Effects of european emissions trading system application to non EU airlines.

The European Union requires the application of an Emission Trading System (ETS) to all the flights arriving to or departing from EU airports beginning on 1 st of January 2012, according to the rules published in the Directive 2008/101/EC. Although actual emissions trading will take place in 2012 and on, part of the regulation started to be applicable in January 2010, in order to gather airline data that will be used for distribution of free emissions permits and for establishing the number of permits to be auctioned. EU carriers will have almost every flight included in the ETS, but non EU airlines participation will be limited to flights touching one EU airport, representing a relatively small part of their route system. However they are subject to the same administrative requirements, being obliged to submit Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) procedures to the EU Authority corresponding to the country with the most emissions from that carrier. This paper explores some of the most likely consequences for non EU carriers, coming from the entry into force of the ETS, both during 2010 and after 1 st of January 2012, when the system will start to be applicable. These effects may be classified in six categories: - strategies to obtain the maximum number of free permits in the first distribution, to be made on 2010 traffic basis - participation in the CO2 auctioning or other carbon markets elements, as a way to obtain additional permits when needed - other Kyoto Protocol tools for achieving additional permits (Joint Implementation, Clean Development Mechanisms) - fuel savings policies to minimise the number of permits needed since 2012 - new schemes for route evaluation, considering the repercussions of ETS - general planning (fleet and network) including carbon accounting As a conclusion it is shown that ETS application will have some unavoidable economic penalties and a non desirable administrative burden but, may offer a number of possibilities for minimising the negative effects of those measures and obtaining competitive advantages if airlines take early measures and elaborate the planning tools with enough anticipation

A Spanish version of the athens insomnia scale

Objectives To develop and validate a Spanish version of the Athens Insomnia Scale (AIS). Methods The AIS is designed to assess sleep difficulty and comprises eight items: the first five refer to the sleep disturbance and the last three to the daytime consequences. Either the full eight-item scale (AIS-8) or the brief form (AIS-5) can be administered. The adaptation used a backtranslation design. The validation process was based on a sample of 323 participants (undergraduates, community sample and psychiatric outpatients), which completed the AIS and other questionnaires: anxiety (BAI), depression (BDI) and psychological well-being (GHQ-12) scales. Results The internal consistency coefficients for both versions were above 0.80. The study of dimensionality revealed a single factor with high loadings and a percentage of explained variance above 50% in both versions. Test-retest reliability was above 0.70 (AIS-5) and over 0.80 (AIS-8) at a one-month interval. The correlation between the AIS and the previously mentioned scales was for both the AIS-5 and the AIS-8 above 0.40 and 0.50, respectively

Redes sociales, política y comunicación 2.0 : análisis de la cuenta oficial de twitter del ex presidente de México, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa

En la actualidad las redes sociales en México han ganado importancia en la esfera política del país puesto que, tanto dependencias de gobierno como personajes políticos, recurren a éstas para mantener informada a la ciudadanía o para dar a conocer información de interés general. En los últimos meses el uso de Twitter ha incrementado exponencialmente su cantidad de usuarios. Esta página de internet se caracteriza por ser una red basada en las actualizaciones y el flujo de información constante además de un fácil manejo de las aplicaciones que ofrece creando la sensación de cercanía entre un emisor y varios receptores, o bien, político y ciudadanos como sería este caso

Size, growth and bank dynamics

This paper investigates the size distribution of the whole population of Spanish commercial, savings and cooperative banks from a dynamic perspective over the 1970 2006 period. To investigate the evolution of the size distribution, we determine whether the data satisfies the Law of Proportionate Effect (LPE) using panel unit root tests. We find that the size-growth relationship is not stable over time but changes depending on the competitive environment of banks (liberalization, deregulation and integration). When Spanish banking was highly regulated, we find that smaller banks grew faster than their larger counterparts. In recent years, however, we find that larger banks grow at the same rate or faster than smaller banks, a result that lends towards LPE acceptance. Thus, our study corroborates the conditioned nature of the size-growth relationship and the size distribution of banks, as emphasized by recent studies for the US banking system. Results imply that the size distribution of Spanish banks will become more skewed in next years, and concentration will tend to increas

Transistor-Level Synthesis of Pipeline Analog-to-Digital Converters Using a Design-Space Reduction Algorithm

A novel transistor-level synthesis procedure for pipeline ADCs is presented. This procedure is able to directly map high-level converter specifications onto transistor sizes and biasing conditions. It is based on the combination of behavioral models for performance evaluation, optimization routines to minimize the power and area consumption of the circuit solution, and an algorithm to efficiently constraint the converter design space. This algorithm precludes the cost of lengthy bottom-up verifications and speeds up the synthesis task. The approach is herein demonstrated via the design of a 0.13 μm CMOS 10 bits@60 MS/s pipeline ADC with energy consumption per conversion of only 0.54 pJ@1 MHz, making it one of the most energy-efficient 10-bit video-rate pipeline ADCs reported to date. The computational cost of this design is of only 25 min of CPU time, and includes the evaluation of 13 different pipeline architectures potentially feasible for the targeted specifications. The optimum design derived from the synthesis procedure has been fine tuned to support PVT variations, laid out together with other auxiliary blocks, and fabricated. The experimental results show a power consumption of 23 [email protected] V and an effective resolution of 9.47-bit@1 MHz. Bearing in mind that no specific power reduction strategy has been applied; the mentioned results confirm the reliability of the proposed approach.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TEC2009-08447Junta de Andalucía TIC-0281

Accurate Settling-Time Modeling and Design Procedures for Two-Stage Miller-Compensated Amplifiers for Switched-Capacitor Circuits

We present modeling techniques for accurate estimation of settling errors in switched-capacitor (SC) circuits built with Miller-compensated operational transconductance amplifiers (OTAs). One distinctive feature of the proposal is the computation of the impact of signal levels (on both the model parameters and the model structure) as they change during transient evolution. This is achieved by using an event-driven behavioral approach that combines small- and large-signal behavioral descriptions and keeps track of the amplifier state after each clock phase. Also, SC circuits are modeled under closed-loop conditions to guarantee that the results remain close to those obtained by electrical simulation of the actual circuits. Based on these models, which can be regarded as intermediate between the more established small-signal approach and full-fledged simulations, design procedures for dimensioning SC building blocks are presented whose targets are system-level specifications (such as ENOB and SNDR) instead of OTA specifications. The proposed techniques allow to complete top-down model-based designs with 0.3-b accuracy.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TEC2006-03022Junta de Andalucía TIC-0281

Assessment of different pre-treatment methods for the removal of limonene in citrus waste and their effect on methane potential and methane production rate

The objective of this study was to assess the limonene removal efficiency of three pre-treatment methods when applied to citrus waste and to evaluate their effects on the biochemical methane potential (BMP) and the methane production rate (MPR) using batch anaerobic testsPostprint (published version

A 5.3mW, 2.4GHz ESD protected Low-Noise Amplifier in a 0.13μm RFCMOS technology

An Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) protected Low- Noise Amplifier (LNA) for the 2.4 GHz ISM band designed in a 0.13 mum standard RFCMOS technology is presented. The amplifier, including packaging effects, achieves 16.8 dB power gain, reflexion coefficients S 11 , S 22 < -30 dB over the 2.4 GHz ISM band, a peak noise figure of 1.8 dB, and an IIP 3 of 1 dBm, while drawing less than 4.5 mA dc biasing current from the 1.2 V power supply. Further, the LNA withstands a Human Body Model (HBM) ESD stress up to plusmn2.0 kV, by means of the additional custom protection circuitry.Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC2003-02355Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TEC2006-0302

O impacto ambiental do transporte aéreo.

Resumen de O impacto ambiental de Transporte Aéreo El artículo describe de forma general los principales efectos ambientales de la actividad del transporte aéreo, tanto aquellos de alcance local, como el ruido alrededor de los aeropuertos, los efectos sobre la calidad de aire local y el uso del suelo, como los de índole global, destacando su aportación al cambio climático y el consumo de materias primas no renovables. En cada uno de ellos se describe su evolución histórica, la situación actual y las previsiones de desarrollo futuro, incluyendo los programas ya en marcha o de futura adopción para mitigar esos efectos