Suchergebnisse

Purpose
This paper aims to analyse the sustainability of two Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya campuses evaluating energy consumption. To do this, the authors consider using geographic information systems (GIS) tools to calculate greenhouse gas emissions in several scenarios.


Design/methodology/approach
Mixed methods (graphical and statistical) and a case study approach are used, considering energy consumption invoice data (electricity and gas) and qualitative data such as the use of buildings, academic calendar, schedules and the COVID-19 pandemics evolution. This study considers two Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya campuses in Barcelona: Baix Llobregat and Diagonal Nord.


Findings
The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya has been managing energy consumption since 2010 using SIRENA (Sistema d'Informació dels Recursos Energètics i l'Aigua, sd) as an energy monitoring and management information system for all the campuses. However, this consumption has never been neither directly computed nor visualized over the study area.This research has used GIS as a sustainability assessment tool, and the results have shown that it can be appropriate for managing data and generating new information that allows detecting anomalies in those buildings that emit more carbon dioxide at different time intervals on Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya campuses. Heat maps are obtained using spatial analysis with inverse distance-weighted interpolation method, supported by statistical analysis such as percentage variation, outlier detection and nonparametric paired tests to verify the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions using renewable energy sources. After having applied the established methodology, the results obtained have determined that energy consumption can demonstrate the state of the buildings, and how much they can affect the environment if measures are not established to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Furthermore, it has been detected that the buildings on both university campuses have pollution problems, generated by the workload and use.


Originality/value
This paper aims to promote the use of tools for sustainability assessment in buildings and to detect existing deficiencies that allow to establish measures to mitigatng these risks in the present and future, and reducing pollution and carbon dioxide emissions. One such tool is GIS. Taking advantage of the situation produced by the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been possible to consider different real occupancy scenarios and their implication on consumption. Likewise, the GIS tools are useful for decision-making as they allow visualization of real environmental problems in buildings, thus proposing continuous improvement strategies to reduce environmental pollution.

Two alternative exact characterizations of the minimum error probability of Bayesian M-ary hypothesis testing are derived. The first expression corresponds to the error probability of an induced binary hypothesis test and implies the tightness of the meta-converse bound by Polyanskiy et al.; the second expression is a function of an information-spectrum measure and implies the tightness of a generalized Verdú-Han lower bound. The formulas characterize the minimum error probability of several problems in information theory and help to identify the steps where existing converse bounds are loose. ; This work was supported in part by the European Research Council under Grant 259663, in part by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Grant FPDI-2013-18602, Grant RYC-2011-08150, and Grant TEC2012-38800-C03-03, and in part by the European Union's 7th Framework Programme under Grant 303633 and Grant 329837.

This paper studies the random-coding exponent of joint source-channel coding for a scheme where source messages are assigned to disjoint subsets (referred to as classes), and codewords are independently generated according to a distribution that depends on the class index of the source message. For discrete memoryless systems, two optimally chosen classes and product distributions are found to be sufficient to attain the sphere-packing exponent in those cases where it is tight. ; This work has been funded in part by the European Research Council (ERC) under grant agreement 259663; by the European Union under the 7th Framework Programme, grants FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IEF no. 252663, FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG no. 303633, FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG no. 333680, FP7- PEOPLE-2013-IEF no. 329837; and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under grants CSD2008-00010, TEC2009-14504-C02- 01, TEC2012-38800-C03-01, TEC2012-38800-C03-03 and RYC-2011-08150. A. Tauste Campo acknowledges funding from an EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK) Doctoral Prize Award.

OBJECTIVE: We introduce a method that quantifies the consistent involvement of intracranially monitored regions in recurrent focal seizures. METHODS: We evaluated the consistency of two ictal spectral activation patterns (mean power change and power change onset time) in intracranial recordings across focal seizures from seven patients with clinically marked seizure onset zone (SOZ). We examined SOZ discrimination using both patterns in different frequency bands and periods of interest. RESULTS: Activation patterns were proved to be consistent across more than 80% of recurrent ictal epochs. In all patients, whole-seizure mean activations were significantly higher for SOZ than non-SOZ regions (P<0.05) while activation onset times were significantly lower for SOZ than for non-SOZ regions (P<0.001) in six patients. Alpha-beta bands (8-20Hz) achieved the highest patient-average effect size on the whole-seizure period while gamma band (20-70Hz) achieved the highest discrimination values between SOZ and non-SOZ sites near seizure onset (0-5s). CONCLUSIONS: Consistent spectral activation patterns in focal epilepsies discriminate the SOZ with high effect sizes upon appropriate selection of frequency bands and activation periods. SIGNIFICANCE: The present method may be used to improve epileptogenic identification as well as pinpoint additional regions that are functionally altered during ictal events. ; The research was supported by the European Union's Horizon2020 research and innovation program under Grant AgreementNo. 720270. M.V. was supported by the Catalan Research projectAL08814 - AGAUR - 2014SGR856. G.D. was supported by the Euro-pean Research Council Advanced Grant DYSTRUCTURE (Grant295129) and by the Spanish Research Project AEI/FEDER-PSI2016–75688-P. A.T.C. was supported by the European ResearchCouncil Advanced Grant DYSTRUCTURE (Grant 295129) and by theSpanish Research Project AEI/FEDER-PSI2016–75688-P.

The spatial mapping of localized events in brain activity critically depends on the correct identification of the pattern signatures associated with those events. For instance, in the context of epilepsy research, a number of different electrophysiological patterns have been associated with epileptogenic activity. Motivated by the need to define automated seizure focus detectors, we propose a novel data-driven algorithm for the spatial identification of localized events that is based on the following rationale: the distribution of emerging oscillations during confined events across all recording sites is highly non-uniform and can be mapped using a spatial entropy function. By applying this principle to EEG recording obtained from 67 distinct seizure epochs, our method successfully identified the seizure focus on a group of ten drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy patients (average sensitivity: 0.94, average specificity: 0.90) together with its characteristic electrophysiological pattern signature. Cross-validation of the method outputs with postresective information revealed the consistency of our findings in long follow-up seizure-free patients. Overall, our methodology provides a reliable computational procedure that might be used as in both experimental and clinical domains to identify the neural populations undergoing an emerging functional or pathological transition. ; M.V was supported by a fellowship from "la Caixa" Foundation, Spain (ID 100010434, fellowship code LCF/BQ/DE17/11600022). G.D. was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, Spain (grant agreement number PSI2016-75688-P, MINECO/AEI/FEDER-EU); European Union's Horizon 2020 FET Flagship Human Brain Project (grant agreement number 785907, HBP SGA2); the Catalan Agency for Management of University and Research Grants, Spain (grant agreement number 2017 SGR 1545), and the Swiss National Science Foundation, Switzerland (grant agreement number CRSII5_170873).

This paper studies the random-coding exponent of joint source-channel coding for a scheme where source messages are assigned to disjoint subsets (referred to as classes), and codewords are independently generated according to a distribution that depends on the class index of the source message. For discrete memoryless systems, two optimally chosen classes and product distributions are found to be sufficient to attain the sphere-packing exponent in those cases where it is tight. ; This work was supported in part by the European Research Council under Grant 259663, in part by the European Union under the 7th Framework Programme under Grant FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IEF 252663, Grant FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG 303633, Grant FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG 333680, and Grant FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF 329837, and in part by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Grant CSD2008-00010, Grant TEC2009-14504-C02-01, Grant TEC2012-38800-C03-01, Grant TEC2012-38800-C03-03, and Grant RYC-2011-08150.

The direction of functional information flow in the sensory thalamocortical circuit may play a role in stimulus perception, but, surprisingly, this process is poorly understood. We addressed this problem by evaluating a directional information measure between simultaneously recorded neurons from somatosensory thalamus (ventral posterolateral nucleus, VPL) and somatosensory cortex (S1) sharing the same cutaneous receptive field while monkeys judged the presence or absence of a tactile stimulus. During stimulus presence, feed-forward information (VPL → S1) increased as a function of the stimulus amplitude, while pure feed-back information (S1 → VPL) was unaffected. In parallel, zero-lag interaction emerged with increasing stimulus amplitude, reflecting externally driven thalamocortical synchronization during stimulus processing. Furthermore, VPL → S1 information decreased during error trials. Also, VPL → S1 and zero-lag interaction decreased when monkeys were not required to report the stimulus presence. These findings provide evidence that both the direction of information flow and the instant synchronization in the sensory thalamocortical circuit play a role in stimulus perception. ; This work was supported by Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Grants PAPIIT- IN202716 and PAPIIT-IN210819, Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología Grant 240892 (to R.R.), Spanish Research Project PSI2016-75688-P [Agencia Estatal de Investigación/Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (AEI/FEDER), European Union] (to G.D.), by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grants 720270 [Human Brain Project Specific Grant Agreement 1 (HBP SGA1)] and 785907 (HBP SGA2) (to G.D.), and by the Catalan Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca (AGAUR) Programme 2017 Suport als Grups de Recerca (SGR) 1545 (to G.D.). Y.V. was supported by a Pew Latin American Fellowship and a Charles H. Revson Biomedical Science Fellowship.

Cognitive processing requires the ability to flexibly integrate and process information across large brain networks. How do brain networks dynamically reorganize to allow broad communication between many different brain regions in order to integrate information? We record neural activity from 12 epileptic patients using intracranial EEG while performing three cognitive tasks. We assess how the functional connectivity between different brain areas changes to facilitate communication across them. At the topological level, this facilitation is characterized by measures of integration and segregation. Across all patients, we found significant increases in integration and decreases in segregation during cognitive processing, especially in the gamma band (50–90 Hz). We also found higher levels of global synchronization and functional connectivity during task execution, again particularly in the gamma band. More importantly, functional connectivity modulations were not caused by changes in the level of the underlying oscillations. Instead, these modulations were caused by a rearrangement of the mutual synchronization between the different nodes as proposed by the "Communication Through Coherence" Theory. ; The authors would like to thank all patients for their participation and the IMIM-Hospital del Mar Epilepsy Unit staff for their technical assistance in collecting the data. This work was supported by Gustavo Deco's ERC Advanced Grant: DYSTRUCTURE (n. 295129), from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. (HBP SGA1) and by the Spanish Research Project PSI2013-42091-P. M.L.K. is supported by the ERC Consolidator Grant CAREGIVING (n. 615539) and the Center for Music in the Brain, funded by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF117).

This paper studies an almost-lossless source-channel coding scheme in which source messages are assigned to different classes and encoded with a channel code that depends on the class index. The code performance is analyzed by means of random-coding error exponents and validated by simulation of a low-complexity implementation using existing source and channel codes. While each class code can be seen as a concatenation of a source code and a channel code, the overall performance improves on that of separate source-channel coding and approaches that of joint source-channel coding when the number of classes increases. ; This work was supported in part by the European Research Council under Grant 259663, in part by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Grant FPDI-2013-18602, Grant RYC-2011-08150, Grant TEC2012-38800-C03-03, and Grant TEC2013-41718-R, and in part by the European Union's 7th Framework Programme under Grant 303633 and Grant 329837.