Measuring the stability of histogram appearance when the anchor position is changed

Although the histogram is the most widely used density estimator, itis well--known that the appearance of a constructed histogram for a given binwidth can change markedly for different choices of anchor position. In thispaper we construct a stability index $G$ that assesses the potential changesin the appearance of histograms for a given data set and bin width as theanchor position changes. If a particular bin width choice leads to an unstableappearance, the arbitrary choice of any one anchor position is dangerous, anda different bin width should be considered. The index is based on the statisticalroughness of the histogram estimate. We show via Monte Carlo simulation thatdensities with more structure are more likely to lead to histograms withunstable appearance. In addition, ignoring the precision to which the datavalues are provided when choosing the bin width leads to instability. We provideseveral real data examples to illustrate the properties of $G$. Applicationsto other binned density estimators are also discussed.

The sustainable debts of Philip II: A reconstruction of Castile's fiscal position, 1566-1596

The defaults of Philip II have attained mythical status as the origin of sovereigndebt crises. We reassess the fiscal position of Habsburg Castile, derivingcomprehensive estimates of revenue, debt, and expenditure from new archivaldata. The king s debts were sustainable. Primary surpluses were large and rising.Debt-to-revenue ratios remained broadly unchanged during Philip s reign.Castilian finances in the sixteenth century compare favorably with those of otherearly modern fiscal states at the height of their imperial ambitions, includingBritain. The defaults of Philip II therefore reflected short-term liquidity crises,and were not a sign of unsustainable debts.

Vehicle de guiat automàtic (AGV)

Aquest projecte documenta la simulació d'un AGV (vehicle de guiat automàtic). Mitjançant un robot educatiu programat en Basic Stamp es simula un entorn d'anàlisi clínic a on el robot gestiona de forma automàtica les estacions d'anàlisi d'una hipotètica mostra de sang.

Membrane-destabilizing activity of pH-responsive cationic lysine-based surfactants: role of charge position and alkyl chain length

Many strategies for treating diseases require the delivery of drugs into the cell cytoplasm following internalization within endosomal vesicles. Thus, compounds triggered by low pH to disrupt membranes and release endosomal contents into the cytosol are of particular interest. Here, we report novel cationic lysine-based surfactants (hydrochloride salts of N¿- and N¿-acyl lysine methyl ester) that differ in the position of the positive charge and the length of the alkyl chain. Amino acid-based surfactants could be promising novel biomaterials in drug delivery systems, given their biocompatible properties and low cytotoxic potential. We examined their ability to disrupt the cell membrane in a range of pH values, concentrations and incubation times, using a standard hemolysis assay as a model of endosomal membranes. Furthermore, we addressed the mechanism of surfactant-mediated membrane destabilization, including the effects of each surfactant on erythrocyte morphology as a function of pH. We found that only surfactants with the positive charge on the ¿-amino group of lysine showed pH-sensitive hemolytic activity and improved kinetics within the endosomal pH range, indicating that the positive charge position is critical for pH-responsive behavior. Moreover, our results showed that an increase in the alkyl chain length from 14 to 16 carbon atoms was associated with a lower ability to disrupt cell membranes. Knowledge on modulating surfactant-lipid bilayer interactions may help us to develop more efficient biocompatible amino acid-based drug delivery devices.

Reconfigurable Architecture To Estimate The Motion Of An Underwater Vehicle

This work proposes a parallel architecture for a motion estimation algorithm. It is well known that image processing requires a huge amount of computation, mainly at low level processing where the algorithms are dealing with a great numbers of data-pixel. One of the solutions to estimate motions involves detection of the correspondences between two images. Due to its regular processing scheme, parallel implementation of correspondence problem can be an adequate approach to reduce the computation time. This work introduces parallel and real-time implementation of such low-level tasks to be carried out from the moment that the current image is acquired by the camera until the pairs of point-matchings are detected

Reinforcement learning utilizes proxemics: an avatar learns to manipulate the position of people in immersive virtual reality

A reinforcement learning (RL) method was used to train a virtual character to move participants to a specified location. The virtual environment depicted an alleyway displayed through a wide field-of-view head-tracked stereo head-mounted display. Based on proxemics theory, we predicted that when the character approached within a personal or intimate distance to the participants, they would be inclined to move backwards out of the way. We carried out a between-groups experiment with 30 female participants, with 10 assigned arbitrarily to each of the following three groups: In the Intimate condition the character could approach within 0.38m and in the Social condition no nearer than 1.2m. In the Random condition the actions of the virtual character were chosen randomly from among the same set as in the RL method, and the virtual character could approach within 0.38m. The experiment continued in each case until the participant either reached the target or 7 minutes had elapsed. The distributions of the times taken to reach the target showed significant differences between the three groups, with 9 out of 10 in the Intimate condition reaching the target significantly faster than the 6 out of 10 who reached the target in the Social condition. Only 1 out of 10 in the Random condition reached the target. The experiment is an example of applied presence theory: we rely on the many findings that people tend to respond realistically in immersive virtual environments, and use this to get people to achieve a task of which they had been unaware. This method opens up the door for many such applications where the virtual environment adapts to the responses of the human participants with the aim of achieving particular goals.

Position Document on the UN Secretary General's Report In Larger Freedom

Aquest document és el resultat de contrastar el “know-how” dels nostres projectes relacionats amb els temes tractats pel Secretari General de l’ONU, Kofi Annan.

Position Document of the Secretariat on System-Wide Coherence in the context of UN Reform Processes

The present document should be seen as one more contribution to the debate to the reform processes and a small guide to these processes and their latest outcomes.

Maximum likelihood estimation of position in GNSS

In this letter, we obtain the Maximum LikelihoodEstimator of position in the framework of Global NavigationSatellite Systems. This theoretical result is the basis of a completelydifferent approach to the positioning problem, in contrastto the conventional two-steps position estimation, consistingof estimating the synchronization parameters of the in-viewsatellites and then performing a position estimation with thatinformation. To the authors’ knowledge, this is a novel approachwhich copes with signal fading and it mitigates multipath andjamming interferences. Besides, the concept of Position–basedSynchronization is introduced, which states that synchronizationparameters can be recovered from a user position estimation. Weprovide computer simulation results showing the robustness ofthe proposed approach in fading multipath channels. The RootMean Square Error performance of the proposed algorithm iscompared to those achieved with state-of-the-art synchronizationtechniques. A Sequential Monte–Carlo based method is used todeal with the multivariate optimization problem resulting fromthe ML solution in an iterative way.

Reinforcement learning utilizes proxemics: an avatar learns to manipulate the position of people in immersive virtual reality

A reinforcement learning (RL) method was used to train a virtual character to move participants to a specified location. The virtual environment depicted an alleyway displayed through a wide field-of-view head-tracked stereo head-mounted display. Based on proxemics theory, we predicted that when the character approached within a personal or intimate distance to the participants, they would be inclined to move backwards out of the way. We carried out a between-groups experiment with 30 female participants, with 10 assigned arbitrarily to each of the following three groups: In the Intimate condition the character could approach within 0.38m and in the Social condition no nearer than 1.2m. In the Random condition the actions of the virtual character were chosen randomly from among the same set as in the RL method, and the virtual character could approach within 0.38m. The experiment continued in each case until the participant either reached the target or 7 minutes had elapsed. The distributions of the times taken to reach the target showed significant differences between the three groups, with 9 out of 10 in the Intimate condition reaching the target significantly faster than the 6 out of 10 who reached the target in the Social condition. Only 1 out of 10 in the Random condition reached the target. The experiment is an example of applied presence theory: we rely on the many findings that people tend to respond realistically in immersive virtual environments, and use this to get people to achieve a task of which they had been unaware. This method opens up the door for many such applications where the virtual environment adapts to the responses of the human participants with the aim of achieving particular goals.

Estudi comparatiu dels filtres de Kalman i IMM per a navegació

Els sistemes híbrids de navegació integren mesures de posició i velocitat provinents de satèl·lits (GPS) i d’unitats de mesura inercials (IMU).Les dades d’aquests sensors s’han de fusionar i suavitzar, i per a aquest propòsit existeixen diversos algorismes de filtratge, que tracten les dades conjuntament o per separat. En aquest treball s’han codificat en Matlab els algorismes dels filtres de Kalman i IMM, i s’han comparat les seves prestacions en diverses trajectòries d’un vehicle. S’han avaluat quantitativament els errors dels dos filtres, i s’han sintonitzat els seus paràmetres per a minimitzar aquests errors. Amb una correcta sintonia dels filtres, s’ha comprovat que el filtre IMM és superior al filtre de Kalman, tant per maniobres brusques com per maniobres suaus, malgrat que la complexitat i el temps de càlcul requerit són majors.

Control de trajectòries òptimes en vehicles submarins : modelització d'un vehicle submarí i estudi de la seva controlabilitat i control òptim de la trajectòria sota linearització

Es modelitza un vehicle submarí i s'estudien diferents alternatives de control sota linearització sota l'assumpció d'una geometria d'elipsoide prolat, obtenint les gràfiques de l'estat i el control en un interval de temps.

Disseny de les llantes en material compòsit de les rodes davanteres i roda posterior del vehicle de baix consum "Àguila"

Durant els últims dos anys un grup d’estudiants de l’Escola Politècnica Superior de laUniversitat de Girona han construït i evolucionat un prototip per competir en la Shell EcoMarathon, una cursa de caràcter internacional que es celebra cada any a Nogaro (França) ia on l’objectiu primordial és aconseguir el mínim consum. Equips de diferents països delmón recorren amb els seus prototips la mateixa distància i el guanyador és qui en finalitzarhagi fet servir menys quantitat de combustible. La intenció de l’equip és continuar competint en aquest cursa durant els propers anys, peraquest motiu cada any es plantegen noves modificacions a realitzar per tal d’aconseguir unprototip més competitiu. Una de les modificacions consisteix en substituir les actuals llantesd’alumini equipades en el vehicle per unes llantes lenticulars fabricades en fibra de carboni.Aquestes llantes en material compòsit representen una millora en prestacions respecte lesllantes convencionals en reduir la inèrcia.Escollir la fibra de carboni com el material a emprar no ha estat a l’atzar. Els avantatges quecomporta la fibra de carboni en referència als rati rigidesa/pes i resistència/pes sónindiscutibles. La resistència a la fatiga d’aquest tipus de material és més elevada que la del’alumini, material utilitzat en les actuals llantes, a més, la voluntat d’entendre millor elcomportament i els processos de fabricació d’aquest material per part dels membres del’equip posicionen a la fibra de carboni com el material més idoni.La solució final adoptada pel disseny de les llantes consta per la unió adhesiva de duespeces iguals fabricades en fibra de carboni. La facilitat de poder fabricar dos “plats” simètricsresulta el punt fort d’aquest disseny, el qual, amb un únic motllo s’arriben a construir latotalitat de les llantes

Treatment of cancer with oral drugs: a position statement by the Spanish Society of Medical Oncology

Cancer treatment involves the participation of multiple medical specialties and, as our knowledge of the disease increases, this fact becomes even more apparent. The degree of multidisciplinarity is determined by several factors, which include the severity and type of disease, the increasing diversity in the available pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapies, and the range of specialists involved in cancer therapy, such as medical oncologists, radiotherapists, gynecologists, gastroenterologists, urologists, surgeons, and pneumologists, among others. Across Europe, the situation of cancer care can be variable due to the diversity of health systems, differences in drug reimbursement, and the degree of establishment of Medical Oncology as a medical specialty in the European Union states.