The Iron Age landscape of Alcoi Valley, eastern Iberia: Agricultural intensification and sociopolitical dynamics

New archaeological survey data are combined with previous evidence to examine the rural landscape during the Iberian Iron Age in the Valencia region of eastern Spain. One goal was to understand the settlement pattern and agricultural intensification through manuring. The second objective was to address the socioeconomic aspects of changes in the landscape. It is possible to trace the emergence of a hierarchical settlement pattern in the Iberian Iron Age in which large fortified settlements carried out the most important functions of control and exploitation of the territory, extending their authority over small rural villages and farmsteads. This pattern is associated with the complex socioeconomic structures and political organization of early Iberian states.

Migraciones interregionales en España (1960-1989): cambios y barreras

En este trabajo se analizan los cambios en el patrón de las migraciones interiores españolas a lo largo del período 1960-1989. De forma preliminar y de acuerdo con las teorías explicativas de los flujos migratorios, se contrasta econométricamente la consistencia de estos cambios con la existencia de sistemas regionales económicamente desequilibrados versus sistemas regionales con diferencias compensadoras. Como resultado, se encuentra que a pesar de la reciente intensificación de las migraciones interiores y a diferencia de lo sucedido en otras etapas y bajo otras circunstancias, ahora no se debería confiar en que los movimientos migratorios puedan contribuir al acercamiento a la media nacional de las regiones con tasas de desempleo más elevadas. Esta vía podría haberse agotado en la medida en que el peso de las barreras procedentes de los mercados de trabajo y de los mercados inmobiliarios es creciente y, paradójicamente, ha generado flujos inte-rregionales equilibrados y no polarizados. Si, además, la posibilidad de que la emigración cumpla un papel dinamizador del ajuste económico se ve afectada por el componente de desempleo de los trabajadores que se desplazan, entonces las políticas públicas no deberían centrarse en la incentivación de los flujos de forma indiscriminada sino, más bien, en los aspectos microeconómicos referentes a la disponibilidad de información, la orientación y la capacitación de los potenciales trabajadores emigrantes.

A hybrid simulation-optimization approach for the design of internally heat-integrated distillation columns

Paper submitted to AIChE 2012 Annual Meeting: Energy Efficiency by Process Intensification, Pittsburgh, PA, October 28-November 2, 2012.

The relationship between plants used to sustain finches (Fringillidae) and uses for human medicine in southeast Spain

We analyzed plants that are traditionally used by wild bird hunters and breeders to capture and promote captive breeding of Fringillidae (finches or songbirds) in the province of Alicante, Spain. The majority of plants used in songbird breeding have medicinal properties in traditional human medicine (48 different uses); thus, another main goal was to show their relationships with human medical uses. We compiled a list of 97 plant species from 31 botanical families that are used to attract finches and identified 11 different use categories for these plants in finch keeping. The most common uses were for trapping birds and as a source of food for birds in captivity. Cannabis sativa has the greatest cultural importance index (CI = 1.158), and Phalaris canariensis (annual canary grass or alpist) was the most common species used to attract Fringillidae and was used by all informants (n = 158). Most of the 97 species are wild plants and mainly belong to the families Compositae, Gramineae, Cruciferae, and Rosaceae and also have medicinal properties for humans. In the study area, the intensification of agriculture and abandonment of traditional management practices have caused the population of many songbirds to decline, as well as the loss of popular ethnographic knowledge.

A data driven study of relationships between relief and farmland abandonment in a Mediterranean region

The environmental, cultural and socio-economic causes and consequences of farmland abandonment are issues of increasing concern for researchers and policy makers. In previous studies, we proposed a new methodology for selecting the driving factors in farmland abandonment processes. Using Data Mining and GIS, it is possible to select those variables which are more significantly related to abandonment. The aim of this study is to investigate the application of the above mentioned methodology for finding relationships between relief and farmland abandonment in a Mediterranean region (SE Spain).We have taken into account up to 28 different variables in a single analysis, some of them commonly considered in land use change studies (slope, altitude, TWI, etc), but also other novel variables have been evaluated (sky view factor, terrain view factor, etc). The variable selection process provides results in line with the previous knowledge of the study area, describing some processes that are region specific (e.g. abandonment versus intensification of the agricultural activities). The European INSPIRE Directive (2007/2/EC) establishes that the digital elevation models for land surfaces should be available in all member countries, this means that the research described in this work can be extrapolated to any European country to determine whether these variables (slope, altitude, etc) are important in the process of abandonment.

Multidecadal variability of the continental precipitation annual amplitude driven by AMO and ENSO

As the water vapor content in the atmosphere scales with temperature, a warmer world is expected to feature an intensification of the hydrological cycle. Work to date has mainly focused on mean precipitation changes, whose connection to climatic modes is elusive at a global scale. Here we show that continental precipitation annual amplitude, which represents the annual range between minimum and maximum (monthly) rainfall, covaries with a linear combination of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and low-frequency variations in the El Niño–Southern Oscillation on a decadal to multidecadal scale with a correlation coefficient of 0.92 (P<0.01). The teleconnection is a result of changes in moisture transport in key regions. Reported trends in the annual amplitude of global precipitation in recent decades need to be assessed in light of this substantial low-frequency variability, which could mask or enhance an anthropogenic signal in hydrological cycle changes.

Guidelines for the design of efficient sono-microreactors

Possible drawbacks of microreactors are inefficient reactant mixing and the clogging of microchannels when solid-forming reactions are carried out or solid (catalysts) suspensions are used. Ultrasonic irradiation has been successfully implemented for solving these problems in microreactor configurations ranging from capillaries immersed in ultrasonic baths to devices with miniaturized piezoelectric transducers. Moving forward in process intensification and sustainable development, the acoustic energy implementation requires a strategy to optimize the microreactor from an ultrasound viewpoint during its design. In this work, we present a simple analytical model that can be used as a guide to achieving a proper acoustic design of stacked microreactors. An example of this methodology was demonstrated through finite element analysis and it was compared with an experimental study found in the literature.

A Sequential Algorithm for the Rigorous Design of Thermally Coupled Distillation Sequences

A sequential design method is presented for the design of thermally coupled distillation sequences. The algorithm starts by selecting a set of sequences in the space of basic configurations in which the internal structure of condensers and reboilers is explicitly taken into account and extended with the possibility of including divided wall columns (DWC). This first stage is based on separation tasks (except by the DWCs) and therefore it does not provide an actual sequence of columns. In the second stage the best arrangement in N-1 actual columns is performed taking into account operability and mechanical constraints. Finally, for a set of candidate sequences the algorithm try to reduce the number of total columns by considering Kaibel columns, elimination of transfer blocks or columns with vertical partitions. An example illustrate the different steps of the sequential algorithm.