Understanding Tariff Deficit and its Challenges

Regulators and market participants have become increasingly concerned about the Spanish electricity tariff deficit due to its size and the difficulties to control its growth. The deficit can be traced to inefficiencies in market organization and solutions should be designed to mitigate those inefficiencies. Tariff deficits have allowed for the transfer of part of the present costs of electricity services to future consumers, but this situation has reached a limit and a deep revision of regulation in this market cannot be postponed. In general, solutions that interfere with market prices and signals are not appropriate.

Application of Entropy and Fractal Dimension Analyses to the Pattern Recognition of Contaminated Fish Responses in Aquaculture

The objective of the work was to develop a non-invasive methodology for image acquisition, processing and nonlinear trajectory analysis of the collective fish response to a stochastic event. Object detection and motion estimation were performed by an optical flow algorithm in order to detect moving fish and simultaneously eliminate background, noise and artifacts. The Entropy and the Fractal Dimension (FD) of the trajectory followed by the centroids of the groups of fish were calculated using Shannon and permutation Entropy and the Katz, Higuchi and Katz-Castiglioni's FD algorithms respectively. The methodology was tested on three case groups of European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax), two of which were similar (C1 control and C2 tagged fish) and very different from the third (C3, tagged fish submerged in methylmercury contaminated water). The results indicate that Shannon entropy and Katz-Castiglioni were the most sensitive algorithms and proved to be promising tools for the non-invasive identification and quantification of differences in fish responses. In conclusion, we believe that this methodology has the potential to be embedded in online/real time architecture for contaminant monitoring programs in the aquaculture industry.

The Derivation of Dative Alternations

Maia Duguine, Susana Huidobro and Nerea Madariaga (eds.)

Impacts of Climate Change on European Critical Infrastructures: The Case of the Power Sector

23 p.

Effect of Neonatal Asphyxia on the Impairment of the Auditory Pathway by Recording Auditory Brainstem Responses in Newborn Piglets: A New Experimentation Model to Study the Perinatal Hypoxic-Ischemic Damage on the Auditory Syste

Introduction Hypoxia-ischemia (HI) is a major perinatal problem that results in severe damage to the brain impairing the normal development of the auditory system. The purpose of the present study is to study the effect of perinatal asphyxia on the auditory pathway by recording auditory brain responses in a novel animal experimentation model in newborn piglets. Method Hypoxia-ischemia was induced to 1.3 day-old piglets by clamping 30 minutes both carotid arteries by vascular occluders and lowering the fraction of inspired oxygen. We compared the Auditory Brain Responses (ABRs) of newborn piglets exposed to acute hypoxia/ischemia (n = 6) and a control group with no such exposure (n = 10). ABRs were recorded for both ears before the start of the experiment (baseline), after 30 minutes of HI injury, and every 30 minutes during 6 h after the HI injury. Results Auditory brain responses were altered during the hypoxic-ischemic insult but recovered 30-60 minutes later. Hypoxia/ischemia seemed to induce auditory functional damage by increasing I-V latencies and decreasing wave I, III and V amplitudes, although differences were not significant. Conclusion The described experimental model of hypoxia-ischemia in newborn piglets may be useful for studying the effect of perinatal asphyxia on the impairment of the auditory pathway.