Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance for Optical Fiber-Sensing Applications

It is well known that optical fiber sensors have attracted the attention of scientific community due to its intrinsic advantages, such as lightweight, small size, portability, remote sensing, immunity to electromagnetic interferences and the possibility of multiplexing several signals. This field has shown a dramatic growth thanks to the creation of sensitive thin films onto diverse optical fiber configurations. In this sense, a wide range of optical fiber devices have been successfully fabricated for monitoring biological, chemical, medical or physical parameters. In addition, the use of nanoparticles into the sensitive thin films has resulted in an enhancement in the response time, robustness or sensitivity in the optical devices, which is associated to the inherent properties of nanoparticles (high surface area ratio or porosity). Among all of them, the metallic nanoparticles are of great interest for sensing applications due to the presence of strong absorption bands in the visible and near-infrared regions, due to their localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPR). These optical resonances are due to the coupling of certain modes of the incident light to the collective oscillation of the conduction electrons of the metallic nanoparticles. The LSPR extinction bands are very useful for sensing applications as far as they can be affected by refractive index variations of the surrounding medium of the nanoparticles, and therefore, it is possible to create optical sensors with outstanding properties such as high sensitivity and optical self-reference. In this chapter, the attractive optical properties of metal nanostructures and their implementation into different optical fiber configuration for sensing or biosensing applications will be studied

Dynamic Behaviour of Air Valves in a Large-Scale Pipeline Apparatus

[EN] This paper describes an experimental programme on the dynamic behaviour of air valves performed in a large-scale pipeline apparatus. Dynamic flow tests were performed at large (full) scale, since previous quasi-steady flow tests at small scale did not lead to realistic results. Investigations in a large-scale pipeline apparatus lead to a better understanding of the physical processes associated with the dynamic performance of air valves. Float type air valves of nominal diameter of 50 and 100 mm were tested in geometrically similar 200 and 500 mm test sections, to allow for the assessment of dynamic scale effects and the development of dimensionless parameter groups and dynamic scale laws. The approach in the determination of the dynamic performance of air valves was to measure their response to flow acceleration/ decelerations, which are imposed upon the valve. In this way, the air valve behaviour following events like system start-up, pump trip and pipe rupture is simulated. Key results of the dynamic flow tests, including air release tests (valve slam) and column separation tests (effect of air valve on surge suppression), are presented and discussed.The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the European Commission for their funding of the Transnational Access to Major Research Infrastructure activity within the Improving Human Potential (IHP) Programme.Bergant, A.; Kruisbrink, A.; Arregui De La Cruz, F. (2012). Dynamic Behaviour of Air Valves in a Large-Scale Pipeline Apparatus. Strojniški vestnik ¿ Journal of Mechanical Engineering. 58(4):225-237. doi:10.5545/sv-jme.2011.032S22523758

Utilidad de la implantación y el desarrollo de un programa de cribado para el diagnóstico precoz del cáncer de cabeza y cuello

208 p.Introducción: Se considera cáncer de cabeza y cuello a los tumores malignos que se originan en la vía aerodigestiva superior y glándulas salivares, con unos factores de riego conocidos y evitables. Aunque son áreas accesibles a la exploración con los medios actuales, sin embargo, más del 60% se diagnostican en estadios avanzadosHipótesis y objetivos: Hemos analizado si un programa de diagnóstico precoz es una herramienta útil, eficaz y segura para el diagnóstico de los tumores y las lesiones preneoplásicas de cabeza y cuello. Promoviendo al mismo tiempo el abandono del hábito de los factores de riesgo oncológicos.Material y métodos: Hemos estudiado 324 pacientes (60,2% hombres, edad media=59,4 años) que reunían unos criterios de riesgo definidos: mayor de 50 años, fumadores o consumidores habituales de alcohol, o bien 2 de estos criterios: antecedentes familiares de cáncer de cabeza y cuello, infección por VPH, exposición laboral a tóxicos, deficiente higiene bucal o enfermedad por reflujo. Se les realizó una exploración otorrinolaringológica completa y pruebas complementarias.Resultados: Los criterios más habituales para acudir a la consulta fueron ser fumador (98,1%) y bebedor (69,4%) y el 29,32% de los pacientes los consumían simultáneamente. El 36,7% presentaron lesiones potencialmente malignizables en laringe e hipofaringe (25%) y en cavidad oral y orofaringe (10,8%) y el 5,56% de los pacientes presentaron más de 1 lesión. El índice de detección de neoplasias fue del 1,2%, y el de lesiones preneoplásicas del 4,6%. No existieron relaciones estadísticamente significativas entre la detección de neoplasias o lesiones y el consumo de tabaco, alcohol o la existencia de antecedentes. Existió una relación estadísticamente significativa entre la detección de lesiones preneoplásicas y la exposición laboral a agentes cancerígenos (p=0,006), la mala higiene bucal (p=0,01) y el RGE (p=0,007).Conclusión: El índice de detección de neoplasias del programa de screening de cáncer de cabeza y cuello fue superior al de otros estudios poblacionales como el de mama 0,47% y el colorrectal del 0,31%

Automatic exploitation of non-determinate independent and-parallelism in the basic andorra model

Andorra-I is the first implementation of a language based on the Andorra Principie, which states that determinate goals can (and shonld) be run before other goals, and even in a parallel fashion. This principie has materialized in a framework called the Basic Andorra model, which allows or-parallelism as well as (dependent) and-parallelism for determinate goals. In this report we show that it is possible to further extend this model in order to allow general independent and-parallelism for nondeterminate goals, withont greatly modifying the underlying implementation machinery. A simple an easy way to realize such an extensión is to make each (nondeterminate) independent goal determinate, by using a special "bagof" constract. We also show that this can be achieved antomatically by compile-time translation from original Prolog programs. A transformation that fulfüls this objective and which can be easily antomated is presented in this report

Utilidad de la implantación y el desarrollo de un programa de cribado para el diagnóstico precoz del cáncer de cabeza y cuello

208 p.Introducción: Se considera cáncer de cabeza y cuello a los tumores malignos que se originan en la vía aerodigestiva superior y glándulas salivares, con unos factores de riego conocidos y evitables. Aunque son áreas accesibles a la exploración con los medios actuales, sin embargo, más del 60% se diagnostican en estadios avanzadosHipótesis y objetivos: Hemos analizado si un programa de diagnóstico precoz es una herramienta útil, eficaz y segura para el diagnóstico de los tumores y las lesiones preneoplásicas de cabeza y cuello. Promoviendo al mismo tiempo el abandono del hábito de los factores de riesgo oncológicos.Material y métodos: Hemos estudiado 324 pacientes (60,2% hombres, edad media=59,4 años) que reunían unos criterios de riesgo definidos: mayor de 50 años, fumadores o consumidores habituales de alcohol, o bien 2 de estos criterios: antecedentes familiares de cáncer de cabeza y cuello, infección por VPH, exposición laboral a tóxicos, deficiente higiene bucal o enfermedad por reflujo. Se les realizó una exploración otorrinolaringológica completa y pruebas complementarias.Resultados: Los criterios más habituales para acudir a la consulta fueron ser fumador (98,1%) y bebedor (69,4%) y el 29,32% de los pacientes los consumían simultáneamente. El 36,7% presentaron lesiones potencialmente malignizables en laringe e hipofaringe (25%) y en cavidad oral y orofaringe (10,8%) y el 5,56% de los pacientes presentaron más de 1 lesión. El índice de detección de neoplasias fue del 1,2%, y el de lesiones preneoplásicas del 4,6%. No existieron relaciones estadísticamente significativas entre la detección de neoplasias o lesiones y el consumo de tabaco, alcohol o la existencia de antecedentes. Existió una relación estadísticamente significativa entre la detección de lesiones preneoplásicas y la exposición laboral a agentes cancerígenos (p=0,006), la mala higiene bucal (p=0,01) y el RGE (p=0,007).Conclusión: El índice de detección de neoplasias del programa de screening de cáncer de cabeza y cuello fue superior al de otros estudios poblacionales como el de mama 0,47% y el colorrectal del 0,31%

Technological Applications for the Automation of Food Questionnaires in Medical Studies: a state-of-art-review and future prospective

Applications for automating the most commonly used dietary surveys in nutritional research, Food Frequency Questionnaires (FFQs) and 24 h Dietary Recalls (24HDRs), are reviewed in this paper. A comprehensive search of electronic databases was carried out and findings were classified by a group of experts in nutrition and computer science into: (i) Computerized Questionnaires and Web-based Questionnaires; (ii) FFQs and 24HDRs and combinations of both; and (iii) interviewer-administered or self-administered questionnaires. A discussion on the classification made and the works reported is included. Finally, works that apply innovative technologies are outlined and the future trends for automating questionnaires in nutrition are identified

Optical fiber sensors based on microstructured optical fibers to detect gases and volatile organic compounds-A review

Since the first publications related to microstructured optical fibers (MOFs), the development of optical fiber sensors (OFS) based on them has attracted the interest of many research groups because of the market niches that can take advantage of their specific features. Due to their unique structure based on a certain distribution of air holes, MOFs are especially useful for sensing applications: on one hand, the increased coupling of guided modes into the cladding or the holes enhances significantly the interaction with sensing films deposited there; on the other hand, MOF air holes enhance the direct interaction between the light and the analytes that get into in these cavities. Consequently, the sensitivity when detecting liquids, gasses or volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is significantly improved. This paper is focused on the reported sensors that have been developed with MOFs which are applied to detection of gases and VOCs, highlighting the advantages that this type of fiber offers.This work was carried out with the financial support of MINECO (Spain) through TEC2016-79367-C2-2-R (AEI/FEDER, UE) as well as Public University of Navarre PhD grants program.This work was carried out with the financial support of MINECO (Spain) through TEC2016-79367-C2-2-R (AEI/FEDER, UE)

Water End Use Disaggregation Based on Soft Computing Techniques

[EN] Disaggregating residential water end use events through the available commercial tools needs a great investment in time to manually process smart metering data. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to achieve a homogenous and sufficiently large corpus of classified single-use events capable of accurately describe residential water consumption. The main goal of the present paper is to develop an automatic tool that facilitates the disaggregation of the individual water consumptions events from the raw flow trace. The proposed disaggregation methodology is conducted through two actions that are iteratively performed: first, the use of an advanced two-step filter, whose calibration is automatically conducted by the Elitist Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm NSGA-II; and second, a cropping algorithm based on the filtered water consumption flow traces. As a secondary goal, yet complementary to the main one, a semiautomatic massive classification process has been developed, so that the resulting single-use events can be easily categorized in the different water end uses in a household. This methodology was tested using water consumption data from two different case studies. The characteristics of the households taken as reference and their occupants were unequivocally dissimilar from each other. In addition, the monitoring equipment used to obtain the consumption flow traces had completely different technical specifications. The results obtained from the processing of the two studies show that the automatic disaggregation is both robust and accurate, and produces significant time saving compared to the standard manual analysis.This study has received funding by the IMPADAPT project /CGL2013-48424-C2-1-R from the Spanish ministry MINECO with European FEDER funds and from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement No. 619172 (SmartH2O: an ICT Platform to leverage on Social Computing for the efficient management of Water Consumption).Pastor-Jabaloyes, L.; Arregui De La Cruz, F.; Cobacho Jordán, R. (2018). Water End Use Disaggregation Based on Soft Computing Techniques. Water. 10(1). https://doi.org/10.3390/w10010046S10

A filtering algorithm for high-resolution flow traces to improve water end-use analysis

[EN] One of the main difficulties encountered when designing automatic tools for water end use identification is the inherent noise present in recorded flow traces. Noise is mainly caused by the inability of the monitoring equipment to accurately register water consumption and data-loggers to register, without distortion, the signal received from the water meter. A universal filtering algorithm has been developed to remove noise and simplify water consumption flow traces with the aim of improving future automatic end use identification algorithms. The performance of the proposed filtering methodology is assessed through the analysis of 21,647 events. Water consumption data were sourced from two different water end use studies, having consumers and monitoring equipment with dissimilar characteristics. The results obtained show that the algorithm is capable of removing an average of 70% of the data points that constitute the flow traces of the complex events examined. The simplified flow traces allow for faster and more accurate disaggregation and classification algorithms, without losing significant information or distorting the original signal. The ability of the proposed filtering algorithm to fit the original flow traces was benchmarked using the Kling-Gupta efficiency coefficient, obtaining an average value above 0.79.This study has received funding by the IMPADAPT project/CGL2013-48424-C2-1-R from the Spanish ministry MINECO with European FEDER funds and from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007e2013) under grant agreement no. 619172 (SmartH2O: an ICT Platform to Leverage on Social Computing for the Efficient Management of Water Consumption).Pastor-Jabaloyes, L.; Arregui De La Cruz, F.; Cobacho Jordán, R. (2018). A filtering algorithm for high-resolution flow traces to improve water end-use analysis. Water Science & Technology: Water Supply. 19(2):451-462. https://doi.org/10.2166/ws.2018.090S45146219