Digital test signal generation: An accurate SNR calibration approach for the DSN

In support of the on-going automation of the Deep Space Network (DSN) a new method of generating analog test signals with accurate signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is described. High accuracy is obtained by simultaneous generation of digital noise and signal spectra at the desired bandwidth (base-band or bandpass). The digital synthesis provides a test signal embedded in noise with the statistical properties of a stationary random process. Accuracy is dependent on test integration time and limited only by the system quantization noise (0.02 dB). The monitor and control as well as signal-processing programs reside in a personal computer (PC). Commands are transmitted to properly configure the specially designed high-speed digital hardware. The prototype can generate either two data channels modulated or not on a subcarrier, or one QPSK channel, or a residual carrier with one biphase data channel. The analog spectrum generated is on the DC to 10 MHz frequency range. These spectra may be up-converted to any desired frequency without loss on the characteristics of the SNR provided. Test results are presented

Music as a multidisciplinary art: The exchange of music and visual elements, and the role of the participants

This thesis demonstrates the processes I undertook to compose a portfolio of music in combination with other artistic disciplines, and the results I found. During my PhD research, I have had the opportunity to work with many different professionals such as poets, painters, and video artists. Co-creating multidisciplinary works has challenged my practice as a composer, allowing me not only to consider the audible side of my pieces, but also the visual side. The different artistic backgrounds of the participants involved in the portfolio attached to this thesis have influenced the way I composed each of the works. My interest in achieving effective audiovisual synchronisation has changed my style of writing; my compositions now have a more graphic and improvisatory nature. This thesis contextualises my work, responding to topics including performance art, verbal and graphic scores, improvisation, aleatory music, and artistic collaboration. I share my perception of musical elements relevant to my practice, for example texture, harmony, and time, observing at the same time the role of the painter, and other issues that arose through the collaborative and audiovisual parts of my composition process. Furthermore, the structure of this commentary gives a reflection, through time, of the direction my compositional language has taken during the last three years of my career, supporting the transition from my initial research interests to those in which I am currently involved. The result of this progression is evident in the more conceptual presentation of some of my scores at the end of the thesis, which coincides with my last pieces. The aim of my work is to contribute a new vision of ways of making and performing music, bringing about new connections between visual arts and music that transcend the composition process, the score, the performance, and in future perhaps, the concert venue

Gastric pouches and the mucociliary sole: setting the stage for nervous system evolution.

Prerequisite for tracing nervous system evolution is understanding of the body plan, feeding behaviour and locomotion of the first animals in which neurons evolved. Here, a comprehensive scenario is presented for the diversification of cell types in early metazoans, which enhanced feeding efficiency and led to the emergence of larger animals that were able to move. Starting from cup-shaped, gastraea-like animals with outer and inner choanoflagellate-like cells, two major innovations are discussed that set the stage for nervous system evolution. First, the invention of a mucociliary sole entailed a switch from intra- to extracellular digestion and increased the concentration of nutrients flowing into the gastric cavity. In these animals, an initial nerve net may have evolved via division of labour from mechanosensory-contractile cells in the lateral body wall, enabling coordinated movement of the growing body that involved both mucociliary creeping and changes of body shape. Second, the inner surface of the animals folded into metameric series of gastric pouches, which optimized nutrient resorption and allowed larger body sizes. The concomitant acquisition of bilateral symmetry may have allowed more directed locomotion and, with more demanding coordinative tasks, triggered the evolution of specialized nervous subsystems. Animals of this organizational state would have resembled Ediacarian fossils such as Dickinsonia and may have been close to the cnidarian-bilaterian ancestor. In the bilaterian lineage, the mucociliary sole was used mostly for creeping, or frequently lost. One possible remnant is the enigmatic Reissner's fibre in the ventral neural tube of cephalochordates and vertebrates

Propuesta de mejora del proceso de identificación de peligros, evaluación de riesgos y determinación de controles para disminuir la ocurrencia de accidentes en la empresa Santo Domingo Contratistas Generales S.A. - 2017

RESUMEN La importancia de la seguridad dentro de una empresa juega un papel fundamental porque tienen que estar bien estructurados porque esto puede generar pérdidas cuantiosas a la empresas por ello es una importante herramienta de gestión es la matriz de la identificación de peligros, evaluación de riesgos y determinación de controles, de obligatorio cumplimiento y auditable, que permite Identificar los Peligros y Evaluar los Riesgos asociados a los procesos y actividades de cualquier organización, así como determinar los controles a implementarse para evitar daños a la integridad y/o salud de nuestros trabajadores. El presente estudio de investigación está centrado en proponer dentro de la empresa Santo Domingo Contratistas Generales S.A. una propuesta de mejora del proceso de identificación de peligros, evaluación de riesgos y determinación de controles para disminuir la ocurrencia de accidentes en la empresa el cual permitió disminuir la ocurrencia de accidentes de trabajo mediante la propuesta de mejora de sus procesos de identificación de peligros, evaluación de riesgos y determinación de controles en la empresa Santo Domingo Contratistas Generales S.A. – 2017. Para ello nos permitió formularnos la siguiente hipótesis Si se diseña una propuesta de mejora del proceso de identificación de peligros, evaluación de riesgos y determinación de controles disminuye la ocurrencia de accidentes en la empresa Santo Domingo Contratistas Generales S.A. Los datos obtenidos se trabajaron de acuerdo a estudios básicos de estadística los cuales muestran como resultado del reconocimiento de los principales peligros dentro de la empresa Santo Domingo Contratistas Generales S.A. y la propuesta permitirá disminuir mediante el manejo de la Matriz IPERC. Por ello las medidas que incluyen los Programas de Prevención de Riesgos Laborales están diseñados por especialistas que conocen los diferentes sectores de actividad y por eso son conscientes de las diferentes medidas que se deben aplicar en cada sector. Es obvio que las medidas para el sector de la construcción han de ser diferentes a aquéllas necesarias en otro sector con menos riesgo. PALABRAS CLAVE: seguridad, riesgo, control, accidente.ABSTRACT The importance of security within a company plays a fundamental role because they have to be well structured because this can generate considerable losses to the company, which is why an important management tool is the matrix of hazard identification, risk assessment and determination. of controls, of mandatory compliance and auditable, that allows to identify the hazards and evaluate the risks associated with the processes and activities of any organization, as well as to determine the controls to be implemented to avoid damage to the integrity and / or health of our workers. The present research study is focused on proposing Santo Domingo Contratistas Generales SA within the company. a proposal to improve the process of hazard identification, risk assessment and determination of controls to reduce the occurrence of accidents in the company which allowed to reduce the occurrence of work accidents through the proposal to improve their hazard identification processes, evaluation of risks and determination of controls in the company Santo Domingo Contratistas Generales SA - 2017. This allowed us to formulate the following hypothesis If a proposal is designed to improve the process of hazard identification, risk assessment and determination of controls, the occurrence of accidents in the company Santo Domingo Contratistas Generales S.A. The data obtained were worked according to basic statistics studies which show as a result of the recognition of the main hazards within the company Santo Domingo Contratistas Generales S.A. and the proposal will allow to decrease through the management of the IPERC Matrix. For this reason, the measures included in the Occupational Risk Prevention Programs are designed by specialists who know the different sectors of activity and therefore are aware of the different measures that should be applied in each sector. It is obvious that the measures for the construction sector must be different from those required in another sector with less risk KEYWORDS: security, risk, control, accident

Interactive web visualization tools to the results interpretation of a seismic risk study aimed at the emergency levels definition

Results of a seismic risk assessment study are often applied and interpreted by users unspecialised on the topic or lacking a scientific background. In this context, the availability of tools that help translating essentially scientific contents to broader audiences (such as decision makers or civil defence officials) as well as representing and managing results in a user-friendly fashion, are on indubitable value. On of such tools is the visualization tool VISOR-RISNA, a web tool developed within the RISNA project (financed by the Emergency Agency of Navarre, Spain) for regional seismic risk assessment of Navarre and the subsequent development of emergency plans. The RISNA study included seismic hazard evaluation, geotechnical characterization of soils, incorporation of site effects to expected ground motions, vulnerability distribution assessment and estimation of expected damage distributions for a 10% probability of exceedance in 50 years. The main goal of RISNA was the identification of higher risk area where focusing detailed, local-scale risk studies in the future and the corresponding urban emergency plans. A geographic information system was used to combine different information layers, generate tables of results and represent maps with partial and final results. The visualization tool VISOR-RISNA is intended to facilitate the interpretation and representation of the collection of results, with the ultimate purpose of defining actuation plans. A number of criteria for defining actuation priorities are proposed in this work. They are based on combinations of risk parameters resulting from the risk study (such as expected ground motion and damage and exposed population), as determined by risk assessment specialists. Although the values that these parameters take are a result of the risk study, their distribution in several classes depends on the intervals defined by decision takers or civil defense officials. These criteria provide a ranking of municipalities according to the expected actuation level and eventually, to alert levels. In this regard, the visualization tool constitutes an intuitive and useful tool that the end-user of the risk study may use to optimize and guide its application on emergency planning. The use of this type of tools can be adapted to other scenarios with different boundary conditions (seismicity level, vulnerability distribution) and user profiles (policy makers, stakeholders, students, general public) maintaining the same final goal: to improve the adaptation of the results of a scientific-technical work to the needs of other users with different backgrounds

A novel role for proline- and acid-rich basic region leucine zipper (PAR bZIP) proteins in the transcriptional regulation of a BH3-only proapoptotic gene.

Proline- and acid-rich (PAR) basic region leucine zipper (bZIP) proteins thyrotroph embryonic factor (TEF), D-site-binding protein (DBP), and hepatic leukemia factor have been involved in neurotransmitter homeostasis and amino acid metabolism. Here we demonstrate a novel role for these proteins in the transcriptional control of a BH3-only gene. PAR bZIP proteins are able to transactivate the promoter of bcl-gS. This promoter is particularly responsive to TEF activation and is silenced by NFIL3, a repressor that shares the consensus binding site with PAR bZIP proteins. Consistently, transfection of TEF induces the expression of endogenous bcl-gS in cancer cells, and this induction is independent of p53. A naturally occurring variant of DBP (tDBP), lacking the transactivation domain, has been identified and shown to impede the formation of active TEF dimers in a competitive manner and to reduce the TEF-dependent induction of bcl-gS. Of note, treatment of cancer cells with etoposide induces TEF activation and promotes the expression of bcl-gS. Furthermore, blockade of bcl-gS or TEF expression by a small interfering RNA strategy or transfection with tDBP significantly reduces the etoposide-mediated apoptotic cell death. These findings represent the first described role for PAR bZIP proteins in the regulation of a gene involved in the execution of apoptosis

Relative age effect in European professional football. Analysis by position

The relative age effect (RAE) in sport consists in the lower presence of athletes born in the months furthest from the cut off date established by the competitive system, which normally coincides with the last months of the year. The purpose of this study is to assess if there is an RAE in European professional football, where the current cut off age for training in the different categories is based on the calendar year; and its analysis by position on the playing field. The analysis has included all the footballers playing in the league championships in the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France and Spain (N= 2763). The results of our study confirm an RAE in professional football in Italy, France and Spain. When differentiated by playing position there is a different RAE incidence in the five championships analyzed