Does malaga city have green and blue infraestructures? analysis of their ecological connectivity, population accesibility and potential ecosystem services

Ecosystem services (ES) are defined as “benefits people obtain from ecosystems”, and classified as provisioning, regulation and maintenance, and cultural services. Nowadays, there is continuous search for incrementing wellbeing, besides a higher concern for environment. Accordingly, ES contribute positively to decrease these concerns. Green and blue infrastructures (GBI) play an important role in the regulation of natural cycles in urban and periurban areas, providing a number of ES, not always considered in planning and decision making process. GBI may be designed to reduce the ecological footprint, reduce natural hazards, and improve the quality of urban living environment (e.g air quality, water quality, noise, climate, aesthetics). GBI provide space for relaxation and restoration as well as exercise and leisure activities, promote new green services and jobs, and therefore increase the resilience of cities facing the Global Change. Many Mediterranean cities present few spaces considered as GBI. In our case study, does Málaga city have GBI providing ES to its population? Málaga is a Mediterranean city of importance in southern Europe due to its strategic location and good communications. It has a population of almost 600.000 people plus the great amount of tourist throughout the year. Thus, it would be rather important to have GBI improving urban quality life and well-being.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

The balance between cognitive and non-cognitive aspects of students’ well-being: a quantitative analysis

The objective of this work is to determine which students’ characteristics (of the 8th grade Spanish students) allow them finding a balance among different dimensions of well-being. Firstly, in order to measure the students’ well-being, we built four synthetic indexes related to anxiety, motivation, belonging to the educational centre and bullying. Then, different models are estimated using as explained variables those indexes and condition on students’ sociodemographic characteristics, use of ICTs, hours of study and a proxy for maturity. Based upon the estimated parameters a multiobjective problem is defined; the problem is solved with multiobjective programing using an achievement scalarazing function. The results allow to characterize the profile of those students who achieve an optimal balance among the different aspects of well-being evaluated, which may be used to design educational policies aimed at improving simultaneously cognitive and non-cognitive measures of students performance.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Extraction of wood compounds by use of subcritical fluids

A study of the extraction of oak wood compounds with subcritical water-ethanol mixtures as extractant, with an ethanol content between 0-60%, is reported. Identification and characterisation of the extracted compounds have been made by spectrophotometry and gas chromatography with either flame ionisation or mass detectors. Extraction was performed statically manner by use of a single cycle or repeated cycles. All variables affecting the extraction process were studied and optimised. Extraction time and temperature are 60 min and 200ºC, respectively. Comparison of the extract thus obtained with commercial extracts showed the former to be rich in compounds characteristic of the commercial extracts. The method enables manipulation of the extract composition by changing the temperature and water/ethanol ratio used. It is faster than the traditional procedures for obtaining wood extracts

Two-parameter determination in vinegar by a flow injection-pervaporation system

A flow-injection method (FI) for the sequential determination of ethanol and acetic acid in vinegar is reported. The determination of ethanol is based on the oxidation of the pervaporated ethanol by Cr2O7K2. The acetic acid is determined by an acid-base reaction with Thymol Blue as the indicator. Both reactions are monitored photometrically at 600 nm using a single detector. Optimisation studies and assessment of the sequential FI method are also reported. The linear determination range is between 0-12 % (v/v) for ethanol and 0-10 % (grams of acetic acid in 100 ml) for acetic acid. The sample throughput of the sequential manifold is 7 per hour. The new method has been applied to vinegar samples and the results obtained are in excellent agreement with those from the reference methods used in Spain

A-GWASF-GA: The New Version of GWASF-GA to Solve Many Objective Problems

A new version of the evolutionary algorithm based on GWASF-GA [1] is proposed in this work. GWASF-GA is an aggregation-based algorithm which uses the Tchebychev metric plus an augmentation term as fitness function and two reference points (the utopian and nadir points) to classify the individuals according to a set of widely-distributed weight vectors. Although this algorithm obtains a good approximation of the Pareto front (PF) for multi-objective optimization problems, this may be more difficult to obtain for many-objective optimization problems due to the fact that the weight vectors used are never updated along the search process. For this reason, we propose a new version of the algorithm, called A-GWASF-GA, in which a dynamic adjustment of the weight vectors is carried out. The main idea is to re-calculate some weight vectors in order to obtain solutions in parts of the PF with a lack of solutions. Firstly, a percentage (p) of the total number of evaluations is performed with the original GWASF-GA [1]. Secondly, during the rest of evaluations (1-p), we re-calculate na times the projection directions determined by a subset of Na weight vectors. The re-calculation process is based on a scattering level, a measure based on the distance of each solution and the solutions around it. According to the scattering level of the generated solutions, we detect the Na weight vectors projecting toward overcrowded areas of the PF and we re-calculate them so that their new projection directions point towards areas of the PF which are not so well approximated. In order to show the effectiveness of A-GWASF-GA, we compare it with NSGA-III [2, 3], MOEA/D [4], MOEA/D-AWA [5] and the original GWASF-GA.To evaluate their performance, we use the IGD metric [6]. The results of the computational experiment demonstrate the good performance of A-GWASF-GA in the novel many-objective optimization benchmark problems considered.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Semiautomatic flow-injection method for the determination of volatile acidity in wines

A flow-injection (FI) method based on analytical pervaporation was assessed for its routine use in the determination of volatile acidity in winery laboratories. The new method was compared with both the official method and the Mathieu method, which is most often used in Spanish wineries, by testing 30 different wines, including young and aged, and sweet and dry wines from Montilla-Moriles appellation d´origine. The robustness of the new method was established and then all three methods were studied in terms of range of linearity and regression of the calibration curve, repeatability, reproducibility, sensitivity, detection and quantification limits (LOD and LQ, respectively) and time of analysis. The FI method surpasses the Mathieu method in reproducibility and both the Mathieu and official methods in LOD and LQ and sensitivity; it also requires less personnel involvement and shorter analysis time. The statistical criteria established by the “Office International de la Vigne et du Vin” were applied to the data and the results obtained indicated that the differences between the analytical parameters of the 3 methods are not significant and can be applied indistinctly. The correlation of the methods was studied by taking them 2 by 2, and the corresponding equations, coefficients and deviations confirmed the statistical results. Thus, the new method can be used in winery laboratories with clear advantages over its 2 counterparts (the routine and official methods)

Determination of ethanol in beverages by flow injection, pervaporation and density measurements

A fast, clean and easy to automate flow injection-pervaporation method for the determination of ethanol in different beverages using density measurements is proposed. The method is based on separation of the ethanol from the sample using a pervaporation module, thus obtaining in the acceptor chamber of the pervaporator a water-alcohol mixture, the density of which is measured. After optimisation by either the univariate or multivariate approach as required, a linear range between 0-40% was established. Then, the assessment of the method versus a reference one was studied in terms of repeatability (0.12% v/v), reproducibility (0.32% v/v), detection limit (0.11% v/v) and traceability. The sample throughput was 15 samples h-1. The method was in agreement with the reference methods used in the European Union

TMbarrier: speculative barriers using hardware transactional memory

Barrier is a very common synchronization method used in parallel programming. Barriers are used typically to enforce a partial thread execution order, since there may be dependences between code sections before and after the barrier. This work proposes TMbarrier, a new design of a barrier intended to be used in transactional applications. TMbarrier allows threads to continue executing speculatively after the barrier assuming that there are not dependences with safe threads that have not yet reached the barrier. Our design leverages transactional memory (TM) (specifically, the implementation offered by the IBM POWER8 processor) to hold the speculative updates and to detect possible conflicts between speculative and safe threads. Despite the limitations of the best-effort hardware TM implementation present in current processors, experiments show a reduction in wasted time due to synchronization compared to standard barriers.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Superheated liquids for the extraction of solid residues from winemaking processes

Solid residues from winemaking process have been subjected to extraction with superheated water-ethanol mixtures. Identification and characterisation of the extracted compounds have been made by spectrophotometry, gas chromatography with either flame ionisation or mass detectors and high performance liquid chromatography with UV detection. The extraction has been performed in a static manner by single or repetitive cycles. All variables affecting the extraction process have been studied and optimised. The extraction time and temperature are 65 min and 210ºC, respectively. Two phases constitute the extract: an aqueous phase, which is rich in phenol compounds and an oily phase, mainly formed by fatty acids. The method allows manipulation of the extract composition by changing the applied pressure, temperature, water-ethanol ratio and pH. The method is faster than the traditional extraction procedures for obtaining valuable compounds from these residues

Sequential Spectrophotometric determination of methanol and iron in vinegar by a flow injection-pervaporation method

An easily automatable sequential flow-injection-pervaporation method is proposed for the photometric determination of methanol and iron in vinegar. The method is based on separation of the methanol from the sample matrix by pervaporation followed by its oxidation to formaldehyde with permanganate, decolouration of the latter with S2O5-2 and subsequent reaction of formaldehyde with p-rosaniline to yield a violet reaction product with maximum absorption at 567 nm. Iron is determined by an existing method based on reaction with thiocyanate in acidic medium and monitoring at 508 nm. After optimisation by either the univariate or multivariate approaches, as required, the linear range was established for methanol (4-1000 mg L-1) and iron (0.18-20 mg L-1); The proposed method was then compared with reference methods for methanol and iron in terms of repeatability (2.452 mg L-1 and 0.245 mg L-1, respectively), reproducibility (4.435 mg L-1 and 0.356 mg L-1, respectively), detection limit (LOD=82 and 0.234 mg L-1, respectively) and traceability. The throughput was nine samples per hour