A preliminary estimate of the economic impact of the energy amplifier

The basic concept and the applicability of the Energy Amplifier (EA) have been exhaustively described elsewhere (Refs. [1] to [4]). The EA is essentially a source of high quality heat, produced by the nuclear cascades induced by a high intensity proton beam inside an appropriate ³beam dump² arrangement. A fraction of such ³heat² has to be transformed into electricity to run the accelerator, the rest being available for a number of different industrial applications, and in particular commercial electricity production. In this paper the economic aspects are further explored and we attempt a first order estimate of the cost of such an energy source, comparing it critically with more conventional sources. In this task we have been greatly helped by a number of people2) who have specific competence in the industrial aspects of the application. We conclude that in agreement to our previous estimates, the practical cost of high quality heat is about US /GJ, namely and times lower than the one of Coal and Natural Gas for the prevailing net interest rate of 5%. The cost of electricity produced with our method is estimated of the order of 2 ¢/kWh, again highly competitive (about half of the cost) with all other traditional sources. In spite of the significant uncertainties in the evaluation, we evidence a strikingly lower cost for our method, direct consequence of the basic simplicity of the design and of its high level of intrinsic safety. Figures are for a 600 MWe stand alone power station. We recall that the EA is also an environmentally more acceptable form of energy from nuclei of virtually unlimited supply. The integrated collective dose for the same energy has been estimated [3] of the order of 2 man Sv/[GWe ¥ year], 1/10 of the average dose due to radionuclide emission from Coal burning and comparable to Oil and Geothermal. The radioactive waste reaches the activity of coal ashes after about 500 years of ³cool-down². Environmentally, the EA performance is comparable to the one of Magnetic Fusion [9], which has, no doubt, a higher cost

Development and Evaluation of Fuzzy Logic Controllers for Improving Performance of Wind Turbines on Semi-Submersible Platforms under Different Wind Scenarios

Among renewable energy technologies, wind energy features one of the best possibilities for large-scale integration into power systems. However, there are specific restrictions regarding the installation areas for this technology, thus resulting in a growing, yet restricted, rate of penetration of the technology because of the limited viable sites onshore or in shallow waters. In this context, the use of offshore semi-submersible platforms appears as a promising option, which additionally enables the incorporation of other elements, such as wave energy converters or aquaculture. Nevertheless, this kind of offshore facility involves interactions between platform movements and the wind turbine, increasing the complexity of the system, causing traditional control techniques to not be able to fully cope with the dynamics of the system, and thus limiting the efficiency of energy extraction. On the contrary, the use of intelligent control techniques is an interesting option to take full account of the said interactions and to improve energy capture efficiency through the control of the pitch of the blades, especially under turbulent, above-rated wind profiles. This work presents an original fuzzy logic controller that has been validated by comparing it with previously validated controllers, following a developed methodology that allows comparison of controllers for wind turbines in semi-submersible platforms using performance indexes.This work was partially supported by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Government of Spain) and European Union (RTC-2016-5712-3); by the European Union, CDTI (Spain) and BEISS (UK) through the call H2020 ERA-NET DEMOWIND (WIP10+ project); by the Regional Government of Andalusia and European Union (UMA-CEIATECH-18); and finally, by partial funding for open access charge from the Universidad de Málaga. Partial funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málag

Spatiotemporal brain hierarchies of auditory memory recognition and predictive coding

Our brain is constantly extracting, predicting, and recognising key spatiotemporal features of the physical world in order to survive. While neural processing of visuospatial patterns has been extensively studied, the hierarchical brain mechanisms underlying conscious recognition of auditory sequences and the associated prediction errors remain elusive. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we describe the brain functioning of 83 participants during recognition of previously memorised musical sequences and systematic variations. The results show feedforward connections originating from auditory cortices, and extending to the hippocampus, anterior cingulate gyrus, and medial cingulate gyrus. Simultaneously, we observe backward connections operating in the opposite direction. Throughout the sequences, the hippocampus and cingulate gyrus maintain the same hierarchical level, except for the final tone, where the cingulate gyrus assumes the top position within the hierarchy. The evoked responses of memorised sequences and variations engage the same hierarchical brain network but systematically differ in terms of temporal dynamics, strength, and polarity. Furthermore, induced-response analysis shows that alpha and beta power is stronger for the variations, while gamma power is enhanced for the memorised sequences. This study expands on the predictive coding theory by providing quantitative evidence of hierarchical brain mechanisms during conscious memory and predictive processing of auditory sequences

How to pass the false-belief task before your fourth birthday.

The experimental record of the last three decades shows that children under 4 years old fail all sorts of variations on the standard false-belief task, whereas more recent studies have revealed that infants are able to pass nonverbal versions of the task. We argue that these paradoxical results are an artifact of the type of false-belief tasks that have been used to test infants and children: Nonverbal designs allow infants to keep track of a protagonist's perspective over a course of events, whereas verbal designs tend to disrupt the perspective-tracking process in various ways, which makes it too hard for younger children to demonstrate their capacity for perspective tracking. We report three experiments that confirm this hypothesis by showing that 3-year-olds can pass a suitably streamlined version of the verbal false-belief task. We conclude that young children can pass the verbal false-belief task provided that they are allowed to keep track of the protagonist's perspective without too much disruption

A rabbit model of Acanthamoeba keratitis: Use of infected soft contact lenses after corneal epithelium debridement with a diamond burr

PURPOSE. To develop a rabbit model of Acanthamoeba keratitis (AK) as the best method to reproduce the natural course of this disease. METHODS. To induce AK, infected contact lenses (1000 amoebae/mm2, 90% trophozoites) were placed over the previously debrided corneal surface, in combination with a temporary tarsorrhaphy. Environmental and clinical strains of Acanthamoeba spp. (genotype T4) were used. Three groups (1L, n = 32; 2L–21d, n = 5; 2L–3d, n = 23) were established according to the number of contact lenses used (1L, 1 lens; 2L–21d and 2L–3d, 2 lenses) and the placement day of these (1L, day 1; 2L–21d, days 1 and 21; 2L–3d, days 1 and 3). The infection was quantified by a clinical score system and confirmed using corneal cytology and culture, polymerase chain reaction and histopathologic analysis. RESULTS. The infection rate obtained was high (1L, 87.5%; 2L–21d, 100%; 2L–3d, 82.6%), although no clinical signs were observed in the 50% of the infected animals in group 1L. Among groups, group 2L–3d showed more cases of moderate and severe infection. Among strains, no statistically significant differences were found in the infection rate. In the control eyes, cross infection was confirmed when a sterile contact lens was placed in the previously debrided corneas but not if the eye remained intact. CONCLUSIONS. The combination of two infected contact lenses after corneal debridement seems to be an alternative model, clinically and histopathologically similar to its human counterpart, to induce the different AK stages and reproduce the course of the disease in rabbits

Low dose anti-inflammatory radiotherapy for the treatment of pneumonia by covid-19 : A proposal for a multi-centric prospective trial

COVID-19 is a highly contagious viral infection with high morbidity that is draining health resources. The biggest complication is pneumonia, which has a serious inflammatory component, with no standardized treatment. Low-dose radiation therapy (LD-RT) is non-invasive and has anti-inflammatory effects that can interfere with the inflammatory cascade, thus reducing the severity of associated cytokine release and might be useful in the treatment of respiratory complications caused by COVID-19. This multicentric prospective clinical trial seeks to evaluate the efficacy of bilateral lung LD-RT therapy as a treatment for interstitial pneumonia in patients with COVID-19 for improving respiratory function. This prospective study will have 2 phases: I) an exploratory phase enrolling 10 patients, which will assess the feasibility and efficacy of low-dose lung irradiation, evaluated according to an increase in the PaO2/FiO2 ratio of at least 20% at 48-72 h with respect to the pre-irradiation value. If a minimum efficiency of 30% of the patients is not achieved, the study will not be continued. II) Non-randomized comparative phase in two groups: a control group, which will only receive pharmacological treatment, and an experimental arm with pharmacological treatment and LD-RT. It will include 96 patients, the allocation will be 1: 2, that is, 32 in the control arm and 64 in the experimental arm. The primary end-point will be the efficacy of LD-RT in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia according to an improvement in PaO2/FiO2. Secondary objectives will include the safety of bilateral lung LD-RT, an improvement in the radiology image, overall mortality rates at 15 and 30 days after irradiation and characterizing anti-inflammatory mechanisms of LD-RT by measuring the level of expression of adhesion molecules, anti-inflammatory cytokines and oxidative stress mediators. Trial registration: ClinicalTrial.gov NCT-04380818