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This book constitutes the proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Technologies and Innovation, CITI 2020, held in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in November-December 2020.The 16 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 41 submissions. They are organized in topical sections named: semantic technologies and machine learning; ICT for agronomy and environment; mobile and collaborative technologies.

This book celebrates the dawn of the rye genomics era with concise, comprehensive, and accessible reviews on the current state of rye genomic research, written by experts in the field for students, researchers and growers. To most, rye is the key ingredient in a flavoursome bread or their favourite American whisky. To a farmer, rye is the remarkable grain that tolerates the harshest winters and the most unforgiving soils, befitting its legacy as the life-giving seed that fed the ancient civilisations of northern Eurasia.Since the mid-1900s, scientists have employed genetic approaches to better understand and utilize rye, but only since the technological advances of the mid-2010s has the possibility of addressing questions using rye genome assemblies become a reality. Alongside the secret of its unique survival abilities, rye genomics has accelerated research on a host of intriguing topics such as the complex history of rye¿s domestication by humans, the natureof genes that switch fertility on and off, the function and origin of accessory chromosomes, and the evolution of selfish DNA.

The Discovery of the calcareous Ioffe Drift in the SW Atlantic in 2010 opens new perspectives in the contourite theory. Although demonstrating similar behavior relative to bottom water dynamics, rather rare and poorly studied calcareous contourites differ from their terrigenous analogs in origin, grain-size distribution, chemical and mineral composition of sedimentary particles. The detailed multidisciplinary study of the Ioffe Drift produces new knowledge on biogenic contourites deposited in pelagic realm, in conditions of low biological productivity and terrigenous material supply, under the influence of the Antarctic Bottom Water flow from the Vema Channel. The major intervals of prevailing erosion are inferred on the drift from 2.51/2.59 to 1.9 Ma and from 1.6 to 0.81 Ma thus indicating strong paleoceanographic changes most likely associated with the reorganization of deep-sea circulation and increased bottom water production in the Southern Ocean during the Early Pleistocene and,in particular, around the Mid-Pleistocene Transition.

What are the physical mechanisms that underlie the efficient generation and transfer of energy at the nanoscale? Nature seems to know the answer to this question, having optimised the process of photosynthesis in plants over millions of years of evolution. It is conceivable that humans could mimic this process using synthetic materials, and organic semiconductors have attracted a lot of attention in this respect.Once an organic semiconductor absorbs light, bound pairs of electrons with positively charged holes, termed `excitons¿, are formed. Excitons behave as fundamental energy carriers, hence understanding the physics behind their efficient generation and transfer is critical to realising the potential of organic semiconductors for light-harvesting and other applications, such as LEDs and transistors. However, this problem is extremely challenging since excitons can interact very strongly with photons. Moreover, simultaneously with the exciton motion, organic molecules canvibrate in hundreds of possible ways, having a very strong effect on energy transfer.The description of these complex phenomena is often beyond the reach of standard quantum mechanical methods which rely on the assumption of weak interactions between excitons, photons and vibrations. In this thesis, Antonios Alvertis addresses this problem through the development and application of a variety of different theoretical methods to the description of these strong interactions, providing pedagogical explanations of the underlying physics. A comprehensive introduction to organic semiconductors is followed by a review of the background theory that is employed to approach the relevant research questions, and the theoretical results are presented in close connection with experiment, yielding valuable insights for experimentalists and theoreticians alike.

This book aims to discuss the technical and ethical challenges posed by the present technological framework and to highlight the fundamental role played by human-centred design and human factors in the definition of robotic architectures for human¿robot collaboration.The book gives an updated overview of the most recent robotic technology, conceived and designed to collaborate with human beings in industrial working scenarios. The technological development of robotics over the last years and the fast evolution of AI, machine learning and IoT have paved the way for applications that extend far beyond the typical use of robots performing repetitive tasks in exclusive spaces. In this new technological paradigm that is expected to drive the robotics market in the coming years, robots and workers will coexist in the same workplace, sharing not only this lived space, but also the roles and functions inherent to a process of production, merging the benefits of automated and manualperforming. However, having robots cooperating in real time with workers, responding in a physical, psychological and social adequate way, requires a human-centred design that not only calls for high safety standards regulating the quality of human¿robot interaction, but also demands the robot's fine-grained perception and awareness of the dynamics of its surrounding environment, namely the behaviours of their human peers¿their expected actions/responses¿fostering the necessary collaborative efforts towards the accomplishment of the tasks to be executed.