Daniel Guerrero

Mosquito-borne diseases continue to ravage humankind with >700 million infections and nearly one million deaths every year. Yet only a small percentage of the >3500 mosquito species transmit diseases, necessitating both extensive surveillance and precise identification. Unfortunately, such efforts are costly, time-consuming, and require entomological expertise. As envisioned by the Global Mosquito Alert Consortium, citizen science can provide a scalable solution. However, disparate data standards across existing platforms have thus far precluded truly global integration. Here, utilizing Open Geospatial Consortium standards, we harmonized four data streams from three established mobile apps—Mosquito Alert, iNaturalist, and GLOBE Observer’s Mosquito Habitat Mapper and Land Cover—to facilitate interoperability and utility for researchers, mosquito control personnel, and policymakers. We also launched coordinated media campaigns that generated unprecedented numbers and types of observations, including successfully capturing the first images of targeted invasive and vector species. Additionally, we leveraged pooled image data to develop a toolset of artificial intelligence algorithms for future deployment in taxonomic and anatomical identification. Ultimately, by harnessing the combined powers of citizen science and artificial intelligence, we establish a next-generation surveillance framework to serve as a united front to combat the ongoing threat of mosquito-borne diseases worldwide.

Optical wireless (OW) technology has attracted significant interest for indoor positioning in the past decade. An emerging form of this technology makes use of angle-of-arrival (AOA) measurements to carry out positioning via triangulation off of an optical beacon grid. Such AOA-based OW positioning systems can yield accurate position estimates-but only given sufficient attention to the optical receiver. The design, operation, and implementation of such a receiver are presented in this work. The optical receiver is designed to have a sufficiently small AOA error, being σ <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">AOA</sub> = 1°, over a wide angular field-of-view (FOV), being 100°. The design allows the optical receiver to carry out positioning based off a 3 × 3 grid of optical beacons, where each optical beacon is uniquely identified using multiple frequency and color channels. The optical beacons are widely spaced to fully utilize the optical receiver's wide angular FOV. The overall AOA-based OW positioning system exhibits a position error of 1.7 cm, which is comparable to those obtained by more complex positioning systems. Thus, the presented AOA-based technologies can play a role in emerging indoor positioning systems.

Microlenses are fabricated and investigated for integrated imaging applications. The microlenses are fabricated by an in situ polymer electro-dispensing technique that enables user-controlled microlens sizes and shapes, by direct-dispensing and voltage-tuning with a metal micro-needle tip in a filler solution. Theoretical and experimental analyses are carried out for three limiting-cases of electro-dispensed microlenses: an acute-angle microlens with a 30° contact angle, a right-angle microlens with a 90° contact angle, and an obtuse-angle microlens with a 120° contact angle. It is found that the right-angle microlens, with a 500 μm diameter, yields an especially short focal length (700 μm) and exceedingly large numerical aperture (0.533). These characteristics can meet the needs of emerging applications, such as optical wireless devices, which demand compact device integration and broad field-of-view imaging. The microlenses are tested in optical wireless imaging receivers, for signal-to-noise ratio performance, and it is found that the right-angle microlens can offer significant (10 dB) performance enhancements.

In this paper we present a method for computing sparse preconditioners for iteratively solving rank deficient least squares problems (LS) by the LSMR method. The main idea of the method proposed is to update an incomplete factorization computed for a regularized problem to recover the solution of the original one. The numerical experiments for a wide set of matrices arising from different science and engineering applications show that the preconditioner proposed, in most cases, can be successfully applied to accelerate the convergence of the iterative Krylov subspace method.

Optical wireless (OW) technologies are an emerging field utilizing optical sources to replace existing radio wavelength technologies. The vast majority of work in OW focuses on communication; however, one smaller emerging field is indoor OW positioning. This emerging field essentially aims to replace GPS indoors. One of the primary competing methods in indoor OW positioning is angle-of-arrival (AOA). AOA positioning uses the received vectors from several optical beacons to triangulate its position. The reliability of this triangulation is fundamentally based on two aspects: the geometry of the optical receiver’s location compared to the optical beacon locations, and the ability for the optical receiver to resolve the incident vectors correctly. The optical receiver is quantified based on the standard deviation of the azimuthal and polar angles that define the measured vector. The quality of the optical beacon geometry is quantified using dilution of precision (DOP). This proceeding discusses the AOA standard deviation of an ultra-wide field-of-view (FOV) lens along with the DOP characteristics for several optical beacon geometries. The optical beacon geometries used were simple triangle, square, and hexagon optical beacon geometries. To assist the implementation of large optical beacon geometries it is proposed to use both frequency and wavelength division multiplexing. It is found that with an ultra-wide FOV lens, coupled with the appropriately sized optical beacon geometry, allow for high accuracy positioning over a large area. The results of this work will enable reliable OW positioning deployments.

An integrated photoconductive (PC) sensor is proposed and tested as a fundamental extension of the semiconductor switch. An enhanced field-of-view (FOV) is demonstrated for application to indoor optical wireless communications (OWC). The three-fold symmetric architecture of the corner-cube PC sensor is adapted for use with the dc-shifted ac-three-phase <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$({\rm ac}_{3\phi})$</tex></formula> to establish output photocurrent characteristics that are largely independent of the incident optical angle-of-arrival. An enhanced FOV of <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$60^{\circ}\times 40^{\circ}$</tex></formula> is demonstrated. The device can be integrated in future OWC systems for increased channel redundancy and greater reliability.

The Cienaga Grande de Santa Marta Ramsar Site (CGSM) is the most important Caribbean estuarine wetland in Colombia. The site represents a strategically important ecosystem supporting the national and local economy. However, their ability to provide ecosystem services has been seriously affected mainly due to changes in land use, disturbances of water flows, man-made climate change and interannual climatic variability. These circumstances led to its inclusion in the Montreux Record, a register of wetland sites on the ‘List of Wetlands of International Importance’ where variations in ecological character have happened, are happening or are likely to happen as an outcome of technological developments, pollution or other human interference. This paper presents the first account of marine and coastal ecosystems developed in Colombia at the Cienaga Grande de Santa Marta. Following the principles for ecosystem accounting of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting—Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA), we developed accounting tables of extent and condition of ecosystems, biophysical and monetary flows of climate regulation and fishing supply and the monetary account of ecosystem assets. Results of the ecosystem account allow visualising the importance of ecosystem services of the wetland, its capacity to provide economic benefits, social welfare and livelihoods at local and national level. Finally, we identify main gaps of information, highlight the applicability of ecosystem accounting to policy- and decision-making on economic and environmental issues and evaluate the challenges to implement it.

In this paper, we analyze how to update incomplete Cholesky preconditioners to solve least squares problems using iterative methods when the set of linear relations is updated with some new information, a new variable is added or, contrarily, some information or variable is removed from the set. Our proposed method computes a low-rank update of the preconditioner using a bordering method which is inexpensive compared with the cost of computing a new preconditioner. Moreover, the numerical experiments presented show that this strategy gives, in many cases, a better preconditioner than other choices, including the computation of a new preconditioner from scratch or reusing an existing one.

An integrated photoconductive (PC) element is introduced as a new optoelectronic device in free-space optical (FSO) wireless applications. The device is a fundamental extension of the standard PC switch, as it has the capabilities for both local optoelectronic signal reception and active directional angle of arrival (AOA) sensing. This second capability is brought about through the use of a three-phase differential technique through three triangular PC switches arranged in a corner-cube architecture. Each PC switch is comprised of 50/150 nm Cr/Au electrodes, patterned on either side of a 200- micron GaAs PC gap, and is biased with the superposition of common DC and AC three-phase (120° phase-shifted) bias voltages. The DC bias forms a summed signal photocurrent on the central vertex output electrode and facilitates data reception; the AC three-phase bias facilitates link reliability for diversity reception in optical wireless communication systems. Complete theoretical and experimental angular characteristics of this device are presented in this work.

We present a preconditioning technique for solving nonsymmetric linear systems Ax=b, where the coefficient matrix A has a skew-symmetric part that can be well approximated with a skew-symmetric low-rank matrix. The method consists of updating a preconditioner obtained from the symmetric part of A. We present some results concerning to the approximation properties of the preconditioner and the spectral properties of the preconditioning technique. The results of the numerical experiments performed show that our strategy is competitive compared with some specific methods.

The status and results of the searches for non-resonant and resonant Higgs boson pair production at the LHC are presented.The analyses are performed using partial and full Run-2 proton-proton collision datasets recorded at √ s = 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of up to about 140 fb -1 .The most sensitive results obtained by ATLAS and CMS are reported.

Water Cherenkov Detectors (WCDs), which are part of the LAGO experimental array, are being built in the cities of Riobamba, Quito and Cumbaya in Ecuador. In order to increase the sensitivity and efficiency of these devices, it is necessary to ensure that the water used as radiator media absorbs as low as possible the UV light due to the incident particles and produced by Cherenkov effect. To do this, we built and used a device that allows us to measure the attenuation length directly. Water samples purified by different techniques are analyzed. Some characteristics like absorbance, refractive index, conductivity and cost are studied. We attempt to simulate the Cherenkov effect in FLUKA, we report our findings and perform a comparison with results from previous reports of LAGO sites elsewhere, and with other experiments that use WCD technology.

El documento consiste en la medicion y analisis de los niveles de exposicion de radiacion no ionizante indoor en la ciudad de Cuenca, provenientes de radio bases de telefonia movil. Con este trabajo se pretende ofrecer informacion valida y actualizada que demuestre segun los estandares internacionales la realidad de la influencia de RNI en la ciudad y asi fomentar el estudio para crear concientizacion sobre los beneficio y desventajas de las radio bases para telefonia celular.

A first measurement of the top-quark mass is presented based on the peak position of the energy spectrum of b jets produced from top-quark decays. This novel technique follows a recent theoretical proposal aiming to minimize systematic uncertainties related to the modeling of top quark production. The analysis is performed selecting top-antitop events with electron-muon final states in proton-proton collision data at $\sqrt{s}$ = 8 TeV with the CMS detector, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb$^{-1}$. The energy peak position is obtained by fitting the observed energy spectrum, and is translated to a top-quark mass estimation using relativistic kinematics, calibrated with Monte Carlo simulation.

Customized high-contact-angle microlenses are presented for optical wireless communication (OWC) and optical wireless location (OWL) applications. These microlenses are fabricated by way of an electro-dispensing technique to establish wide field-of-views (FOVs). Each microlens is formed from dispensed UV-curable polymer with pressurecontrol defining the microlens volume and a voltage on the metal needle tip defining the microlens shape (by way of electrowetting). UV curing is then applied. Microlenses with FOVs up to 90&deg; are fabricated for high-density integration above a CMOS imaging sensor for wide-FOV operation in emerging OWC and OWL applications. Both theoretical raytracing analyses and experimental imaging results are presented with good agreement.

Dada la importancia actual del procesamiento paralelo y su complejidad, este trabajo pretende integrar el elemento visual y la animacion dentro de la ensenanza y aprendizaje de la programacion paralela. Con dicha orientacion, se presentan las principales aportaciones de un proyecto de innovacion docente que extiende el material web existente en las practicas de una asignatura de programacion paralela, dotandolo de elementos visuales dinamicos y cierto grado de interactividad para favorecer el aprendizaje. Asimismo, se introduce en las practicas, el uso de herramientas de visualizacion de procesos y trazado grafico de la ejecucion que facilitan la comprension y depuracion de los programas paralelos. Las ideas presentadas pueden ser facilmente aplicables a cualquier asignatura de programacion que integre contenidos de concurrencia.

En el presente trabajo de grado se tratara el diseno de un tablero electronico para la ensenanza vial a personas discapacitadas. El dispositivo integrado que se utilizo como herramienta fundamental de este proyecto es el grabador/reproductor de voz ISD2560P controlado por el PIC16F877A. Se profundizara en la importancia de la educacion vial, en el diseno de un prototipo funcional para personas con discapacidad intelectual y el circuito electronico utilizado. El proposito de este proyecto es el de urbanizar a las personas con discapacidad, ensenandoles por medio de un tablero didactico con retroalimentacion auditiva las principales senales viales que existen en la ciudad para su correcto uso. Las senales que se propusieron fueron, el semaforo, el semaforo peatonal, el disco pare, la senal de doble via, el paso zebra, la parada de bus, la senal de use el cinturon de seguridad, utilice la vereda y por ultimo pero no los menos importantes el giro a la derecha y el giro a la izquierda. Para lo cual, se realizar un estudio sobre la importancia de la educacion vial; se hace el estudio de la tecnologia utilizada en el trabajo (microcontrolador, chip grabador/reproductor de voz, la comunicacion serial); se hace referencia al diseno y construccion del circuito electronico, como tambien de la placa del circuito impresa (PCB), la programacion en microcode, la programacion en visual basic y el diseno como la construccion de la estructura funcional para personas especiales; finalmente, se describe una memoria tecnica del equipo construido.

Beyond providing an essential community service, public utilities and critical infrastructure employees are the first line of defense against threats that could lead to widespread disruption and possibly death. Approaches to security planning and response generally focus on protecting key assets.

A first measurement of the top-quark mass is presented based on the peak position of the energy spectrum of b jets produced from top-quark decays.This novel technique follows a recent theoretical proposal aiming to minimize systematic uncertainties related to the modeling of top quark production.The analysis is performed selecting top-antitop events with electron-muon final states in proton-proton collision data at √ s = 8 TeV with the CMS detector, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb -1 .The energy peak position is obtained by fitting the observed energy spectrum, and is translated to a top-quark mass estimation using relativistic kinematics, calibrated with Monte Carlo simulation.

This report compiles multiple articles describing activities developed and performed under the Site-Directed Research and Development Program for the benefit the Nation during Fiscal Year 2018. Sustained investment and ongoing core innovation are the keys to successful research and development programs. These elements drive the Site-Directed Research and Development (SDRD) Program and provide solutions to some of the most challenging problems our nation and our allies face. Our Nevada enterprise, consisting of both our management and operating entity and our NNSA field office, is aggressively investing in SDRD and injecting innovation through strategic partnerships. Our partnerships with universities, industry, and our sister institutions within the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) build upon our core capabilities and allow us to create innovative solutions to support our mission requirements. In 2018, we raised the investment level of SDRD for only the second time in the history of the program. Nearly at our congressionally authorized limit, SDRD has substantial resources to successfully address numerous issues. Investment is only one part of the equation; innovation is generated through collaborations that bring discovery and provide the “technical differentiation” and the return on investment we seek. This report demonstrates an enduring theme of how partnerships help us drive the best outcomes and provide the maximum impact possible, while using our resources efficiently.

X-ray phase contrast imaging with transmission gratings for density profile measurements has been developed and tested for dynamic experimental applications. Talbot-Lau x-ray deflectometry is a new method of measuring x-ray refraction in addition to attenuation and ultrasmall-angle scattering that has recently been developed for static imaging, primarily for medical and industrial applications. To obtain density profiles from fast-evolving systems, we must use a flash x-ray source with a spot size much larger than the continuous microfocus sources of static imaging systems, and we can obtain only a single exposure. The challenges to measuring electron density profiles of two mixed elements from a single-image, low spatial resolution system are addressed, and initial results from the first dynamic experiments with one such system, conducted on a gas launcher at the end of FY 2018 and beginning of FY 2019, are presented. In FY 2019, we designed and built a new deflectometer designed for detonator experiments to test new techniques to improve the sensitivity and reliability of the diagnostic.

The Phase-2 upgrade of the CMS Level-1 (L1) trigger will be carried out to achieve the highest possible acceptance for physics processes in the large pile-up and instantaneous luminosity conditions of the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC).In the CMS endcap region, muon reconstruction in the L1 trigger is complicated by the non-uniform magnetic field, high pileup and punch-through interactions.However, the new muon detectors and the upgraded trigger processing capabilities proposed for the Phase-2 upgrade will allow the implementation of novel techniques to address successfully these challenges.For instance, track-finding and reconstruction of the standalone and displaced muons are performed by a neural network-based algorithm.In addition, a proposed Global Muon Trigger system will have access to tracker tracks, muon trigger tracks and individual muon detector hits.These objects can then be combined to improve the muon momentum resolution, reduce the muon trigger rates, and form multi-object triggers targeting specific processes such as charged lepton flavour violating τ → 3µ decays.We present here preliminary studies addressing all these new capabilities.

The accurate description of a complex process should take into account not only the interacting elements involved but also the scale of the description. Therefore, there can not be a single measure for describing the associated complexity of a process nor a single metric applicable in all scenarios. This article introduces a framework based on multiscale entropy to characterize the complexity associated with the most identifiable characteristic of songs: the melody. We are particularly interested in measuring the complexity of popular songs and identifying levels of complexity that statistically explain the listeners' preferences. We analyze the relationship between complexity and popularity using a database of popular songs and their relative position in a preferences ranking. There is a tendency toward a positive association between complexity and acceptance (success) of a song that is, however, not significant after adjusting for multiple testing.

the start of operations in 2000, were compared with baseline statistical reference level (BSRL) data established over a four-year-long preoperational period. Most radionuclides in mice were either at nondetectable levels or within BSRLs. The few radionuclides that were above BSRLs included U isotopes; and the ratios of some samples indicated depleted U sources. Although the amounts of U in some samples were just above BSRLs, and since depleted U is less soluble and less toxic (chemical and radioactive) than naturally occurring U, the very small levels in the mice collected around the DARHT facility grounds are unlikely to pose a threat to predators that feed upon them.