A Blended Artificial Intelligence Approach for Spectral Classification of Stars in Massive Astronomical Surveys.

This paper analyzes and compares the sensitivity and suitability of several artificial intelligence techniques applied to the Morgan-Keenan (MK) system for the classification of stars. The MK system is based on a sequence of spectral prototypes that allows classifying stars according to their effective temperature and luminosity through the study of their optical stellar spectra. Here, we include the method description and the results achieved by the different intelligent models developed thus far in our ongoing stellar classification project: fuzzy knowledge-based systems, backpropagation, radial basis function (RBF) and Kohonen artificial neural networks. Since one of today's major challenges in this area of astrophysics is the exploitation of large terrestrial and space databases, we propose a final hybrid system that integrates the best intelligent techniques, automatically collects the most important spectral features, and determines the spectral type and luminosity level of the stars according to the MK standard system. This hybrid approach truly emulates the behavior of human experts in this area, resulting in higher success rates than any of the individual implemented techniques. In the final classification system, the most suitable methods are selected for each individual spectrum, which implies a remarkable contribution to the automatic classification process.

Traceability in Patient Healthcare through the Integration of RFID Technology in an ICU in a Hospital.

Patient safety is a principal concern for health professionals in the care process and it is, therefore, necessary to provide information management systems to each unit of the hospital, capable of tracking patients and medication to reduce the occurrence of adverse events and therefore increase the quality of care received by patients during their stay in hospital. This work presents a tool for the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), a key service with special characteristics, which computerises and tracks admissions, care plans, vital monitoring, the prescription and medication administration process for patients in this service. To achieve this, it is essential that innovative and cutting-edge technologies are implemented such as Near Field Communication (NFC) technology which is now being implemented in diverse environments bringing a range of benefits to the tasks for which it is employed.

Distributed Fast Self-Organized Maps for Massive Spectrophotometric Data Analysis †.

Analyzing huge amounts of data becomes essential in the era of Big Data, where databases are populated with hundreds of Gigabytes that must be processed to extract knowledge. Hence, classical algorithms must be adapted towards distributed computing methodologies that leverage the underlying computational power of these platforms. Here, a parallel, scalable, and optimized design for self-organized maps (SOM) is proposed in order to analyze massive data gathered by the spectrophotometric sensor of the European Space Agency (ESA) Gaia spacecraft, although it could be extrapolated to other domains. The performance comparison between the sequential implementation and the distributed ones based on Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark is an important part of the work, as well as the detailed analysis of the proposed optimizations. Finally, a domain-specific visualization tool to explore astronomical SOMs is presented.

The Development of an RFID Solution to Facilitate the Traceability of Patient and Pharmaceutical Data.

One of the principal objectives of hospitals is to increase the quality of care of the patient. This is even more of a priority in Day Hospitals where certain medication requires special attention, from its preparation in the Pharmacy service to its delivery to the patient in the Day Hospital. In the case of expensive medicines, nursing staff have to comply with very detailed instructions in their administration to the patient (name of medicine, route, dosage, schedule, previous medication, conditions of conservation, etc.). This work focuses on the development of a multi-faceted hub application to facilitate the traceability of mixed intravenous medication from the beginning to the end of the process of prescription-validation-dosing-preparation-administration (PVD-PA) and be available to all health professionals involved: doctors, pharmacists, and the nursing staff of the Hospital Pharmacy and Day Hospital.

Evaluation of a Tracking System for Patients and Mixed Intravenous Medication Based on RFID Technology.

At present, one of the primary concerns of healthcare professionals is how to increase the safety and quality of the care that patients receive during their stay in hospital. This is particularly important in the administration of expensive and high-risk medicines with which it is fundamental to minimize the possibility of adverse events in the process of prescription-validation-preparation/dosage-dispensation-administration of intravenous mixes. This work is a detailed analysis of the evaluation, carried out by the health personnel involved in the Radiofrequency Identification (RFID) system developed in the Day Hospital and Pharmacy services of the Complejo Hospitalario Universitario A Coruña (CHUAC). The RFID system is evaluated by analyzing surveys completed by said health personnel, since their questions represent the key indicators of the patient care process (safety, cost, adequacy with the clinical practice). This work allows us to conclude, among other things, that the system tracks the patients satisfactorily and that its cost, though high, is justified in the context of the project context (use of dangerous and costly medication).

Safety and Traceability in Patient Healthcare through the Integration of RFID Technology for Intravenous Mixtures in the Prescription-Validation-Elaboration-Dispensation-Administration Circuit to Day Hospital Patients.

This work presents the integration of the RFID technology with the aim of ensuring the traceability of patients and minimization of adverse events during the process of prescription-validation-elaboration-dispensation-administration of medication by means of the implementation of various passive and active WIFI RFID systems in the Pharmacy and Day Hospital services of the Complejo Hospitalario Universitario A Coruña. Obtaining patient traceability and using the patient/drug binomial during this process allows us to minimize the occurrence of adverse events. The key points in this work are the unmistakably unique identification and accurate real time location of the controlled items (patients and medication). RFID technology has proved to be invaluable in assisting with the everyday clinical practice of a hospital, and has been successfully implemented in this environment and others. In services such as the day hospital, the implementation of said technology is further justified by the high costs of the service and the high risk to the patient.

Phosphorus-rich stars with unusual abundances are challenging theoretical predictions.

Almost all chemical elements have been made by nucleosynthetic reactions in various kind of stars and have been accumulated along our cosmic history. Among those elements, the origin of phosphorus is of extreme interest because it is known to be essential for life such as we know on Earth. However, current models of (Galactic) chemical evolution under-predict the phosphorus we observe in our Solar System. Here we report the discovery of 15 phosphorus-rich stars with unusual overabundances of O, Mg, Si, Al, and Ce. Phosphorus-rich stars likely inherit their peculiar chemistry from another nearby stellar source but their intriguing chemical abundance pattern challenge the present stellar nucleosynthesis theoretical predictions. Specific effects such as rotation or advanced nucleosynthesis in convective-reactive regions in massive stars represent the most promising alternatives to explain the existence of phosphorus-rich stars. The phosphorus-rich stars progenitors may significantly contribute to the phosphorus present on Earth today.