Properties of the redback millisecond pulsar binary 3FGL J0212.1+5320

Linares et al. (2016) obtained quasi-simultaneous g', r' and i-band light curves and an absorption line radial velocity curve of the secondary star in the redback system 3FGL J0212.1+5320. The light curves showed two maxima and minima primarily due to the secondary star's ellipsoidal modulation, but with unequal maxima and minima. We fit these light curves and radial velocities with our X-ray binary model including either a dark solar-type star spot or a hot spot due to off-centre heating from an intrabinary shock, to account for the unequal maxima. Both models give a radial velocity semi-amplitude and rotational broadening that agree with the observations. The observed secondary star's effective temperature is best matched with the value obtained using the hot spot model, which gives a neutron star and secondary star mass of $M_{\rm 1}$=1.85$^{+0.32}_{-0.26}$ $M_{\odot}$and $M_{\rm 2}$=0.50$^{+0.22}_{-0.19}$ $M_{\odot}$, respectively.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figues, accepted by MNRA

An AER handshake-less modular infrastructure PCB with x8 2.5Gbps LVDS serial links

Nowadays spike-based brain processing emulation is taking off. Several EU and others worldwide projects are demonstrating this, like SpiNNaker, BrainScaleS, FACETS, or NeuroGrid. The larger the brain process emulation on silicon is, the higher the communication performance of the hosting platforms has to be. Many times the bottleneck of these system implementations is not on the performance inside a chip or a board, but in the communication between boards. This paper describes a novel modular Address-Event-Representation (AER) FPGA-based (Spartan6) infrastructure PCB (the AER-Node board) with 2.5Gbps LVDS high speed serial links over SATA cables that offers a peak performance of 32-bit 62.5Meps (Mega events per second) on board-to-board communications. The board allows back compatibility with parallel AER devices supporting up to x2 28-bit parallel data with asynchronous handshake. These boards also allow modular expansion functionality through several daughter boards. The paper is focused on describing in detail the LVDS serial interface and presenting its performance.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TEC2009-10639-C04-02/01Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2012-37868-C04-02/01Junta de Andalucía TIC-6091Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad PRI-PIMCHI-2011-076

Live Demonstration: Multiplexing AER Asynchronous Channels over LVDS Links with Flow-Control and Clock- Correction for Scalable Neuromorphic Systems

In this live demonstration we exploit the use of a serial link for fast asynchronous communication in massively parallel processing platforms connected to a DVS for realtime implementation of bio-inspired vision processing on spiking neural networks

A USB3.0 FPGA Event-based Filtering and Tracking Framework for Dynamic Vision Sensors

Dynamic vision sensors (DVS) are frame-free sensors with an asynchronous variable-rate output that is ideal for hard real-time dynamic vision applications under power and latency constraints. Post-processing of the digital sensor output can reduce sensor noise, extract low level features, and track objects using simple algorithms that have previously been implemented in software. In this paper we present an FPGA-based framework for event-based processing that allows uncorrelated-event noise removal and real-time tracking of multiple objects, with dynamic capabilities to adapt itself to fast or slow and large or small objects. This framework uses a new hardware platform based on a Lattice FPGA which filters the sensor output and which then transmits the results through a super-speed Cypress FX3 USB microcontroller interface to a host computer. The packets of events and timestamps are transmitted to the host computer at rates of 10 Mega events per second. Experimental results are presented that demonstrate a low latency of 10us for tracking and computing the center of mass of a detected object.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2012-37868-C04-0

Understanding Perceptions about Contraceptive Responsibility Among Adolescents

Invited Commentary on Attitudes Surrounding Contraceptive Responsibility: Do Latino Adolescents Differ From Other Groups

Using FPGA for visuo-motor control with a silicon retina and a humanoid robot

The address-event representation (AER) is a neuromorphic communication protocol for transferring asynchronous events between VLSI chips. The event information is transferred using a high speed digital parallel bus. This paper present an experiment based on AER for visual sensing, processing and finally actuating a robot. The AER output of a silicon retina is processed by an AER filter implemented into a FPGA to produce a mimicking behaviour in a humanoid robot (The RoboSapiens V2). We have implemented the visual filter into the Spartan II FPGA of the USB-AER platform and the Central Pattern Generator (CPG) into the Spartan 3 FPGA of the AER-Robot platform, both developed by authors.Unión Europea IST-2001-34124 (CAVIAR)Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC-2003-08164-C03-0

Instabilities in Zakharov Equations for Laser Propagation in a Plasma

F.Linares, G.Ponce, J-C.Saut have proved that a non-fully dispersive Zakharov system arising in the study of Laser-plasma interaction, is locally well posed in the whole space, for fields vanishing at infinity. Here we show that in the periodic case, seen as a model for fields non-vanishing at infinity, the system develops strong instabilities of Hadamard's type, implying that the Cauchy problem is strongly ill-posed

Venezuela Revisited: Foreign Investment, Technology, and Related Issues

A brief history of foreign investment in Venezuela is necessary to understand recent changes in Venezuelan foreign investment policy. The development of selected industrial sectors, including principally petroleum and mining, but also agriculture, electric power, manufacturing, banking, and insurance, has played a significant role in shaping Venezuelan foreign investment policy. The laws, policies, and their application can then be reviewed in practical terms to provide the practitioner with an understanding of the stated objectives of the host government within the context of Third World movements toward greater control over economic activities

A complex state transition from the black hole candidate Swift J1753.5-0127

We present our monitoring campaign of the outburst of the black-hole candidate Swift J1753.5-0127, observed with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer and the Swift satellites. After ~4.5 years since its discovery, the source had a transition to the hard intermediate state. We performed spectral and timing studies of the transition showing that, unlike the majority of the transient black holes, the system did not go to the soft states but it returned to the hard state after a few months. During this transition Swift J1753.5-0127 features properties which are similar to those displayed by the black hole Cygnus X-1. We compared Swift J1753.5-0127 to one dynamically confirmed black hole and two neutron stars showing that its power spectra are in agreement with the binary hosting a black hole. We also suggest that the prolonged period at low flux that followed the initial flare is reminiscent of that observed in other X-ray binaries, as well as in cataclysmic variables.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA