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

Ultrastructural, morphometrical and immunocytochemical analyses of the exocrine pancreas in a hibernating dormouse.

Pancreatic acinar cells of euthermic, hibernating and arousing individuals of the hazel dormouse Muscardinus avellanarius (Gliridae) have been observed at the electron-microscopic level and analysed by means of ultrastructural morphometry and immunocytochemistry in order to investigate possible fine structural changes of cellular components during periods of strikingly different degrees of metabolic activity. During hibernation, the cisternae of the rough endoplasmic reticulum (RER) flatten assuming a parallel pattern, the Golgi apparatus is extremely reduced and the mitochondria contain many electron-dense particles. The cell nuclei appear irregularly shaped, with deep indentations containing small zymogen granules. They also contain abundant coiled bodies and unusual constituents, such as amorphous bodies and dense granular bodies. Large numbers of zymogen granules occur in all animals. However, the acinar lumina are open and filled with zymogen only in euthermic animals, whereas, in hibernating and arousing individuals, they appear to be closed. Morphometrical analyses indicate that, in pancreatic acinar cells, nuclei and zymogen granules significantly decrease in size from euthermia to hibernation, probably reflecting a drastic decrease of metabolic activities, mainly protein synthesis and processing. In all the studied animals, immunocytochemistry with specific antibodies has revealed an increasing gradient in alpha-amylase content along the RER-Golgi-zymogen granule pathway, reflecting the protein concentration along the secretory pathway. Moreover, during deep hibernation, significantly larger amounts of alpha-amylase accumulate in RER and zymogen granules in comparison to the other seasonal phases analysed. Upon arousal, all cytoplasmic and nuclear constituents restore their euthermic aspect and all morphometrical and immunocytochemical parameters exhibit the euthermic values, thereby indicating a rapid resumption of metabolic activities.

Aplicació en línia d'un sistema variable de control multivariable en un Reactor ..

L’objecte del present treball és la realització d’una aplicació que permeti portar a terme el control estadístic multivariable en línia d’una planta SBR.Aquesta eina ha de permetre realitzar un anàlisi estadístic multivariable complet del lot en procés, de l’últim lot finalitzat i de la resta de lots processats a la planta.L’aplicació s’ha de realitzar en l’entorn LabVIEW. L’elecció d’aquest programa vecondicionada per l’actualització del mòdul de monitorització de la planta que s’estàdesenvolupant en aquest mateix entorn

A protocol for a systematic review on the impact of unpublished studies and studies published in the gray literature in meta-analyses.

BACKGROUND: Meta-analyses are particularly vulnerable to the effects of publication bias. Despite methodologists' best efforts to locate all evidence for a given topic the most comprehensive searches are likely to miss unpublished studies and studies that are published in the gray literature only. If the results of the missing studies differ systematically from the published ones, a meta-analysis will be biased with an inaccurate assessment of the intervention's effects.As part of the OPEN project (http://www.open-project.eu) we will conduct a systematic review with the following objectives:â-ª To assess the impact of studies that are not published or published in the gray literature on pooled effect estimates in meta-analyses (quantitative measure).â-ª To assess whether the inclusion of unpublished studies or studies published in the gray literature leads to different conclusions in meta-analyses (qualitative measure). METHODS/DESIGN: Inclusion criteria: Methodological research projects of a cohort of meta-analyses which compare the effect of the inclusion or exclusion of unpublished studies or studies published in the gray literature.Literature search: To identify relevant research projects we will conduct electronic searches in Medline, Embase and The Cochrane Library; check reference lists; and contact experts.Outcomes: 1) The extent to which the effect estimate in a meta-analyses changes with the inclusion or exclusion of studies that were not published or published in the gray literature; and 2) the extent to which the inclusion of unpublished studies impacts the meta-analyses' conclusions.Data collection: Information will be collected on the area of health care; the number of meta-analyses included in the methodological research project; the number of studies included in the meta-analyses; the number of study participants; the number and type of unpublished studies; studies published in the gray literature and published studies; the sources used to retrieve studies that are unpublished, published in the gray literature, or commercially published; and the validity of the methodological research project.Data synthesis: Data synthesis will involve descriptive and statistical summaries of the findings of the included methodological research projects. DISCUSSION: Results are expected to be publicly available in the middle of 2013.

Mètriques de productivitat de programari per a la gestió de projectes

Treball fi de carrera sobre les mètriques de productivitat de programari per a la gestió de projectes.

Servidor d'impressió per a ordinadors a monedes

Aquest projecte es va realitzar per a un client que disposa d’un conjunt d’uns 100 ordinadors per a accés a internet amb accés temporitzat per monedes, ubicats en diferents locals, I havia observat una creixent demanda del servei d’impressió, entre d'altres per a fer el checkin per a ryanair.L'objecte d'aquest projecte és crear un sistema que permeti realitzar el cobrament de les impressions de forma prèvia i automàtica, alhora que clara per al client final. Aquest sistema ha de funcionar de forma autònoma, alliberant així al personal del local de les tasques de gestió de la impressora.Cal tenir en compte que aquest sistema ha de funcionar tant per a Linux com per a Windows XP o superior.Es dissenyarà l’electrònica i el software corresponent al servidor d’ impressió,així com les comunicacions entre el servidor d’impressió i els ordinadors per monedes. Quant als ordinadors controlats per monedes, s'implantarà la comunicació amb el moneder, per tal de controlar el crèdit disponible i descomptar el temps corresponent a les impressions. Per altre banda, es realitzarà una interfície d'usuari on es comunicarà a l’usuari el preu de les impressions, el temps que se li restarà, el que té disponible i el que li restaràdesprés de realitzar la impressió. En aquesta mateixa pantalla se li donarà la opció d'acceptar o rebutjar la impressió abans que li sigui descomptada del temps disponible

Diagnosing Patients Combining Principal Components Analysis and Case Based Reasoning

This paper addresses the application of a PCA analysis on categorical data prior to diagnose a patients data set using a Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) system. The particularity is that the standard PCA techniques are designed to deal with numerical attributes, but our medical data set contains many categorical data and alternative methods as RS-PCA are required. Thus, we propose to hybridize RS-PCA (Regular Simplex PCA) and a simple CBR. Results show how the hybrid system produces similar results when diagnosing a medical data set, that the ones obtained when using the original attributes. These results are quite promising since they allow to diagnose with less computation effort and memory storage

Land plants and DNA barcodes: short-term and long-term goals.

Land plants have had the reputation of being problematic for DNA barcoding for two general reasons: (i) the standard DNA regions used in algae, animals and fungi have exceedingly low levels of variability and (ii) the typically used land plant plastid phylogenetic markers (e.g. rbcL, trnL-F, etc.) appear to have too little variation. However, no one has assessed how well current phylogenetic resources might work in the context of identification (versus phylogeny reconstruction). In this paper, we make such an assessment, particularly with two of the markers commonly sequenced in land plant phylogenetic studies, plastid rbcL and internal transcribed spacers of the large subunits of nuclear ribosomal DNA (ITS), and find that both of these DNA regions perform well even though the data currently available in GenBank/EBI were not produced to be used as barcodes and BLAST searches are not an ideal tool for this purpose. These results bode well for the use of even more variable regions of plastid DNA (such as, for example, psbA-trnH) as barcodes, once they have been widely sequenced. In the short term, efforts to bring land plant barcoding up to the standards being used now in other organisms should make swift progress. There are two categories of DNA barcode users, scientists in fields other than taxonomy and taxonomists. For the former, the use of mitochondrial and plastid DNA, the two most easily assessed genomes, is at least in the short term a useful tool that permits them to get on with their studies, which depend on knowing roughly which species or species groups they are dealing with, but these same DNA regions have important drawbacks for use in taxonomic studies (i.e. studies designed to elucidate species limits). For these purposes, DNA markers from uniparentally (usually maternally) inherited genomes can only provide half of the story required to improve taxonomic standards being used in DNA barcoding. In the long term, we will need to develop more sophisticated barcoding tools, which would be multiple, low-copy nuclear markers with sufficient genetic variability and PCR-reliability; these would permit the detection of hybrids and permit researchers to identify the 'genetic gaps' that are useful in assessing species limits.

Statistical significance of quantitative PCR.

BACKGROUND: PCR has the potential to detect and precisely quantify specific DNA sequences, but it is not yet often used as a fully quantitative method. A number of data collection and processing strategies have been described for the implementation of quantitative PCR. However, they can be experimentally cumbersome, their relative performances have not been evaluated systematically, and they often remain poorly validated statistically and/or experimentally. In this study, we evaluated the performance of known methods, and compared them with newly developed data processing strategies in terms of resolution, precision and robustness. RESULTS: Our results indicate that simple methods that do not rely on the estimation of the efficiency of the PCR amplification may provide reproducible and sensitive data, but that they do not quantify DNA with precision. Other evaluated methods based on sigmoidal or exponential curve fitting were generally of both poor resolution and precision. A statistical analysis of the parameters that influence efficiency indicated that it depends mostly on the selected amplicon and to a lesser extent on the particular biological sample analyzed. Thus, we devised various strategies based on individual or averaged efficiency values, which were used to assess the regulated expression of several genes in response to a growth factor. CONCLUSION: Overall, qPCR data analysis methods differ significantly in their performance, and this analysis identifies methods that provide DNA quantification estimates of high precision, robustness and reliability. These methods allow reliable estimations of relative expression ratio of two-fold or higher, and our analysis provides an estimation of the number of biological samples that have to be analyzed to achieve a given precision.

BadiRate: Estimating Family Turnover Rates by Likelihood-Based Methods

Motivation: The comparative analysis of gene gain and loss rates is critical for understanding the role of natural selection and adaptation in shaping gene family sizes. Studying complete genome data from closely related species allows accurate estimation of gene family turnover rates. Current methods and software tools, however, are not well designed for dealing with certain kinds of functional elements, such as microRNAs or transcription factor binding sites. Results: Here, we describe BadiRate, a new software tool to estimate family turnover rates, as well as the number of elements in internal phylogenetic nodes, by likelihood-based methods and parsimony. It implements two stochastic population models, which provide the appropriate statistical framework for testing hypothesis, such as lineage-specific gene family expansions or contractions. We have assessed the accuracy of BadiRate by computer simulations, and have also illustrated its functionality by analyzing a representative empirical dataset.

BadiRate: estimating family turnover rates by likelihood-based methods

Motivation: The comparative analysis of gene gain and loss rates is critical for understanding the role of natural selection and adaptation in shaping gene family sizes. Studying complete genome data from closely related species allows accurate estimation of gene family turnover rates. Current methods and software tools, however, are not well designed for dealing with certain kinds of functional elements, such as microRNAs or transcription factor binding sites. Results: Here, we describe BadiRate, a new software tool to estimate family turnover rates, as well as the number of elements in internal phylogenetic nodes, by likelihood-based methods and parsimony. It implements two stochastic population models, which provide the appropriate statistical framework for testing hypothesis, such as lineage-specific gene family expansions or contractions. We have assessed the accuracy of BadiRate by computer simulations, and have also illustrated its functionality by analyzing a representative empirical dataset.

Uuden täydennysyhteistyömallin toteuttaminen: vaikutukset toimittajayritykseen

Pärjätäkseen nykypäivän kiristyvässä kilpailussa yritysten on kuuluttava kilpailukykyiseen toimitusketjuun ja toimittava yhteistyössä muiden yritysten kanssa. Yksi tunnetuimmista yhteistyömenetelmistä on täydennysyhteistyö, jossa toimittaja vastaa toimitusten suunnittelusta ilman perinteistä tilaus-toimitus-prosessia. Täydennysyhteistyöstä käytetään eri nimityksiä toimialasta ja toimitusketjun portaasta riippuen, mutta yleisellä tasolla on kyse samoista periaatteista: toimittajalla on vastuu varaston täydentämisestä ja sillä on käytössään täydennyspäätöksiin tarvittavaa tietoa. Työssä tarkastellaan tapausta, jossa toimittaja on ottanut käyttöön uuden täydennysyhteistyöhön liittyvän toimintatavan ja täydennystoimitusten laskentaan käytettävän työkalun. Tavoitteena on selvittää uuden täydennysyhteistyömallin käyttöönoton vaikutukset toimittajan näkökulmasta. Kirjallisuuskatsauksen avulla kartoitetaan täydennystoimitusten suunnitteluun vaikuttavat tekijät. Työssä kuvataan vanha ja uusi täydennysyhteistyömalli ja niitä vertaillaan keskenään. Uuden tyädennysyhteistyömallin vaikutuksia tutkitaan kolmella tasolla: yhteistyön mahdollistajat, suunnittelu ja prosessit sekä suorituskyky. Tutkimuksen perusteella uuden täydennysyhteistyömallin etuja ovat muun muassa tiedon käsittelyn nopeus ja helppous. Puutteeksi koetaan toimitussuunnitelman muuttamisen hankaluus työkalussa. Vaikka lähes kaikkien tutkimusotoksen tuotteiden keskimääräiset varastotasot olivat alentuneet uuden täydennysyhteistyömallin käyttöönoton jälkeen, varastotavoitteiden saavuttaminen ei ollut parantunut. Tuloksiin vaikuttavat useattekijät, joista tärkeimpiä ovat kysynnän vaihtelu ja volyymi sekä varastotavoite. Lisäksi ennustetarkkuus vaikuttaa toimitusten suunnitteluun ja siten varastonsuorituskykyyn.