Matches and mismatches between conservation investments and biodiversity values in the European Union

Recently, the European Commission adopted a new strategy to halt the loss of biodiversity. Member states are expected to favor a more effective collection and redistribution of European Union (EU) funds under the current Multiannual Financial Framework for 2014-2020. Because of the large spatial variation in the distribution of biodiversity and conservation needs at the continental scale, EU instruments should ensure that countries with higher biodiversity values get more funds and resources for the conservation than other countries. Using linear regressions, we assessed the association between conservation investments and biodiversity values across member states, accounting for a variety of conservation investment indicators, taxonomic groups (including groups of plants, vertebrates, and invertebrates), and indicators of biodiversity value. In general, we found clear overall associations between conservation investments and biodiversity variables. However, some countries received more or less investment than would be expected based on biodiversity values in those countries. We also found that the extensive use of birds as unique indicators of conservation effectiveness may lead to biased decisions. Our results can inform future decisions regarding funding allocation and thus improve distribution of EU conservation funds.Peer reviewe

Andalusia in the spanish territorial division of labour. An approach in the light of its socio- economic metabolism

En las páginas que siguen trataremos de aproximarnos al lugar que ocupa Andalucía dentro de la división territorial del trabajo en España utilizando la metodología de la Contabilidad de Flujos Materiales (CFM), con la que se trata de ir más allá de los valores monetarios, haciendo un seguimiento de los flujos físicos involucrados en los procesos económicos en términos de metabolismo social. Para ello utilizamos en la primera parte los datos regionales sobre extracción de materiales y energía, para seguir, en una segunda parte, con la consideración de los flujos físicos comerciales;finalmente, (tercera parte), se atiende a la localización regional de las diferentes ramas de actividad dentro de la economía española para así presentar un dibujo más completo del reparto espacial de funciones y su alcance social y ecológico.Reduced to the isolated universe of monetary value, the conventional economic approach circumscribes the economic dynamics affecting territories, such as the relationships between them, to a set of flows solely expressed in monetary terms. This one-dimensional view disconnects the economic system from the social, physical and territorial world in such a way that the social and economic costs essential for the maintenance and enrichment of life in those territories are ignored. This way of viewing economics generates a conflict between the economy and the territory and this conflict is at the root of ecological degradation which reaches different degrees and has different implications depending on the economic activities occurring in those territories and depending on the role they play within the system and the relationships between them. The territorial division of work, which has been intensified by globalization, has accentuated the polarization between territories devoted to activities located in the later stages of the manufacture and marketing of goods and services, to be found at the apex of the hierarchy of tasks within the division of work (central territories) and territories which supply primary products and which perform the first stages of extraction and processing of natural resources (peripheral territories). Behind the veil of the monetary worldview held by the conventional economy, therefore, lie hidden the relationships of power and the spatial division of work as mechanisms for domination and for the appropriation of the wealth of some territories by others. This paper studies the place occupied by Andalusia in the territorial division of work in Spain using Material Flow Accounting (MFA) methodology. The aim is to look beyond monetary value, monitoring the physical flows involved in the economic processes in terms of social metabolism. To do so, in a step-by-step approach, the first section uses regional data on the extraction of materials and energy, followed in the second section by an examination of physical commercial flows. Finally, in section three, the regional localization of different branches of activity within the Spanish economy is considered. Section 1 compares the capacity for the appropriation of monetary value (GDP) of each Autonomous Community with the endogenous resources generated by each one, represented by the domestic extraction of materials. This reveals a regional grouping in which we can clearly distinguish a set of regions which, with relatively low domestic extraction of resources, appropriate a significant proportion of the monetary value generated by the Spanish economy. Among them, the territories which have traditionally been central to the Spanish economy (Madrid, Catalonia and the Basque Country), (9.3% of the territory), enjoyed 42.6% of the added value in the Spanish economy, which is more than double the figure for their domestic extraction (20.2% of the Spanish total). They are, basically, the regions which use the rest of the territory to supply their production and consumption patterns. On the other hand, there are the majority of the Spanish regions, where 67.9% of the domestic extraction of resources takes place and where 41.3% of added value is enjoyed. In this case, more than half of the extraction (50.2%) is located in five regions: Murcia, Galicia, Castilla La Mancha, Castilla León and Andalusia. The latter is the region with the greatest difference between the GDP obtained and the use of endogenous natural resources. The study of external trade flows offers a clearer profile of Andalusia’s specialization within the Spanish economy as it allows us more clearly to determine what is demanded of the Andalusian economy from outside and, at the same time, makes it possible to incorporate the manufacturing process of products and to calibrate the weighting of different sectors of production within the complex of interregional relationships.With respect to exports, there is considerable concentration in two sectors: Energy products and Food products. These two sectors represented well over half (58.2%) of the products exported from Andalusia to the other Autonomous Communities over the 15 years studied. The first item, Energy products, is related to the relocation to Andalusia in the 1960s of certain industrial activities (oil refining, basic chemical industry, paper mills, initial processing and production of metals) which covers the first stages of production processes whose later, more complex phases, where greater added value is generated, take place outside Andalusia. The ecological degradation associated with this relocation of industrial activities has caused environmental damage in Andalusia which is proportionally much greater than that seen in the industrialized regions. The second item of Andalusian exports, food products, represented 26.0% of total Andalusian exports for the period 1996-2010. Most are agricultural products or the results of the initial processing of foodstuffs, which is simply a prolongation of agricultural activity (fruit, vegetables and oil). In this regard, it is interesting to note that these exports represent a growing proportion of the biomass extracted in Andalusia, and so it can be said that the natural heritage of Andalusia is, increasingly, being used to satisfy the food requirements of other territories which receive primary products from Andalusia with a very low level of processing, and which are distanced from the more dynamic nucleus of the agri-food system. In contrast, it should be noted that the high volume of food products exported to the rest of Spain is accompanied by a similar tonnage of imports from those other regions. These are mainly processed products. Here, a growing gap is to be found between domestic extraction and the internal demand for foodstuffs, which accentuates the food dependency of Andalusia and, at the same time, translates into a sharp disconnection between food production and consumption. The third section looks in greater detail at specialization in the tasks performed in the different territories by looking at the regional localization of economic activities. This gives us a more complete picture of the spatial distribution of those tasks as it uses a more detailed breakdown of the different processing activities and includes services. Here, again, it can be observed that, as it has traditionally been, Andalusia is still an extractive economy, a supplier of primary products. With a system of intensive agriculture on a model in which extraction is forced through the introduction into the system of increasing volumes of materials and energy and the intensity of extraction is increased through the progressive use of intermediate inputs, which are mainly non-renewable, and which, in turn, involve extractive processes in the same and/or other spaces, with the consequent deterioration and progressive degradation of the environment in which this agriculture is practiced, and to which is added to the import of sustainability from other territories. The devotion to extractive industry in the Andalusian economy differentiates and distances it from the “central” economies, as can be seen in a comparison with Catalonia, deepening an unequal exchange between Andalusia and other territories which is masked by the conventional conception of the economy and is related to the fact that, in monetary terms, the contribution of nature has no cost, and to the role of Power relationships within the system. In this paper, Andalusia is seen to be a territory specializing in activities which generate social and ecological damage which remains hidden by the focus of the conventional economy. An area for the appropriation of wealth at low cost by the central territories, from where not only their own spheres of activity are controlled and managed, but also, to a large extent, those of outside and “peripheral” territories such as Andalusia, for which economic growth means the exacerbation of their situation of dependency and marginalization. This domination is not only material. It is also an ideological domination which results in the very situation of domination being interpreted in terms of models and instruments operating in favor of the dominant interests. For Andalusia, this is a path of divergence, not convergence, a path which leads to the loss of control over the management of its resources and the separation of the Andalusian economy from what should be its priority objective: the maintenance and enrichment (sustainability) of social and natural life

The CIAO Multi-Dialect Compiler and System: An Experimentation Workbench for Future (C)LP Systems

CIAO is an advanced programming environment supporting Logic and Constraint programming. It offers a simple concurrent kernel on top of which declarative and non-declarative extensions are added via librarles. Librarles are available for supporting the ISOProlog standard, several constraint domains, functional and higher order programming, concurrent and distributed programming, internet programming, and others. The source language allows declaring properties of predicates via assertions, including types and modes. Such properties are checked at compile-time or at run-time. The compiler and system architecture are designed to natively support modular global analysis, with the two objectives of proving properties in assertions and performing program optimizations, including transparently exploiting parallelism in programs. The purpose of this paper is to report on recent progress made in the context of the CIAO system, with special emphasis on the capabilities of the compiler, the techniques used for supporting such capabilities, and the results in the áreas of program analysis and transformation already obtained with the system

Estudi sobre la relació entre episotomía i esquinç en els parts eutòcis de la Fundació Hospital de Manacor (FHM)

Objectiu: Determinar la incidència d’esquinços i sutures del total de parts eutòcics de FHM i intentar correlacionar el risc d’esquinç en funció de diferents variables durant el part. Material i mètode: Estudi descriptiu restrospectiu durant el 4t trimestre de 2007 de 269 parts eutòcics agafant com a variables l’edat, paritat, administració d’anestèsia epidural, hores d’expulsiu, realització d’episiotomia, esquinç i grau. Resultats: Sembla ser que pesos fetals majors de 3.5kg tenen un 20% més de risc d’esquinç(OR:1.2). Períodes amb expulsiu superior a l’hora es correlacionen amb 10% menys d’esquinços (OR:0.9).de la mateixa manera que el risc d’esquinç de les parteres amb un expulsiu que no se’ls ha practicat episiotomia i que ha durat més d’una hora és el doble que aquelles amb un expulsiu inferior a una hora (OR:2.0).Objective: To study the perineal lacerations and suture incidence of the total amount of normal deliveries in our Hospital and to correlate the laceration risk between different variables. Material and methods: Aretrospective population-based study was carried out on the 269 normal deliveries during the 4th trimester of 2007 taking as variables: age, parity, epidural anesthesia administration, expulsion stage, episiotomy, laceration and grade. Results: It seems that foetal weight of 3.5Kg or more has a 20% increased risk of laceration (OR:1.2). If the expulsion stage is longer than an hour, it is related with a 10% lower tax of laceration (OR:0.9), in the same way, we find a double increased risk of laceration for those women who haven’t an episiotomy and have a prolonged expulsive stage(OD:2.0)

Agent Programming in Ciao Prolog

The agent programming landscape has been revealed as a natural framework for developing “intelligence” in AI. This can be seen from the extensive use of the agent concept in presenting (and developing) AI systems, the proliferation of agent theories, and the evolution of concepts such as agent societies (social intelligence) and coordination

Study on the suitability of two test for the assessment of the range of motion in sedentary people with intellectual disabilities

Introducción: Las personas con discapacidad intelectual (DI) muestran, en general, menores niveles de condición física (CF) que las personas sin discapacidad. Sin embargo, la mayoría de test utilizados para su valoración han sido diseñados para población normalizada y no muestran su conveniencia para ser utilizados con personas con DI. Entre las capacidades condicionales una de las que habitualmente es valoradaeslaamplituddemovimiento(ADM).ElobjetivodeestainvestigaciónfueconocerlaidoneidaddedostestdeevaluacióndelaADM a través de la valoración de sus propiedades psicométricas en personas con DI leve-moderada. Los test seleccionados fueron el sit and reach (SAR) y el deep trunk flexion (DTF). Método: Se llevó a cabo el estudio con un diseño test-retest, en el que participaron 60 personas con DI: se distribuyeron aleatoriamente 15 mujeres (37.07±11.60 años) y 15 hombres (37.47±11.62) para valorar el DTF y 15 mujeres (36.87±11.72) y 15 hombres (36.40±8.57) para el SAR. Para conocer la idoneidad de ambos test, se calculó la fiabilidad, la viabilidad, el error estándar de la medida (EEM) y el mínimo cambio detectable (MCD). Resultados: La fiabilidad del DTF y del SAR fue buena-alta. Sin embargo, los gráficos de Bland-Altman mostraron sesgos para el SAR. La viabilidad del SAR fue baja, con menos del 50% de los participantes realizando la prueba correctamente. El EEM y el MCD mostraron mayor variabilidad de puntuaciones del SAR respecto al DTF. Conclusiones: el DTF se ha mostrado como el más recomendable de los dos test para la valoración de la ADM en personas con DI. Sin embargo, futuras investigaciones deben orientarse a la creación de test específicos diseñados para personas con DI

Repercusión de los recursos electrónicos invertidos para la investigación en la UCM

El incremento del coste de los recursos bibliográficos necesarios para la investigación, por encima de un 5% anual, hace necesaria la evaluación de las adquisiciones realizadas con el fin de optimizar el ratio coste/eficiencia. En este trabajo se revisan las metodologías empleadas para estimar la repercusión de la inversión en estos recursos y su distribución entre las diferentes facultades de la UCM..

Por el Excelentísimo Señor Don Antonio Valdés, Secretario de Estado y del Despacho Universal de Marina, se ha comunicado al Excelentísimo Señor Conde de la Cañada, Gobernador del Consejo, con fecha 25 de este mes la Real órden del tenor siguiente

Creu xil. a la capçaleraCòpia de l'original datada a Segovia el 14 de març de 1793 signada per Josef Cabeza EscaladaLloc i data del text Madrid 27 de febrer de 1793 certificat per EscolanoTítol obtingut de les primeres línies del text"Real Orden por la que se dispone que aquellos voluntarios que en vez de ir al Ejercito de Tierra prefieran la Marina, puedan ir a ella" --Catàleg manual de la Biblioteca Econòmica CarandellOrdre Reial segons la qual els voluntaris que prefereixin anar a la Marina en lloc d'anar a l'Exèrcit de Terra, ho puguin fer.