Time Series Analysis Using Transprecision Computing

Presented at NiPS Summer School 2019, Perugia (Italy)This work presents results using transprecision techniques for reducing the precision of the computation of time series analysis. The developed benchmark allows to explore how the accuracy of the results is affected by this reduction in the precision of the data types. Custom hardware could benefit from this approach reducing energy consumption and improving performance.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Development of a programming environment for a simulated TURTLEBOT-2 robot with a WIDOWX manipulator arm through the connection of V-REP and MATLAB

El objetivo principal de este Trabajo de Fin de Grado ha sido el de implementar un entorno de programación para un robot móvil Turtlebot-2 dotado de un brazo articulado WidowX. Para ello, se ha modelado este conjunto robótico en el simulador V-REP a partir de las descripciones físicas de los mismos, y se han ajustado diversos parámetros para que el comportamiento del robot simulado sea lo más parecido al del robot real. Para implementar las aplicaciones que controlen nuestro conjunto robótico hemos elegido MATLAB. Por tanto, es necesario establecer una conexión entre MATLAB y V-REP. Puesto que V-REP dispone de una API remota, ha sido necesario diseñar una toolbox que permita a un usuario potencial crear las aplicaciones de manera eficiente, sin tener que conocer las funciones propias de esa API. Esta toolbox hace uso de la Robotics System Toolbox de MATLAB, y tiene una apariencia muy similar a la misma. De esta manera, la curva de aprendizaje es bastante suave, y es posible usar el mismo programa tanto sobre el simulador como sobre el robot real. Para ello, simplemente hay que cambiar un parámetro en el programa. Por último, se han implementado dos aplicaciones completas: una de ellas utiliza el brazo para mover un objeto en un escenario y la otra utiliza un algoritmo de navegación reactiva para mover el conjunto robótico de un lugar a otro

Danza creativa y reproductiva en estudiantes de Educación Secundaria: Una propuesta didáctica

La práctica de la danza conlleva múltiples beneficios para la salud general, lo que ha facilitado que se incluya en el currículo de la asignatura de Educación Física (EF) en la educación formal a nivel mundial. Aun así, investigaciones recientes evidencian que muchos profesionales de la actividad física (AF) aún no se sienten lo suficientemente cualificados a la hora de planificar y enseñar danza. Por tanto, el objetivo de esta investigación es proporcionar una propuesta didáctica basada en una revisión bibliográfica de la literatura científica sobre danza y metodología. Esta propuesta didáctica forma parte de una investigación más amplia en la que se compara la AF objetiva, la AF percibida y el estado de flow del alumnado entre sesiones de danza creativa y reproductiva en el entorno de la EF de la escuela Educación Secundaria.Dance practices has multiple benefits for general health, which has facilitated its inclusion in the curriculum of the Physical Education (PE) subject in formal education worldwide. However, recent research shows that many physical activity (PA) professionals still do not feel qualified enough when it comes to planning and teaching dance. Consequently, the main purpose of this research is to provide an instructional strategy based on a bibliographic review of the scientific literature about dance and methodology. This instructional strategy is part of a larger investigation where it is compared students’ objective PA, perceived PA and flow state between creative and reproductive dance sessions in the high school PE setting.Mar Lara-Aparicio is supported by a PhD grant of the Spanish Ministry of Universities (FPU18/00496) Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Heparan sulfate proteoglycans undergo differential expression alterations in left sided colorectal cancer, depending on their metastatic character

Abstract Background Heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPGs) are complex molecules which play a role in the invasion and growth and metastatic properties of cancerous cells. In this work we analyze changes in the patterns of expression of HSPGs in left sided colorectal cancer (LSCRC), both metastatic and non-metastatic, and the results are also compared with those previously obtained for right sided tumors (RSCRCs). Methods Eighteen LSCRCs were studied using qPCR to analyze the expression of both the proteoglycan core proteins and the enzymes involved in heparan sulfate chain biosynthesis. Certain HSPGs also carry chondroitin sulfate chains and so we also studied the genes involved in its biosynthesis. The expression of certain genes that showed significant expression differences were also analysed using immunohistochemical techniques. Results Changes in proteoglycan core proteins were dependent on their location, and the main differences between metastatic and non-metastatic tumors affected cell-surface glypicans, while other molecules were quite similar. Glypicans were also responsible for the main differences between RS- and LS- malignances. Regarding the biosynthesis of heparan sulfate chains, differential alterations in transcription depending on the presence or not of metastasis affected genes involved in the modification of uronic acid (epimerization and 2-O sulfation), and some isoforms responsible for sulfation of glucosamine (NDST1, HS6ST1). Moreover, in RSCRCs differences were preferentially found in the expression of genes involved in C6 and C3 sulfation of glucosamine, but not in NDSTs or SULFs. Finally, synthesis of chondroitin sulfate showed some alterations, which affected various steps, including polimerization and the modification of chains, but the main variations dependent on the presence of metastases were epimerization and 6C sulfation; however, when compared with RSCRCs, the essential divergences affected polymerization of the chains and the 6C sulfation of the galactosamine residue. Conclusions We evidenced alterations in the expression of HSPGs, including the expression of cell surface core proteins, many glycosiltransferases and some enzymes that modify the GAG chains in LSCRCs, but this was dependent on the metastatic nature of the tumor. Some of these alterations are shared with RSCRCs, while others, focused on specific gene groups, are dependent on tumor localization

Experiencia docente con la aplicación de la metodología Aprendizaje Basado en Problemas en estudiantes universitarios del Grado en Educación Primaria

Los objetivos del presente trabajo fueron: 1) Describir una experiencia docente basada en la metodología ABP con estudiantes universitarios del Grado en Educación Primaria, y 2) examinar las percepciones del estudiantado sobre dicha experiencia docente. El 22,2% de los estudiantes tenían experiencia previa con la metodología ABP. Los estudiantes, de media, reportaron una valoración positiva con la aplicación de la metodología ABP (desde “un poco de acuerdo” a “totalmente de acuerdo”; media de todos los ítems = 4,7), excepto para el ítem 18 (“Aprendo más y mejor con la técnica del ABP que con las prácticas -gimnasio, aire libre-) que fue neutro (puntuación de 3,5). La mayoría de los estudiantes (88,9%) mostraron una satisfacción académica (media ítems 1-7) positiva (es decir, de 4 a 6 puntos). Sólo tres estudiantes (4,2%) reportaron una satisfacción académica negativa (es decir, por debajo de 3,5 puntos). Por último, los resultados de la prueba de Mann-Whitney mostraron que la aplicación de la metodología ABP se valoraba de manera similar entre estudiantes varones y mujeres (p > 0,05) y estudiantes con o sin experiencia previa con dicha metodología (p > 0,05).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Daily Step-Based Recommendations Related to Moderate-to-Vigorous Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior in Adolescents

Among adolescents empirical studies examining the total daily steps translation of the moderate-to-vigorous physical activity recommendation are scarce and inconsistent, and there are no previous studies with cadence-based steps and related to sedentary behavior. The main objective of the present study was to establish and compare the accuracy of daily step-based recommendations related to the moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and sedentary behavior thresholds in adolescents. The present study followed a cross-sectional design. A total of 126 adolescents (56 girls) aged 12-15 years old were assessed by ActiGraph GT3X accelerometers for eight consecutive days (moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, sedentary behavior, and steps) and the multistage 20-meter shuttle run test (cardiorespiratory fitness). ROC curve analyses showed that total daily steps (AUC = 0.94, 0.89- 0.99; Threshold ≥ 11,111 steps/ day; P = 0.93; k = 0.67; p < 0.001) was a more appropriate indicator than cadence-based daily steps for distinguishing between physically active and inactive adolescents. Daily step-based thresholds represent a promising way to translate a total daily sedentary behavior threshold (e.g., total daily steps, AUC = 0.87, 0.81-0.93; Sensitivity = 0.87; Specificity = 0.70). Adolescents who met a favorable combination of stepbased recommendations related to both physical activity and sedentary behavior thresholds had a higher probability of having a healthy cardiorespiratory fitness profile than those who did not meet either of them (e.g., risk ratio = 5.05, 1.69-15.08) or only the one related to physical activity (e.g., risk ratio = 4.09, 1.36- 12.29). These findings may help policy-makers to provide accurate daily step-based recommendations that would simplify the physical activity and sedentary behavior thresholds for adolescents

Accelerating time series motif discovery in the Intel Xeon Phi KNL processor

Presented at HiPEAC Conference 2020, Bologna (Italy)Time series analysis is an important research topic of great interest in many fields. However, the memory-bound nature of the state-of-the-art algorithms limits the execution performance in some processor architectures. We analyze the Matrix Profile algorithm from the performance viewpoint in the context of the Intel Xeon Phi Knights Landing architecture (KNL). The experimental evaluation shows a performance improvement up to 190x with respect to the sequential execution and that the use of the HBM memory improves performance in a factor up to 5x with respect to the DDR4 memory.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Exploiting Vector Extensions to Accelerate Time Series Analysis

Time series analysis is an important research topic and a key step in monitoring and predicting events in many fields. Recently, the Matrix Profile method, and particularly two of its Euclidean-distance-based implementations – SCRIMP and SCAMP – have become the state-of-the-art approaches in this field. Those algorithms bring the possibility of obtaining exact motifs and discords from a time series, which can be used to infer events, predict outcomes, detect anomalies and more. While matrix profile is embarrassingly parallelizable, we find that autovectorization techniques fail to fully exploit the SIMD capabilities of modern CPU architectures. In this paper, we develop custom-vectorized SCRIMP and SCAMP implementations based on AVX2 and AVX-512 extensions, which we combine with multi-threading techniques aimed at exploiting the potential of the underneath architectures. Our experimental evaluation, conducted using real data, shows a performance improvement of more than 4× with respect to the autovectorization.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Desarrollo de una aplicación de gestión de álbumes de cromos de fútbol

Este trabajo consiste en un álbum de cromos virtual de la liga española de fútbol. Brinda al usuario la posibilidad de coleccionar todos los cromos de la competición. Además de esta funcionalidad básica de cualquier colección, también ofrece la posibilidad de hacer porras o responder preguntas que ayudan al usuario a obtener monedas que posteriormente podrán ser utilizadas para conseguir el objetivo final, que es completar la colección. También ofrece una funcionalidad importante e innovadora que es poder intercambiar los cromos repetidos que ya no interesan con el resto de los usuarios que tengan algún cromo repetido que también se quiera deshacer de él, para así interactuar con otros usuarios y entre todos lograr terminar la colección

TraTSA: A Transprecision Framework for Efficient Time Series Analysis

Time series analysis (TSA) comprises methods for extracting information in domains as diverse as medicine, seismology, speech recognition and economics. Matrix Profile (MP) is the state-of-the-art TSA technique, which provides the most similar neighbor to each subsequence of the time series. However, this computation requires a huge amount of floating-point (FP) operations, which are a major contributor ( 50%) to the energy consumption in modern computing platforms. In this sense, Transprecision Computing has recently emerged as a promising approach to improve energy efficiency and performance by using fewer bits in FP operations while providing accurate results. In this work, we present TraTSA, the first transprecision framework for efficient time series analysis based on MP. TraTSA allows the user to deploy a high-performance and energy-efficient computing solution with the exact precision required by the TSA application. To this end, we first propose implementations of TraTSA for both commodity CPU and FPGA platforms. Second, we propose an accuracy metric to compare the results with the double-precision MP. Third, we study MP’s accuracy when using a transprecision approach. Finally, our evaluation shows that, while obtaining results accurate enough, the FPGA transprecision MP (i) is 22.75 faster than a 72-core server, and (ii) the energy consumption is up to 3.3 lower than the double-precision executions.This work has been supported by the Government of Spain under project PID2019-105396RB-I00, and Junta de Andalucia under projects P18-FR-3433 and UMA18-FEDERJA-197. Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málaga / CBUA