Color representation and interpretation of special effect coatings

A representation of the color gamut of special effect coatings is proposed and shown for six different samples, whose colors were calculated from spectral bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) measurements at different geometries. The most important characteristic of the proposed representation is that it allows a straightforward understanding of the color shift to be done both in terms of conventional irradiation and viewing angles and in terms of flake-based parameters. A different line was proposed to assess the color shift of special effect coatings on a*,b*-diagrams: the absorption line. Similar to interference and aspecular lines (constant aspecular and irradiation angles, respectively), an absorption line is the locus of calculated color coordinates from measurement geometries with a fixed bistatic angle. The advantages of using the absorption lines to characterize the contributions to the spectral BRDF of the scattering at the absorption pigments and the reflection at interference pigments for different geometries are shown.

Coverage and invariance for the biological control of pests in mediterranean greenhouses

A major problem related to the treatment of ecosystems is that they have no available mathematical formalization. This implies that many of their properties are not presented as short, rigorous modalities, but rather as long expressions which, from a biological standpoint, totally capture the significance of the property, but which have the disadvantage of not being sufficiently manageable, from a mathematical standpoint. The interpretation of ecosystems through networks allows us to employ the concepts of coverage and invariance alongside other related concepts. The latter will allow us to present the two most important relations in an ecosystem – predator–prey and competition – in a different way. Biological control, defined as “the use of living organisms, their resources or their products to prevent or reduce loss or damage caused by pests”, is now considered the environmentally safest and most economically advantageous method of pest control (van Lenteren, 2011). A guild includes all those organisms that share a common food resource (Polis et al., 1989), which in the context of biological control means all the natural enemies of a given pest. There are several types of intraguild interactions, but the one that has received most research attention is intraguild predation, which occurs when two organisms share the same prey while at the same time participating in some kind of trophic interaction. However, this is not the only intraguild relationship possible, and studies are now being conducted on others, such as oviposition deterrence. In this article, we apply the developed concepts of structural functions, coverage, invariant sets, etc. (Lloret et al., 1998, Esteve and Lloret, 2006a, Esteve and Lloret, 2006b and Esteve and Lloret, 2007) to a tritrophic system that includes aphids, one of the most damaging pests and a current bottleneck for the success of biological control in Mediterranean greenhouses.

Export and import market-specific characteristics. How they drive the decision to trade and how much

Using a rich firm-level dataset on the Italian manufacturing industry, this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the role that firms and market characteristics play in shaping firms’ trade activities. We enhance the previous analyses by considering firms’ engagement in international transactions, by focusing on either exports or imports. We show that the determinants of a firm’s export participation and value across countries also drive import behavior. Our research is consistent with the presence of country-specific sunk costs and with a qualitatively similar role of gravity forces and other country attributes on both sides of trading activities. Our evidence, however, militates in favor of a framework where variations in market characteristics have a larger impact on imports than exports.

Muro Mediterráneo versus movimiento moderno

Una década antes de que fuera construido el Muro Atlántico fue ejecutado un sistema de defensas a lo largo de la costa del Mediterráneo español (1936-39). La recuperación de estas construcciones (de sus documentos gráficos) y su puesta en valor pueden ayudar a consolidar una memoria propia del siglo XX. Este trabajo consiste en inventariar, medir y dibujar los planos de estas arquitecturas a fin de fijar la memoria que se diluye por la erosión del tiempo. Estas defensas militares se sitúan en muchas fronteras: ¿son propiamente arquitectura o piezas industriales? ¿Son arquitectura moderna? Estas transitan entre dos mundos: uno que proyecta arquitecturas ligeras, flexibles y con caducidad frente a otro que construye obras compactas, rígidas y eternas. También se mueven por dos épocas: una que perpetúa las hazañas épicas frente a otras que muestra los desastres. Espacio, tiempo y materia. Son las ruinas de hormigón más modernas de nuestra historia que se encuentran camufladas en la topografía: templos y tumbas a la vez. En esta reconstrucción de la memoria, resulta crucial la restitución gráfica que es donde comienza el conocimiento.

Muro Mediterráneo: arquitecturas para la defensa de la Guerra de España (1936-1939)

Una década antes de que fuera construido el Muro Atlántico, fue ejecutado un sistema de defensas a lo largo de la costa del Mediterráneo español (1936-39). La recuperación de estas construcciones (de sus documentos gráficos y de las obras que existen) y su puesta en valor puede ayudar a consolidar una memoria propia del siglo XX. Las piezas militares se sitúan en muchas fronteras: ¿son estas defensas arquitectura o piezas industriales? ¿Son arquitectura moderna? Estas transitan entre dos mundos: uno que proyecta arquitecturas ligeras, flexibles y con caducidad frente a otro que construye obras compactas, rígidas y eternas. Espacio, tiempo y materia. Son las ruinas de hormigón más modernas de nuestra historia camufladas en la topografía: templos y tumbas a la vez.