Efficiency and automation in ATM

Sustainable growth of aviation whilst respecting the environment. • ANSPs and Aircraft Operators (AO) have to improve the way they operate

Waves, analytical signals, and some postulates of quantum theory

In this paper we apply the formalism of the analytical signal theory to the Schrödinger wavefunction. Making use exclusively of the wave-particle duality and the rinciple of relativistic covariance, we actually derive the form of the quantum energy and momentum operators for a single nonrelativistic particle. Without using any more quantum postulates, and employing the formalism of the characteristic function, we also derive the quantum-mechanical prescription for the measurement probability in such cases.

Improving the analysis of road pricing acceptability surveys by using hybrid models

Several international studies have analyzed the acceptability of road pricing schemes by means of an attitude survey in combination with the results of a stated choice experiment using both a descriptive analysis and a discrete-choice model with binary choice (?accept? or ?not accept? the toll). However, the use of hybrid discrete choice models constitutes an innovative alternative for integrating subjective attitudes and perceptions deriving from the survey of attitudes with the more objective variables from the stated choice experiment. This paper analyzes the results of applying these models to measure the acceptability of interurban road pricing among different groups of stakeholders (road freight and passenger operators, highway concessionaires, and associations of private car users) with qualitatively significant opinions on road pricing measures. Our results show that hybrid models are better suited to explaining the acceptability of a road pricing scheme by different groups of stakeholders than a separate analysis of the survey of attitudes and a discrete-choice model applied on a stated choice experiment. A particular finding was that the strong psycho-social latent variable of the perception of fairness explains the rejection or acceptance of a toll scheme by road stakeholders.

Assessing the impact of adaptive accessibility on the optimal transport policy implementation by using an integrated land-use/transport model for Madrid

Accessibility is an essential concept widely used to evaluate the impact of land-use and transport strategies in transport and urban planning. Accessibility is typically evaluated by using a transport model or a land-use model independently or successively without a feedback loop, thus neglecting the interaction effects between the two systems and the induced competition effects among opportunities due to accessibility improvements. More than a mere methodological curiosity, failure to account for land- use/transport interactions and the competition effect may result in large underestimation of the policy effects. With the recent development of land-use and transport interaction (LUTI) models, there is a growing interest in using these models to adequately measure accessibility and evaluate its impact. The current study joins this research stream by embedding an accessibility measure in a LUTI model with two main aims. The first aim is to account for adaptive accessibility, namely the adjustment of the potential accessibility due to the effect of competition among opportunities (e.g., workplaces) as a result of improved accessibility. LUTI models are particularly suitable for assessing adaptive accessibility because the competition factor is a function of the number of jobs, which is related to land-use attractiveness and the number of workers which is related, among other factors, to the transport demand. The second aim is to identify the optimal implementation scenario of policy measures on the basis of the potential and adaptive accessibility and analyse the results in terms of social welfare and accessibility. The metropolitan area of Madrid is used as a case-study and two transport policy instruments, namely a cordon toll and bus frequency increase, have been chosen for the simulation study in order to present the usefulness of the approach to urban planners and policy makers. The MARS model (Metropolitan Activity Relocation Simulator) calibrated for Madrid was employed as the analysis tool. The impact of accessibility is embedded in the model through a social welfare function that includes not only costs and benefits to both road users and transport operators, but also costs and benefits for the government and society in general (external costs). An optimisation procedure is performed by the MARS model for maximizing the value of objective function in order to find the best (optimal) policy imp lementations intensity (i.e., price, frequency). Last, the two policy strategies are evaluated in terms of their accessibility. Results show that the accessibility with competition factor influences the optimal policy implementation level and also generates different results in terms of social welfare. In addition, mapping the difference between the potential and the adaptive accessibility indicators shows that the main changes occur in areas where there is a strong competition among land-use opportunities.

Métodos computacionales para visco-hiperelasticidad anisótropa en grandes deformaciones

El comportamiento mecánico de muchos materiales biológicos y poliméricos en grandes deformaciones se puede describir adecuadamente mediante formulaciones isocóricas hiperelásticas y viscoelásticas. Las ecuaciones de comportamiento elástico y viscoelástico y las formulaciones computacionales para materiales incompresibles isótropos en deformaciones finitas están ampliamente desarrolladas en la actualidad. Sin embargo, el desarrollo de modelos anisótropos no lineales y de sus correspondientes formulaciones computacionales sigue siendo un tema de investigación de gran interés. Cuando se consideran grandes deformaciones, existen muchas medidas de deformación disponibles con las que poder formular las ecuaciones de comportamiento. Los modelos en deformaciones cuadráticas facilitan la implementación en códigos de elementos finitos, ya que estas medidas surgen de forma natural en la formulación. No obstante, pueden dificultar la interpretación de los modelos y llevar a resultados pocos realistas. El uso de deformaciones logarítmicas permite el desarrollo de modelos más simples e intuitivos, aunque su formulación computacional debe ser adaptada a las exigencias del programa. Como punto de partida, en esta tesis se demuestra que las deformaciones logarítmicas representan la extensión natural de las deformaciones infinitesimales, tanto axiales como angulares, al campo de las grandes deformaciones. Este hecho permite explicar la simplicidad de las ecuaciones resultantes. Los modelos hiperelásticos predominantes en la actualidad están formulados en invariantes de deformaciones cuadráticas. Estos modelos, ya sean continuos o microestructurales, se caracterizan por tener una forma analítica predefinida. Su expresión definitiva se calcula mediante un ajuste de curvas a datos experimentales. Un modelo que no sigue esta metodología fue desarrollado por Sussman y Bathe. El modelo es sólo válido para isotropía y queda definido por una función de energía interpolada con splines, la cual reproduce los datos experimentales de forma exacta. En esta tesis se presenta su extensión a materiales transversalmente isótropos y ortótropos utilizando deformaciones logarítmicas. Asimismo, se define una nueva propiedad que las funciones de energía anisótropas deben satisfacer para que su convergencia al caso isótropo sea correcta. En visco-hiperelasticidad, aparte de las distintas funciones de energía disponibles, hay dos aproximaciones computational típicas basadas en variables internas. El modelo original de Simó está formulado en tensiones y es válido para materiales anisótropos, aunque sólo es adecuado para pequeñas desviaciones con respecto al equilibrio termodinámico. En cambio, el modelo basado en deformaciones de Reese y Govindjee permite grandes deformaciones no equilibradas pero es, en esencia, isótropo. Las formulaciones anisótropas en este último contexto son microestructurales y emplean el modelo isótropo para cada uno de los constituyentes. En esta tesis se presentan dos formulaciones fenomenológicas viscoelásticas definidas mediante funciones hiperelásticas anisótropas y válidas para grandes desviaciones con respecto al equilibrio termodinámico. El primero de los modelos está basado en la descomposición multiplicativa de Sidoroff y requiere un comportamiento viscoso isótropo. La formulación converge al modelo de Reese y Govindjee en el caso especial de isotropía elástica. El segundo modelo se define a partir de una descomposición multiplicativa inversa. Esta formulación está basada en una descripción co-rotacional del problema, es sustancialmente más compleja y puede dar lugar a tensores constitutivos ligeramente no simétricos. Sin embargo, su rango de aplicación es mucho mayor ya que permite un comportamiento anisótropo tanto elástico como viscoso. Varias simulaciones de elementos finitos muestran la gran versatilidad de estos modelos cuando se combinan con funciones hiperelásticas formadas por splines. ABSTRACT The mechanical behavior of many polymeric and biological materials may be properly modelled be means of isochoric hyperelastic and viscoelastic formulations. These materials may sustain large strains. The viscoelastic computational formulations for isotropic incompressible materials at large strains may be considered well established; for example Ogden’s hyperelastic function and the visco-hyperelastic model of Reese and Govindjee are well known models for isotropy. However, anisotropic models and computational procedures both for hyperelasticity and viscohyperelasticity are still under substantial research. Anisotropic hyperelastic models are typically based on structural invariants obtained from quadratic strain measures. These models may be microstructurallybased or phenomenological continuum formulations, and are characterized by a predefined analytical shape of the stored energy. The actual final expression of the stored energy depends on some material parameters which are obtained from an optimization algorithm, typically the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. We present in this work anisotropic spline-based hyperelastic stored energies in which the shape of the stored energy is obtained as part of the procedure and which (exactly in practice) replicates the experimental data. These stored energies are based on invariants obtained from logarithmic strain measures. These strain measures preserve the metric and the physical meaning of the trace and deviator operators and, hence, are interesting and meaningful for anisotropic formulations. Furthermore, the proposed stored energies may be formulated in order to have material-symmetries congruency both from a theoretical and from a numerical point of view, which are new properties that we define in this work. On the other hand, visco-hyperelastic formulations for anisotropic materials are typically based on internal stress-like variables following a procedure used by Sim´o. However, it can be shown that this procedure is not adequate for large deviations from thermodynamic equilibrium. In contrast, a formulation given by Reese and Govindjee is valid for arbitrarily large deviations from thermodynamic equilibrium but not for anisotropic stored energy functions. In this work we present two formulations for visco-hyperelasticity valid for anisotropic stored energies and large deviations from thermodynamic equilibrium. One of the formulations is based on the Sidoroff multiplicative decomposition and converges to the Reese and Govindjee formulation for the case of isotropy. However, the formulation is restricted to isotropy for the viscous component. The second formulation is based on a reversed multiplicative decomposition. This last formulation is substantially more complex and based on a corotational description of the problem. It can also result in a slightly nonsymmetric tangent. However, the formulation allows for anisotropy not only in the equilibrated and non-equilibrated stored energies, but also in the viscous behavior. Some examples show finite element implementation, versatility and interesting characteristics of the models.

Influencia de un nuevo marco jurídico en la competitividad del sistema portuario español

El sistema portuario español movió en el año 2013 aproximadamente 458,54 millones de toneladas, 13,8 millones de TEUs, con un total de 131.128 buques que accedieron a puerto para el conjunto de las 28 Autoridades Portuarias. Con el 62% de las exportaciones y el 86% de las importaciones realizadas por vía marítima, una rentabilidad del 2,34 %, muy cerca del objetivo del 2,5 % de rentabilidad media annual establecida legalmente, y una cifra de negocios aproximada de 1.028 millones de euros equivalentes al 1,1 % del PIB que genera un empleo directo e indirecto vinculado de 145.000 personas, concluimos que estamos hablando de un sector estratégico para la economía del país. Desde hace décadas, en muchos puertos del mundo se han venido desarrollando terminales “hub” o de concentración y distribución de cargas. Las navieras concentran entre este tipo de terminales sus líneas transoceánicas con buques de enormes dimensiones y capacidad de carga para producir los tránsitos de contenedores desde estas líneas a otras líneas llamadas “feeder”, con buques de menor tamaño que enlazan el “hub” con los puertos de su área marítima de influencia. La excepcional ubicación geoestratégica de España, con aproximadamente ocho mil kilómetros de costa, ha originado que los puertos españoles de mayor dimensión aspiren a incorporarse a esta red marítima internacional de contenedores y determina que en nuestro sistema portuario los movimientos de contenedores de tránsito tengan gran importancia. Sin embargo, la crisis económica ha tenido un efecto decisivo en el sector marítimo, determinando una lucha feroz entre todos los puertos, nacionales e internacionales, por captar este tipo de tráficos, lo que origina una búsqueda de las compañías navieras de puertos cada vez más eficientes en términos calidad/coste del servicio. La entrada en vigor del Texto Refundido de la Ley de Puertos y la piedra angular de su reforma, la Ley 33/2010, plantea como objetivo principal la mejora de la competitividad del sistema portuario español y liderar su recuperación, ofreciendo unas condiciones de entorno favorables a los puertos españoles que acaben por incentivar la captación de tráficos e inversión privada a través de una oferta de servicios e infraestructura de calidad y a precios competitivos que consoliden su posición dentro del tráfico marítimo mundial. Surge, por tanto, la conveniencia de investigar la influencia de las medidas propuestas por dicha norma legal y las soluciones ofrecidas a las demandas de un sector considerado estratégico para la economía del país, y cuya resolución se considera imprescindible para consolidar su recuperación. Por eso, se han analizado los aspectos más importantes de la reforma mediante la realización de un resumen ejecutivo y se ha estudiado la influencia de las medidas que incorpora desde el punto de vista de tres factores, que previamente se han considerado como fundamentales para la recuperación del sistema portuario español, y que históricamente habían sido demandados por el mismo, como son, en primer lugar, un progresivo sistema de flexibilización tributaria que permitiera a los puertos españoles ganar en términos de competitividad respecto a otros modelos portuarios mucho más flexibles en materia tarifaria, en segundo lugar, una necesaria liberalización del régimen de prestación de los servicios portuarios que posibilite el libre acceso a cualquier interesado en su prestación y, en último lugar, el progresivo abaratamiento de los costes inherentes a dichos servicios, fundamentalmente la manipulación de mercancías. Con posterioridad se ha investigado el trámite parlamentario al que se ha sometido la ley, fruto del enorme consenso alcanzado entre las dos principales fuerzas políticas del país, que determinó que se presentaran más de 700 enmiendas al proyecto original, y en algunos casos, se ha prestado especial atención a determinadas enmiendas que se consideran, en opinión de este investigador, novedosas y aventuradas, razón por la cual quizás no fueron incorporadas definitivamente al texto legal. Y se han analizado las principales demandas y aportaciones extraídas de la Sesión Informativa sobre la tramitación del entonces proyecto de ley ofrecida por la Comisión de Fomento del Congreso de los Diputados a los principales representantes del sector, comunidad portuaria, universidad y sindicatos. Siendo conscientes de la incidencia que tiene el servicio portuario de manipulación de mercancías en el paso de la mercancía por el puerto, se ha hecho una referencia concreta al peculiar régimen jurídico y laboral del personal vinculado al servicio. Avanzamos que las características de la relación laboral especial, y su peculiar régimen jurídico, con una dualidad de relaciones laborales, tiene una influencia decisiva en la nómina del trabajador que se repercute en los usuarios del servicio, fundamentalmente el naviero y el operador de la terminal, que en definitiva, incide en la competitividad del puerto. Y se ha constatado el auge aperturista de numerosas legislaciones portuarias europeas, prestando especial atención al proyecto frustrado de liberalización de los servicios portuarios en la Unión Europea de la conocida como Directiva Loyola de Palacio del año 2003 y al Libro Blanco de Transportes del año 2011. Así como a las deficiencias advertidas por el Dictamen de la Comisión Europea de fecha 27/09/2012 en relación al régimen jurídico del servicio portuario de manipulación de mercancías, que lo considera disconforme y contrario con las normas de libertad de establecimiento en Europa y que amenaza con una previsible reforma unilateral de la legislación portuaria española, a instancias europeas. Bajo este planteamiento, se ha procedido a analizar el marco de prestación de dichos servicios desde el punto de vista de la propia comunidad portuaria. Inicialmente, a través de un estudio de fuerzas de la competitividad del sector de los servicios portuarios en el sistema portuario español que nos permitirá trazar un mapa estratégico del mismo a través del “Modelo de las Cinco Fuerzas de Porter” concluyendo, que el poder de los prestadores de servicios portuarios como proveedores de los mismos, fundamentalmente en la manipulación de mercancías, es máximo, con un único colectivo, los estibadores portuarios, que al amparo de la normativa legal vigente tienen la exclusividad de su prestación. Dichas circunstancias restan competitividad al sistema frente a alternativas portuarias más flexibles y desincentivan la inversión privada. Y, en segundo lugar, mediante un proceso participativo en distintas encuestas sobre el modelo legislativo y sobre el marco formativo del sector con los propios agentes afectados dentro de la comunidad portuaria, desde la triple perspectiva de la vertiente pública que representan las Autoridades Portuarias, como gestores de las infraestructuras, la vertiente privada que representan los usuarios y prestadores de servicios, como principal cliente del puerto y desde el punto de vista de la propia mano de obra portuaria materializada en la representación sindical de dichos trabajadores. Los resultados nos permitirán concluir, respectivamente, la incidencia del servicio portuario mercancía por el puerto, por representar más de la mitad de los costes. Así como la aspiración de los trabajadores adscritos a dicho servicio de consolidar un título formativo que unifique y potencie su capacitación profesional, circunstancia esta última, también demandada por toda comunidad portuaria. Analizadas las conclusiones extraídas en cada una de las líneas de investigación se han detectado una serie de ineficiencias dentro del mismo que dicho marco regulador no ha sabido resolver, por lo que se ha considerado la conveniencia de formular, como herramienta de ayuda a gestores del sistema portuario español, una relación de medidas que, en opinión de este investigador, se consideran necesarias para mejorar el régimen de prestación de los servicios portuarios y se ha propuesto un borrador de modificación del actual Texto Refundido que pueda servir de base para materializar una futura reforma legal. Las conclusiones obtenidas en la investigación deben sentar las bases de una profunda reflexión sobre la necesidad de encaminar, como alternativa a una previsible modificación a instancias europeas, una reforma legal que decididamente apueste por la competitividad del sistema portuario español desde el punto de vista de la liberalización de servicios, el abaratamiento de los costes de la estiba y la necesaria profesionalización de los trabajadores adscritos al servicio portuario de manipulación de mercancías. During 2013 the Spanish Port System moved nearly 458,54 million tons of freight, 13,8 million TEUs, involving a total of 131.128 ships for the 28 existing Port Authorities. With 62% of exports and 86% of imports made through sea transportation, a 2,34% profit, close to the 2,5% average annual profit goal legally established, revenues of 1.028 million € equivalent to a 1.1% of Spain’s GDP and a figure of 145.000 people a directly or indirectly employed we can conclude that maritime industry is undoubtedly one of the strategic and key sectors for the country’s economy. Since several decades many ports in the world have been increasingly developing “Hub” terminals, those which concentrate and distribute freight. Shipping companies place among these type of terminals their transoceanic sea liners along with huge dimension & capacity ships to make the container transit from these liners to other called “feeder” which are smaller freight ships that connect the “hub” with the ports within its maritime area of influence. Spain’s exceptional geostrategic location with over 8.000 km of coastline has originated that those big dimension Spanish ports aspire to become a part of a container international maritime network which also determines that transit container move is key within our port system. Nevertheless the economic crisis has had a decisive impact on the maritime sector originating a fierce battle between all ports, national and international ones, all of them fight against each other to catch this type of maritime traffic which triggers an ongoing shipping companies search in cost/service quality efficient ports. The cornerstone of the Restated Text of Port Law is Law 33/2010, which lays out as main goal the Spanish Port System competitiveness improvement and lead its recovery offering favorable environment conditions to Spanish ports which help encourage maritime traffic attraction and private investment through a wide offer of services, quality of infrastructure and competitive prices which can consolidate its positioning within the world’s maritime traffic. It is therefore key to investigate the influence of the measures proposed by the above mentioned law and also the solutions offered to the demands of a sector which is considered strategic for the country’s economy and which solution is essential to consolidate the recovery. It is because of this that the most important aspects of the reform have been analyzed through the making of an executive summary and it has also been studied the influence of the measures it includes from the point of view of three factors which have previously been considered as key for the Spanish port system recovery. The system has historically demanded a progressive tax flexibility, which would permit Spanish ports be more competitive compared to other port models much more flexible in rates, a necessary liberalization of the port service provision regime and last but not least, to cut the price of costs related to those services, mainly freight handling. Following this, the parliamentary process of the law has also been studied as a consequence of the vast consensus reached by the main political forces in the country which clearly determined that more than 700 amendments to the original project were presented. In some cases the focus has been on amendments which are adventurous and new, reason why they were finally not included to the final legal text. Being well aware of the importance that freight handling procedure has, I have made a specific reference to the legal and working framework of those employees related to this service. We conclude that the special working relationship, its different legal regime, along with the working relationship dualism has a big impact and decisive influence over the worker’s salary which also affects service users, mainly shipowners and terminal operators, having a bad effect on the port’s competitiveness. The above confirms the new opening trend of main European port laws with special attention to the frustrated European Union port services liberalization project, also known as Directive Loyola de Palacio (2003) and the White Paper on Transports (2011). It is important to highlight that the European Commission has also observed several deficiencies with regard to the freight handling port service Law Regime being in disagreement with it, considering it is against the free establishment rules in Europe. The Commission is likely to present a unilateral reform to the Spanish Port Law. Under this approach the service provision framework is being analyzed from the Port Community point of view. Initially the analysis will focus on the study of the competition forces within the port services industry in Spain, this will allow us to draw up an strategic map through “Porter’s Five Forces Model” concluding that the power of port services providers as freight handlers is maximum, with an only collective, stevedores, which has the exclusivity for their services. All these circumstances not only decrease the system’s competitiveness versus other more flexible but also restrain private investments. Secondly, through a participating procedure in different surveys about the legislative model and about the training framework with the affected agents within the port community, there is a triple perspective: Public point of view represented by Port Authorities as infrastructure managers, Private point of view represented by users and service suppliers as main Port’s customer and finally, port workforce, represented by union leaders. Results will let us conclude that freight handling service is the most critical port service and represents more than half of the costs. This service related workers aspire to obtain a training certificate that unifies and boosts their professional role which is also chased by the entire port community. Once conclusions have been analyzed for all research lines, several deficiencies have been found and the regulatory framework hasn’t yet been able to solve them, it has therefore been a series of necessary measures that help improve the port services provision regime. A new proposal to the Restated Law Text has been drafted as the first step to embrace a future legal reform. Conclusions obtained on the research should set the new basis of a deep reflection about the need to bent on a new legal reform which firmly bets on Spanish port system competitiveness from three key points of view, service liberalization, ship load cost reduction and professionalization of freight handling related workers.

Garantía de funcionamiento de estaciones de tratamiento terciario de aguas residuales para usos recreativos : controles necesarios

La legislación existente en nuestro país, el Real Decreto 1620/200, de 7 de diciembre, por el que se establece el régimen jurídico de la reutilización de las aguas depuradas, no ha sido modificada en estos últimos años a pesar de las opiniones de expertos y operadores en el sentido que merece una revisión y mejora. Por ello se ha realizado un análisis pormenorizado de toda la legislación existente a nivel país y de otros países con amplia experiencia en reutilización para proponer mejoras o cambios en base a la información recopilada, tanto en estudios específicos de investigación como de los datos obtenidos de operadores y/o explotadores de estaciones regeneradoras de aguas residuales en España. Del estudio surgen algunas propuestas claras que se ponen a consideración de las autoridades. Se ha comprobado que no existen estudios suficientes relacionados a tipos de controles en estaciones de tratamiento terciario de aguas residuales en cada uno de los pasos de la línea de proceso, que permitan conocer las garantías de funcionamiento de dichas etapas y del proceso en su conjunto. De éste modo se podrían analizar todas las etapas por separado y comprobar si el funcionamiento en las condiciones previstas de diseño es apropiado, o si es posible mejorar la eficiencia a partir de estos datos intermedios, en lugar de los controles normales efectuados en la entrada y la salida realizados por los explotadores de las plantas existentes en el país. Existen, sin embargo, investigaciones y datos de casi todas las tecnologías existentes en el mercado relacionadas con la regeneración, lo cual ha permitido identificar sus ventajas e inconvenientes. La aplicación de un proceso de APPCC (Análisis de Peligros y Puntos de Control Críticos) a una planta existente ha permitido comprobar que es una herramienta práctica que permite gestionar la seguridad de un proceso de producción industrial como es el caso de un sistema de reutilización, por lo que se considera conveniente recomendar su aplicación siempre que sea posible. The existing legislation in our country, Royal Decree 1620/2007, of 7th December, establishing the legal regime for the reuse of treated water has not been modified in recent years despite expert and operators opinions in the sense that it deserves review and improvement. Therefore it has been conducted a detailed analysis of all existing legislation at country level and of other countries with extensive experience in water reuse to propose improvements or changes based on the information gathered both in specific research studies and the data obtained from operators and/or operators of regenerative sewage stations in Spain. As a result of these studies, some clear proposals are made to be considered by the authorities. It has been found that there are not enough studies related to types of controls in tertiary wastewater treatment plants, in each step of the process line, that provide insight into the performance guarantees of the mention stages and of the whole process. In this manner all stages could be analyzed separately and check if the operation in the design conditions envisaged is appropriate, or whether it is possible to improve efficiency taking in account these intermediate data, instead to the normal checks at entry and exit carried out by operators in existing plants in the country. There are, however, research and data from almost all technologies existing in the market related to regeneration, which has allowed identified its advantages and disadvantages. The application of a process of HACCP (hazard analysis and critical control points) to an existing plant has shown that it is a practical tool for managing the security of a process of industrial production as is the case of a water reuse system, so it is considered appropriate to recommend application whenever possible.

Asymptotically Toeplitz Hessenberg Operators and the Rieman mapping

In a recent work the authors have established a relation between the limits of the elements of the diagonals of the Hessenberg matrix D associated with a regular measure, whenever those limits exist, and the coe?cients of the Laurent series expansion of the Riemann mapping ?(z) of the support supp(?), when this is a Jordan arc or a connected nite union of Jordan arcs in the complex plane C. We extend here this result using asymptotic Toeplitz operator properties of the Hessenberg matriz.

A user-centric approach to service creation and delivery over next generation networks

Next Generation Networks (NGN) provide Telecommunications operators with the possibility to share their resources and infrastructure, facilitate the interoperability with other networks, and simplify and unify the management, operation and maintenance of service offerings, thus enabling the fast and cost-effective creation of new personal, broadband ubiquitous services. Unfortunately, service creation over NGN is far from the success of service creation in the Web, especially when it comes to Web 2.0. This paper presents a novel approach to service creation and delivery, with a platform that opens to non-technically skilled users the possibility to create, manage and share their own convergent (NGN-based and Web-based) services. To this end, the business approach to user-generated services is analyzed and the technological bases supporting the proposal are explained.

Interactive Graphic Simulation: An Advanced Methodology to Improve the Teaching-Learning Process in Nuclear Engineering Education and Training

Nowadays, computer simulators are becoming basic tools for education and training in many engineering fields. In the nuclear industry, the role of simulation for training of operators of nuclear power plants is also recognized of the utmost relevance. As an example, the International Atomic Energy Agency sponsors the development of nuclear reactor simulators for education, and arranges the supply of such simulation programs. Aware of this, in 2008 Gas Natural Fenosa, a Spanish gas and electric utility that owns and operate nuclear power plants and promotes university education in the nuclear technology field, provided the Department of Nuclear Engineering of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid with the Interactive Graphic Simulator (IGS) of “José Cabrera” (Zorita) nuclear power plant, an industrial facility whose commercial operation ceased definitively in April 2006. It is a state-of-the-art full-scope real-time simulator that was used for training and qualification of the operators of the plant control room, as well as to understand and analyses the plant dynamics, and to develop, qualify and validate its emergency operating procedures.

IDT-3D: Identification and tracking in controlled environments using a 3D unified user interface

Identification and tracking of objects in specific environments such as harbors or security areas is a matter of great importance nowadays. With this purpose, numerous systems based on different technologies have been developed, resulting in a great amount of gathered data displayed through a variety of interfaces. Such amount of information has to be evaluated by human operators in order to take the correct decisions, sometimes under highly critical situations demanding both speed and accuracy. In order to face this problem we describe IDT-3D, a platform for identification and tracking of vessels in a harbour environment able to represent fused information in real time using a Virtual Reality application. The effectiveness of using IDT-3D as an integrated surveillance system is currently under evaluation. Preliminary results point to a significant decrease in the times of reaction and decision making of operators facing up a critical situation. Although the current application focus of IDT-3D is quite specific, the results of this research could be extended to the identification and tracking of targets in other controlled environments of interest as coastlines, borders or even urban areas.

Global Linear Instability at the Dawn of its 4th Decade: A List of Challenges (A Practical Guide on how to Contain the Euphoria and Avoid the Oversell)

Global linear instability theory is concerned with the temporal or spatial development of small-amplitude perturbations superposed upon laminar steady or time-periodic threedimensional flows, which are inhomogeneous in two (and periodic in one) or all three spatial directions.1 The theory addresses flows developing in complex geometries, in which the parallel or weakly nonparallel basic flow approximation invoked by classic linear stability theory does not hold. As such, global linear theory is called to fill the gap in research into stability and transition in flows over or through complex geometries. Historically, global linear instability has been (and still is) concerned with solution of multi-dimensional eigenvalue problems; the maturing of non-modal linear instability ideas in simple parallel flows during the last decade of last century2–4 has given rise to investigation of transient growth scenarios in an ever increasing variety of complex flows. After a brief exposition of the theory, connections are sought with established approaches for structure identification in flows, such as the proper orthogonal decomposition and topology theory in the laminar regime and the open areas for future research, mainly concerning turbulent and three-dimensional flows, are highlighted. Recent results obtained in our group are reported in both the time-stepping and the matrix-forming approaches to global linear theory. In the first context, progress has been made in implementing a Jacobian-Free Newton Krylov method into a standard finite-volume aerodynamic code, such that global linear instability results may now be obtained in compressible flows of aeronautical interest. In the second context a new stable very high-order finite difference method is implemented for the spatial discretization of the operators describing the spatial BiGlobal EVP, PSE-3D and the TriGlobal EVP; combined with sparse matrix treatment, all these problems may now be solved on standard desktop computers.

Coronary Artery Tracking in 3D Cardiac CT Images Using Local Morphological Reconstruction Operators

Automatic segmentation and tracking of the coronary artery tree from Cardiac Multislice-CT images is an important goal to improve the diagnosis and treatment of coronary artery disease. This paper presents a semi-automatic algorithm (one input point per vessel) based on morphological grayscale local reconstructions in 3D images devoted to the extraction of the coronary artery tree. The algorithm has been evaluated in the framework of the Coronary Artery Tracking Challenge 2008 [1], obtaining consistent results in overlapping measurements (a mean of 70% of the vessel well tracked). Poor results in accuracy measurements suggest that future work should refine the centerline extraction. The algorithm can be efficiently implemented and its general strategy can be easily extrapolated to a completely automated centerline extraction or to a user interactive vessel extraction

A mathematical framework for finite strain elastoplastic consolidation. Part 1: Balance laws, variational formulation, and linearization

A mathematical formulation for finite strain elasto plastic consolidation of fully saturated soil media is presented. Strong and weak forms of the boundary-value problem are derived using both the material and spatial descriptions. The algorithmic treatment of finite strain elastoplasticity for the solid phase is based on multiplicative decomposition and is coupled with the algorithm for fluid flow via the Kirchhoff pore water pressure. Balance laws are written for the soil-water mixture following the motion of the soil matrix alone. It is shown that the motion of the fluid phase only affects the Jacobian of the solid phase motion, and therefore can be characterized completely by the motion of the soil matrix. Furthermore, it is shown from energy balance consideration that the effective, or intergranular, stress is the appropriate measure of stress for describing the constitutive response of the soil skeleton since it absorbs all the strain energy generated in the saturated soil-water mixture. Finally, it is shown that the mathematical model is amenable to consistent linearization, and that explicit expressions for the consistent tangent operators can be derived for use in numerical solutions such as those based on the finite element method.