Abstract: The Environmental Control System (ECS) allows the control of the environment within the cabin and flight deck for pilot and passenger comfort, and protects them from adverse weather conditions. This study presents a Matlab-Simulink® model developed to calculate the shaft power and ventilation required by the ECS during different flight conditions. The ECS model includes two blocks. The first block determines the requirements of the ECS by means of the analysis of thermal loads presented inside the helicopter. The second block computes the ECS air-conditioning pack of the helicopter (for cooling, heating and demisting). Two different ambient and flight conditions are simulated to find the power consumption of the air-conditioning pack once a comfortable cabin environment has been achieved. It is concluded that by using this model, the changes in the comfort level can be predicted in real time in order to intelligently reduce the ECS overall power consumption in a helicopter by choosing among five different ECS configurations the most appropriated, thus maintain the thermal comfort of the pilot and the passengers. Resumen: El Sistema de Control Ambiental (ECS por sus siglas en inglés) permite el control del ambiente dentro de la cabina y la consola de control del helicóptero, proporcionando confort y protección a los pilotos y pasajeros en condiciones climáticas adversas. Este estudio presenta un modelo en Matlab-Simulink® aplicable a diversas condiciones de vuelo para calcular la potencia mecánica y la ventilación requerida por el ECS. El modelo ECS incluye dos bloques. El primer bloque determina los requerimientos del ECS por medio del análisis de cargas térmicas presentadas en el interior del helicóptero. El segundo bloque computa el sistema de acondicionamiento de aire del ECS dentro de un helicoptero (para refrigeración, calefacción y desempañado). Dos condiciones diferentes de ambiente y de vuelo son simuladas para encontrar el consumo de potencia del sistema de acondicionamiento de aire una vez alcanzado un ambiente de cabina confortable. Se concluye que por medio de este modelo, los patrones de cambio próximos en el nivel de confort se pueden predecir en tiempo real con el fin de reducir de forma inteligente el consumo general de energía del ECS en un helicóptero al seleccionar entre 5 configuraciones la más apropiada, y asi mantener el confort térmico del piloto y los pasajeros.

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a chronic disease characterized by a progressive elevation in mean pulmonary arterial pressure. This occurs due to abnormal remodeling of small peripheral lung vasculature resulting in progressive occlusion of the artery lumen that eventually causes right heart failure and death. The most common cause of PAH is inactivating mutations in the gene encoding a bone morphogenetic protein type II receptor (BMPRII). Current therapeutic options for PAH are limited and focused mainly on reversal of pulmonary vasoconstriction and proliferation of vascular cells. Although these treatments can relieve disease symptoms, PAH remains a progressive lethal disease. Emerging data suggest that restoration of BMPRII signaling in PAH is a promising alternative that could prevent and reverse pulmonary vascular remodeling. Here we will focus on recent advances in rescuing BMPRII expression, function or signaling to prevent and reverse pulmonary vascular remodeling in PAH and its feasibility for clinical translation. Furthermore, we summarize the role of described miRNAs that directly target the BMPR2 gene in blood vessels. We discuss the therapeutic potential and the limitations of promising new approaches to restore BMPRII signaling in PAH patients. Different mutations in BMPR2 and environmental/genetic factors make PAH a heterogeneous disease and it is thus likely that the best approach will be patient-tailored therapies.

Abstract: On April 20, 2010, an explosion in the rig Deepwater Horizon performing drilling operations on the Macondo Prospect Well, in the Gulf of Mexico, led to the largest oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. Eleven crewmembers lost their lives and around 4.9 million barrels of oil were discharged into the ocean until the continuous subsea blowout of the well was contained in September 19, 2010. Given the magnitude and the complexity of the accident, several safety analyses have been proposed by the international community at different levels of the system involved in the accident. Most of these studies use accident analysis techniques based on chain-of-event models, whose main objective is to identify root-causes. However, while this approach describes physical phenomena accurately, it does not explain the role of organizational and socio-economical factors, human decisions, or design inaccuracies in accidents in complex, adaptive, and tightly coupled systems like Macondo. In response to this need, N. Leveson developed the new accident-analysis technique Causal Analysis Based on System Theory (CAST), based on her model System-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP). In STAMP accidents are not treated as chain of failure events, but as complex processes that result from a large variety of causes including component failures and faults, system design errors, unintended and unplanned interactions among system components, human operator errors, flawed management decision-making, inadequate controls and oversight, and poor safety culture. This thesis presents management recommendations based on a CAST analysis of the Macondo Accident. The goal is to help the oil and gas offshore drilling community achieve safer operations and understand the value of systems safety in achieving organizational goals. Resumen: El 20 de abril de 2010, una explosión en la plataforma Deepwater Horizon, la cual estaba ejecutando operaciones de perforación en el pozo exploratorio Macondo, en el Golfo de Méjico, resultó en el mayor derrame de crudo de la historia de la industria petrolera. Once trabajadores perdieron su vida y cerca de 4,9 millones de barriles de crudo contaminaron el océano hasta que el escape fue contenido el 19 de septiembre de 2010. Dada la magnitud y complejidad del accidente, múltiples análisis de seguridad industrial han sido propuestos por la comunidad internacional examinando diferentes niveles del sistema organizacional involucrado en el accidente. La mayoría de estos estudios usan técnicas de análisis basadas en modelos de cadena de eventos, cuyo objetivo principal es identificar causa raíces. Sin embargo, mientras este enfoque describe procesos físicos acertadamente, no explica el papel de factores organizacionales y socio-económicos, decisiones humanas, o imprecisiones de diseño en accidentes sucedidos en sistemas organizacionales complejos, adaptativos, y estrechamente acoplados como el de Macondo. En respuesta a esta necesidad, N. Leveson desarrolló la nueva técnica de análisis de accidentes Análisis Causal Basado en la Teoría de Sistemas (CAST por sus siglas en inglés), basada en su Modelo y Proceso Teórico de Análisis de Sistemas (STAMP por sus siglas en inglés). En STAMP, los accidentes no se tratan como eventos de cadena de fallas, sino como procesos complejos que resultan de una gran variedad de causas, incluidas defectos y fallas de componentes, errores de diseño del sistema, interacciones involuntarias e inesperadas entre los componentes del sistema, errores de operadores humanos, decisiones gerenciales equivocadas, controles y supervisiones inadecuados, y deficiencias en la cultura de seguridad industrial. Esta tesis presenta recomendaciones de gestión basadas en un análisis CAST del accidente de Macondo. El objetivo es ayudar a la comunidad de perforación petrolera a lograr operaciones más seguras y comprender el valor de la seguridad industrial en el logro de objetivos organizacionale.

Abstract: The internal biliary fistulas are considering a rare complication of gallbladder disease and even rarer of duodenal ulcer, constituting an occasional finding during ERCP in studies of recurrent biliary disease. They are frequently in relation with the complicated cholelithiasis. Occur in up to 2 % of all patients with biliary disease and is associated with a higher incidence of carcinoma in this system. The location between the gallbladder and duodenum (cholecystoduodenal) is found in 72-80% of cases; the choledochoduodenal, which relates to the case report, is the less frequent, present in the 3 to 5 %. We present a male patient aged 44 years, he was operated 26 years ago by perforated duodenal ulcer. Since October 2015 begins with slight jaundice, dark urine and right upper quadrant pain, it impressed toxic hepatitis, the simptoms recurred on several occasions. During the study in the latest crisis choledochoduodenal fistula was found, being referred to our center for surgical treatment. In relation with the rarity of the case, it is decided to review the current literature and presentation. Resumen: La fistulas biliares internas son consideras una complicación poco frecuente de las enfermedad biliar y aún más raras del ulcus duodenal. Constituyen un hallazgo ocasional durante la colangiografía retrograda endoscópica durante el estudio de la enfermedad biliar recurrente. Se relaciona principalmente con la litiasis vesicular complicada. Puede afectar hasta un 2 % del total de los pacientes con enfermedad biliar y se asocia a una mayor incidencia de carcinoma de este sistema. La localización más habitual es entre la vesícula y el duodeno (colecistoduodenal) en un 72 – 80 % de los casos. La coledocoduodenal -la cual se relaciona con el caso a reportar- es de las menos frecuentes, la cual se encuentra solo en 3 – 5 %. Se presenta a un paciente masculino de 44 años, operado hace 26 años de úlcera duodenal perforada. En octubre de 2015 debutó con íctero ligero, coluria y dolor en hipocondrio derecho, que impresionó hepatitis toxica, cuadro que recurrió en varias ocasiones. Durante el estudio realizado en su última crisis, se halló una fístula coledocoduodenal, se remitió a nuestro centro para tratamiento quirúrgico. Debido a lo infrecuente del caso, se decidió realizar revisión de la literatura actual y su presentación.

Resumen: El objetivo de ésta tesis es dar una base bibliográfica suficiente para identificar estudios, disciplinas y tecnologías vigentes que puedan ser aplicadas a la observación y mejoramiento de los mecanismos biológicos necesarios para tocar contrabajo, y que por tanto aporten a la potenciación de las posibilidades técnicas y artísticas del contrabajista, así como de su salud. En el Capítulo 1 se presenta información considerada clave acerca de las características morfológicas, tanto del cuerpo humano como del contrabajo, a la vez que se introducen algunos ejemplos de la manera en que dichas morfologías, y la interacción entre ellas, aportan a la producción controlada de sonido. En el segundo capítulo se integra al documento información acerca de los trastornos músculo-esqueléticos que aquejan a músicos profesionales. Allí se recogen datos estadísticos referentes los músicos de orquesta, y se focaliza en algunos de los trastornos comunes para los contrabajistas, incluyendo descripciones de condiciones endógenas y exógenas que los originan. En el tercer capítulo se exponen algunas iniciativas investigativas que buscan vincular al panorama del desarrollo musical profesional ciertas perspectivas emergentes: conceptos y disciplinas dedicados a cultivar un buen uso de la asociación humana mente/cuerpo, que muestran un gran potencial, tanto para la prevención y la rehabilitación de trastornos músculo-esqueléticos como para el pulimento de la técnica instrumental. En la cuarta y última fase de la exploración bibliográfica (capítulo 4) se integrará enfáticamente información conteniendo análisis más detallados de las mecánicas corporales en interacción con los objetos, las herramientas, los instrumentos. Abstract: The objective of this document is to give a sufficientbibliographic basis to identify current studies, disciplines and technologies that can be applied to the observation and improvement of the biological mechanisms necessary to touch against Touch double bass, and therefore contribute to the empowerment of the technical and artistic possibilities of the bassist, as well as his health. In this sense, in the first instance (Chapter 1), information is presented that is considered key to the morphological characteristics of both the human body and the double bass, while introducing some examples of how these Morphology, and the interaction between them, contributes to the controlled production of sound. In the second chapter, information on musculoskeletal disorders afflicting professional musicians is integrated into the document. There are collected statistical data concerning orchestral musicians, and focuses on some of the common disorders for the bassists, including descriptions of endogenous and exogenous conditions that originate them. The third chapter sets out some research initiatives that seek to link to the panorama of professional musical development certain emerging perspectives: concepts and disciplines dedicated to cultivating a good use of the human Mind/body Association, which They show great potential, both for the prevention and rehabilitation of musculoskeletal disorders and for the polishing of instrumental techniques. In the fourth and final phase of bibliographic exploration (chapter 4), information will be emphatically integrated containing more detailed analyses of body mechanics in interaction with objects, tools, instruments. It will be sought to make evident the relevance of the use of detailed biomechanical control and analysis tools, for the observation and development of the necessary movements within the instrumental musical activity of the bassist.

La actividad apícola en Costa Rica está conformada por aproximadamente 1.700 apicultores y apicultoras ubicados principalmente en cuatro provincias: San José, Alajuela, Puntarenas y Guanacaste. Esta es una actividad que en la actualidad no forma parte de los sectores prioritarios en la agenda económica del país y que a nivel regional ha perdido participación frente a países como Guatemala y El Salvador, reconocidos productores y exportadores de miel, uno de los productos base de la apicultura. Desde una dimensión ecológica, han sido diversos los factores asociados con el rezago del sector, incluyendo la llegada de la abeja africanizada, cambio de uso del suelo y cambio climático. No obstante, aún quedan vacíos de información en otras dimensiones de la actividad como las sociales y las económicas. Este estudio se realizó con el fin de conocer cómo se encuentra el sector en la actualidad partiendo de dichos vacíos, abarca tanto los aspectos socioeconómicos y organizacionales como los ambientales de la actividad apícola. Las zonas de análisis fueron dos de las provincias más destacadas en el país: Puntarenas y Guanacaste. Reconocidas no solo por su tradición en la actividad, sino porque representan el 55.8 % de la producción nacional. Fueron realizadas entrevistas semiestructuradas a 76 apicultores y apicultoras, utilizando el Enfoque de Medios de Vida (EMV) y Marco de los Capitales de la Comunidad (MCC). Igualmente, se realizaron dos talleres con apicultores (uno en cada provincia) para analizar cada uno de los eslabones presentes en la cadena productiva de la miel, además de 14 entrevistas semiestructuradas a diversos actores clave en la composición de la cadena como lo son el sector público, sector privado y las organizaciones de apicultores. Con la información recopilada de las entrevistas y talleres, se desarrolla una matriz de análisis de viabilidad en el establecimiento de un esquema de financiamiento para enfrentar el cambio climático que puede ser la figura de la Medida Nacional Apropiada de Mitigación (NAMA) o de otro mecanismo financiero con mayor énfasis en adaptación. Los resultados muestran que la actividad enfrenta diversos desafíos, no solamente relacionados con el cambio climático sino con una débil estructura productiva que la limita en el desarrollo de una cadena de valor. Los apicultores optan por organizarse a través de asociaciones, con el fin de permanecer en el sector apícola y superar limitaciones relacionadas con el acceso a capacitaciones y subsidios. Aunque existen debilidades en la forma de determinar el costo monetario en que se incurre en la apicultura, esta actividad resulta rentable según la cantidad de colmenas que posean.

Detection of insider threats relies on monitoring individuals and their interactions with organizational resources. Identification of anomalous insiders typically relies on supervised learning models that use labeled data. However, such labeled data is not easily obtainable. The labeled data that does exist is also limited by current insider threat detection methods and undetected insiders would not be included. These models also inherently assume that the insider threat is not rapidly evolving between model generation and use of the model in detection. Yet there is a large body of research that illustrates that the insider threat changes significantly after some types of precipitating events, such as layoffs, significant restructuring, and plant or facility closure. To capture this temporal evolution of user-system interactions, we use an unsupervised learning framework to evaluate whether potential insider threat events are triggered following precipitating events. The analysis leverages a bipartite graph of user and system interactions. The approach shows a clear correlation between precipitating events and the number of apparent anomalies. The results of our empirical analysis show a clear shift in behaviors after events which have previously been shown to increase insider activity, specifically precipitating events. We argue that this metadata about the level of insider threat behaviors validates the potential of the approach. We apply our method to a dataset that comprises interactions between engineers and software components in an enterprise version control system spanning more than 22 years. We use this unlabeled dataset and automatically detect statistically significant events. We show that there is statistically significant evidence that a subset of users diversify their committing behavior after precipitating events have been announced. Although these findings do not constitute detection of insider threat events per se, they do identify patterns of potentially malicious high-risk insider behavior. They reinforce the idea that insider operations can be motivated by the insiders' environment. Our proposed framework outperforms algorithms based on naive random approaches and algorithms using volume dependent statistics. This graph mining technique has potential for early detection of insider threat behavior in user-system interactions independent of the volume of interactions. The proposed method also enables organizations without a corpus of identified insider threats to train its own anomaly detection system.

Social media data have been increasingly used to assess the impact of scholarly research. Such data provide complementary metrics (often called altmetrics) to traditional impact indicators. This paper provides a summary on the diffusion of scholarly content in social media, based on a collection of tweets citing papers from a set of 27 academic publishers within various fields between 2011 and 2013. We first show that there has been an increasing adoption of Twitter as a channel to disseminate scholarly literature. In particular, between 2012 and 2013, the number of scholarly tweets and the fraction of tweets (over the entire corpus) have increased by 91.2% and 42.6% respectively. We then analyze the structure of the information diffusion network. We show that the distributions of the numbers of times a specific paper is tweeted, retweeted, and the number of connected components in the diffusion network are scale-free. These preliminary results suggest that, as for other kinds of information, there are underlying mechanisms that lead some scholars and their products to become viral.

Disaster Risks are the cause of many economic losses and fatalities all over the world. Insurance and reinsurance industry has had a close eye on the catastrophic risks in Latin America, as it is a mechanism for disaster risk management and an incentive of mitigation in the region. Catastrophe insurance is the market in charge of covering losses caused by catastrophic events and a growing market worldwide. Imperfections and different reasons for underinsurance have made the region a hub of vulnerability. Due to its geographical location, social and economic situation, Latin America has a high exposure to disasters that have created many monetary consequences and mortalities over its history. However, there is still a gap in insurance coverage and a lack of information. There is evidence that insurance as an ex-ante financing tool has many benefits for developing regions as the case of the Latin American countries. Insurance is an incentive of mitigation through risk-based price signals, and measures taken by insurance companies themselves. Though, this study intends to present a clear lack of cooperation within the region in terms of regulatory frameworks and international collaboration that is reflected in the lack of information for the insured and insurers. Therefore, the research of disaster risks and (re)insurance in Latin America provides evidence of the high risk that the region presents and the deficiencies that the catastrophic insurance market has in the region, and highlights the necessity for mechanisms for enhancing the market, to develop new insurance solutions and create a region base collaboration in order to promote the disaster risk management using insurance as a tool.

People share opinions, exchange information, and trade services on large, interconnected platforms. As with many new technologies these platforms bring with them new vulnerabilities, often becoming targets for fraudsters who try to deceive randomly selected users. To monitor such behavior, the proposed algorithm evaluates structural anomalies that result from local interactions between users. In particular, the algorithm evaluates the degree of membership to well-defined communities of users and the formation of close-knit groups in their neighborhoods. It identifies a set of suspects using a first order approximation of the evolution of the eigenpairs associated to the continuously growing network. Within the set of suspects, the algorithm them locates fraudsters based on deviations from the expected local clustering coefficients. Simulations illustrate how incorporating asymptotic behavior of the structural properties into the design of the algorithm allows us to differentiate between the aggregate dynamics of fraudsters and regular users.