Reactive nitrogen in the Spanish agri-food sector: environmental impact on atmosphere, soils, water and resources.

The presence of reactive species of nitrogen (N) in the biosphere might cause environmental impacts at local, regional and global scales. Nowadays the N flows generated by human activities greatly exceed natural processes, thus a necessity exists of identifying and quantifying the current state of environmental N loads. The aim of this work is to quantify the amount of reactive N used in the Spanish agri-food sector, assessing the related potential environmental impacts and potential uses of resources. Data from a previously calculated N flow analysis in the Spanish agricultural and food production system for the 1996-2000 time period were used. Total anthropogenic N inputs to the systems were calculated. Input and output flows were considered in each economic compartment in order to calculate use efficiency (ratio of useful outputs to total inputs), eco-efficiency (ratio of useful outputs to outputs to the environment) and recycling rate (ratio of flow recycled to an earlier life-cycle compartment divided by total outputs). Environmental impacts were assessed by quantifying the N balance between the economic and the environmental subsystems: water, atmosphere, ecosystems soils and other soils. In this case agricultural soils were also considered an environmental compartment, since they are an important intermediate path to the environment. The impact on resources was evaluated considering the net N imports into the system and legume fixing crops, pastures and forages versus feed and fertilizers within the system. Anthropogenic N inputs are relatively high in Spain, which is a net importer of nitrogen, mainly in fertilizers and food and feed commodities. Environmental compartments receive relative high amounts of reactive nitrogen, especially soils. Furthermore, there was a relative low use of domestic resources, with a low proportion of N recycled within the system

Identification and selection of an environmental indicator set from a reactive nitrogen flow analysis framework

Reactive nitrogen loads causes important impacts on the environment (Soler-Rovira et al., 2008) so its flows and key sources and drivers knowledge are essential for developing management and policy options (De Clercq et al., 2001). The use of environmental indicators will help to understand a complex issue and facilitate decision making (EEA, 2005). The aim of this work is to apply a previous N flow analysis as a framework for the identification and selection of a set of environmental indicators pertaining to reactive N in the Spanish agricultural and food production sector

Indicadores del estado nutricional del cultivo en la fertilización nitrogenada de la remolacha azucarera

La gestión de nutrientes en un cultivo implica un manejo adecuado de la fertilización, teniendo en cuenta la evaluación de la fertilidad de los suelos y el estado nutricional de las plantas, con el objetivo de maximizar los rendimientos y las rentas, así como minimizar el impacto sobre el medio ambiente. El nitrógeno es un elemento imprescindible en la nutrición vegetal, afectando de manera importante al crecimiento y al rendimiento de los cultivos. El flujo de nitrógeno en el sistema suelo-planta es muy complejo y en él intervienen una gran cantidad de factores difíciles de controlar y de cuantificar. El exceso de nitrógeno reactivo en la biosfera produce, además, una serie de impactos sobre el agua, la atmósfera, los suelos, la biodiversidad y la salud humana. Por otro lado, la fabricación de abonos nitrogenados requiere una cantidad importante de recursos y energía. Estos condicionantes van a establecer el marco de una correcta gestión del uso del nitrógeno en los cultivos, en general y, en el cultivo de remolacha azucarera, en particular

Hacia el concepto de moda sostenible

¿Cómo se puede establecer un “consumo responsable” en moda? Procesos de creación y nuevos hábitos de consumo se suman para construir un panorama más razonable que haga posible un sistema de la moda sostenibl

Fast-PPP assessment in European and equatorial region near the solar cycle maximum

Oustanding Student Poster Award, European Geosciences Union General Assembly, 2014Award-winningPostprint (published version

Automatic real-time monitoring and assessment of tremor parameters in the upper limb from orientation data

Upper limb tremor is the most prevalent movement disorder and, unfortunately, it is not effectively managed in a large proportion of the patients. Neuroprostheses that stimulate the sensorimotor pathways are one of the most promising alternatives although they are still under development. To enrich the interpretation of data recorded during long-term tremor monitoring and to increase the intelligence of tremor suppression neuroprostheses we need to be aware of the context. Context awareness is a major challenge for neuroprostheses and would allow these devices to react more quickly and appropriately to the changing demands of the user and/or task. Traditionally kinematic features are used to extract context information, with most recently the use of joint angles as highly potential features. In this paper we present two algorithms that enable the robust extraction of joint angle and related features to enable long-term continuous monitoring of tremor with context awareness. First, we describe a novel relative sensor placement identification technique based on orientation data. We focus on relative rather than absolute sensor location, because in many medical applications magnetic and inertial measurement units (MIMU) are used in a chain stretching over adjacent segments, or are always placed on a fixed set of locations. Subsequently we demonstrate how tremor parameters can be extracted from orientation data using an adaptive estimation algorithm. Relative sensor location was detected with an accuracy of 94.12% for the 4 MIMU configuration, and 100% for the 3 MIMU configurations. Kinematic tracking error values with an average deviation of 8% demonstrate our ability to estimate tremor from orientation data. The methods presented in this study constitute an important step toward more user-friendly and context-aware neuroprostheses for tremor suppression and monitoring. © 2014 Lambrecht, Gallego, Rocon and Pons.This work has been funded by the European project NeuroTremor(ICT-2011.5.1-287739)andt he Spanish Consolider project HYPER (CSD2009-00067).Peer Reviewe

Assessment of the use of technical software by the students in the context of mechanical engineering

[EN] In the framework of the European Higher Education area, university teaching has focused in recent years on adapting Master's and Bachelor's degrees to the demands of the professional sector. To do this, the training and development of the generic and specific skills recommended for the incorporation of students into the job market have been priority objectives in the approach to study plans. However, there is no consensus on the methodologies for evaluating these skills, especially regarding how to separate the acquisition and / or improvement of the skills from the specific knowledge and skills of the subjects. Due to the lack of time, teaching staff seek methodologies that do not involve additional tests for the evaluation of competences, which would increase the number of tests to a non-realistic number with the corresponding assessment duties for the professors. In order to make a contribution in this regard, this work presents an approach for evaluating the ability to handle specific software applied to problems in the area of mechanical engineering. This work proposes a methodology for acquiring the required skills and an evaluation system to grade the degree of expertise in the manipulation of the software. In our University, this skill is called the Specific Instrumental Skill, which measures the ability of the students for using the tools in engineering, like, in this case, the use of software to run structural numerical simulations as ANSYS®. The methodology proposed is based on an a priori training. This training is based on 2 hours weekly sessions where the students should solve, in groups of 2 or 3 students, a set of labs with the help of the professor. The students do not need to deliver any report to the professor since the objective of the sessions is the training of the students. Therefore, the pressure over the student is low and the professor avoid to mark a high number of student¿s reports, allowing him to focus only on the learning process of the students and not on the evaluation during the training sessions. These labs increase the difficulty along a number of sessions. The last session consists in an exam in which the students must solve a lab similar to those already solved during the training sessions. This time, each student will work individually without the help of the professor and with a control of the time. Finally, the performance of the methodology is checked by a cross-test for the same students who are part of the group of students of another subject (control subject) where the same tool (ANSYS®) is used. The collected data showed that the students following this methodology acquire the sufficient expertise for handling the software and their skills outperform those of the students of the control subject who did not follow the proposed methodology. As a conclusion, the methodology proposed in this work guarantees a good level of expertise for the students, as shown by the results. Since the results in the final lab exam and the results of the cross-test coincides, the use of the final test exam could be interpreted as a good indicator of the degree of expertise in the use of the software. Additionally, the proposed methodology reduces the work load for the professor as it only requires assessing 1 report per student (instead of several reports for each group of 2 or 3 students in each of the session) while ensuring the authorship of the report.Authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Vicerrectorado de Estudios, Calidad y Acreditación and the Vicerrectorado de Recursos Digitales y Documentación of the Universitat Politècnica de València (project PIME B/19-20/165) and the Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación of the Universitat Politècnica de València (EICE INTEGRAL).Nadal, E.; Rupérez Moreno, MJ.; Giner Navarro, J.; Rovira, A.; Ródenas, JJ.; Martínez Casas, J.; Pedrosa, AM. (2020). Assessment of the use of technical software by the students in the context of mechanical engineering. IATED Academy. 3344-3348. https://doi.org/10.21125/iceri.2020.0756S3344334

AATR an ionospheric activity indicator specifically based on GNSS measurements

This work reviews an ionospheric activity indicator useful for identifying disturbed periods affecting the performance of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). This index is based in the Along Arc TEC Rate (AATR) and can be easily computed from dual-frequency GNSS measurements. The AATR indicator has been assessed over more than one Solar Cycle (2002–2017) involving about 140 receivers distributed world-wide. Results show that it is well correlated with the ionospheric activity and, unlike other global indicators linked to the geomagnetic activity (i.e. DST or Ap), it is sensitive to the regional behaviour of the ionosphere and identifies specific effects on GNSS users. Moreover, from a devoted analysis of different Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS) performances in different ionospheric conditions, it follows that the AATR indicator is a very suitable mean to reveal whether SBAS service availability anomalies are linked to the ionosphere. On this account, the AATR indicator has been selected as the metric to characterise the ionosphere operational conditions in the frame of the European Space Agency activities on the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System (EGNOS). The AATR index has been adopted as a standard tool by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for joint ionospheric studies in SBAS. In this work we explain how the AATR is computed, paying special attention to the cycle-slip detection, which is one of the key issues in the AATR computation, not fully addressed in other indicators such as the Rate Of change of the TEC Index (ROTI). After this explanation we present some of the main conclusions about the ionospheric activity that can extracted from the AATR values during the above mentioned long-term study. These conclusions are: (a) the different spatial correlation related with the MOdified DIP (MODIP) which allows to clearly separate high, mid and low latitude regions, (b) the large spatial correlation in mid latitude regions which allows to define a planetary index, similar to the geomagnetic ones, (c) the seasonal dependency which is related with the longitude and (d) the variation of the AATR value at different time scales (hourly, daily, seasonal, among others) which confirms most of the well-known time dependences of the ionospheric events, and finally, (e) the relationship with the space weather events.Postprint (published version