Modification of Coronary-Prone Behaviors in Coronary Patients of Low Socio-Economic Status

Este estudio pretende conocer la efectividad de un tratamiento cognitivo-conductual aplicado a grupos de enfermos coronarios de un nivel educativo y status social predominantemente bajo para modificar conductas prono-coronarias. Método: La distribución de los 98 varones enfermos coronarios en un grupo experimental y dos de control se realizó al azar. Los tres grupos recibieron el tratamiento médico estándar. El grupo experimental recibió adicionalmente un tratamiento psicológico y uno de los dos grupos de control recibió además un programa de educación para la salud. Los resultados mostraron que sólo el grupo que recibió el tratamiento psicológico redujo significativamente su Comportamiento Apresurado y su Prisa-Impaciencia después del tratamiento y durante los dos años de seguimiento posteriores al tratamiento. La depresión también se redujo sólo en este grupo tras los dos años de seguimiento. Los resultados se consideran un primer paso fiable en el proceso de validar este programa diseñado para mejorar la calidad de vida de los pacientes coronarios.The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of a group cognitive-behavioral treatment to modify coronary-prone behaviors in patients from a fairly low social and educational level. Participants were 98 male coronary patients randomly allocated to one experimental and two control groups. All groups received standard medical treatment. The experimental group received an additional psychological treatment and one of the two control groups received a health education treatment. Results showed that only the psychological treatment group significantly reduced Pressured Drive and Speed-Impatience after treatment, and at 1- and 2-year follow-ups. Depression was also significantly reduced only in this group at 2-year follow-up. The results are considered a reliable first step in the process of validating this program designed to improve coronary heart disease patients’ quality of life

Information in feedback ratchets

Feedback control uses the state information of the system to actuate on it. The information used implies an effective entropy reduction of the controlled system, potentially increasing its performance. How to compute this entropy reduction has been formally shown for a general system, and has been explicitly computed for spatially discrete systems. Here, we address a relevant example of how to compute the entropy reduction by information in a spatially continuous feedback-controlled system. Specifically, we consider a feedback flashing ratchet, which constitutes a paradigmatic example for the role of information and feedback in the dynamics and thermodynamics of transport induced by the rectification of Brownian motion. A Brownian particle moves in a periodic potential that is switched on and off by a controller, with the latter performing the switching depending on the system state. We show how the entropy reduction can be computed from the entropy of a sequence of control actions, and also discuss the required sampling effort for its accurate computation. Moreover, the output power developed by the particle against an external force is investigated, which -- for some values of the system parameters -- is shown to become larger than the input power due to the switching of the potential: the apparent efficiency of the ratchet thus becomes higher than one, if the entropy reduction contribution is not considered. This result highlights the relevance of including the entropy reduction by information in the thermodynamic balance of feedback controlled devices, specifically when writing the second principle: the inclusion of the entropy reduction by information leads to a well-behaved efficiency over all the range of parameters investigated.Comment: 17 pages, 13 figure

Broadband linear-to-circular polarizing reflector for space applications in Ka-band

This communication presents a novel low-profile broadband polarizing reflector to convert dual linear polarization (LP) into dual circular polarization (CP). The polarizing cell is based on printed dipole technology and presents a wideband performance in Ka-band. The dimensions of the printed dipoles are adjusted cell by cell to improve the reflection phase performance against variations in the incidence angles or in the cell dimensions. A 25-cm flat polarizing reflector demonstrator has been designed, fabricated and tested. The design has been optimized for transmit (19.2-20.2 GHz) and receive (29-30 GHz) frequencies in Kaband, but the broadband behavior of the cell provides satisfactory results also at the intermediate frequencies. The measured patterns show a good agreement with the simulations, with an axial ratio lower than 1.8 dB within the 19.2-30 GHz band. The proposed polarizing reflector can be used for novel multibeam antenna configurations to produce multi-spot coverage in Ka-band with a smaller number of apertures.Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. TEC2016-75103-C2-1-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad | Ref. TEC2015-65353-REuropean Space Agency ESTEC | Ref. 4000117113/16/NL/A

Study of bifocal dual reflectarray configurations for multi-beam antennas in ka-band

This paper describes the design of multi-beam dual reflectarray antennas for operation in the Ka-band satellite transmission band (around 20 GHz), using the bifocal design concept to improve antenna performance. This technique has been first applied to obtain beam compression with adjacent feeds, resulting in low radiation efficiency. Then it has been used without beam compression to correct beam aberration, showing better results than an equivalent single-focus reference reflector. The simulated radiation patterns in the elevation plane and the amplitude distributions of the incident field on each reflectarray have been calculated for different antenna configurations

Novel conductor design to increase the thermal rating of overhead lines

International Conference on Renewable Energies and Power Quality (ICREPQ’16) Madrid (Spain), 4th to 6th May, 2016In this paper the performance of existing and novel designs of overhead bare conductors with regard to their capacity to evacuate the heat generated by ohmic losses is compared. The effect of both the diameter of strands and the external shape of the conductor on the convective heat transfer capacity are evaluated with a finite element method commercial software for an ACSR conductor with different diameter strands, wind velocities and conductor current, resulting in a design that improves the customary design by around a 7 % of thermal ratingMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación ENE2013-48428- C2-1-

Synthetic aperture radar imaging system for landmine detection using a ground penetrating radar on board a unmanned aerial vehicle

This paper presents a novel system to obtain images from the underground based on ground penetrating radar (GPR). The proposed system is composed by a radar module mounted on board an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which allows the safe inspection of difficult-to-access areas without being in direct contact with the soil. Therefore, it can be used to detect dangerous buried objects, such as landmines. The radar measurements are coherently combined using a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) algorithm, which requires cm-level accuracy positioning system. In addition, a clutter removal technique is applied to mitigate the reflection at the air-soil interface (which is caused by impedance mismatching). Besides the aforementioned advantages, the system can detect both metallic and dielectric targets (due to the use of a radar instead of a metal detector) and it allows to obtain high-resolution underground images (due to the SAR processing). The algorithms and the UAV payload are validated with measurements in both controlled and real scenarios, showing the feasibility of the proposed system.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad | Ref. TEC2014-54005-PMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad | Ref. TEC2014-55290-JINMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad | Ref. TEC2015-73908-JINMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad | Ref. TEC2015-65353-RAgencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. RYC-2016-20280Ministerio de Educación | Ref. FPU15/06341Gobierno del Principado de Asturias | Ref. PCTI 2013-2017Gobierno del Principado de Asturias | Ref. FC-15-GRUPIN14-114Gobierno del Principado de Asturias | Ref. IDI/2017/000095Xunta de Galicia | Ref. GRC2015/01