University of Alcalá

About: University of Alcalá is a education organization based out in Alcalá de Henares, Spain. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 10795 authors who have published 20718 publications receiving 410089 citations. The organization is also known as: University of Alcala & University of Alcala de Henares.

Expert video-surveillance system for real-time detection of suspicious behaviors in shopping malls

Abstract: Tracking-by-detection based on segmentation, Kalman predictions and LSAP association.Occlusion management: SVM kernel metric for GCH+LBP+HOG image features.Overall performance near to 85% while tracking under occlusions in CAVIAR dataset.Human behavior analysis (exits, loitering, etc.) in naturalistic scenes in shops.Real-time multi-camera performance with a processing capacity near to 50fps/camera. Expert video-surveillance systems are a powerful tool applied in varied scenarios with the aim of automatizing the detection of different risk situations and helping human security officers to take appropriate decisions in order to enhance the protection of assets. In this paper, we propose a complete expert system focused on the real-time detection of potentially suspicious behaviors in shopping malls. Our video-surveillance methodology contributes several innovative proposals that compose a robust application which is able to efficiently track the trajectories of people and to discover questionable actions in a shop context. As a first step, our system applies an image segmentation to locate the foreground objects in scene. In this case, the most effective background subtraction algorithms of the state of the art are compared to find the most suitable for our expert video-surveillance application. After the segmentation stage, the detected blobs may represent full or partial people bodies, thus, we have implemented a novel blob fusion technique to group the partial blobs into the final human targets. Then, we contribute an innovative tracking algorithm which is not only based on people trajectories as the most part of state-of-the-art methods, but also on people appearance in occlusion situations. This tracking is carried out employing a new two-step method: (1) the detections-to-tracks association is solved by using Kalman filtering combined with an own-designed cost optimization for the Linear Sum Assignment Problem (LSAP); and (2) the occlusion management is based on SVM kernels to compute distances between appearance features such as GCH, LBP and HOG. The application of these three features for recognizing human appearance provides a great performance compared to other description techniques, because color, texture and gradient information are effectively combined to obtain a robust visual description of people. Finally, the resultant trajectories of people obtained in the tracking stage are processed by our expert video-surveillance system for analyzing human behaviors and identifying potential shopping mall alarm situations, as are shop entry or exit of people, suspicious behaviors such as loitering and unattended cash desk situations. With the aim of evaluating the performance of some of the main contributions of our proposal, we use the publicly available CAVIAR dataset for testing the proposed tracking method with a success near to 85% in occlusion situations. According to this performance, we corroborate in the presented results that the precision and efficiency of our tracking method is comparable and slightly superior to the most recent state-of-the-art works. Furthermore, the alarms given off by our application are evaluated on a naturalistic private dataset, where it is evidenced that our expert video-surveillance system can effectively detect suspicious behaviors with a low computational cost in a shopping mall context.

Molecular phylogeny of the mycorrhizal desert truffles (Terfezia and Tirmania), host specificity and edaphic tolerance

Abstract: Terfezia and Tirmania, so called desert truffles, are mycorrhizal fungi mostly endemic to arid and semi-arid areas of the Mediterranean Region, where they are associated with Helianthemum species. The aim of this work was to study the phylogenetic relationships in these pezizalean hypogeous fungi. The restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and DNA sequences of internal transcribed spacers (ITS) of the nuclear rDNA were studied for several morphological species, Terfezia arenaria, T. boudieri, T. claveryi, T. leptoderma, T. terfezioides (=Mattirolomyces terfezioides), Tirmania nivea and T. pinoyi. The sequences were analyzed with distance and parsimony methods. Phylogenetic analyses indicated a close genetic relationship between Tirmania and Terfezia. They may have arisen from a single evolutionary lineage of pezizalean fungi that developed the hypogeous habit as an adaptation to heat and drought in Mediterranean ecosystems. This analysis also supports the re-establishment of the genus Mattirolomyces. The genera Tirmania and Terfezia were monophyletic, and morphological species corresponded to phylogenetic species. The Tirmania clade comprises desert truffles with smooth spores and amyloid asci, which were found in deserts. The Terfezia clade grouped species found in semi-arid habitats having ornamented and spherical spores. These species are adapted to exploit different types of soil (either acid or basic soils) in association with specific hosts (either basophilous or acidophilous species). Although other factors might also play a role, host specialization and edaphic tolerances (fungus and/or host tolerances) might be the key in the species diversity of these genera.

Prevalence and Determinants of COPD in Spain: EPISCAN II.

Abstract: Background: Two previous national epidemiological studies, IBERPOC in 1997 and EPISCAN in 2007, determined the COPD burden in Spain. Changes in demographics and exposure to risk factors demand the periodic update of COPD prevalence and its determinants. Methods: EPISCAN II aimed to estimate the prevalence of COPD in the general population aged 40 years or older in all 17 regions of Spain. A random population screening sample, requiring 600 participants per region performed a questionnaire plus post-bronchodilator (post-BD) spirometry. Results: A total of 12,825 subjects were initially contacted, and 9433 (73.6%) agreed to participate, of whom 9092 performed a valid spirometry. Baseline characteristics were: 52.6% women, mean ± SD age 60 ± 11 years, 19.8% current- and 34.2% former-smokers. The prevalence of COPD measured by post-BD fixed ratio FEV1/FVC < 0.7 was 11.8% (95% C.I. 11.2–12.5) with a high variability by region (2.4-fold). Prevalence was 14.6% (95% C.I. 13.5–15.7) in males and 9.4% (95% C.I. 8.6–10.2) in females; according to the lower limit of normal (LLN) was 6.0% (95% C.I. 5.5–6.5) overall, by sex being 7.1% (95% C.I. 6.4–8.0) in males and 4.9% (95% C.I. 4.3–5.6) in females. Underdiagnosis of COPD was 74.7%. Cases with COPD were a mean of seven years older, more frequently male, of lower attained education, and with more smokers than the non-COPD population (p < 0.001). However, the number of cigarettes and pack-years in non-COPD participants was substantial, as it was the reported use of e-cigarettes (7.0% vs. 5.5%) (p = 0.045). There were also significant social and clinical differences including living alone, previous respiratory diagnoses, more comorbidities measured with the Charlson index, greater BODE and COTE scores, cognitive impairment, and depression (all p < 0.001). Conclusions: COPD remains prevalent in Spain and frequently underdiagnosed.

Exposure to benzodiazepines (anxiolytics, hypnotics and related drugs) in seven European electronic healthcare databases: a cross-national descriptive study from the PROTECT-EU Project.

Abstract: PURPOSE: Studies on drug utilization usually do not allow direct cross-national comparisons because of differences in the respective applied methods. This study aimed to compare time trends in BZDs prescribing by applying a common protocol and analyses plan in seven European electronic healthcare databases. METHODS: Crude and standardized prevalence rates of drug prescribing from 2001-2009 were calculated in databases from Spain, United Kingdon (UK), The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. Prevalence was stratified by age, sex, BZD type [(using ATC codes), i.e. BZD-anxiolytics BZD-hypnotics, BZD-related drugs and clomethiazole], indication and number of prescription. RESULTS: Crude prevalence rates of BZDs prescribing ranged from 570 to 1700 per 10 000 person-years over the study period. Standardization by age and sex did not substantially change the differences. Standardized prevalence rates increased in the Spanish (+13%) and UK databases (+2% and +8%) over the study period, while they decreased in the Dutch databases (-4% and -22%), the German (-12%) and Danish (-26%) database. Prevalence of anxiolytics outweighed that of hypnotics in the Spanish, Dutch and Bavarian databases, but the reverse was shown in the UK and Danish databases. Prevalence rates consistently increased with age and were two-fold higher in women than in men in all databases. A median of 18% of users received 10 or more prescriptions in 2008. CONCLUSION: Although similar methods were applied, the prevalence of BZD prescribing varied considerably across different populations. Clinical factors related to BZDs and characteristics of the databases may explain these differences. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Language: en