Standard meteorological measurements on board of POLARSTERN during expedition ANT-IV (PS08, 4 cruises, south summer 1985/86) in the Atlantic and Weddell Sea, Antarctica

During the fourth Antarctic voyage ANT-IV of the research icebreaker POLARSTERN standard meteorological measurements have been performed. The measurements include 3-hourly synoptic observations as well as daily upper air soundings. The measurements started on September 6 1985 at Bremerhaven and were terminated at April 28 1986 in Punta Arenas. The 3-hourly synoptic observations are performed following the instructions of the FM 13 ships code defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The datasets include automatic measurements such as mean ship's speed, wind velocity, wind direction, air temperature, water temperature as well as visual observations such as total cloud amount, present weather, clouds, height and period of swell waves, ice classification. The visual observation are not performed during night time. For the upper air soundings VAISALA RS80 radiosondes, carried by helium-filled balloons (TOTEX 350 - 1500) were used. Data reception and evaluation were carried out by a MicroCora System (VAISALA). The upper air soundings include profile measurements of pressure, temperature, relative humidity and wind vector. Usually the soundings started at the heliport (10 m above sea level) and terminated between 15 and 37 km. The height of the measurements was calculated by applying the barometric formula. The wind vector was determined with the aid of the OMEGA navigation system.

On Labor Complementarity, Cultural Frictions and Strategic Immigration Policies

In this paper we consider a model with two industrialized countries that face a flow of immigration from the "rest of the world." The countries differ in three characteristics: the labor complementarity between the "native" population and immigrants, the population size, and the magnitude of the cultural friction between the natives and immigrants. We consider a non-cooperative game between two countries' when their strategic instrument is the choice of an immigration quota and the world immigrant wages introduce the spill-over effect between two countries. We first show that the quota game admits unique pure strategies Nash equilibrium. We then compare the equilibrium choices of two countries and show that even though the larger country attracts more immigrants, it chooses lower quota than its smaller counterpart. It also turns out that higher degree of labor complementarity between natives and immigrants and a lower degree of cultural friction between two groups yield higher immigration quota. We also examine the welfare implications of countries choices' and argue that coordinated and harmonized immigration policies may improve the welfare of both countries.

Effects of Bologna, the economic crisis and the immigration in enrollment at the UPM

Over the past 20 years, the economic landscape has changed dramatically in Spain, undergoing a growth explosion and a subsequent decline which has led to the current economic crisis. This growth has led to heavy immigration from both developed and developing countries, which provided skilled and unskilled labour. This article aims to analyze the impact of immigrant students at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, pondering the effect that the economic crisis is having and will have on this group, and evaluating the implementation of new plans of Bologna. We analyze the enrolment at the UPM and particularize to the Civil Engineering school (previous EUITOP), crossing with the effect of the economic crisis on foreign students. The exponential increase of foreign students, most of them from Latin American and born in Spain, and students of European countries that have started to register considerably from 2002 and 2003, lead us to consider a renewal in certain areas of learning, and to exploit the possibility of interaction with other countries so successful through the acquisition of transversal skills, as well as to guide and improve, support and integrate these groups at our university Keywords: knowledge, learning, Bologna, academic record

In situ acoustic methods to estimate the physical and mechanical aging of oriented strand board

Following the success achieved in previous research projects usin non-destructive methods to estimate the physical and mechanical aging of particle and fibre boards, this paper studies the relationships between aging, physical and mechanical changes, using non-destructive measurements of oriented strand board (OSB). 184 pieces of OSB board from a French source were tested to analyze its actual physical and mechanical properties. The same properties were estimated using acoustic non-destructive methods (ultrasound and stress wave velocity) during a physical laboratory aging test. Measurements were recorded of propagation wave velocity with the sensors aligned, edge to edge, and forming an angle of 45 degrees, with both sensors on the same face of the board. This is because aligned measures are not possible on site. The velocity results are always higher in 45 degree measurements. Given the results of statistical analysis, it can be concluded that there is a strong relationship between acoustic measurements and the decline in physical and mechanical properties of the panels due to aging. The authors propose several models to estimate the physical and mechanical properties of board, as well as their degree of aging. The best results are obtained using ultrasound, although the difference in comparison with the stress wave method is not very significant. A reliable prediction of the degree of deterioration (aging) of board is presented.

On-board and Ground Visual Pose Estimation Techniques for UAV Control

In this paper, two techniques to control UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), based on visual information are presented. The first one is based on the detection and tracking of planar structures from an on-board camera, while the second one is based on the detection and 3D reconstruction of the position of the UAV based on an external camera system. Both strategies are tested with a VTOL (Vertical take-off and landing) UAV, and results show good behavior of the visual systems (precision in the estimation and frame rate) when estimating the helicopter¿s position and using the extracted information to control the UAV.

Efficient hybrid monocular-stereo approach to on-board, video-based traffic sign detection and tracking

In this paper we propose an innovative method for the automatic detection and tracking of road traffic signs using an onboard stereo camera. It involves a combination of monocular and stereo analysis strategies to increase the reliability of the detections such that it can boost the performance of any traffic sign recognition scheme. Firstly, an adaptive color and appearance based detection is applied at single camera level to generate a set of traffic sign hypotheses. In turn, stereo information allows for sparse 3D reconstruction of potential traffic signs through a SURF-based matching strategy. Namely, the plane that best fits the cloud of 3D points traced back from feature matches is estimated using a RANSAC based approach to improve robustness to outliers. Temporal consistency of the 3D information is ensured through a Kalman-based tracking stage. This also allows for the generation of a predicted 3D traffic sign model, which is in turn used to enhance the previously mentioned color-based detector through a feedback loop, thus improving detection accuracy. The proposed solution has been tested with real sequences under several illumination conditions and in both urban areas and highways, achieving very high detection rates in challenging environments, including rapid motion and significant perspective distortion