Challenges in Lifestyle Migration Research: Reflections and Findings about the Spanish Crisis

The lifestyle migration conceptual framework is based on the motivation for moving reported by the migrants themselves. We discuss the operability of this approach, which is built on the subjective assessments of individuals. It diminishes the actual importance of economic factors and has an underlying ideological element associated with the categorisation of people according to their nationality. A comparative analysis of residential variations by nationalities between 2005 and 2010 in Alicante (Spain) shows that, when faced with the economic crisis, the so-called lifestyle migrants are changing their mobility patterns in a way similar to the rest of the migrants. This calls into question the adequacy of juxtaposing lifestyle and labour migration. Both theory and research show that this duality, instead of clarifying applied research, makes it more difficult. We argue that the lifestyle migration framework is inadequate to study changes in mobility patterns, particularly when using a quantitative approach.

Open educational resources: the role of OCW, blogs and videos in computer network classrooms

This paper analyzes the learning experiences and opinions obtained from a group of undergraduate students in their interaction with several on-line multimedia resources included in a free on-line course about Computer Networks. These new educational resources employed are based on the Web 2.0 approach such as blogs, videos and virtual labs which have been added in a web-site for distance self-learning.

3D-based reconstruction using growing neural gas landmark: application to rapid prototyping in shoe last manufacturing

Customizing shoe manufacturing is one of the great challenges in the footwear industry. It is a production model change where design adopts not only the main role, but also the main bottleneck. It is therefore necessary to accelerate this process by improving the accuracy of current methods. Rapid prototyping techniques are based on the reuse of manufactured footwear lasts so that they can be modified with CAD systems leading rapidly to new shoe models. In this work, we present a shoe last fast reconstruction method that fits current design and manufacturing processes. The method is based on the scanning of shoe last obtaining sections and establishing a fixed number of landmarks onto those sections to reconstruct the shoe last 3D surface. Automated landmark extraction is accomplished through the use of the self-organizing network, the growing neural gas (GNG), which is able to topographically map the low dimensionality of the network to the high dimensionality of the contour manifold without requiring a priori knowledge of the input space structure. Moreover, our GNG landmark method is tolerant to noise and eliminates outliers. Our method accelerates up to 12 times the surface reconstruction and filtering processes used by the current shoe last design software. The proposed method offers higher accuracy compared with methods with similar efficiency as voxel grid.

Temporal variation in saproxylic beetle assemblages in a Mediterranean ecosystem

One of the main challenges in biological conservation has been to understand species distribution across space and time. Over the last decades, many diversity and conservation surveys have been conducted that have revealed that habitat heterogeneity acts as a major factor that determines saproxylic assemblages. However, temporal dynamics have been poorly studied, especially in Mediterranean forests. We analyzed saproxylic beetle distribution at inter and intra-annual scales in a “dehesa” ecosystem, which is a traditional Iberian agrosilvopastoral ecosystem that is characterized by the presence of old and scattered trees that dominate the landscape. Significant differences in effective numbers of families/species and species richness were found at the inter-annual scale, but this was not the case for composition. Temperature and relative humidity did not explain these changes which were mainly due to the presence of rare species. At the intra-annual scale, significant differences in the effective numbers of families/species, species richness and composition between seasons were found, and diversity partitioning revealed that season contributed significantly to gamma-diversity. Saproxylic beetle assemblages exhibited a marked seasonality in richness but not in abundance, with two peaks of activity, the highest between May and June, and the second between September and October. This pattern is mainly driven by the seasonality of the climate in the Mediterranean region, which influences ecosystem dynamics and imposes a marked seasonality on insect assemblages. An extended sampling period over different seasons allowed an overview of saproxylic dynamics, and revealed which families/species were restricted to particular seasons. Recognizing that seasons act as a driver in modelling saproxylic beetle assemblages might be a valuable tool in monitoring and for conservation strategies in Mediterranean forests.

Tackling the Big Challenges of the Future: The Role of Chemistry

The end of 2015 was the deadline that 189 countries gave themselves to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a list of eight goals that were agreed upon and approved by the UN after the Millennium Summit in year 2000. Despite some legitimate criticism, the MDGs were revealed as an important tool towards building a more equitable and sustainable world. Yet our planet still faces many challenges. In September 2015, the UN approved a new set of 17 goals, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), aiming to develop and implement strategies to create “The Future We Want”; strategies that 192 countries agreed upon to work together towards a more sustainable planet.