La Tessera de hospitalidad del oppidum de monte bernorio (Villarén de Valdivia, Palencia)

El oppidum de Monte Bernorio (Villarén, Pomar de Valdivia, Palencia), está situado en el centro de la región cantábrica y es uno de los más importantes yacimientos arqueológicos de la Edad del Hierro del norte de la Península Ibérica (fig. 1). Se emplaza en una muela caliza en la vertiente sur de la Cordillera Cantábrica ocupando una estratégica posición, lo que lo convierte en un referente natural y en un punto defensivo clave para el control de un amplio territorio. Domina una importante intersección de vías de comunicación naturales que conectan ambas vertientes de la Cordillera Cantábrica por su lado central. Además el oppidum controla otra importante vía de comunicación natural que permite recorrer el piedemonte cantábrico en dirección este-oeste por su vertiente meridional; así mismo se sitúa en una posición muy ventajosa para acceder a las cabeceras de las cuencas de los ríos Ebro y Pisuerga

Temporal and spatial variations of atmospheric radiocarbon in the Mexico City metropolitan area

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.-- et al.Proceedings of the 1st International Radiocarbon in the Environment Conference 18–22 August 2014, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland (UK).The Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) produces a complex mixture of gases and aerosols from diverse sources, including burning of fossil fuels, biomass, and wastes, with a significant biogenic contribution. We present the first results of ongoing projects to study temporal and spatial variations of 14CO2 in the area. Temporal variations reconstructed from tree rings of Taxodium mucronatum indicate a considerable radiocarbon depletion, in accordance to the vast amount of fossil fuels burnt inside Mexico Valley, with values between 62 and 246‰ lower than background values for the 1962–1968 period, and lower by 51–88‰ for the 1983–2010 period. The lower dilution found for the last decades might indicate an increase in enriched 14CO2 sources. Results from the spatial distribution, as revealed from integrated CO2 samples and grasses from six points within the MCMA collected during the 2013 dry season, show variations between sites and sample types. For integrated CO2 samples, values range from 35.6‰ to 54.0‰, and for grasses between –86.8‰ and 40.7‰. For three of the sampling points, the grasses are significantly depleted, by up to ~133‰, as compared to the corresponding integrated CO2 sample. This may result from differences in the carbon assimilation period and exposure to different CO2 sources. Higher-than-background Δ14C values were found for all integrated CO2 samples, presumably resulting from 14C-enriched CO2 derived from forest fires in the mountains during the sampling period. Results obtained so far confirm the complexity of the 14C cycle in the MCMA.This research is funded by DGAPA-UNAM through project PAPIIT-IN106113. Scholarships from CONACyT for AMJ and AMR and from Instituto de Geología and DGAPA-UNAM for AGS are gratefully acknowledged.Peer Reviewe

An educational tool for understanding MPEG‐2 video compression and coding techniques

The understanding of the video encoding/decoding processes is a key skill for students of computer science, engineering, or telecommunications, especially those specialized in multimedia. The special characteristics of the video signals, and how such features are leveraged to compress the video frames using coding theory, are hard to understand for engineering students. In this paper, we describe MPEG-2 analyzer, an educational tool designed to provide a comprehensive and interactive way to understand MPEG-2 video compression and encoding techniques. We have used our tool to evaluate its usefulness in reinforcing the knowledge about the MPEG-2 video (de)coding process to Telecommunication Engineering students. Results show that the evaluation of the tool is very positive, and it has helped them to understand many of the complex concepts covered in the course.Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málaga / CBUA

SPIRAL 2 coupler preparation and RF conditioning

Proc. On LineInternational audienceFive radiofrequency coupler prototypes have been manufactured. Three of them will be mounted in the cryomodules of the SPIRAL 2 superconducting LINAC (LINear ACcelerator). This paper describes the coupler preparation and the first results of their conditioning

Evaluation of a two-phase extraction system of carbohydrates and proteins from chlorella vulgaris utex 1803

Microalgae are a valuable source of high-value products and biofuels, however the high-energy cost required for the extraction of their metabolites has kept questioning on possible industrial upgrading. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of temperature, solvent/biomass, NaOH concentration and thermal pretreatment of the biomass in a 2-cycle carbohydrate and protein extraction system. Results shown that best conditions for carbohydrates extraction are achieved at a solvent concentration of 3.67 M, 55°C and a solvent/biomass ratio of 30mL/g. On the other side, the best conditions for protein were 3 M, 85°C and 45 mL/g. The efficiencies achieved under these conditions were 95% for carbohydrates and 98% for proteins. Using the best extraction conditions for each metabolite a thermal pre-treatment was performed at 25°C, 75°C and 105°C. Results indicate that highest efficiencies were achieved with dry biomass pretreated at 105°C, with values of 95% for carbohydrates and 98% for proteins

A novel approach to forecast urban surface-level ozone considering heterogeneous locations and limited information

Surface ozone (O3) is considered an hazard to human health, affecting vegetation crops and ecosystems. Accurate time and location O3 forecasting can help to protect citizens to unhealthy exposures when high levels are expected. Usually, forecasting models use numerous O3 precursors as predictors, limiting the reproducibility of these models to the availability of such information from data providers. This study introduces a 24 h-ahead hourly O3 concentrations forecasting methodology based on bagging and ensemble learning, using just two predictors with lagged O3 concentrations. This methodology was applied on ten-year time series (2006–2015) from three major urban areas of Andalusia (Spain). Its forecasting performance was contrasted with an algorithm especially designed to forecast time series exhibiting temporal patterns. The proposed methodology outperforms the contrast algorithm and yields comparable results to others existing in literature. Its use is encouraged due to its forecasting performance and wide applicability, but also as benchmark methodology

Smart farming IoT platform based on edge and cloud computing

Precision Agriculture (PA), as the integration of information, communication and control technologies in agriculture, is growing day by day. The Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing paradigms offer advances to enhance PA connectivity. Nevertheless, their usage in this field is usually limited to specific scenarios of high cost, and they are not adapted to semi-arid conditions, or do not cover all PA management in an efficient way. For this reason, we propose a flexible platform able to cope with soilless culture needs in full recirculation greenhouses using moderately saline water. It is based on exchangeable low-cost hardware and supported by a three-tier open source software platform at local, edge and cloud planes. At the local plane, Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) interact with crop devices to gather data and perform real-time atomic control actions. The edge plane of the platform is in charge of monitoring and managing main PA tasks near the access network to increase system reliability against network access failures. Finally, the cloud platform collects current and past records and hosts data analytics modules in a FIWARE deployment. IoT protocols like Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) or Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) are used to communicate with CPS, while Next Generation Service Interface (NGSI) is employed for southbound and northbound access to the cloud. The system has been completely instantiated in a real prototype in frames of the EU DrainUse project, allowing the control of a real hydroponic closed system through managing software for final farmers connected to the platform.This work has been sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, through the HIDROLEAF project (ref. RTC-2016-4827-2) and the Torres Quevedo program (grant TQ-15-08073), and the European Commission, through the DrainUse (ref. LIFE14 ENV/ES/000538) and ANASTACIA (contract 731558) projects. The authors would also like to thank the colleagues from OdinS company for their support in the prototype deployment

Experiencia con la herramienta de virtualización VNUML para la enseñanza de redes de computadores

La virtualización permite disponer y configurar infraestructuras de red con un coste asumible para un laboratorio y, a diferencia de los simuladores, muestra un comportamiento real del sistema. Este artículo presenta la metodología que seguimos en la asignatura de Redes de la Facultad de Informática de la Universidad de Murcia para la enseñanza práctica de conceptos tales como encaminamiento, movilidad IP, balanceo de carga y alta disponibilidad por medio de la herramienta de virtualización de código abierto VNUML. Para mostrar estos conceptos hemos añadido diversas utilidades al sistema de ficheros utilizado en VNUML. Gracias a estas herramientas, los alumnos han podido mejorar el aprendizaje de estos conceptos como lo refutan las encuestas realizadas.Peer Reviewe