G-Bikes: Gettysburg Bike Share

The focus of this paper was to asses Gettysburg as possible location to implement a bike share program and ultimately to propose a framework for a successful program. We evaluated bike share programs across North America and created a list of criteria of successful programs. The second part of our data collection included a Google Forms survey which targeted three demographics, students, locals and tourists. We targeted our focus groups by posting on Facebook pages frequented by each demographic, as well as administering the survey in person with smart phones in Lincoln Square in Gettysburg. Our survey generated 134 responses, 86 of which were students, 27 locals, and 21 tourists. Our research showed that, demographically, successful programs occur in areas with high traffic from college students and tourists, as well as support from the local population. On the technical side, successful programs have 10-30 bikes per 10,000 residents with bike stations that range from 1-2 miles apart, averaging 4-8 trips per day, per bike. Our survey showed that a bike share program in Gettysburg would receive heavy support from our three demographics. It also showed that the largest concern from each demographic was bike related travel during the winter months which is consistent with the other programs we studied. Based on our research, we propose that the G-Bikes program should have 5 stations located at the top five intended locations of visitation, Gettysburg Town Center, Gettysburg College, Little Round Top, The Observation Tower, and on Steinwehr Avenue near the National Cemetery. Based off the overall population we recommend that the program start with a minimum of 20 bikes. We also recommend that the bike models follow the oBike specs from European bike share programs to maximize user convenience and minimize the threat of theft and vandalism. Through our study we determined Gettysburg\u27s unique niche as a small college town and tourist hub to be a possible location to implement a successful bike share program that implements many of the similar characteristics of other tourist destinations we studied

Contribución del proceso de concentración parcelaria a la reducción de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero: estudio de dos casos en la estepa cerealista de Castilla y León (España)

El proceso de concentración parcelaria se considera un importante instrumento de desarrollo rural en muchos países, donde contribuye a asegurar el desarrollo económico y la viabilidad de sus zonas rurales. En el presente trabajo se pretende demostrar cómo la concentración parcelaria puede contribuir a la reducción de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero aprovechando la racionalización introducida en la configuración de las explotaciones agrarias. Con este objetivo, se realiza el análisis de la energía consumida en los desplazamientos realizados en cada una de las operaciones de cultivo y de transporte de la cosecha, así como en los giros que se producen dentro de la parcela, a la vez que se analizan los efectos que las actuaciones de concentración parcelaria generan en el tamaño, forma y grado de dispersión del parcelario afectado. Para realizar estos cálculos, se han elegido dos zonas recientemente sometidas a un proceso de concentración: Boadilla de Rioseco (Palencia) y Villagarcía de Campos (Valladolid). Ambas están situadas en la comarca natural de Tierra de Campos y son representativas de la pseudoestepa cerealista de Castilla y León. En las diversas determinaciones efectuadas en ambas zonas, se ha verificado una reducción de consumos de combustible como consecuencia de la mayor regularidad de las fincas resultantes, su mayor tamaño y menor dispersión espacial. A la vista de los resultados obtenidos puede considerarse a la concentración parcelaria como un proceso eficaz en la estrategia de reducción de gases de efecto invernadero, en sintonía con los compromisos actuales del protocolo de Kioto. Igualmente, se considera necesario continuar investigando la estructura e importancia que los desplazamientos tienen en el conjunto de consumos del sector agrario y su posible vinculación con las políticas de reducción de emisiones.Departamento de Ingeniería Agrícola y ForestalMáster en Investigación en Ingeniería para el Desarrollo Agroforesta

Sensitivity for tau neutrinos at PeV energies and beyond with the MAGIC telescopes

The MAGIC telescopes, located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (2200 a.s.l.) in the Canary Island of La Palma, are placed on the top of a mountain, from where a window of visibility of about 5 deg in zenith and 80 deg in azimuth is open in the direction of the surrounding ocean. This permits to search for a signature of particle showers induced by earth-skimming cosmic tau neutrinos in the PeV to EeV energy range arising from the ocean. We have studied the response of MAGIC to such events, employing Monte Carlo simulations of upward-going tau neutrino showers. The analysis of the shower images shows that air showers induced by tau neutrinos can be discriminated from the hadronic background coming from a similar direction. We have calculated the point source acceptance and the expected event rates, assuming an incoming tau neutrino flux consistent with IceCube measurements, and for a sample of generic neutrino fluxes from photo-hadronic interactions in AGNs. The analysis of about 30 hours of data taken toward the sea leads to a point source sensitivity for tau neutrinos at the level of the down-going point source analysis of the Pierre Auger Observatory.Comment: Proceedings of the 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2017), Bexco, Busan, Korea,(arXiv:1708.05153

Constraining the Dark Matter decay lifetime with very deep observations of the Perseus cluster with the MAGIC telescopes

We present preliminary results on Dark Matter searches from observations of the Perseus galaxy cluster with the MAGIC Telescopes. MAGIC is a system of two Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes located in the Canary island of La Palma, Spain. Galaxy clusters are the largest known gravitationally bound structures in the Universe, with masses of ~10^15 Solar masses. There is strong evidence that galaxy clusters are Dark Matter dominated objects, and therefore promising targets for Dark Matter searches, particularly for decay signals. MAGIC has taken almost 300 hours of data on the Perseus Cluster between 2009 and 2015, the deepest observational campaign on any galaxy cluster performed so far in the very high energy range of the electromagnetic spectrum. We analyze here a small sample of this data and search for signs of dark matter in the mass range between 100 GeV and 20 TeV. We apply a likelihood analysis optimized for the spectral and morphological features expected in the dark matter decay signals. This is the first time that a dedicated Dark Matter optimization is applied in a MAGIC analysis, taking into account the inferred Dark Matter distribution of the source. The results with the full dataset analysis will be published soon by the MAGIC Collaboration