Search results for: José Alberto García Fernández

Authors: Rica Jell de Laza, Jose Alberto Fernandez, Andrea Marie Mendoza, Qristin Jeuel Regalado

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This study investigates whether participants experience different levels of persuasion depending on the hemisphere of the brain and the tone of voice. The experiment was performed on 96 volunteer undergraduate students taking an introductory course in psychology. The participants took part in a 2 x 3 (Hemisphere: left, right x Tone of Voice: positive, neutral, negative) Mixed Factorial Design to measure how much a person was persuaded. Results showed that the hemisphere of the brain and the tone of voice used did not significantly affect the results individually. Furthermore, there was no interaction effect. Therefore, the hemispheres of the brain and the tone of voice employed play insignificant roles in persuading a person.

Keywords: dichotic listening, brain hemisphere, tone of voice, persuasion

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Authors: J. Fernandez de Canete, S. Fernandez-Calvo, I. García-Moral

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This paper presents and discusses the application of the object-oriented modelling software SIMSCAPE to hydraulic systems, with particular reference to multivariable proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control. As a result, a particular modelling approach of a double cylinder-piston coupled system is proposed and motivated, and the SIMULINK based PID tuning tool has also been used to select the proper controller parameters. The paper demonstrates the usefulness of the object-oriented approach when both physical modelling and control are tackled.

Keywords: object-oriented modeling, multivariable hydraulic system, multivariable PID control, computer simulation

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Authors: José Alberto García Fernández, Zhimin Du, Xinqiao Jin

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Nowadays, data center industry faces strong challenges for increasing the speed and data processing capacities while at the same time is trying to keep their devices a suitable working temperature without penalizing that capacity. Consequently, the cooling systems of this kind of facilities use a large amount of energy to dissipate the heat generated inside the servers, and developing new cooling techniques or perfecting those already existing would be a great advance in this type of industry. The installation of a temperature sensor matrix distributed in the structure of each server would provide the necessary information for collecting the required data for obtaining a temperature profile instantly inside them. However, the number of temperature probes required to obtain the temperature profiles with sufficient accuracy is very high and expensive. Therefore, other less intrusive techniques are employed where each point that characterizes the server temperature profile is obtained by solving differential equations through simulation methods, simplifying data collection techniques but increasing the time to obtain results. In order to reduce these calculation times, complicated and slow computational fluid dynamics simulations are replaced by simpler and faster finite element method simulations which solve the Burgers‘ equations by backward, forward and central discretization techniques after simplifying the energy and enthalpy conservation differential equations. The discretization methods employed for solving the first and second order derivatives of the obtained Burgers‘ equation after these simplifications are the key for obtaining results with greater or lesser accuracy regardless of the characteristic truncation error.

Keywords: Burgers' equations, CFD simulation, data center, discretization methods, FEM simulation, temperature profile

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Authors: Jaime Carpio-García, Elena Blanco-Fernández, Javier González-Fernández, Daniel Castro-Fresno

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Sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) are more often used in order to prevent floods, water treatment, fight against pollution, urban heat island effect, and global warming in applications like green roofs, permeable pavements, and others. Furthermore, geosynthetics are also worldwide used as a part of drainage systems in road construction. Geotextiles are an essential part of both, and one of the main geotextile properties in those applications is permeability, whose behavior is not well established along its service life. In this paper, clogging reduction design factors for an estimated service life of 25 years are experimentally obtained for five different geotextiles used in SUDS and roads combined with two different soils and with two pollutants, motor oil, and lime, in order to evaluate chemical clogging, too. The effect of characteristic opening size and other characteristics of the geosynthetics are also discussed in order to give civil engineers, together with the clogging reduction factors, a better long-time design of geotextiles used in their SUDS and roads.

Keywords: geotextiles, drainage, clogging, reduction factor

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Authors: Juan F. Muñoz-Rosas, Rosa M. García-Fernández, Encarnación Álvarez-Verdejo, Pablo J. Moya-Fernández

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Poverty measurement is a very important topic in many studies in social sciences. One of the most important indicators when measuring poverty is the low income proportion. This indicator gives the proportion of people of a population classified as poor. This indicator is generally unknown, and for this reason, it is estimated by using survey data, which are obtained by official surveys carried out by many statistical agencies such as Eurostat. The main feature of the mentioned survey data is the fact that they contain several variables. The variable used to estimate the low income proportion is called as the variable of interest. The survey data may contain several additional variables, also named as the auxiliary variables, related to the variable of interest, and if this is the situation, they could be used to improve the estimation of the low income proportion. In this paper, we use Monte Carlo simulation studies to analyze numerically the performance of estimators based on several auxiliary variables. In this simulation study, we considered real data sets obtained from the 2011 European Union Survey on Income and Living Condition. Results derived from this study indicate that the estimators based on auxiliary variables are more accurate than the naive estimator.

Keywords: inclusion probability, poverty, poverty line, survey sampling

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Authors: R. D. Esposito, V. M. Barberá, P. García Morales, P. Dorado Rodríguez, J. Sanz, M. Fuentes, D. Planes Meseguer, M. Saceda, L. Fernández Fornos, M. P. Ventero

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Results obtained by our group on glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) primary cultures , show a dramatic potentiation of radiation effects when 2 units/ml of D-amino acid oxidase (DAO) enzyme are added, free or immobilized in magnetic nanoparticles, to irradiated samples just after the irradiation. Cell cultures were exposed to radiation doses of 7Gy and 15Gy of 6 MV photons from a clinical linear accelerator. At both doses, we observed a clear enhancing effect of radiation-induced damages due to the addition of DAO.

Keywords: D-amino Acid Oxidase (DAO) enzyme, magnetic particles, nanotechnology, radiation therapy enhancement

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Authors: Encarnación Álvarez, Rosa M. García-Fernández, Francisco J. Blanco-Encomienda, Juan F. Muñoz

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The European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) is a popular survey which provides information on income, poverty, social exclusion and living conditions of households and individuals in the European Union. The EUSILC contains variables which may contain outliers. The presence of outliers can have an impact on the measures and indicators used by the EU-SILC. In this paper, we used data sets from various countries to analyze the presence of outliers. In addition, we obtain some indicators after removing these outliers, and a comparison between both situations can be observed. Finally, some conclusions are obtained.

Keywords: poverty line, headcount index, risk of poverty, skewness coefficient

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Authors: Carlos Alberto Riveros, Edwin Fabián García, Javier Enrique Rivero

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The measured data obtained from sensors in continuous monitoring of civil structures are mainly used for modal identification and damage detection. Therefore when modal identification analysis is carried out the quality in the identification of the modes will highly influence the damage detection results. It is also widely recognized that the usefulness of the measured data used for modal identification and damage detection is significantly influenced by the number and locations of sensors. The objective of this study is the numerical implementation of two widely known optimum sensor placement methods in beam-like structures

Keywords: optimum sensor placement, structural damage detection, modal identification, beam-like structures.

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Authors: Isabela Romanha de Alcantara, Jose Eustaquio Ribeiro Vieira Filho, Jose Garcia Gasques

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Innovation and technology can be determinant factors to ensure agricultural and sustainable growth, as well as productivity gains. Technical change has contributed considerably to supply agricultural expansion in Brazil. This agricultural growth could be achieved by incorporating more land or capital. If capital is the main source of agricultural growth, it is possible to increase production per unit of land. The objective of this paper is to estimate: 1) total factor productivity (TFP), which is measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input; and 2) the land-saving effect (LSE) that is the amount of land required in the case that yield rate is constant over time. According to this study, from 1990 to 2019, it appears that 87 percent of Brazilian agriculture product growth comes from the gains of productivity; the rest of 13 percent comes from input growth. In the same period, the total LSE was roughly 400 Mha, which corresponds to 47 percent of the national territory. These effects reflect the greater efficiency of using productive factors, whose technical change has allowed an increase in agricultural production based on productivity gains.

Keywords: agriculture, land-saving effect, livestock, productivity

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Authors: J. Fernandez de Canete, P. Del Saz Orozco, I. Garcia-Moral, A. Akhrymenka

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Object-oriented modeling is spreading in current simulation of wastewater treatments plants through the use of the individual components of the process and its relations to define the underlying dynamic equations. In this paper, we describe the use of the free-software OpenModelica simulation environment for the object-oriented modeling of an activated sludge process under feedback control. The performance of the controlled system was analyzed both under normal conditions and in the presence of disturbances. The object-oriented described approach represents a valuable tool in teaching provides a practical insight in wastewater process control field.

Keywords: object-oriented programming, activated sludge process, OpenModelica, feedback control

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Authors: Aitana Alonso-Nogueira, Helia Estévez-Fernández, Isaías García

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This paper presents an approach to reduce some of its current flaws in the requirements phase inside the software development process. It takes the software requirements of an application, makes a conceptual modeling about it and formalizes it within JSON documents. This formal model is lodged in a NoSQL database which is document-oriented, that is, MongoDB, because of its advantages in flexibility and efficiency. In addition, this paper underlines the contributions of the detailed approach and shows some applications and benefits for the future work in the field of automatic code generation using model-driven engineering tools.

Keywords: conceptual modelling, JSON, NoSQL databases, requirements engineering, software development

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Authors: Encarnación Álvarez, Rosa M. García-Fernández, Juan F. Muñoz, Francisco J. Blanco-Encomienda

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The problem of estimating a proportion has important applications in the field of economics, and in general, in many areas such as social sciences. A common application in economics is the estimation of the headcount index. In this paper, we define the general headcount index as a proportion. Furthermore, we introduce a new quantitative method for estimating the headcount index. In particular, we suggest to use the logistic regression estimator for the problem of estimating the headcount index. Assuming a real data set, results derived from Monte Carlo simulation studies indicate that the logistic regression estimator can be more accurate than the traditional estimator of the headcount index.

Keywords: poverty line, poor, risk of poverty, Monte Carlo simulations, sample

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Authors: Carlos Escobar-del Pozo, César Ahumada-Monroy, Azael García-Rebolledo, Alberto Brambila-Solórzano, Gregorio Martínez-Sánchez, Luis Ortiz-Rincón

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Numerical simulations of flow in complex biological structures have gained considerable attention in the last years. However, the major issue is the validation of the results. The present work shows a Particle Image Velocimetry PIV flow visualization technique in complex biological structures, particularly in intracranial aneurysms. A methodology to reconstruct and generate a transparent model has been developed, as well as visualization and particle tracking techniques. The generated transparent models allow visualizing the flow patterns with a regular camera using the visualization techniques. The final goal is to use visualization as a tool to provide more information on the treatment and surgery decisions in aneurysms.

Keywords: aneurysms, PIV, flow visualization, particle tracking

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Authors: José Ramón López-Mínguez, Estrella Suárez-Corchuelo, Sergio López-Tejero, Luis Nombela-Franco, Xavier Freixa-Rofastes, Guillermo Bastos-Fernández, Xavier Millán-Álvarez, Raúl Moreno-Gómez, José Antonio Fernández-Díaz, Ignacio Amat-Santos, Tomás Benito-González, Fernando Alfonso-Manterola, Pablo Salinas-Sanguino, Pedro Cepas-Guillén, Dabit Arzamendi, Ignacio Cruz-González, Juan Manuel Nogales-Asensio

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Background and objectives: The treatment of patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF) who need coronary stenting is challenging. The objective of the study was to determine whether left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) could be a feasible option and benefit these patients. To this end, we studied the impact of LAAO plus antiplatelet drugs vs oral anticoagulants (OAC) (including direct OAC) plus antiplatelet drugs in these patients’ long-term outcomes. Methods: The results of 207 consecutive patients with NVAF who underwent coronary stenting were analyzed. A total of 146 patients were treated with OAC (75 with acenocoumarol, 71 with direct OAC) while 61 underwent LAAO. The median follow-up was 35 months. Patients also received antiplatelet therapy as prescribed by their cardiologist. The study received the proper ethical oversight. Results: Age (mean 75.7 years), and the past medical history of stroke were similar in both groups. However, the LAAO group had more unfavorable characteristics (history of coronary artery disease [CHA2DS2-VASc], and significant bleeding [BARC ≥ 2] and HAS-BLED). The occurrence of major adverse events (death, stroke/transient ischemic events, major bleeding) and major cardiovascular events (cardiac death, stroke/transient ischemic attack, and myocardial infarction) were significantly higher in the OAC group compared to the LAAO group: 19.75% vs 9.06% (HR, 2.18; P = .008) and 6.37% vs 1.91% (HR, 3.34; P = .037), respectively. Conclusions: In patients with NVAF undergoing coronary stenting, LAAO plus antiplatelet therapy produced better long-term outcomes compared to treatment with OAC plus antiplatelet therapy despite the unfavorable baseline characteristics of the LAAO group.

Keywords: stents, atrial fibrillation, anticoagulants, left atrial appendage occlusion

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Authors: Stefania Arguelles Reyes, Octavio José Salcedo Parra, Alberto Acosta López

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This paper presents a web application for the improvement of images through recognition. The web application is based on the analysis of picture-based recognition methods that allow an improvement on the physical appearance of people posting in social networks. The basis relies on the study of tools that can correct or improve some features of the face, with the help of a wide collection of user images taken as reference to build a facial profile. Automatic facial profiling can be achieved with a deeper study of the Object Detection Library. It was possible to improve the initial images with the help of MATLAB and its filtering functions. The user can have a direct interaction with the program and manually adjust his preferences.

Keywords: Matlab, make up, recognition methods, web application

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Authors: Victoriano Valencia García, Luis Usero Aragonés, Eugenio J. Fernández Vicente

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Nowadays, the successful implementation of ICTs is vital for almost any kind of organization. Good governance and ICT management are essential for delivering value, managing technological risks, managing resources and performance measurement. In addition, outsourcing is a strategic IT service solution which complements IT services provided internally in organizations. This paper proposes the measurement tools of a new holistic maturity model based on standards ISO/IEC 20000 and ISO/IEC 38500, and the frameworks and best practices of ITIL and COBIT, with a specific focus on IT outsourcing. These measurement tools allow independent validation and practical application in the field of higher education, using a questionnaire, metrics tables, and continuous improvement plan tables as part of the measurement process. Guidelines and standards are proposed in the model for facilitating adaptation to universities and achieving excellence in the outsourcing of IT services.

Keywords: IT governance, IT management, IT services, outsourcing, maturity model, measurement tools

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Authors: Jesús Antonio Puente Fernández, Luis Javier Garcia Villalba

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New trends on streaming videos such as series or films require a high demand of network resources. This fact results in a huge problem within traditional IP networks due to the rigidity of its architecture. In this way, Software Defined Networks (SDN) is a new concept of network architecture that intends to be more flexible and it simplifies the management in networks with respect to the existing ones. These aspects are possible due to the separation of control plane (controller) and data plane (switches). Taking the advantage of this separated control, it is easy to deploy a monitoring tool independent of device vendors since the existing ones are dependent on the installation of specialized and expensive hardware. In this paper, we propose a framework that optimizes the traffic monitoring in SDN networks that decreases the number of monitoring queries to improve the network traffic and also reduces the overload. The performed experiments (with and without the optimization) using a video streaming delivery between two hosts demonstrate the feasibility of our monitoring proposal.

Keywords: optimization, monitoring, software defined networking, statistics, query

Procedia PDF Downloads 298

Authors: Encarnación Álvarez, Rosa M. García-Fernández, Juan F. Muñoz

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Estimation of a proportion has many applications in economics and social studies. A common application is the estimation of the low income proportion, which gives the proportion of people classified as poor into a population. In this paper, we present this poverty indicator and propose to use the logistic regression estimator for the problem of estimating the low income proportion. Various sampling designs are presented. Assuming a real data set obtained from the European Survey on Income and Living Conditions, Monte Carlo simulation studies are carried out to analyze the empirical performance of the logistic regression estimator under the various sampling designs considered in this paper. Results derived from Monte Carlo simulation studies indicate that the logistic regression estimator can be more accurate than the customary estimator under the various sampling designs considered in this paper. The stratified sampling design can also provide more accurate results.

Keywords: poverty line, risk of poverty, auxiliary variable, ratio method

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Authors: J. M. de Luis Ruiz, P. M. Sierra García, R. P. García, R. P. Álvarez, F. P. García, E. C. López

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Given the evolution of viaducts, structural health monitoring requires more complex techniques to define their state. two alternatives can be distinguished: experimental and operational modal analysis. Although accelerometers or Global Positioning System (GPS) have been applied for the monitoring of structures under exploitation, the dynamic monitoring during the stage of construction is not common. This research analyzes whether GPS data can be applied to certain dynamic geometric controls of evolving structures. The fundamentals of this work were applied to the New Bridge of Cádiz (Spain), a worldwide milestone in bridge building. GPS data were recorded with an interval of 1 second during the erection of segments and turned to the frequency domain with Fourier transform. The vibration period and amplitude were contrasted with those provided by the finite element model, with differences of less than 10%, which is admissible. This process provides a vibration record of the structure with GPS, avoiding specific equipment.

Keywords: Fourier transform, global position system, operational modal analysis, structural health monitoring

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Authors: Marta Fernández Batalla, José María Santamaría García, Maria Lourdes Jiménez Rodríguez, Roberto Barchino Plata, Adriana Cercas Duque, Enrique Monsalvo San Macario

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Background: Primary Care Nursing is taking more autonomy in clinical decisions. One of the most frequent therapies to solve is related to the problems of maintaining a sufficient supply of food. Nursing diagnoses related to food are addressed by the nurse-family and community as the first responsible. Objectives and interventions are set according to each patient. To improve the goal setting and the treatment of these care problems, a technological tool is developed to help nurses. Objective: To evaluate the computational tool developed to support the clinical decision in feeding problems. Material and methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out at the Meco Health Center, Madrid, Spain. The study population consisted of four specialist nurses in primary care. These nurses tested the tool on 30 people with ‘need for nutritional therapy’. Subsequently, the usability of the tool and the satisfaction of the professional were sought. Results: A simple and convenient computational tool is designed for use. It has 3 main entrance fields: age, size, sex. The tool returns the following information: BMI (Body Mass Index) and caloric consumed by the person. The next step is the caloric calculation depending on the activity. It is possible to propose a goal of BMI or weight to achieve. With this, the amount of calories to be consumed is proposed. After using the tool, it was determined that the tool calculated the BMI and calories correctly (in 100% of clinical cases). satisfaction on nutritional assessment was ‘satisfactory’ or ‘very satisfactory’, linked to the speed of operations. As a point of improvement, the options of ‘stress factor’ linked to weekly physical activity. Conclusion: Based on the results, it is clear that the computational tools of decision support are useful in the clinic. Nurses are not only consumers of computational tools, but can develop their own tools. These technological solutions improve the effectiveness of nutrition assessment and intervention. We are currently working on improvements such as the calculation of protein percentages as a function of protein percentages as a function of stress parameters.

Keywords: feeding behavior health, nutrition therapy, primary care nursing, technology assessment

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Authors: Javier Fernandez De Canete, Alvaro Fernandez-Quintero

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Nowadays, adaptive control schemes are being used when model based control schemes are applied in presence of uncertainty and model mismatches. Artificial neural networks have been employed both in modelling and control of non-linear dynamic systems with unknown dynamics. In fact, these are powerful tools to solve this control problem when only input-output operational data are available. A neural network controller under SIMULINK together with the ARDUINO hardware platform has been used to perform real-time speed control of a computer case fan. Comparison of performance with a PID controller has also been presented in order to show the efficacy of neural control under different command signals tracking and also when disturbance signals are present in the speed control loops.

Keywords: neural networks, ARDUINO platform, SIMULINK, adaptive speed control

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Authors: J. Fernandez, N. Aguilar, R. Fernandez de Canete, J. C. Ramos-Diaz

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In this paper, a simulation model of the glucose-insulin system for a patient undergoing diabetes Type 1 is developed by using a causal modeling approach under system dynamics. The OpenModelica simulation environment has been employed to build the so called causal model, while the glucose-insulin model parameters were adjusted to fit recorded mean data of a diabetic patient database. Model results under different conditions of a three-meal glucose and exogenous insulin ingestion patterns have been obtained. This simulation model can be useful to evaluate glucose-insulin performance in several circumstances, including insulin infusion algorithms in open-loop and decision support systems in closed-loop.

Keywords: causal modeling, diabetes, glucose-insulin system, diabetes, causal modeling, OpenModelica software

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Authors: Jose Alberto Duarte Moller, Cynthia Deisy Gomez Esparza

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The cobalt-titanium system was grown as thin films in an INTERCOVAMEX V3 sputtering system, equipped with four magnetrons assisted by DC pulsed and direct DC. A polished highly oriented (400) silicon wafer was used as substrate and the growing temperature was 500 oC. Xray Absorption Spectroscopy experiments were carried out in the SSRL in the 4-3 beam line. The Extenden X-Ray Absorption Fine Structure spectra have been numerically processed by WINXAS software from the background subtraction until the normalization and FFT adjustment. Analyzing the absorption spectra of cobalt in the CoTi2 phase we can appreciate that they agree in energy with the reference spectra that corresponds to the CoO, which indicates that the valence where upon working is Co2+. The RDF experimental results were then compared with those RDF´s generated theoretically by using FEFF software, from a model compound of CoTi2 phase obtained by XRD. The fitting procedure is a highly iterative process. Fits are also checked in R-space using both the real and imaginary parts of Fourier transform. Finally, the presence of overlapping coordination shells and the correctness of the assumption about the nature of the coordinating atom were checked.

Keywords: XAS, EXAFS, FEFF, CoTi

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Authors: Iván García-Magariño, Javier Bravo-Agapito, Marta López-Fernández

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Online judges have proven their utility in partial auto-evaluation of programming short exercises in the last decades. UnitJudge online judge has the advantage of facilitating the evaluation of separate units to provide more segregate and meaningful feedback to students in complex exercises and practices. This paper discusses the use of UnitUdge in advanced Java object-oriented programming exercises and web development practices. This later usage has been proposed by means of the Selenium Java library and classes to provide the web address. Consequently, UnitJudge is an online judge system that can be applied in several subjects, and therefore, many other students would take advantage of self-testing their exercises. This paper presents the experiments with a Java programming exercise for learning Java object-oriented classes with a generic type. Considering 10 students who voluntarily used UnitJudge, 80% successfully learned this concept, passing the judge exercise with correct results.

Keywords: online judges, programming skills, computer science education, auto-evaluation

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Authors: J. Fernandez, R. Fernandez de Canete, J. Perea-Paizal, J. C. Ramos-Diaz

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The high prevalence of cardiovascular diseases has provoked a raising interest in the development of mathematical models in order to evaluate the cardiovascular function both under physiological and pathological conditions. In this paper, a physical model of the cardiovascular system with intrinsic regulation is presented and implemented by using the object-oriented Modelica simulation software tools.  For this task, a multi-compartmental system previously validated with physiological data has been built, based on the interconnection of cardiovascular elements such as resistances, capacitances and pumping among others, by following an electrohydraulic analogy. The results obtained under both physiological and pathological scenarios provide an easy interpretative key to analyze the hemodynamic behavior of the patient. The described approach represents a valuable tool in the teaching of physiology for graduate medical and nursing students among others.

Keywords: cardiovascular system, MODELICA simulation software, physical modelling, teaching tool

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Authors: Hernando Santamaría-García, Sandra Báez, Pablo Reyes, José Santamaría-García, Diana Matallana, Adolfo García, Agustín Ibañez

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The study of moral emotions (i.e., Schadenfreude and envy) is critical to understand the ecological complexity of everyday interactions between cognitive, affective, and social cognition processes. Most previous studies in this area have used correlational imaging techniques and framed Schadenfreude and envy as monolithic domains. Here, we profit from a relevant neurodegeneration model to disentangle the brain regions engaged in three dimensions of Schadenfreude and envy: deservingness, morality, and legality. We tested 20 patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), 24 patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), as a contrastive neurodegeneration model, and 20 healthy controls on a novel task highlighting each of these dimensions in scenarios eliciting Schadenfreude and envy. Compared with the AD and control groups, bvFTD patients obtained significantly higher scores on all dimensions for both emotions. Interestingly, the legal dimension for both envy and Schadenfreude elicited higher emotional scores than the deservingness and moral dimensions. Furthermore, correlational analyses in bvFTD showed that higher envy and Schadenfreude scores were associated with greater deficits in social cognition, inhibitory control, and behavior. Brain anatomy findings (restricted to bvFTD and controls) confirmed differences in how these groups process each dimension. Schadenfreude was associated with the ventral striatum in all subjects. Also, in bvFTD patients, increased Schadenfreude across dimensions was negatively correlated with regions supporting social-value rewards, mentalizing, and social cognition (frontal pole, temporal pole, angular gyrus and precuneus). In all subjects, all dimensions of envy positively correlated with the volume of the anterior cingulate cortex, a region involved in processing unfair social comparisons. By contrast, in bvFTD patients, the intensified experience of envy across all dimensions was negatively correlated with a set of areas subserving social cognition, including the prefrontal cortex, the parahippocampus, and the amygdala. Together, the present results provide the first lesion-based evidence for the multidimensional nature of the emotional experiences of envy and Schadenfreude. Moreover, this is the first demonstration of a selective exacerbation of envy and Schadenfreude in bvFTD patients, probably triggered by atrophy to social cognition networks. Our results offer new insights into the mechanisms subserving complex emotions and moral cognition in neurodegeneration, paving the way for groundbreaking research on their interaction with other cognitive, social, and emotional processes.

Keywords: social cognition, moral emotions, neuroimaging, frontotemporal dementia

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Authors: José Eugenio Ortiz, Pierre Plaza, Josefa Herrero, Iván Cabria, José Luis Blanco, Javier Gavilanes, José Ignacio Escavy, Ignacio López-Cilla, Virginia Yagüe, César Pérez, Silvia Rodríguez, Jorge Rico, Cecilia Serrano, Jesús Bernat

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The development of Artificial Intelligence services in mining processes, specifically in aggregate quarries, is facilitating automation and improving numerous aspects of operations. Ultimately, AI is transforming the mining industry by improving efficiency, safety and sustainability. With the ability to analyze large amounts of data and make autonomous decisions, AI offers great opportunities to optimize mining operations and maximize the economic and social benefits of this vital industry. Within the framework of the European DIGIECOQUARRY project, various services were developed for the identification of material quality, production estimation, detection of anomalies and prediction of consumption and production automatically with good results.

Keywords: aggregates, artificial intelligence, automatization, mining operations

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Authors: Tomás Sobrino, Lara García-Varela, Marta Aramburu-Núñez, Mónica Castro, Noemí Gómez-Lado, Mariña Rodríguez-Arrizabalaga, Antía Custodia, Juan Manuel Pías-Peleteiro, José Manuel Aldrey, Daniel Romaus-Sanjurjo, Ángeles Almeida, Pablo Aguiar, Alberto Ouro

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Introduction: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other tauopathies are primary causes of dementia, causing progressive cognitive deterioration that entails serious repercussions for the patients' performance of daily tasks. Currently, there is no effective approach for the early diagnosis and treatment of AD and tauopathies. This study suggests a theragnostic approach based on the importance of phosphorylated tau protein (p-Tau) in the early pathophysiological processes of AD. We have developed a novel theragnostic monoclonal antibody (mAb) to provide both diagnostic and therapeutic effects. Methods/Results: We have developed a p-Tau mAb, which was doped with deferoxamine for radiolabeling with Zirconium-89 (89Zr) for PET imaging, as well as fluorescence dies for immunofluorescence assays. The p-Tau mAb was evaluated in vitro for toxicity by MTT assay, LDH activity, propidium iodide/Annexin V assay, caspase-3, and mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) assay in both mouse endothelial cell line (bEnd.3) and cortical primary neurons cell cultures. Importantly, non-toxic effects (up to concentrations of p-Tau mAb greater than 100 ug/mL) were detected. In vivo experiments in the tauopathy model mice (PS19) show that the 89Zr-pTau-mAb and 89Zr-Fragments-pTau-mAb are stable in circulation for up to 10 days without toxic effects. However, only less than 0.2% reached the brain, so further strategies have to be designed for crossing the Brain-Blood-Barrier (BBB). Moreover, an intraparenchymal treatment strategy was carried out. The PS19 mice were operated to implement osmotic pumps (Alzet 1004) at two different times, at 4 and 7 months, to stimulate the controlled release for one month each of the B6 antibody or the IgG1 control antibody. We demonstrated that B6-treated mice maintained their motor and memory abilities significantly compared with IgG1 treatment. In addition, we observed a significant reduction in p-Tau deposits in the brain. Conclusions /Discussion: A theragnostic pTau-mAb was developed. Moreover, we demonstrated that our p-Tau mAb recognizes very-early pathology forms of p-Tau by non-invasive techniques, such as PET. In addition, p-Tau mAb has non-toxic effects, both in vitro and in vivo. Although the p-Tau mAb is stable in circulation, only 0.2% achieve the brain. However, direct intraventricular treatment significantly reduces cognitive impairment in Alzheimer's animal models, as well as the accumulation of toxic p-Tau species.

Keywords: alzheimer's disease, theragnosis, tau, PET, immunotherapy, tauopathies

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Authors: Germán Gálvez-García, Marta Lavin, Javiera Peña, Javier Albayay, Claudio Bascour, Jesus Fernandez-Gomez, Alicia Pérez-Gálvez

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We studied the effectiveness of response inhibition in movements with different degrees of motor complexity when they were executed in isolation and alternately. Sixteen participants performed the Stroop task which was used as a measure of response inhibition. Participants responded by lifting the index finger and reaching the screen with the same finger. Both actions were performed separately and alternately in different experimental blocks. Repeated measures ANOVAs were used to compare reaction time, movement time, kinematic errors and Movement errors across conditions (experimental block, movement, and congruency). Delta plots were constructed to perform distributional analyses of response inhibition and accuracy rate. The effectiveness of response inhibition did not show difference when the movements were performed in separated blocks. Nevertheless, it showed differences when they were performed alternately in the same experimental block, being more effective for the lifting action. This could be due to a competition of the available resources during a more complex scenario which also demands to adopt some strategy to avoid errors.

Keywords: response inhibition, motor complexity, Stroop task, delta plots

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Authors: Arturo J. Anci Alméstar, Jose D. Fernandez Huapaya, David Mauricio

Abstract:

Companies make erroneous decisions by not evaluating the inherent difficulties of entering electronic commerce without a prior review of current digital and alternate means of payment. For this reason, it is very important for businesses to have reliable, complete and integrated information on the means of current digital and alternate payments that allow decisions to be made about which of these to use. However, there is no such consolidated information or criteria that companies use to make decisions about the means of payment according to their needs. In this paper, we propose a decision tree model based on a taxonomy that presents us with a categorization of digital and alternative means of payment, as well as the visualization of the flow of information at a high level from the company to obtain a recommendation. This will allow the company to make the most appropriate decision about the implementation of the digital means of payment or alternative ideal for their needs, which allows a reduction in costs and complexity of the payment process. Likewise, the efficiency of the proposed model was evaluated through a satisfaction survey presented to company personnel, confirming the satisfactory quality level of the recommendations obtained by the model.

Keywords: digital payment medium, decision tree, decision making, digital payments taxonomy

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