Space, mass and ornament in the Gothic-Renaissance transition in Spain

La introducción en España de las nuevas formas y sintaxis renacentistas a lo largo del siglo xvi no se produjo con un abandono radical e inmediato de los viejos usos góticos, de validez comprobada en trascendentales cuestiones del diseño arquitectónico. La renovación de la producción fue heterogénea y en cierto modo particular de cada artífice, según su formación previa y el grado de contacto, coherencia y compromiso con las novedades italianas, generando un panorama híbrido y plural en la arquitectura del quinientos hispano. Atendiendo a significativos textos y documentos gráficos de la época, se pretende rastrear los cambios, e inercias, en el proceso de diseño arquitectónico durante esta larga etapa de transición, estructurando el análisis a partir de tres categorías sustanciales, interdependientes y autónomas a la vez: espacio, masa y ornato.During the sixteenth century the new Renaissance forms were introduced in Spain, but the Gothic procedures continued to be used due to their proven validity for the architectural design. The renovation of the architecture was heterogeneous and different for each master, according to his previous training and his knowledge of the new Italian forms. This involved a hybrid and plural context in the Spanish architecture of the 16th century. The changes and continuities of the architectural design process during this transitory stage are investigated in this paper, based on significant texts and graphic documents of this period. The analysis is structured based on three substantial architectural categories, which are simultaneously interdependent and autonomous: space, mass and ornamen

Entrance in the Castle of Portell

[EN] The church square is part of the old castle of Portell. In this square, an old staircase, in poor condition and with excessive slope, connected the gap between the town and the upper part of the walled enclosure. The existing staircase is replaced by building a new more convenient access, occupying a small municipal plot located next to the square. The new access comes up as if it were deposited on the natural ground, thus facilitates a more leisurely and comfortable promenade that invites to stop and sit down, join and converse. A small enclosure is built with the new walls and, on the other hand, they co-exist with what already existed. A concrete wall configures the boundaries of the square not directly showing the new entrance, but rather, it is suggested behind it inviting to enter and explore it.[ES] La plaza de l’Esglèsia forma parte del antiguo castillo de Portell. En esta plaza, una antigua escalera, en mal estado y con excesiva pendiente, conectaba el desnivel entre la población y la parte superior del recinto amurallado. Se sustituye la escalera existente construyendo un nuevo acceso más cómodo, ocupando un pequeño solar municipal recayente a la plaza. El nuevo acceso asciende entendiéndose como depositado sobre el terreno natural, facilita un recorrido más pausado y cómodo que invita a parar y sentarse, al encuentro y la conversación. Los nuevos muros construyen un pequeño recinto y, por otra parte, se relacionan con lo existente. Un muro de hormigón configura los límites de la plaza. sin mostrar directamente el nuevo acceso, sino más bien, se sugiere detrás de él e invitan a entrar y recorrerlo.García Blay, A.; Ruiz Suaña, JA. (2018). Acceso en el castillo de Portell. En CIAB 8. VIII Congreso Internacional de arquitectura blanca. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 174-181. https://doi.org/10.4995/CIAB8.2018.7432OCS17418

Morphological changes, beach inundation and overwash caused by an extreme storm on a low-lying embayed beach bounded by a dune system (NW Mediterranean)

The geomorphological evolution of a low-lying, micro-tidal sandy beach in the western Mediterranean, Pals beach, was characterized using airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data. Data were collected in prior to and six months after the impact of an extreme storm with a return period of approx. 50 years, with the aim of characterizing the beach's response to the storm. The use of repeated high-resolution topographic data to quantify beach geomorphic changes has allowed assessment of the accuracy of different proxies for estimating beach volume changes. Results revealed that changes in the shoreline position cannot accurately reproduce beach volume changes on low-lying beaches where overwash processes are significant. Observations also suggested that volume estimations from beach profiles do not accurately represent subaerial volume changes at large profile distances on beaches with significant alongshore geomorphological variability. Accordingly, the segmentation of the beach into regularly spaced bins is proposed to assess alongshore variations in the beach volume with the accuracy of the topographic data. The morphological evolution of Pals beach during the study period showed a net shoreline retreat (- 4 m) and a significant sediment gain on the subaerial beach (+ 7.5 m3/m). The net gain of sediment is mostly due to the impact of the extreme storm, driving significant overwash processes that transport sediment landwards, increasing volume on the backshore and dunes. The increase of volume on the foreshore and the presence of cuspate morphologies along the shoreline also evidence post-storm beach recovery. Observed morphological changes exhibit a high variability along the beach related to variations in beach morphology. Changes in the morphology and migration of megacusps result in a high variability in the shoreline position and foreshore volume changes. On the other hand, larger morphological changes on the backshore and larger inundation distances occur when the beach and the dunes are lower, favouring the dominance of overwash. The observed storm-induced morphological changes differ from predicted beach storm impacts because of spatial and temporal variations in the beach morphology, suggesting that detailed morphological parameters and indicators used for predicting beach vulnerability to storms should be regularly updated in order to represent the pre-storm beach conditions. Finally, observed morphological changes in Pals Bay evidenced a different behaviour between natural and urban areas, with better post-storm beach recovery on natural areas where the beach is not artificially narrowed.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

QoS-Aware Semantic Service Selection: An Optimization Problem

In order to select the best suited service among a set of discovered services, with respect to QOS parameters, a user have to state his or her preferences, so services can be ranked according to these QOS parameters. Current Se- mantic Web Services ontologies do not support the defini- tion of QOS-aware user preferences, though there are some proposals that extend those ontologies to allow selection based on those preferences. However, their selection algo- rithms are very coupled with user preferences descriptions, which are defined without semantics or at a different seman- tic level than service functionality. In this work, we present a service selection framework that transforms user prefer- ences into an optimization problem where the best service is selected. This framework is based on an ontology that conceptualizes these user preferences. Thus, we use a very expressive solution decoupled with the concrete selection technique by using XSL transformations, while describing QOS-aware user preferences at the same semantic level of functional preferences.Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2006-00472Junta de Andalucía TIC-253

SOA4 All Integrated Ranking: a Preference-Based, Holistic Implementation

There exist many available service ranking implementations, each one providing ad hoc preference models that offer different levels of expressiveness. Consequently, applying a single implementation to a particular scenario constrains the user to define preferences based on the underlying formalisms. Furthermore, preferences from different ranking implementation’s model cannot be combined in general, due to interoperability issues. in this article we present an integrated ranking implementation that enables the combination of three different ranking implementations developed within the EU FP7 SOA4All project. Our solution has been developed using PURI, a Preference-based Universal Ranking Integration framework that is based on a common, holistic preference model that allows to exploit synergies from the integrated ranking implementations, offering a single user interface to define preferences that acts as a façade to the integrated ranking implementation

Improving Semantic Web Services Discovery Using SPARQL-Based Repository Filtering

Semantic Web Services discovery is commonly a heavyweight task, which has scalability issues when the number of services or the ontology complexity increase, because most approaches are based on Description Logics reasoning. As a higher number of services becomes available, there is a need for solutions that improve discovery performance. Our proposal tackles this scalability problem by adding a preprocessing stage based on two SPARQL queries that filter service repositories, discarding service descriptions that do not refer to any functionality or non-functional aspect requested by the user before the actual discovery takes place. This approach fairly reduces the search space for discovery mechanisms, consequently improving the overall performance of this task. Furthermore, this particular solution does not provide yet another discovery mechanism, but it is easily applicable to any of the existing ones, as our prototype evaluation shows. Moreover, proposed queries are automatically generated from service requests, transparently to the user. In order to validate our proposal, this article showcases an application to the OWL-S ontology, in addition to a comprehensive performance analysis that we carried out in order to test and compare the results obtained from proposed filters and current discovery approaches, discussing the benefits of our proposal

On User Preferences and Utility Functions in Selection: A Semantic Approach

Discovery tasks in the context of Semantic Web Services are generally performed using Description Logics. However, this formalism is not suited when non-functional, numerical parameters are involved in the discovery process. Furthermore, in selection tasks, where an optimization algorithm is needed, DLs are not capable of computing the optimum. Although there are DLs extensions that can handle numerical parameters, they bring decidability problems. Other solutions, as hybrid approaches which use DLs in functional discovery and other formalisms in non-functional selection, do not provide a semantic framework to describe user preferences based on non-functional properties. In this work, we propose to semantically describe user preferences, so they can be used to perform selection within a hybrid solution. By using semantically described utility functions in order to define user preferences, our proposal enables interoperability between service offers and demands, while providing a high level of expressiveness in these preferences and including them within SWS descriptions.Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2006-0047

A test for deterministic dynamics in spatial processes

We propose a statistical procedure to determine if a spatial structure that is observed in the data is generated by a deterministic (even chaotic) spatial process, rather than by a stochastic process. This procedure can be used as a speci cation test. It is robust against nonlinearity and nonstationarity and can complete the toolbox for testing diagnosis as well. The advantages of the presented methods are high power, simplicity, and ease and ample applicability for tests to be conducted, provided that weak conditions are required. Herein, we conduct several simulations to evaluate the performance of our procedure on well-known spatial processes and in situations where standard tests for spatial autocorrelation fail to detect spatial dependence. Guidelines for using the technique are also provided herein.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) [grant number ECO2015-65637-P]; and Group of Excellence of the FUNDACIÓN SENECA DE LA REGIÓN DE MURCIA [grant number 19884/GERM/15]

STATService: Herramienta de análisis estadístico como soporte para la investigación con Metaheurísticas

Actualmente, la aplicación de técnicas estadísticas es una necesidad cuando se trabaja con metaheurísticas. A pesar de que existen multitud de paquetes software para el cálculo estadístico, estos sistemas exigen en la mayoría de los casos la instalación de componentes y no son fáciles de integrar con otros sistemas. En este artículo presentamos un conjunto de herramientas para análisis estadístico denominado STATService, que puede usarse a través de un portal web. STATService provee además interfaces programáticas a través de servicios web que hacen que su integración con otros sistemas sea extremadamente simple, independientemente de la plataforma y tecnologías concretas de dichos sistemas

Modelos de regresión espacio temporales en la estimación municipal de la renta. Estimación de la RFDPC municipal en la región de Murcia

Muy recientemente han aparecido estudios en los que haciendo uso de técnicas de econometría espacial, se han realizado nuevas estimaciones de la renta municipal eliminando los problemas de autocorrelación espacial que presentaban los modelos anteriores. Estos modelos poseen una elevada capacidad explicativa, pero tienen ciertas carencias al utilizarlos con intención predictiva. El objetivo de este estudio es plantear una alternativa a la estimación de la renta municipal mediante modelos espacio-temporales de regresión que simultáneamente solucione dos problemas: el problema de autocorrelación espacial y a la falta de capacidad predictiva de ciertos modelos espaciales de regresión. Se utiliza el modelo teórico desarrollado con el fin de realizar una estimación de la Renta Familiar Bruta Disponible per cápita de los municipios de la Región de Murcia