Systematics of Senecio sect. Crociseris (Compositae, Senecioneae)

Se revisa taxonómicamente Senecio sect. Crociseris (Compositae, Senecioneae),una de las cuatro principales secciones del género en el ámbito de Eurasia y el norte de África. Este grupo comprende hierbas rizomatosas, distribuidas principalmente del oeste de Europa y noroeste de África al oeste asiático, y presenta la mayor diversidad en el Mediterráneo septentrional. El nuevo tratamiento taxonómico que se propone reconoce 28 especies y 8 subespecies. Se ha hecho un especial esfuerzo en el análisis de la variabilidad del gr. S. doronicum, cuya sistemática ha sido objeto de controversia durante mucho tiempo. En este grupo se aceptan tres especies: S. doronicum, S.lagascanus, y S. provincialis, la primera con tres subespecies: subsp. doronicum, subsp.longifolius, y subsp. orientalis. Con el objetivo de indagar en las relaciones de las especies dentro de la sección y de ésta con otros grupos de Senecio, se han llevado a cabo análisis filogenéticos basados en secuencias ITS y de cloroplasto. Los resultados sugieren que la sect. Crociseris es un grupo parafilético, ya que incluye las especies secuenciadas de la sect. Doria. Además, complejos patrones de algunas secuencias ITS sugieren eventos de hibridación. Como resultado del estudio taxonómico se proponen las siguientes combinaciones: Senecio doronicum subsp. longifolius(Willk.) J. Calvo, Senecio doronicum subsp. orientalis (Ten.) J. Calvo, Senecio macedonicus subsp. barckhausiaefolius (Boiss. & Heldr.) J. Calvo, y Senecio racemosus subsp. kirghisicus(DC.) J. Calvo. Por otro lado, S. ruthenensis de Francia y S. lusitanicus de Portugal han sido sinonimizados a S. lagascanus, así como S. ovatifolius, S. pisidicus y S. tmoleus de Anatolia a S. kolenatianus, S. olympicus, y S. castagneanus respectivamente, S.bertramii de Líbano a S. cilicius, y S. delbesianus de Siria a S. racemosus subsp. racemosus. Se han lectotipificado setenta y cinco nombres, y neotipificado S. pyrenaicus y S. scopolii. Senecio gerardi Godr., S. doronicum (L.) L. y S. paucifolius S.G. Gmel. se propusieron a conservar. Se incluyen claves de identificación, descripciones detalladas, mapas de distribución e ilustraciones. Nueve táxones han sido ilustrados por primera vez.

Employment rate impacts of charging the Heavy Good Vehicle corridor (Madrid-Sevilla) across Spanish regions: a Random Utility Based Multiregional Input-Output approach

The implementation of a charging policy for heavy goods vehicles in European Union (EU) member countries has been imposed to reflect costs of construction and maintenance of infrastructure as well as externalities such as congestion, accidents and environmental impact. In this context, EU countries approved the Eurovignette directive (1999/62/EC) and its amending directive (2006 /38/EC) which established a legal framework to regulate the system of tolls. Even if that regulation seek s to increase the efficien cy of freight, it will trigger direct and indirect effects on Spain’s regional economies by increasing transport costs. This paper presents the development of a multiregional Input-Output methodology (MRIO) with elastic trade coefficients to predict in terregional trade, using transport attributes integrated in multinomial logit models. This method is highly useful to carry out an ex-ante evaluation of transport policies because it involves road freight transport cost sensitivity, and determine regional distributive and substitution economic effect s of countries like Spain, characterized by socio-demographic and economic attributes, differentiated region by region. It will thus be possible to determine cost-effective strategies, given different policy scenarios. MRIO mode l would then be used to determine the impact on the employment rate of imposing a charge in the Madrid-Sevilla corridor in Spain. This methodology is important for measuring the impact on the employment rate since it is one of the main macroeconomic indicators of Spain’s regional and national economic situation. A previous research developed (DESTINO) using a MRIO method estimated employment impacts of road pricing policy across Spanish regions considering a fuel tax charge (€/liter) in the entire shortest cost path network for freight transport. Actually, it found that the variation in employment is expected to be substantial for some regions, and negligible for others. For example, in this Spanish case study of regional employment has showed reductions between 16.1% (Rioja) and 1.4% (Madrid region). This variation range seems to be related to either the intensity of freight transport in each region or dependency of regions to transport intensive economic sect ors. In fact, regions with freight transport intensive sectors will lose more jobs while regions with a predominantly service economy undergo a fairly insignificant loss of employment. This paper is focused on evaluating a freight transport vehicle-kilometer charge (€/km) in a non-tolled motorway corridor (A-4) between Madrid-Sevilla (517 Km.). The consequences of the road pricing policy implementation show s that the employment reductions are not as high as the diminution stated in the previous research because this corridor does not affect the whole freight transport system of Spain.

Orthogonal MCMC algorithms

Monte Carlo (MC) methods are widely used in signal processing, machine learning and stochastic optimization. A well-known class of MC methods are Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. In this work, we introduce a novel parallel interacting MCMC scheme, where the parallel chains share information using another MCMC technique working on the entire population of current states. These parallel ?vertical? chains are led by random-walk proposals, whereas the ?horizontal? MCMC uses a independent proposal, which can be easily adapted by making use of all the generated samples. Numerical results show the advantages of the proposed sampling scheme in terms of mean absolute error, as well as robustness w.r.t. to initial values and parameter choice.