process. The study seeks to contribute and enrich the innovation management literature regarding stakeholder inclusion. It combines existing literature with the RRI field and adds non-economic stakeholders into the mix, with the aim to enhance the innovation management capabilities of Norwegian startups by conducting a research on the members of an organization in the Oslo region. The findings suggest that innovation is widely accepted and encouraged, it also shows that firms have dynamic capabilities since they are able to reflect, absorb and adapt to some degree their innovation based on stakeholder inclusion but that these interactions focus on primary economic relationships with informal meetings and networking as the main method. The evidence also shows that most stakeholder interactions are being held at the launch and post launch stages of a new product or service development. The study concludes making an argument for the inclusion of non-economic stakeholders to be done at earlier stages of the innovation proces

OFAR-CM: Efficient Dragonfly networks with simple congestion management

Dragonfly networks are appealing topologies for large-scale Data center and HPC networks, that provide high throughput with low diameter and moderate cost. However, they are prone to congestion under certain frequent traffic patterns that saturate specific network links. Adaptive non-minimal routing can be used to avoid such congestion. That kind of routing employs longer paths to circumvent local or global congested links. However, if a distance-based deadlock avoidance mechanism is employed, more Virtual Channels (VCs) are required, what increases design complexity and cost. OFAR (On-the-Fly Adaptive Routing) is a previously proposed routing that decouples VCs from deadlock avoidance, making local and global misrouting affordable. However, the severity of congestion with OFAR is higher, as it relies on an escape sub network with low bisection bandwidth. Additionally, OFAR allows for unlimited misroutings on the escape sub network, leading to unbounded paths in the network and long latencies. In this paper we propose and evaluate OFAR-CM, a variant of OFAR combined with a simple congestion management (CM) mechanism which only relies on local information, specifically the credit count of the output ports in the local router. With simple escape sub networks such as a Hamiltonian ring or a tree, OFAR outperforms former proposals with distance-based deadlock avoidance. Additionally, although long paths are allowed in theory, in practice packets arrive at their destination in a small number of hops. Altogether, OFAR-CM constitutes the first practicable mechanism to the date that supports both local and global misrouting in Dragonfly networks.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n. ERC-2012-Adg-321253- RoMoL, the Spanish Ministry of Science under contracts TIN2010-21291-C02-02, TIN2012-34557, and by the European HiPEAC Network of Excellence. M. García participated in this work while affiliated with the University of Cantabria.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

L'urbanisme de la Il·lustració a Barcelona: el memorial de Francesc Canals (4 de maig de 1786)

Durant el darrer ten; del segle XVIII conflueixen en l'empresa de modernitzar l'espai barceloní els capitans generals, que havien protagonitzat quasi en solitari les principals operacions urbanístiques des de 1714, i la societat civil, refon;ada per la nova empenta del comerç i de la manufactura, especialment acusada a partir del final de la guerra per la independència dels Estats Units (1783). En l'acció dels militars pesa, sobretot, una concepció de la ciutat segons la qual bellesa i ordre visible són sinònims i la idea que l'assoliment d'aquest súmmum és, a més coincident amb la conveniència estratègica. La iniciativa privada, i en especial els manufacturers que en constitueixen el sector més actiu, es lliga menys a codis formals i pensa que la ciutat ha d'anar-se plegant a les exigències canviants del desenvolupament econòmic. Es plantegen ara, per primer cop de manera inequívoca, la pugna entre els ideals contraposats de la ciutat bella i de la ciutat funcional i el debat sobre el repartiment de papers entre els poders de l'Estat i la propietat privada