On the Move: Constructing, Rethinking, Narrating Identities

Social, cultural, political, technological and economic changes, such as globalization, migratory processes and cross-border population mobility, are key forces of transformation which have affected the notions of \u201chome\u201d, \u201cfamily\u201d and \u201cSelf\u201d. Identities are \u201con the move\u201d: they move across space and time, interact and undergo transformation. Identities are also discursively (re)produced, transformed, and destructed. This essay introduces the collection and its contents, putting the notion of identity - approached from different angles - into a unifying perspective

Bivalve taxonomic diversity throughout the Italian Pliocene as a tool for climatic-oceanographic and stratigraphic inferences

The state of research on the evolution of marine bivalve taxonomic diversity of the Mediterranean Pliocene is analysed. The following assertions are discussed: 1) The Early Pliocene malacofauna is characterized by a high number of warm-water taxa and a high taxonomic diversity with respect to that of the present time. 2) The first appreciable extinction event in the Mediterranean Pliocene approximates or just follows the FO of Globorotalia bononiensis. 3) The second appreciable extinction event is between the LAD of Discoaster tamalis and the LAD of Discoaster surculus . 4) A third minor extinction event is penecontemporaneous with the FO of Globorotalia inflaia. Taking into account the available data on the Pliocene extinction events it has been possible to distinguish 4 different molluscan units with different climatic-oceanographic significance

SATCHMO-JS: a webserver for simultaneous protein multiple sequence alignment and phylogenetic tree construction.

We present the jump-start simultaneous alignment and tree construction using hidden Markov models (SATCHMO-JS) web server for simultaneous estimation of protein multiple sequence alignments (MSAs) and phylogenetic trees. The server takes as input a set of sequences in FASTA format, and outputs a phylogenetic tree and MSA; these can be viewed online or downloaded from the website. SATCHMO-JS is an extension of the SATCHMO algorithm, and employs a divide-and-conquer strategy to jump-start SATCHMO at a higher point in the phylogenetic tree, reducing the computational complexity of the progressive all-versus-all HMM-HMM scoring and alignment. Results on a benchmark dataset of 983 structurally aligned pairs from the PREFAB benchmark dataset show that SATCHMO-JS provides a statistically significant improvement in alignment accuracy over MUSCLE, Multiple Alignment using Fast Fourier Transform (MAFFT), ClustalW and the original SATCHMO algorithm. The SATCHMO-JS webserver is available at http://phylogenomics.berkeley.edu/satchmo-js. The datasets used in these experiments are available for download at http://phylogenomics.berkeley.edu/satchmo-js/supplementary/

Evidences of evanescent Bloch waves in Phononic Crystals

We show both experimentally and theoretically the evanescent behaviour of modes in the Band Gap (BG) of finite Phononic Crystal (PC). Based on experimental and numerical data we obtain the imaginary part of the wave vector in good agreement with the complex band structures obtained by the Extended Plane Wave Expansion (EPWE). The calculated and measured acoustic field of a localized mode out of the point defect inside the PC presents also evanescent behaviour. The correct understanding of evanescent modes is fundamental for designing narrow filters and wave guides based on Phononic Crystals with defects.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Applications of the complexity space to the General Probabilistic Divide and Conquer Algorithms

AbstractSchellekens [M. Schellekens, The Smyth completion: A common foundation for denotational semantics and complexity analysis, in: Proc. MFPS 11, in: Electron. Notes Theor. Comput. Sci., vol. 1, 1995, pp. 535–556], and Romaguera and Schellekens [S. Romaguera, M. Schellekens, Quasi-metric properties of complexity spaces, Topology Appl. 98 (1999) 311–322] introduced a topological foundation to obtain complexity results through the application of Semantic techniques to Divide and Conquer Algorithms. This involved the fact that the complexity (quasi-metric) space is Smyth complete and the use of a version of the Banach fixed point theorem and improver functionals. To further bridge the gap between Semantics and Complexity, we show here that these techniques of analysis, based on the theory of complexity spaces, extend to General Probabilistic Divide and Conquer schema discussed by Flajolet [P. Flajolet, Analytic analysis of algorithms, in: W. Kuich (Ed.), 19th Internat. Colloq. ICALP'92, Vienna, July 1992; Automata, Languages and Programming, in: Lecture Notes in Comput. Sci., vol. 623, 1992, pp. 186–210]. In particular, we obtain a general method which is useful to show that for several recurrence equations based on the recursive structure of General Probabilistic Divide and Conquer Algorithms, the associated functionals have a unique fixed point which is the solution for the corresponding recurrence equation

Laterality of Stance during Optic Flow Stimulation in Male and Female Young Adults

During self-motion, the spatial and temporal properties of the optic flow input directly influence the body sway. Men and women have anatomical and biomechanical differences that influence the postural control during visual stimulation. Given that recent findings suggest a peculiar role of each leg in the postural control of the two genders, we investigated whether the body sway during optic flow perturbances is lateralized and whether anteroposterior and mediolateral components of specific center of pressure (COP) parameters of the right and left legs differ, reexamining a previous experiment (Raffi et al. (2014)) performed with two, side-by-side, force plates. Experiments were performed on 24 right-handed and right-footed young subjects. We analyzed five measures related to the COP of each foot and global data: anteroposterior and mediolateral range of oscillation, anteroposterior and mediolateral COP velocity, and sway area. Results showed that men consistently had larger COP parameters than women. The values of the COP parameters were correlated between the two feet only in the mediolateral axis of women. These findings suggest that optic flow stimulation causes asymmetry in postural balance and different lateralization of postural controls in men and women

URANS Analysis of a Launch Vehicle Aero-Acoustic Environment

[EN] Predicting and mitigating acoustic levels become critical because of the harsh acoustic environment during space vehicle lift-off. This paper aimed to study the aero-acoustic environment during a rocket lift-off. The sound propagation within a launch event was studied using dedicated computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The resolution of all the phenomena that occur is unfeasible. We discuss the turbulence simplification and propose a feasible simulation through an unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier¿Stokes (URANS) model. The results were validated with experimental data showing a good correlation near the fairing surface and an improvable accuracy in the far field. To assess noise generation, the main shock waves were identified, and the evolution of the generated sound pressure was assessed. Moreover, vertical directivity was revealed by data analysis of the pressure field surrounding the fairing.This research was funded by the European Space Agency of Project REDLAUCH: Launch Sound Level Reduction under contract 4000126316/19/NL/LvH. The work was supported by the MICINN (grants: DIN2019-010877 and RTI2018-102256-B-100) and by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center under Project IM-2021-2-0017 Rocket launch aeroacoustics.Escartí-Guillem, MS.; García-Raffi, LM.; Hoyas, S. (2022). URANS Analysis of a Launch Vehicle Aero-Acoustic Environment. Applied Sciences. 12(7):1-9. https://doi.org/10.3390/app120733561912

Rocket plume URANS simulation using OpenFOAM

[EN] A key aspect in the launch environment of a space vehicle is the generation and propagation of noise, due to its effect in the payload. Obtaining experimental measures is an extremely difficult, so CFD techniques appear as a useful tool to estimate both the spatial location of noise sources and their spectral power. In this paper, a numerical simulation has been carried out to simulate the supersonic impingement of the plume jet generated by the engine and the corresponding acoustic load generated in the launch platform of the VEGA rocket using a URANS model in OpenFOAM.This work was partially funded by MINECO / FEDER, under project TI2018-102256-B-I00.Escartí-Guillem, MS.; Hoyas, S.; García-Raffi, LM. (2019). Rocket plume URANS simulation using OpenFOAM. Results in Engineering. 4:1-3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rineng.2019.100056S13

Compact convex sets in 2-dimensional asymmetric normed lattices

[EN] In this note, we study the geometric structure of compact convex sets in 2-dimensional asymmetric normed lattices. We prove that every q-compact convex set is strongly q-compact and we give a complete geometric description of the compact convex set with non empty interior in (R-2, q), where q is an asymmetric lattice norm.The first author has been supported by CONACYT (Mexico) under Grant 204028. The second author has been supported by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (Spain) under Grant MTM2012-36740-C02-02.Jonard-Perez, N.; Sánchez Pérez, EA. (2016). Compact convex sets in 2-dimensional asymmetric normed lattices. Quaestiones Mathematicae. 39(1):73-82. https://doi.org/10.2989/16073606.2015.1023864S738239