Responsables, Sostenibles, Universitarios como vía de lucha contra el cambio climático: El caso de la ETSIMontes, Forestal y del Medio Natural (UPM)

La universidad responsable juega un rol importante en el cambio climático. Le compete promover la responsabilidad empresarial, la responsabilidad social científica y la responsabilidad social ciudadana, y lo hace a través de tres enfoques distintos: Gerencial, basado en la rendición de cuentas a sus grupos de interés; Transformacional, muy comprometida socialmente, a través de actividades de voluntariado o cooperación al desarrollo; o Normativo, con el propósito de fortalecer el papel de la educación superior desde el servicio público, la relevancia y la Responsabilidad Social Universitaria. En este sentido, la Escuela Técnica de Ingeniería de Montes, Forestal y del Medio Natural de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, primera entidad pública española con la validación de la ISO 26000, se erige como entidad de transformación, como modelo de actuación y, especialmente, de lucha contra el cambio climático, dada la naturaleza de sus enseñanzas y el enfoque de su estrategia RSU: Responsables, Sostenibles y Universitarios

Robust Cardiac Motion Estimation using Ultrafast Ultrasound Data: A Low-Rank-Topology-Preserving Approach

Cardiac motion estimation is an important diagnostic tool to detect heart diseases and it has been explored with modalities such as MRI and conventional ultrasound (US) sequences. US cardiac motion estimation still presents challenges because of the complex motion patterns and the presence of noise. In this work, we propose a novel approach to estimate the cardiac motion using ultrafast ultrasound data. -- Our solution is based on a variational formulation characterized by the L2-regularized class. The displacement is represented by a lattice of b-splines and we ensure robustness by applying a maximum likelihood type estimator. While this is an important part of our solution, the main highlight of this paper is to combine a low-rank data representation with topology preservation. Low-rank data representation (achieved by finding the k-dominant singular values of a Casorati Matrix arranged from the data sequence) speeds up the global solution and achieves noise reduction. On the other hand, topology preservation (achieved by monitoring the Jacobian determinant) allows to radically rule out distortions while carefully controlling the size of allowed expansions and contractions. Our variational approach is carried out on a realistic dataset as well as on a simulated one. We demonstrate how our proposed variational solution deals with complex deformations through careful numerical experiments. While maintaining the accuracy of the solution, the low-rank preprocessing is shown to speed up the convergence of the variational problem. Beyond cardiac motion estimation, our approach is promising for the analysis of other organs that experience motion.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, Physics in Medicine and Biology, 201

Cosmography and constraints on the equation of state of the Universe in various parametrizations

We use cosmography to present constraints on the kinematics of the Universe, without postulating any underlying theoretical model. To this end, we use a Monte Carlo Markov Chain analysis to perform comparisons to the supernova Ia Union 2 compilation, combined with the Hubble Space Telescope measurements of the Hubble constant, and the Hubble parameter datasets. We introduce a sixth order cosmographic parameter and show that it does not enlarge considerably the posterior distribution when comparing to the fifth order results. We also propose a way to construct viable parameter variables to be used as alternatives of the redshift $z$. These can overcome both the problems of divergence and lack of accuracy associated with the use of $z$. Moreover, we show that it is possible to improve the numerical fits by re-parameterizing the cosmological distances. In addition, we constrain the equation of state of the Universe as a whole by the use of cosmography. Thus, we derive expressions which can be directly used to fit the equation of state and the pressure derivatives up to fourth order. To this end, it is necessary to depart from a pure cosmographic analysis and to assume the Friedmann equations as valid. All our results are consistent with the $\Lambda$CDM model, although alternative fluid models, with nearly constant pressure and no cosmological constant, match the results accurately as well.Comment: 23 pages. 1 reference added. Minor correction

Constant mean curvature solutions of the Einstein-scalar field constraint equations on asymptotically hyperbolic manifolds

We follow the approach employed by Y. Choquet-Bruhat, J. Isenberg and D. Pollack in the case of closed manifolds and establish existence and non-existence results for the Einstein-scalar field constraint equations on asymptotically hyperbolic manifolds.Comment: 15 page