La primera ciudad española en el Hemisferio Sur

Trabajo académico sobre la ciudad colonial de San Miguel de Piura (Perú).

Mejora de la calidad y conectividad del hábitat forestal del oso pardo en la Cordillera Cantábrica: propuesta metodológica e implicacionesde gestión

Desarrollo de estrategias de gestión forestal que mejoren la calidad del hábitat para el oso pardo cantábrico y la conectividad dentro y entre sus subpoblaciones.

Tree and grazing influence on herbaceous pasture diversity in the Dehesa agroforestry system

Mediterranean Dehesas are one of the European natural habitat types of Community interest (43/92/EEC Directive), associated to high diversity levels and producer of important goods and services. In this work, tree contribution and grazing influence over pasture alpha diversity in a Dehesa in Central Spain was studied. We analyzed Richness and Shannon-Wiener (SW) indexes on herbaceous layer under 16 holms oak trees (64 sampling units distributed in two directions and in two distances to the trunk) distributed in four different grazing management zones (depending on species and stocking rate). Floristic composition by species or morphospecies and species abundance were analyzed for each sample unit. Linear mixed models (LMM) and generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) were used to study relationships between alpha diversity measures and independent factors. Edge crown influence showed the highest values of Richness and SW index. No significant differences were found between orientations under tree crown influence. Grazing management had a significant effect over Richness and SW measures, specially the grazing species (cattle or sheep). We preliminary quantify and analyze the interaction of tree stratum and grazing management over herbaceous diversity in a year of extreme climatic conditions.

Práctica aleatoria y aprendizaje perceptivo-motor

Los efectos de la práctica es un asunto que posee una larga tradición investigadora en el ámbito del aprendizaje motor. En las últimas décadas el interés se ha centrado en analizar si una práctica aleatoria posee unos efectos más favorables que una práctica repetitiva en el aprendizaje. Este fue el objetivo de este estudio en el que participaron voluntariamente cuarenta y ocho estudiantes universitarios. veinticuatro fueron varones y veinticuatro mujeres. Se organizaron tres grupos de práctica, uno de baja interferencia contextual, otro de interferencia moderada y el tercero de máxima interferencia contextual. La tarea empleada fue el putt golf consistente en un golpeo de precisión a unas dianas marcadas en el suelo. Los participantes realizaron tres fases, una de adquisición, y dos de transferencia, una inmediata nada más terminar la fase de adquisición y otra mediata a los dos días. Los resultados apoyaron el efecto contextual constatándose que la práctica bajo condiciones aleatorias favorece la transferencia. Asimismo se encontraron diferencias de género en las diferentes fases de la experiencia.

Factores que influyen en el ascenso a la máxima categoría de jugadores de baloncesto

Los deportistas a lo largo de su carrera deportiva experimentan una serie de transiciones (Wylleman, Alfermann y Lavallee, 2004). El acceso a la elite del deporte es una transición crucial que ha recibido poca atención en la literatura. El objetivo del estudio es conocer los factores que facilitaron el acceso a la máxima competición del baloncesto español de 8 jugadores internacionales. Se empleó una metodología cualitativa deductiva y la técnica para la recogida de datos fue una entrevista semiestructurada. Los factores que en opinión de los 8 jugadores entrevistados facilitaron su acceso a la máxima competición fueron: a) su nivel de competencia deportiva, b) las oportunidades recibidas y su forma de aprovecharlas, c) no tener lesiones graves y d) la existencia de normativas que favorecieron su incorporación a la alta competición

Estación de servicio de gas natural licuado y comprimido para vehículos

Se propone la construcción de una planta satélite de gas natural anexa a una estación de servicio de carburante. El interés del proyecto se centra en el ahorro económico que supone el uso de este combustible para el transporte por carretera (hasta 50 %). Además el gas natural es, en relación al petróleo, más limpio y la relación reservas/producción es mayor. En España la infraestructura de esta tecnología es una de las mayores y mejor consolidadas de Europa. Se ha elegido la E.S. localizada en el km 26 de la autopista A1 con sentido Burgos (San Sebastián de los Reyes, Madrid). Esta autopista es una de las principales vías de conexión entre España y el resto de Europa, resultando interesante pensando en el sector trasportista. La planta dispondrá de un tanque criogénico de 60 m3 para almacenar gas natural licuado (GNL) a una temperatura de -163 ºC. Parte de éste será comprimido a 290 bar y después conducido a un vaporizador ambiental de alta presión que lo gasificará. Finalmente el gas resultante se odorizará obteniendo gas natural comprimido (GNC) que quedará preparado para su almacenaje en vasijas. El tanque criogénico (GNL) y las botellas (GNC) se conectarán a sus respectivos surtidores para el suministro de combustible. La planta incluirá un surtidor de GNC y otro de GNL para vehículos pesados. Se realizará el montaje e instalación de los equipos y líneas necesarios para el almacenaje, manipulación y suministro de gas natural vehicular.

Creating and modelling personal socio-economic networks in on-line banking

The banking industry is observing how new competitors threaten its millennial business model by targeting unbanked people, offering new financial services to their customer base, and even enabling new channels for existing services and customers. The knowledge on users, their behaviour, and expectations become a key asset in this new context. Well aware of this situation, the Center for Open Middleware, a joint technology center created by Santander Bank and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, has launched a set of initiatives to allow the experimental analysis and management of socio-economic information. PosdataP2P service is one of them, which seeks to model the economic ties between the holders of university smart cards, leveraging on the social networks the holders are subscribed to. In this paper we describe the design principles guiding the development of the system, its architecture and some implementation details.

Evolving a core Banking enterprise architecture: leveraging business events exploitation

Business information has become a critical asset for companies and it has even more value when obtained and exploited in real time. This paper analyses how to integrate this information into an existing banking Enterprise Architecture, following an event-driven approach, and entails the study of three main issues: the definition of business events, the specification of a reference architecture, which identifies the specific integration points, and the description of a governance approach to manage the new elements. All the proposed solutions have been validated with a proof-of-concept test bed in an open source environment. It is based on a case study of the banking sector that allows an operational validation to be carried out, as well as ensuring compliance with non-functional requirements. We have focused these requirements on performance.

Personal data usage management

Personal data about users (customers) is a key component for enterprises and large organizations. Its correct analysis and processing can produce relevant knowledge to achieve different business goals. For example, the monetisation of this data has become a valuable asset for many companies, such as Google, Facebook or Twitter, that obtain huge profits mainly from targeted advertising.

Biomass Gasification in a Fluidized Bed Reactor: Effect of Temperature, Stoichiometric Ratio and Biomass Type

This paper investigates the gasification of two biomass types (pine wood and olive stones) in a laboratory scale bubbling fluidized bed reactor, in order to evaluate comparatively their potential in the production of syngas.

Modelado de un sistema de telemetría LIDAR CW-RM

Los sistemas LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) permiten medir la distancia entre dos puntos, evaluando el tiempo que tarda una señal óptica (generalmente procedente de un Láser) en hacer un recorrido de ida y vuelta entre dichos puntos. En los sistemas CW-RM (Continuous Wave - Random Modulated) esta evaluación se hace calculando la correlación entre la señal emitida (pseudoaleatoria) y la recibida (cuyo retardo depender de la distancia entre los puntos). Este sistema CW-RM tiene la ventaja sobre los TOF (Time Of Flight) de que funcionan bien ún con señales recibidas de reducida relación señal a ruido. La precisión de la medida, depende, entre otros parámetros, del tiempo de bit de la secuencia pseudoaleatoria y de la frecuencia de muestreo del sistema que capta las señales y posteriormente las correla. El objetivo del presente trabajo es realizar un sistema de gran precisión, utilizando señales pseudoaleatorias de tiempo de bit de centenas de pico segundo y frecuencia de muestreo de Gs/s, para lo que deberemos utilizar equipamiento disponible en laboratorio, as mismo deberemos seleccionar y con guiar los láseres emisores para que puedan trabajar a estas velocidades. La primera etapa del proyecto será el conocimiento del instrumental de laboratorio que vamos a utilizar en el set-up. La segunda etapa será la realización de un primer montaje en el que se conectará emisor y receptor a través de una fibra óptica de longitud conocida. Esto nos permitir á el desarrollo de algoritmos para extraer información de la medida y para una calibración del instrumental para posteriores medidas. La tercera etapa es el diseño definitivo con emisor al aire para el que tendremos que ajustar todos los elementos ópticos del sistema, de modo que se pueda detectar la luz reflejada y además se pueda reducir parte de la luz de background.

Life cycle assessment of concentrated solar power (CSP) and the influence of hybridising with natural gas

Purpose Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plants based on parabolic troughs utilize auxiliary fuels (usually natural gas) to facilitate start-up operations, avoid freezing of HTF and increase power output. This practice has a significant effect on the environmental performance of the technology. The aim of this paper is to quantify the sustainability of CSP and to analyse how this is affected by hybridisation with different natural gas (NG) inputs. Methods A complete Life Cycle (LC) inventory was gathered for a commercial wet-cooled 50 MWe CSP plant based on parabolic troughs. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to evaluate the environmental performance of the plant operating with different NG inputs (between 0 and 35% of gross electricity generation). ReCiPe Europe (H) was used as LCA methodology. CML 2 baseline 2000 World and ReCiPe Europe E were used for comparative purposes. Cumulative Energy Demands (CED) and Energy Payback Times (EPT) were also determined for each scenario. Results and discussion Operation of CSP using solar energy only produced the following environmental profile: climate change 26.6 kg CO2 eq/KWh, human toxicity 13.1 kg 1,4-DB eq/KWh, marine ecotoxicity 276 g 1,4-DB eq/KWh, natural land transformation 0.005 m2/KWh, eutrophication 10.1 g P eq/KWh, acidification 166 g SO2 eq/KWh. Most of these impacts are associated with extraction of raw materials and manufacturing of plant components. The utilization NG transformed the environmental profile of the technology, placing increasing weight on impacts related to its operation and maintenance. Significantly higher impacts were observed on categories like climate change (311 kg CO2 eq/MWh when using 35 % NG), natural land transformation, terrestrial acidification and fossil depletion. Despite its fossil nature, the use of NG had a beneficial effect on other impact categories (human and marine toxicity, freshwater eutrophication and natural land transformation) due to the higher electricity output achieved. The overall environmental performance of CSP significantly deteriorated with the use of NG (single score 3.52 pt in solar only operation compared to 36.1 pt when using 35 % NG). Other sustainability parameters like EPT and CED also increased substantially as a result of higher NG inputs. Quasilinear second-degree polynomial relationships were calculated between various environmental performance parameters and NG contributions. Conclusions Energy input from auxiliary NG determines the environmental profile of the CSP plant. Aggregated analysis shows a deleterious effect on the overall environmental performance of the technology as a result of NG utilization. This is due primarily to higher impacts on environmental categories like climate change, natural land transformation, fossil fuel depletion and terrestrial acidification. NG may be used in a more sustainable and cost-effective manner in combined cycle power plants, which achieve higher energy conversion efficiencies.

Environmental analysis of a Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant hybridised with different fossil and renewable fuels

The environmental performance of a 50 MW parabolic trough Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant hybridised with different fuels was determined using a Life Cycle Assessment methodology. Six different scenarios were investigated, half of which involved hybridisation with fossil fuels (natural gas, coal and fuel oil), and the other three involved hybridisation with renewable fuels (wheat straw, wood pellets and biogas). Each scenario was compared to a solar-only operation. Nine different environmental categories as well as the Cumulative Energy Demand and the Energy Payback Time (EPT) were evaluated using Simapro software for 1 MWh of electricity produced. The results indicate a worse environmental performance for a CSP plant producing 12% of the electricity from fuel than in a solar-only operation for every indicator, except for the eutrophication and toxicity categories, whose results for the natural gas scenario are slightly better. In the climate change category, the results ranged between 26.9 and 187 kg CO2 eq/MWh, where a solar-only operation had the best results and coal hybridisation had the worst. Considering a weighted single score indicator, the environmental impact of the renewable fuels scenarios is approximately half of those considered in fossil fuels, with the straw scenario showing the best results, and the coal scenario the worstones. EPT for solar-only mode is 1.44 years, while hybridisation scenarios EPT vary in a range of 1.72 -1.83 years for straw and pellets respectively. The fuels with more embodied energy are biomethane and wood pellets.

Hybridizing concentrated solar power (CSP) with biogas and biomethane as an alternative to natural gas: Analysis of environmental performance using LCA

Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plants typically incorporate one or various auxiliary boilers operating in parallel to the solar field to facilitate start up operations, provide system stability, avoid freezing of heat transfer fluid (HTF) and increase generation capacity. The environmental performance of these plants is highly influenced by the energy input and the type of auxiliary fuel, which in most cases is natural gas (NG). Replacing the NG with biogas or biomethane (BM) in commercial CSP installations is being considered as a means to produce electricity that is fully renewable and free from fossil inputs. Despite their renewable nature, the use of these biofuels also generates environmental impacts that need to be adequately identified and quantified. This paper investigates the environmental performance of a commercial wet-cooled parabolic trough 50 MWe CSP plant in Spain operating according to two strategies: solar-only, with minimum technically viable energy non-solar contribution; and hybrid operation, where 12 % of the electricity derives from auxiliary fuels (as permitted by Spanish legislation). The analysis was based on standard Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology (ISO 14040-14040). The technical viability and the environmental profile of operating the CSP plant with different auxiliary fuels was evaluated, including: NG; biogas from an adjacent plant; and BM withdrawn from the gas network. The effect of using different substrates (biowaste, sewage sludge, grass and a mix of biowaste with animal manure) for the production of the biofuels was also investigated. The results showed that NG is responsible for most of the environmental damage associated with the operation of the plant in hybrid mode. Replacing NG with biogas resulted in a significant improvement of the environmental performance of the installation, primarily due to reduced impact in the following categories: natural land transformation, depletion of fossil resources, and climate change. However, despite the renewable nature of the biofuels, other environmental categories like human toxicity, eutrophication, acidification and marine ecotoxicity scored higher when using biogas and BM.

Approaching unbanked people: a person-to-person payment application on Facebook

More than 2.5 billion people are still unbanked and they do not access or use financial services. In this paper, we present an innovative service that allows Santander University Smart Card holders to make person-to-person payments to their friends, using different social channels, such as Telegram, Facebook or Twitter. Our first implementation is based on Facebook, one of the most used social networks. This approach allows the service to reach a great number of potential users but the delivery and stability of the service depends on an external provider. We include the description of the service architecture, its implementation, tests, and the lessons learned from the development. We also discuss pros and cons of the third party service dependency from the technical and business viewpoints.