Els nous usos del castanyer

El present projecte de final de carrera de Ciències Ambientals estudia els usos actuals del castanyer (Castanea sativa) amb la finalitat de trobar nous usos per a aquesta espècie i de potenciar la recuperació de les masses de castanyer catalanes. Aquest objectiu s’assolirà mitjançant una recerca bibliogràfica exhaustiva, la realització d’enquestes a empreses que tractin amb productes del castanyer i amb sortides al camp per veure l’estat actual de les castanyedes catalanes, donada la seva afectació per diverses patologies i per l’abandonament que han patit. Una vegada coneguda la situació del castanyer i dels seus productes, es realitzarà una anàlisi de la viabilitat econòmica dels possibles nous usos d’aquest arbre, una anàlisi DAFO (Debilitats, Amenaces, Fortaleses i Oportunitats), i el balanç energètic de l’explotació dels seus recursos forestals.

Prospects of doubling global wheat yields

While an adequate supply of food can be achieved at present for the current global population, sustaining this into the future will be difficult in the face of a steadily increasing population, increased wealth and a diminishing availability of fertile land and water for agriculture. This problem will be compounded by the new uses of agricultural products, for example, as biofuels. Wheat alone provides ≥20% of the calories and the protein for the world's population, and the value and need to increase the production is recognized widely. Currently, the world average wheat yield is around 3 t/ha but there is considerable variation between countries, with region-specific factors limiting yield, each requiring individual solutions. Delivering increased yields in any situation is a complex challenge that is unlikely to be solved by single approaches and a multidisciplinary integrated approach to crop improvement is required. There are three specific major challenges: increasing yield potential, protecting yield potential, and increasing resource use efficiency to ensure sustainability. Since the green revolution, yields at the farm gate have stagnated in many countries, or are increasing at less than half the rate required to meet the projected demand. In some countries, large gains can still be achieved by improvements in agronomy, but in many others the yield gains will only be achieved by further genetic improvement. In this overview, the problems and potential solutions for increased wheat yields are discussed, in the context of specific geographic regions, with a particular emphasis on China. The importance and the prospects for improvement of individual traits are presented. It is concluded that there are opportunities for yield increase but a major challenge will be avoiding a simultaneous increase in resource requirements.

New evidence on emigrant selection

This paper examines the extent to which Mexican emigrants to the United States are negatively selected, that is, have lower skills than individuals who remain in Mexico. Previous studies have been limited by the lack of nationally representative longitudinal data. This one uses a newly available household survey, which identifies emigrants before they leave and allows a direct comparison to non-migrants. I find that, on average, US bound Mexican emigrants from 2000 to 2004 earn a lower wage and have less schooling years than individuals who remain in Mexico, evidence of negative selection. This supports the original hypothesis of Borjas (AER, 1987) and argues against recent findings, notably those of Chiquiar and Hanson (JPE, 2005). The discrepancy with the latter is primarily due to an under-count of unskilled migrants in US sources and secondarily to the omission of unobservables in their methodology.

The New Institutions of Transatlantic Aviation

This article focuses on the institutions of transatlantic aviation since 1945, and aims at extracting from this historical process topical policy implications. Using the methodology of an analytic narrative, we describe and explain the creation of the international cartel institutions in the 1940s, their operation throughout the 1950s and 60s, their increasing vulnerability in the 1970s, and then the progressive liberalization of the whole system. Our analytic narrative has a natural end, marked by the signing of an Open Skies Agreement between the US and the EU in 2007. We place particular explanatory power on (a) the progressive liberalization of the US domestic market, and (b) the active role of the European Commission in Europe. More specifically, we explain these developments using two frameworks. First, a “political limit pricing” model, which seemed promising, then failed, and then seemed promising again because it failed. Second, a strategic bargaining model inspired by Susanne Schmidt’s analysis of how the European Commission uses the threat of infringement proceedings to force member governments into line and obtain the sole negotiating power in transatlantic aviation.

The referent : a new referential methodology and procedure in live drawing

My research in live drawing and new technologies uses a combination of a human figure in live in composition, overlaid with a digital projection of a second human figure. The aim is to explore, to amplify and thoroughly analyse the search for distinctive identities and graphic languages of representation for live and projected models.

Technological, biopharmaceutical and pharmacokinetic advances: new formulations of application on the skin and oral mucosa

Currently a growing interest to improve the pharmacological therapy exists, not only by the production and the appearance of new drugs, but guaranteeing that the uses of those which already exist, become more effective. In fact, the conventional pharmaceutical formulations of different drugs present a few secondary effects due to oral administration. In order to avoid these undesired side effects, the purpose of current therapeutic is the development and research of formulations as an alternative to others routes of administration. Therefore, in spite of the undoubtedly complete parenteral absorption, the transdermal and transbuccal routes appear to be a rather attractive alternative to provide an efficient absorption. In this chapter a new technological, biopharmaceutical and pharmacokinetic approach of strategies for application on skin and buccal mucosa are reported. In the future new transdermal drug delivery systems will emerge to be more effective, equipped with an improved aesthetic appearance, better adherence and greater diffusion. But to reach these aims, it is necessary previous knowledge of histology and physiology of skin, and factors involved in the penetration of drugs through it.

Plagiarism meets paraphrasing: insights for the new generation in automatic plagiarism detection

Although paraphrasing is the linguistic mechanism underlying many plagiarism cases, little attention has been paid to its analysis in the framework of automatic plagiarism detection. Therefore, state-of-the-art plagiarism detectors find it difficult to detect cases of paraphrase plagiarism. In this article, we analyse the relationship between paraphrasing and plagiarism, paying special attention to which paraphrase phenomena underlie acts of plagiarism and which of them are detected by plagiarism detection systems. With this aim in mind, we created the P4P corpus, a new resource which uses a paraphrase typology to annotate a subset of the PAN-PC-10 corpus for automatic plagiarism detection. The results of the Second International Competition on Plagiarism Detection were analysed in the light of this annotation. The presented experiments show that (i) more complex paraphrase phenomena and a high density of paraphrase mechanisms make plagiarism detection more difficult, (ii) lexical substitutions are the paraphrase mechanisms used the most when plagiarising, and (iii) paraphrase mechanisms tend to shorten the plagiarized text. For the first time, the paraphrase mechanisms behind plagiarism have been analysed, providing critical insights for the improvement of automatic plagiarism detection systems.

Reconsidering the analysis of the uses of ICTs by political parties : an application to the Catalan case

For years a literature on the uses that political parties make of information andcommunication technologies (ICTs) has been developed. It is a rapidly increasing, rich,and interesting field in the forefront of the investigation in political science. Generally,these works start from the expectation that the ICTs have a regenerative potential forliberal democracies and for the political parties as well. In developed societies, politicalparties have experienced some transformations that have leaded them to an increasingdivorce with the public. This divorce is shown by the decay of party adscription andmembership, and also by the decay of the conventional political participation. In thetheoretical discussion this situation has been described as ¿the crisis of the democracy¿(Norris, 1999). According to the more radically oriented scholars this crisis reflects theincapacities of liberal democracies. In this sense, ICTs suppose a great opportunity tosurpass the representative institutions and to institutionalize new forms of directdemocracy. More moderate scholars have considered that ICTs offer the opportunity for¿renaissance¿ for representative institutions, as they can reinforce the bonds between thepublic and its representatives.

Mobile ensembles: The uses of mobile phones for social protest by Spain¿s indignados

Peer-reviewed

New approximation to the third-order density : application to the calculation of correlated multicenter indices

In this work we present the formulas for the calculation of exact three-center electron sharing indices (3c-ESI) and introduce two new approximate expressions for correlated wave functions. The 3c-ESI uses the third-order density, the diagonal of the third-order reduced density matrix, but the approximations suggested in this work only involve natural orbitals and occupancies. In addition, the first calculations of 3c-ESI using Valdemoro's, Nakatsuji's and Mazziotti's approximation for the third-order reduced density matrix are also presented for comparison. Our results on a test set of molecules, including 32 3c-ESI values, prove that the new approximation based on the cubic root of natural occupancies performs the best, yielding absolute errors below 0.07 and an average absolute error of 0.015. Furthemore, this approximation seems to be rather insensitive to the amount of electron correlation present in the system. This newly developed methodology provides a computational inexpensive method to calculate 3c-ESI from correlated wave functions and opens new avenues to approximate high-order reduced density matrices in other contexts, such as the contracted Schrödinger equation and the anti-Hermitian contracted Schrödinger equation