Age-related brood parasitism and egg rejection in magpie hosts

When the strength or nature of a host-parasite interaction changes over the host life cycle, the consequences of parasitism can depend on host population age structure. Avian brood parasites reduce hosts’ breeding success, and host age may play a role in this interaction if younger hosts are more likely parasitized and/or less able to defend themselves. We analyzed whether the age of female magpie (Pica pica) hosts is associated with parasite attack or their ability to reject foreign eggs. We recorded parasitism and model egg rejection of known-age individuals over their lifetime and established whether the likelihood of parasitismor egg rejection changed with age or longevity. Parasitism probability did not change with female age, and there was a trend toward longer-lived females being less likely to be parasitized. However, model egg rejection probability increased with age for each individual female, and longer-lived females were more prone to reject model eggs. Most females in the population were young, and the majority of them accepted model eggs, suggesting that brood parasites exploiting younger host individuals are benefitting from a lower defense level of their hosts. Our results stress that the intensity of selection by brood parasites may be mediated by the age structure of host populations, a to-date neglected aspect in brood parasite–host research.Junta de Andalucía (proyecto P06-RNM-01862) Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (proyectos CGL2011-27561 y CGL2014-55362-P)

Spatial spillovers in public expenditure on a municipal level in Spain

A key function of local governments is to provide a wide array of public services. The supply of these services has been found to create spatial spillovers among neighbouring municipalities. Although it is generally agreed that spillovers are present in models that explain government expenditures, their type—whether endogenous, exogenous or residual—and sign—whether positive or negative—remain ambiguous. In most cases, a subjective process is used to select the type of spatial regression model used in analysis, with mixed results. Per capita expenditures of ten subprogrammes (Security, Housing, Welfare, Environment, Social services, Employment promotion, Health, Education, Culture and Sport) are analysed for all Spanish municipalities with more than 5000 inhabitants in the 2010–2012 period. A Spatial Seemingly Unrelated Regression methodology in a panel framework is used to incorporate correlation between different subprogrammes and spatial dependence. Our results show that the three types of spatial effects are present. Furthermore, substantive dependence is positive in most cases, while negative residual dependence is observed in some.We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of three anonymous reviewers in helping us improve the quality of this paper. Prof. Fernando A. López , grateful for the financial support offered by the projects from Programa de Ayudas a Grupos de Excelencia de la Región de Murcia, Fundación Seneca (#19884-GERM-15) and Ministry of Economy and Competiveness (ECO2015-651758)

Improving the absorptive capacity through unlearning context: an empirical investigation in hospital-in-the-home units

The Spanish healthcare system has undergone important changes, particularly in the development of new homecare services. In practice, however, results have been mixed. Some homecare services have been successful, but implementation failures are common and the intended patients are frequently reluctant to use the homecare services. A possible explanation for efficiency and effectiveness gaps of services provided by hospital-in-the-home units (HHUs) may relate to the advantages and disadvantages of the knowledge processes that these units highlight as a result of their different structural properties. This study examines the impact of an unlearning (forgetting) context on the HHU's ability to challenge basic beliefs and to implement processes that are explicitly or tacitly helpful in the reception of new ideas (absorptive capacity). These relationships are examined through an empirical investigation of 54 doctors and 62 nurses belonging to 44 HHUs. The results show that the unlearning context plays a key role in managing the tension between potential absorptive capacity and realized absorptive capacity.Ministerio de Educación ECO2008-0641-C02-0

Multi-homing tunnel broker

A proper support for communications has to provide fault tolerance capabilities such as the preservation of established connections in case of failures. Multihoming addresses this issue, but the currently available solution based in massive BGP route injection presents serious scalability limitations, since it contributes to the exponential growth of the BGP table size. An alternative solution based on the configuration of tunnels between the multihomed site exit routers and the ISP border routers has been proposed for IPv6 in RFC 3178. However, the amount of manual configuration imposed by this solution on the ISP side prevents its wide adoption. In particular, this solution requires at the ISP the manual configuration of a tunnel endpoint per each multihomed client that it serves. We present a multihoming tunnel broker (MHTB) that provides automatic creation of the tunnel endpoint at the ISP side.This work was supported by the SAM (Advanced Servers with Mobility)project, funded by the Spanish National research and Development Programme as TIC2002-04531-C04-03.Publicad

An application of the performance-evaluation model for e-learning quality in higher education

The demand for e-learning in higher education is rising, competition is increasing, and universities are investing significant resources towards improving the quality of their e-learning offerings. Thus, effective quality measures for e-learning are urgently required. With the aim of following the total quality management practices of raising students' satisfaction and continuous improvement, a performance-evaluation model was applied in a sample of business students. The application of this model was useful for selecting the quality items that most urgently require improvement to achieve student satisfaction and for identifying the items of surplus resource investment, thereby helping to provide the means to minimise resource wastage. This way, an effective and efficient improvement plan to enhance the efficient use of resources in e-learning and to meet an adequate level of quality was established

Preserving Established Communications in IPv6 Multi-homed Sites with MEX

This research was supported by the SAM (Advanced Mobility Services) project, funded by the Spanish National R&D Programme under contract MCYT TIC2002-04531-C04-03.A proper support for multimedia communications transport has to provide fault tolerance capabilities such as the preservation of established connections in case of failures. While multi-homing addresses this issue, the currently available solution based in massive BGP route injection presents serious scalability limitations, since it contributes to the exponential growth of the BGP table size. Alternative solutions proposed for IPv6 fail to provide equivalent facilities to the current BGP based solution. In this paper we present MEX (Muti-homing through EXtension header) a novel proposal for the provision of IPv6 multi-homing capabilities. MEX preserves overall scalability by storing alternative route information in end-hosts while at the same time reduces packet loss by allowing routers to re-route in-course packets. This behavior is enabled by conveying alternative route information within packets inside a newly defined Extension Header. The resulting system provides fault tolerance capabilities and preserves scalability, while the incurred costs, namely deployment and packet overhead, are only imposed to those that benefit from it. An implementation of the MEX host and router components is also presented.Publicad

End-Site Routing Support for IPv6 Multihoming

Multihoming is currently widely used to provide fault tolerance and traffic engineering capabilities. It is expected that, as telecommunication costs decrease, its adoption will become more and more prevalent. Current multihoming support is not designed to scale up to the expected number of multihomed sites, so alternative solutions are required, especially for IPv6. In order to preserve interdomain routing scalability, the new multihoming solution has to be compatible with Provider Aggregatable addressing. However, such addressing scheme imposes the configuration of multiple prefixes in multihomed sites, which in turn causes several operational difficulties within those sites that may even result in communication failures when all the ISPs are working properly. In this paper we propose the adoption of Source Address Dependent routing within the multihomed site to overcome the identified difficulties.Publicad

Evaluación del funcionamiento hidráulico del alcantarillado pluvial del barrio Tunjuelito, según la variación de los niveles del Río Tunjuelo, mediante SWMM

Trabajo de InvestigaciónHoy en día se evidencian colectores pluviales que no cumplen los criterios para drenar las aguas lluvias. Para la presente investigación se afirmó que el colector existente del barrio Tunjuelito, a pesar de contar con pendientes y diámetros considerables, presenta un problema en el desnivel del barrio, identificable en los perfiles de lámina de agua de los colectores de alcantarillado pluviales analizados. Para el alcantarillado pluvial del barrio Tunjuelito, conforme a los análisis realizados, el sistema no está en la capacidad hidráulica para evacuar las aguas en un evento de lluvia, esto a razón del rebose generado en el mayor porcentaje de pozos y la condición de sobrecarga de la totalidad de la red. Con base en el software SWMM, se identificó que, para el alcantarillado pluvial, un 70% de los pozos está presentando rebose para los periodos de retorno correspondientes a 10, 25 y 100 años.98 p.INTRODUCCIÓN 1. GENERALIDADES 2. DELIMITACIÓN 3. MARCO REFERENCIA 4. METODOLOGÍA 5. RESULTADOS 6. ANÁLISIS 7. CONCLUSIONES 8. RECOMENDACIONES 9. BIBLIOGRAFÍAPregradoIngeniero Civi

An IoT reader for wireless passive electromagnetic sensors

This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art Sensors Technology in Spain 2016.In the last years, many passive electromagnetic sensors have been reported. Some of these sensors are used for measuring harmful substances. Moreover, the response of these sensors is usually obtained with laboratory equipment. This approach highly increases the total cost and complexity of the sensing system. In this work, a novel low-cost and portable Internet-of-Things (IoT) reader for passive wireless electromagnetic sensors is proposed. The reader is used to interrogate the sensors within a short-range wireless link avoiding the direct contact with the substances under test. The IoT functionalities of the reader allows remote sensing from computers and handheld devices. For that purpose, the proposed design is based on four functional layers: the radiating layer, the RF interface, the IoT mini-computer and the power unit. In this paper a demonstrator of the proposed reader is designed and manufactured. The demonstrator shows, through the remote measurement of different substances, that the proposed system can estimate the dielectric permittivity. It has been demonstrated that a linear approximation with a small error can be extracted from the reader measurements. It is remarkable that the proposed reader can be used with other type of electromagnetic sensors, which transduce the magnitude variations in the frequency domain

Deposición y análisis del crecimiento de películas delgadas de silicio fabricado por PECVD

En este trabajo se presenta un estudio de las propiedades ópticas, estructurales y morfológicas de películas delgadas de silicio microcristalino hidrogenado (μc-Si:H) con diferentes concentraciones de boro. Las muestras de μc-Si:H fueron depositadas sobre un substrato de vidrio Corning 7059 mediante la técnica de Deposición Química en fase de Vapor Activada por Plasma (PECVD), en una mezcla de 94% de hidrógeno (H2) y 6% de silano (SiH4) y como gas dopante se utilizó diborano (B4H6) en el rango de 0 ppm a 75 ppm. Las constantes ópticas y el espesor del material fueron calculados a partir de los espectros de transmisión en el rango UV-Vis-IR cercano, usando el método de Swanepoel. El carácter microcristalino de las películas se identificó por medio de difracción de rayos X. Un análisis de la formación de los granos en la superficie de las muestras fue realizado a través de medidas de SEM y AFM. La evidencia de un crecimiento columnar de los granos cristalinos inmersos en una matriz de silicio amorfo fue obtenida por medidas realizadas con TEM. / Abstract. In this work we are present a study of optical, structural and morphological properties of borondoped hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon thin films (μc-Si:H). The μc-Si:H samples were deposited on Corning 7059 glass substrate by Plasma – Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD), in a mixture of 94%hydrogen (H2) and 6% silane (SiH4). Diborane (B2H6) was used as dopant gas in the range of 0 ppm to 75 ppm. The optical constants and thickness of the material were calculated from transmission spectrum in UV-Vis-NIR using the Swanepoel method. Micro-crystallinity of the samples was determined by X-ray diffraction. An analysis of the formation of grains on the surface of the samples was performed by SEM and AFM measurements. The evidence of a columnar growth of crystallines grains membedded in a matrix of amorphous silicon was obtained by TEM measurements.Maestrí