RadonPotential: An interactive web application for radon potential prediction under different climates and soil textures

The presence of radon in soil poses a significant health risk when it enters and concentrates indoors. The primary health problem associated with radon exposure is lung cancer, but it can also contribute to other respiratory issues. Estimating radon potential is a challenging task caused by the interaction of various environmental, geological, and variability factors. Although efforts are ongoing to improve radon potential assessment methodologies, there is a lack of software tools that estimate and model radon potential in different scenarios. The paper aims to develop a novel web-based software tool, RadonPotential, that predicts Geogenic Radon Potential by considering variations in climate and soil textures. The program runs using a constant radon concentration or estimates its concentration from the radium activity. RadonPotential calculates the transport of radon through a soil profile based on water content and soil texture. It also determines the dynamics of soil water content in different climates, incorporating long-term weather data under various climatic scenarios and local weather time series. The web-based format of the program increases its dissemination, usage, and manageability among a larger user base compared to an installable computer program. The program aims to provide a simplified and effective characterization of radon potential levels accessible to a wide range of scientists, technical experts and policymakers in developing strategies not only for radon measurement and mitigation buildings but also for developing more reliable large-scale radon potential maps.Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Government (grant numbers RTI2018-099052-B-I00 and PID2021-123135OB-C21), and by the Conselleria de Innovación, Universidades, Ciencia y Sociedad Digital de la Generalitat Valenciana (project CIAICO/2022/038)

Integration of Automated Vehicle Location, Fare Control, and Schedule Data for Improved Public Transport Trip Definition

his paper proposes a flexible methodology to improve the definition of each distinct trip carried out in a transport system, integrating the information provided by stop-level events from its automated vehicle location and fare collection systems, and scheduling subsystem information at the initial stop of planned trips. The data are structured; and then corrected and completed utilizing several criteria, including a probabilistic approach based on the distributions of travel and dwell times, aiming to minimize the distortions that appear due to the nature of the available sources. The case study data encompass one year of records from the automated vehicle location, fare collection, and scheduling subsystems in Santander City, Spain. The results are discussed with captures from an interactive web visualization tool that has been developed for this work.This work was supported in part by the Ministerio de Ciencia Innovación y Universidades through the European Regional Development Fund under Project TRA2015-69903-R, in part by the EU Horizon 2020 Projec

Minimizing the Impact of Large Freight Vehicles in the City: A Multicriteria Vision for Route Planning and Type of Vehicles

The impact of freight transport in cities is significant, and as such correct planning and management thereof help reduce their enormous negative impact. Above all, the special large vehicles have a greater impact than the remainder of freight vehicles, so a special attention should be paid to them.The vehicles which supply or pick up large amounts of goods at specific points throughout the city are an example of this type of vehicles.Theaimof this paper is to minimize the cost of this freight transport type froma social, economic, and environmental viewpoint. To this effect, an optimization model has been proposed based on bilevel mathematical programming which minimizes the total system costs. City networkmodel data are obtained on the lower level such as vehicle flow and travelling times, which are then used on the upper level to calculate total system costs.The model has been applied to a real case in Santander (Spain), whose final result shows the size and typology of the fleet of vehicles necessary to have the least impact on the city.The greater the vehicles size is (i.e., using fewer trucks), the less the cost of the freight transport is

An error based mathematical module to enhance learning in signals and systems

During the last years, the lecturers at the Circuits and Systems Engineering Department at the E.U.I.T. de Telecomunicación at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid are observing more and more serious mathematical errors in the different exams and exercises taken by the students. Although some of these mistakes can be considered unacceptable in engineering disciplines, it is possible for a student to pass the final exam regardless of these mistakes. In this scenario, and aware that results were getting worse and worse year after year, it was considered convenient, and almost indispensable, to develop math exercises that students must practice if they want to progress following a continuous and formative assessment method along their engineering studies. The first part of this work is to analyze basic mathematical errors in final exam exercises of the course “Signals and Systems”. We present and illustrate the most relevant errors detected during the last two years final exams of that course. The information obtained permits us to identify the main lacks, difficulties and defaults of the students. The second part of this work is to develop a training module in order to the students can practice as many times as they want with simple exercises dealing with the topics where frequent errors are detected. After practicing they must pass an initial test to make sure that students have acquired the adequate basic mathematical background and skills to progress successfully in the mentioned course. The questions and exercises have been written using different formats, most of them to be compatible with Moodle platform requirements

A comparative study of texture analysis algorithms in textile inspection applications

Nowadays, quality control is an important problem for fabric manufacturers. Typically these operations have been carried out by humans operators. However, this method has numerous drawbacks such as low precision, performance and effectiveness. Therefore, automatic inspection systems have increased substantially in the last decade. This work evaluates the performance of some texture measures in textile defect detection applications. For classification a method based on leaving-one-out is used. Our study has been carried out using a large database of samples to take into account a wide spectrum of fabrics and multiple defects of different nature reported by specialized works and publications. A ranking with the effectiveness of best algorithms is presented for every type of fabric. In addition, the computation time of algorithms is compared.This work is partially backed by the European Community (FEDER project)

Preliminary hydrogeological characterization of an evaporite karst area (province of Cordoba, South Spain)

The northern sector of the Subbetic Domain in the Betic Cordillera is formed by an olistostrome unit known as the Chaotic Subbetic Complex (CSC). This megabreccia is basically made of Triassic (Keuper) clays and evaporites (gypsum, anhidrite and halite) as well as blocks of other lithologies (limestones, dolostones, sandstones, etc). Despite that low permeability has been traditionally assumed for these materials, water flow and storage through them is likely derived of their aquitard behavior, but also because of the highly permeable conduits generated by dissolution/karstification processes within the evaporite rocks. The geological complexity of the CSC materials determines their hydrogeological heterogeneity, with groundwater flow systems of different length and various scales from recharge areas to discharge zones. Three springs draining the CSC outcrops have been identified around an evaporitic karst plateau located between the Anzur River (to the North) and the Genil River (to the South), in the province of Cordoba (Spain). Data logger devices have been installed in two of them, located at the Anzur River (left margin), providing an hourly record of discharge, electrical conductivity and water temperature. Water samples have been collected fortnightly for subsequent chemical analysis. After two years of record, the results obtained show that the response of the springs to rainfall events is completely different between them. One has a clearly karstic behavior, with a rapid response to recharge whereas the other one is more inertial, and variations in its waters occur in a yearly scale. This is an evidence of the aforementioned hydrogeological heterogeneity of the CSC.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Experimental results and modelling of humidity control strategies for greenhouses in continental and coastal settings in the Mediterranean region. I: Experimental results and model development

Experimental strategies for controlling humidity were compared in a greenhouse sited in Madrid, a continental site in the Mediterranean region. Small roof window apertures significantly reduced the relative humidity with only a limited increase in associated energy consumption. A simplified climate model with four energy exchange terms (heating, insolation, losses through structure, and losses through windows) and three mass exchange terms (evapotranspiration, losses through structure, and losses through windows) was validated, allowing relative humidity to be predicted with an error of < 9%

Experimental results and modelling of humidity control strategies for greenhouses in continental and coastal settings in the Mediterranean region. II: Modelling of strategies

Strategies for humidity control —with and without heating— were evaluated via simulations performed with a previously developed model (see accompanying paper, this issue, part I). With heating, the best strategy combined the use of a humidity setpoint with step control of the roof window, increasing the ventilation in line with the outside temperature. Without heating, the best strategy again combined the use of a humidity setpoint with step control of the roof window, but required ventilation to be increased in line with the inside air temperature

Presencia y distribución de contaminantes emergentes en cuatro cuencas antropizadas del Sur de la Península Ibérica

El objetivo del presente estudio fue estudiar la presencia y distribución de contaminantes emergentes, tanto en aguas superficiales como en aguas subterráneas de acuíferos de cuatro cuencas del Sur de la Península Ibérica (Cuenca del río Guadalhorce (Málaga), Cuenca de la Laguna de Fuente de Piedra (Málaga), Cuenca del río Guadiaro (Málaga-Cádiz) y el acuífero detrítico de la Vega de Granada (Granada)). Para ello se seleccionaron casi 110 puntos de muestreo (77 subterráneas y 32 superficiales) distribuidas en cuatro cuencas que componen la zona de estudio. Los resultados revelan la presencia de contaminantes emergentes en todas las muestras analizadas. En las aguas superficiales se detectaron 33 contaminantes emergentes diferentes, principalmente fármacos, mientras que en las aguas subterráneas se hallaron 37 contaminantes emergentes diferentes, mayoritariamente plaguicidas.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

A case study: Final exam versus continuous assessment marks for electrical and electronic engineering students

In this work we analyze the final marks obtained by the students of the course “Signals and Systems” of the Electrical and Electronic Engineering degree at the E.U.I.T. de Telecomunicación in the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Students within this course are assessed by two different methods: the first one consists of only a final exam while the second one implies students following a continuous and formative assessment method in which they are required to solve some open exercises almost every week and to fulfil a self-evaluation test every two weeks all along the whole semester. During the academic year 07/08, all the students of the course were assessed by both methods. Herein, we analyze the final marks (in a 0-10 scale) obtained by the students and compare the pass and fail rates obtained with both assessment methods when the minimum mark for passing is set to 5. This work was done with a sample of 210 students that were divided in 7 different groups with different lecturers. We have found that more than 70 % of the students where classified in the same group, either pass or fail, with both assessment methods. As for the rest, 15 % of the students failed with the continuous assessment method but succeeded in the final exam and the remaining 15% passed in the continuous assessment and failed in the finals. For these two groups, observations indicate that the first one corresponds to students that either deliberately chose to be evaluated only with a final exam, thus not presenting the required coursework, or presented medium quality works (marks around 4) and did a greater effort for preparing the exam. As for the last group, it should be highlighted that their effort during the course allowed the majority of them to obtain marks above 3.5 points in the final exam. Based on these results, we made simulations so as to have an insight in what would be the student’s final marks when both assessment methods were combined with different weightings. Nowadays, this kind of combination is a common practice in many Universities, but usually the final exam has a higher weight (60 to 80 %) in the final student’s marks. We found that even if the final exam’s weight was only 25% and the continuous assessment’s weight was 75%, only 3% of the students that had final exam marks lower than 3.5 would obtain a weighted mark over 5.0. Consequently, we conclude that continuous assessment gives practically the same pass/fail rates as the final exam