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

Effects on Rotational Dynamics of Azo and Hydrazodicarboxamide-Based Rotaxanes

© 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY 4.0 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This document is the Published Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Molecules. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules22071078The synthesis of novel hydrogen-bonded [2]rotaxanes having two pyridine rings in the macrocycle and azo- and hydrazodicarboxamide-based templates decorated with four cyclohexyl groups is described. The different affinity of the binding sites for the benzylic amide macrocycle and the formation of programmed non-covalent interactions between the interlocked components have an important effect on the dynamic behavior of these compounds. Having this in mind, the chemical interconversion between the azo and hydrazo forms of the [2]rotaxane was investigated to provide a chemically-driven interlocked system enable to switch its circumrotation rate as a function of the oxidation level of the binding site. Different structural modifications were carried out to further functionalize the nitrogen of the pyridine rings, including oxidation, alkylation or protonation reactions, affording interlocked azo-derivatives whose rotation dynamics were also analyzed

Gobernanza y planificación de la infraestructura verde en España

El objeto del trabajo pasa por evaluar el marco normativo en materia de infraestructuras verdes urbanas (IV) en el estado Español con la finalidad de hacer un diagnóstico normativo y escalado para evaluar las características comunes y diferenciadoras entre las distintas Comunidades Autónomas. El trabajo se centra en las IV, cuya implantación en España con respecto al marco europeo se encuentra ciertamente atrasada; es por ello, que se hace necesario un mayor esfuerzo por parte del Estado, para elaborar una legislación y normativa básica que permitan una aplicación real de medidas que favorezcan el desarrollo de IV a escalas territoriales menores.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Empleo de carbones activados procedentes de lignina como catalizadores no metálicos en la oxidación húmeda con peróxido de hidrogeno

Una lignina obtenida por un proceso a la sosa se empleó como precursor para preparar carbones activados. En primer lugar, se carbonizó la lignina en atmósfera inerte y, a continuación, se procedió a su activación térmica en atmósfera oxidante usando temperaturas entre 150 y 350 C. Se emplearon distintas técnicas de caracterización para evaluar sus propiedades texturales y química superficial, observando un aumento del desarrollo de la porosidad con la temperatura de activación usada, y un marcado carácter básico en todos ellos. Los carbones preparados se ensayaron como catalizadores no metálicos para la oxidación húmeda catalítica con peróxido de hidrógeno (CWPO) de 4-nitrofenol (4-NP; 5 g L-1), usando condiciones de operación relativamente suaves (presión atmosférica, T = 50 C, pH = 3, carga de catalizador = 2.5 g L-1, [H2O2]0 = 17.8 g L-1). Con los catalizadores preparados a las temperaturas de activación más altas (300 y 350 C) se logró eliminar cerca del 70 % de 4-NP, observándose una eficiente descomposición de H2O2. Por su parte, los materiales preparados a las temperaturas de activación más bajas (150 y 200 C) promovieron una descomposición del H2O2 más rápida pero ineficiente, eliminándose menos del 25 % de 4-NP en estos casos.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Assessment of the structures contribution (crystalline and mesophases) and mechanical properties of polycaprolactone/pluronic blends

Films of biodegradable blends of polycaprolactone (PCL) and Pluronics F68 and F127 were manufactured by an industrial thermo-mechanical process to be applied as potential delivery systems. The effects of Pluronics on the structure (mesophase organization), and thermal and mechanical properties of polycaprolactone were investigated using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), polarized optical microscopy (POM) and tensile mechanical tests. The addition of Pluronics affected the crystallization process by changing the relative amounts of crystalline, amorphous, and meso- (condis + plastic) phases. The melting transition and XRD profiles were deconvoluted to assess the individual contribution of the different crystal morphologies. Furthermore, it was found that the mechanical properties of the blends depended on the ratio and type of Pluronic. Thus, Pluronic F127 showed a larger mesophase content than its F68 counterpart with PCL and blends with enhanced ductilityFunding for open access charge was provided by Universidad de Huelva / CBUA. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support

Exploring the activity of chemical-activated carbons synthesized from peach stones as metal-free catalysts for wet peroxide oxidation

Peach stones were used as raw material for the synthesis of activated carbons with different properties. Firstly, peach stones were chemically activated using a 12M H3PO4 solution and carbonized under flowing air (400 °C). The obtained activated carbon, named as PS, is characterized by a high surface development (SBET=1262m2 g−1) and acidic character (pHPZC=4.2). A fraction of PS was further carbonized under N2 atmosphere at 800 °C to remove surface functionalities and to increase its basicity (PS-800). In addition, a Pt catalyst supported on PS (3% w/w Pt/PS) was synthesized by incipient wetness impregnation, resulting in a considerable hydrophilicity increasing. The synthesized materials were tested in the catalytic wet peroxide oxidation (CWPO) of highly concentrated solutions of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP, 5 g L−1) during 24 h experiments, conducted at relatively mild operating conditions (T=50–110 °C, pH=3, catalyst load=2.5 g L−1 and [H2O2]0=17.8 g L−1, corresponding to the stoichiometric amount of H2O2 needed for the complete mineralization of 4-NP). It was observed that the increase of electron-donating functionalities in PS-800 promotes the generation of reactive HO% radicals, being the activity towards CWPO twice higher than that obtained with the pristine PS. Besides, increasing operating temperature substantially enhances CWPO, finding a 80% of 4-NP removal at 110 °C. On the other hand, despite the sharp increment in H2O2 decomposition due to the presence of Pt particles in Pt/PS catalyst, this decomposition is inefficient in all cases, with a consequent poor pollutant removal. This can be attributed to the recombination of HO% radicals into non-reactive species −scavenging effects, promoted by the hydrophilicity of the catalyst.This work is a result of project “AIProcMat@N2020 − Advanced Industrial Processes and Materials for a Sustainable Northern Region of Portugal 2020”, with the reference NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000006, supported by NORTE 2020, under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the ERDF and of Project POCI-01-0145-FEDER- 006984–Associate Laboratory LSRE-LCM funded by ERDF through COMPETE2020 − POCI − and by national funds through FCT. M. Martín Martínez and A.M.T. Silva acknowledge the FCT Postdoc grant SFRH/BPD/108510/2015 and FCT Investigator 2013 Programme IF/ 01501/2013, respectively.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Discriminative Bernoulli Mixture Models for Handwritten Digit Recognition

Bernoulli-based models such as Bernoulli mixtures or Bernoulli HMMs (BHMMs), have been successfully applied to several handwritten text recognition (HTR) tasks which range from character recognition to continuous and isolated handwritten words. All these models belong to the generative model family and, hence, are usually trained by (joint) maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). Despite the good properties of the MLE criterion, there are better training criteria such as maximum mutual information (MMI). The MMI is a widespread criterion that is mainly employed to train discriminative models such as log-linear (or maximum entropy) models. Inspired by the Bernoulli mixture classifier, in this work a log-linear model for binary data is proposed, the so-called mixture of multiclass logistic regression. The proposed model is proved to be equivalent to the Bernoulli mixture classifier. In this way, we give a discriminative training framework for Bernoulli mixture models. The proposed discriminative training framework is applied to a well-known Indian digit recognition task.Work supported by the EC (FEDER/FSE) and the Spanish MEC/MICINN under the MIPRCV “Consolider Ingenio 2010” program (CSD2007-00018), iTrans2 (TIN2009-14511) and MITTRAL (TIN2009-14633-C03-01) projects. Also supported by the IST Programme of the European Community, under the PASCAL2 Network of Excellence, IST-2007-216886, and by the Spanish MITyC under the erudito.com (TSI-020110-2009-439).Giménez Pastor, A.; Andrés Ferrer, J.; Juan Císcar, A.; Serrano Martinez Santos, N. (2011). Discriminative Bernoulli Mixture Models for Handwritten Digit Recognition. En Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), 2011 International Conference on. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). 558-562. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDAR.2011.118S55856

Surface of carbon nanotubes for wet peroxide oxidation

Catalytic wet peroxide oxidation (CWPO) is regarded as a potential solution for the treatment of aqueous effluents containing recalcitrant and toxic organic pollutants, difficult to remove by conventional biological processes, mainly if present at high concentrations (1-10 g L-1) [1]. In a recent study, three magnetic carbon nanotube (CNT) samples, named E30 (undoped), A30 (completely N-doped) and E10A20 (partially N-doped), were synthesized by chemical vapor deposition and tested in the CWPO process, finding that N-doped hydrophilic surfaces promoted the fast decomposition of H2O2 into nonreactive species (H2O and O2), hindering CWPO [2].info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio