ASLP-MULAN: Audio speech and language processing for multimedia analytics

Our intention is generating the right mixture of audio, speech and language technologies with big data ones. Some audio, speech and language automatic technologies are available or gaining enough degree of maturity as to be able to help to this objective: automatic speech transcription, query by spoken example, spoken information retrieval, natural language processing, unstructured multimedia contents transcription and description, multimedia files summarization, spoken emotion detection and sentiment analysis, speech and text understanding, etc. They seem to be worthwhile to be joined and put at work on automatically captured data streams coming from several sources of information like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, online newspapers, web search engines, etc. to automatically generate reports that include both scientific based scores and subjective but relevant summarized statements on the tendency analysis and the perceived satisfaction of a product, a company or another entity by the general population

AMIC: Affective multimedia analytics with inclusive and natural communication

Traditionally, textual content has been the main source of information extraction and indexing, and other technologies that are capable of extracting information from the audio and video of multimedia documents have joined later. Other major axis of analysis is the emotional and affective aspect intrinsic in human communication. This information of emotions, stances, preferences, figurative language, irony, sarcasm, etc. is fundamental and irreplaceable for a complete understanding of the content in conversations, speeches, debates, discussions, etc. The objective of this project is focused on advancing, developing and improving speech and language technologies as well as image and video technologies in the analysis of multimedia content adding to this analysis the extraction of affective-emotional information. As additional steps forward, we will advance in the methodologies and ways for presenting the information to the user, working on technologies for language simplification, automatic reports and summary generation, emotional speech synthesis and natural and inclusive interaction

Strategy for managing industrial anaerobic sludge through the heterotrophic cultivation of chlorella sorokiniana: Effect of iron addition on biomass and lipid production

Microalgae provides an alternative for the valorization of industrial by-products, in which the nutritional content varies substantially and directly affects microalgae system performance. Herein, the heterotrophic cultivation of Chlorella sorokiniana was systematically studied, allowing us to detect a nutritional deficiency other than the carbon source through assessing the oxygen transfer rate for glucose or acetate fermentation. Consequently, a mathematical model of the iron co-limiting effect on heterotrophic microalgae was developed by exploring its ability to regulate the specific growth rate and yield. For instance, higher values of the specific growth rate (0.17 h−1 ) compared with those reported for the heterotrophic culture of Chlorella were obtained due to iron supplementation. Therefore, anaerobic sludge from an industrial wastewater treatment plant (a baker’s yeast company) was pretreated to obtain an extract as a media supplement for C. sorokiniana. According to the proposed model, the sludge extract allowed us to supplement iron values close to the growth activation concentration (KFe ~12 mg L−1). Therefore, a fed-batch strategy was evaluated on nitrogen-deprived cultures supplemented with the sludge extract to promote biomass formation and fatty acid synthesis. Our findings reveal that nitrogen and iron in sludge extract can supplement heterotrophic cultures of Chlorella and provide an alternative for the valorization of industrial anaerobic sludge

Stable isotopes applied to the study of the concrete/bentonite interaction in the FEBEX in situ test

Stable isotope analysis was carried out on a set of samples from the concrete-bentonite interface from the FEBEX real-scale in-situ experiment. The concrete and bentonite that simulated the engineering barriers system of a deep geological repository have interacted for 13 years in saturated conditions up to dismantling. The monitoring of the experiment during the years of operation has made possible to know not only the baseline status but also the evolution of the system and the mass transfer processes. Thus, the FEBEX experiment has been a unique opportunity to study concrete degradation within a broader multi-proxy approach under real-scale repository conditions. Analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes of carbonates in groundwater, concrete and clay have provided evidence of how dissolution and mass transfer processes occur in the Engineered Barrier System (EBS). Spatial distribution of δ13C values points to the existence of a dominant process of diffusion of carbon species from bentonite towards the concrete/bentonite interface. Variations in δ18O values suggest a non-homogeneous geochemical and hydraulic behavior of the EBS in the vicinity of both, the granite-concrete interface and the concrete-bentonite interface. These differences might be related to different degrees of exposure of each sample to bentonite porewater, groundwater and concrete/bentonite leachates. This seem to be in agreement with the existence of different chemical environments depending on the location of the samples in the experiment.The work was financially supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 grant agreement n° 662147 (www.cebama.eu) and the Annex XLII of the ENRESA-CIEMAT framework agreement. The FEBEX project was financed by ENRESA and the EC Contracts FI4W-CT95-006 and FIKWCT-2000-00016. The FEBEX-DP Consortium (NAGRA, SKB, POSIVA, CIEMAT, KAERI) financed the dismantling operation and onsite determinations in 2015

A Columnar Liquid Crystal with Permanent Polar Order

The self-assembly of axial dipolar subphthalocyanine molecules in the presence of electric fields leads to uniaxially oriented columnar liquid crystalline materials that exhibit permanent polarizationFunding from MINECO (MAT2012-38538-CO3-01, 02 and CTQ2012- 31914), MICINN and MEC (F.P.U. fellowship (JG), CTQ-2011- 24187/BQU, CTQ2011-23659 and Consolider-Ingenio Nanociencia Molecular, CDS2007-00010), Comunidad de Madrid (MADRISOLAR-2, S2009/PPQ/1533), European Research Council (StG-279548), Aragon government, E04, Basque Country Government GI/IT-449-10, Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO/ 2012/053), and FEDER is acknowledge

COVID-19 publications: Database coverage, citations, readers, tweets, news, Facebook walls, Reddit posts

© 2020 The Authors. Published by MIT Press. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00066The COVID-19 pandemic requires a fast response from researchers to help address biological, medical and public health issues to minimize its impact. In this rapidly evolving context, scholars, professionals and the public may need to quickly identify important new studies. In response, this paper assesses the coverage of scholarly databases and impact indicators during 21 March to 18 April 2020. The rapidly increasing volume of research, is particularly accessible through Dimensions, and less through Scopus, the Web of Science, and PubMed. Google Scholar’s results included many false matches. A few COVID-19 papers from the 21,395 in Dimensions were already highly cited, with substantial news and social media attention. For this topic, in contrast to previous studies, there seems to be a high degree of convergence between articles shared in the social web and citation counts, at least in the short term. In particular, articles that are extensively tweeted on the day first indexed are likely to be highly read and relatively highly cited three weeks later. Researchers needing wide scope literature searches (rather than health focused PubMed or medRxiv searches) should start with Dimensions (or Google Scholar) and can use tweet and Mendeley reader counts as indicators of likely importance

Hydrogen recovery by mixed matrix membranes made from 6FCl-APAF HPA with different contents of a porous polymer network and their thermal rearrangement

Producción CientíficaMixed matrix membranes (MMMs) consisting of a blend of a hydroxypolyamide (HPA) matrix and variable loads of a porous polymer network (PPN) were thermally treated to induce the transformation of HPA to polybenzoxazole (β-TR-PBO). Here, the HPA matrix was a hydroxypolyamide having two hexafluoropropyilidene moieties, 6FCl-APAF, while the PPN was prepared by reacting triptycene (TRP) and trifluoroacetophenone (TFAP) in a superacid solution. The most probable size of the PPN particles was 75 nm with quite large distributions. The resulting membranes were analyzed by SEM and AFM. Up to 30% PPN loads, both SEM and AFM images confirmed quite planar surfaces, at low scale, with limited roughness. Membranes with high hydrogen permeability and good selectivity for the gas pairs H2/CH4 and H2/N2 were obtained. For H2/CO2, selectivity almost vanished after thermal rearrangement. In all cases, their hydrogen permeability increased with increasing loads of PPN until around 30% PPN with ulterior fairly abrupt decreasing of permeability for all gases studied. Thermal rearrangement of the MMMs resulted in higher permeabilities but lower selectivities. For all the membranes and gas pairs studied, the balance of permeability vs. selectivity surpassed the 1991 Robeson’s upper bound, and approached or even exceeded the 2008 line, for MMMs having 30% PPN loads. In all cases, the HPA-MMMs before thermal rearrangement provided good selectivity versus permeability compromise, similar to their thermally rearranged counterparts but in the zone of high selectivity. For H2/CH4, H2/N2, these nonthermally rearranged MMMs approach the 2008 Robeson’s upper bound while H2/CO2 gives selective transport favoring H2 on the 1991 Robeson’s bound. Thus, attending to the energy cost of thermal rearrangement, it could be avoided in some cases especially when high selectivity is the target rather than high permeability.Gobierno de España - (Projects PID2019- 109403RBC21/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, PID2019-109403RBC22/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and EQC2019-006481-P)Junta de Castilla y León y Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) - (Projects CLU2017-09, UIC082, VA088G19