Managing the national road network maintenance in Spain

The Spanish Ministry of Public Works manages the National Road Network, which consists in 27,000 km. In 1992, the average age of pavements was 7.2 years, whereas at present it has increased to 9 years. The great heterogeneity of pavements, the constant increase in the network length and its gradual aging demand important budgets but also agile technical, economic and administrative management models. The Subdirectorate of Maintenance and Operation is responsible of management systems for this network, now helped by the engineering consultancy GETINSA. This communication shows the actual state of the pavement management that consists in an Integrated Database System comprising many parameters both about technical values and administrative follow-up of actions. It is connected to various pavement evolution models that allow managers to predict the future state of the roads, then to establish a maintenance policy. Finally, the Management System calculates a maintenance plan, detailing actions to be done in each section in a multi-year scenario, so that the investment and the road quality are optimised. The Management System software combines analytical formula with geographical information, used for representing results as well as part of the forecast and optimisation models, using the modern technology of “dynamic segments”. Attention has been paid to conciliate the operational organisation of maintenance works with the fact that optimal needs are detailed for each road section in too short distances to be executed separately. The communication starts analysing other existing Pavement Management Systems, then describes the Spanish situation and justifies which Pavement Management System is needed. The body of the text covers the description of the functionalities and design assumptions of the new System. Finally, the conclusions present some future evolutions for the Spanish Management Systems and the possibility to generalise its use to other road networks, either for pavement or other assets.

Test Data Generation of Bytecode by CLP Partial Evaluation

We employ existing partial evaluation (PE) techniques developed for Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) in order to automatically generate test-case generators for glass-box testing of bytecode. Our approach consists of two independent CLP PE phases. (1) First, the bytecode is transformed into an equivalent (decompiled) CLP program. This is already a well studied transformation which can be done either by using an ad-hoc decompiler or by specialising a bytecode interpreter by means of existing PE techniques. (2) A second PE is performed in order to supervise the generation of test-cases by execution of the CLP decompiled program. Interestingly, we employ control strategies previously defined in the context of CLP PE in order to capture coverage criteria for glass-box testing of bytecode. A unique feature of our approach is that, this second PE phase allows generating not only test-cases but also test-case generators. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that (CLP) PE techniques are applied for test-case generation as well as to generate test-case generators

Design of an Efficient Interconnection Network of Temperature Sensors

Temperature has become a first class design constraint because high temperatures adversely affect circuit reliability, static power and degrade the performance. In this scenario, thermal characterization of ICs and on-chip temperature monitoring represent fundamental tasks in electronic design. In this work, we analyze the features that an interconnection network of temperature sensors must fulfill. Departing from the network topology, we continue with the proposal of a very light-weight network architecture based on digitalization resource sharing. Our proposal supposes a 16% improvement in area and power consumption compared to traditional approache

PVT-Robust CMOS Programmable Chaotic Oscillator: Synchronization of Two 7-Scroll Attractors

Designing chaotic oscillators using complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuit technology for generating multi-scroll attractors has been a challenge. That way, we introduce a current-mode piecewise-linear (PWL) function based on CMOS cells that allow programmable generation of 2–7-scroll chaotic attractors. The mathematical model of the chaotic oscillator designed herein has four coefficients and a PWL function, which can be varied to provide a high value of the maximum Lyapunov exponent. The coefficients are implemented electronically by designing operational transconductance amplifiers that allow programmability of their transconductances. Design simulations of the chaotic oscillator are provided for the 0.35μ m CMOS technology. Post-layout and process–voltage–temperature (PVT) variation simulations demonstrate robustness of the multi-scroll chaotic attractors. Finally, we highlight the synchronization of two seven-scroll attractors in a master–slave topology by generalized Hamiltonian forms and observer approach. Simulation results show that the synchronized CMOS chaotic oscillators are robust to PVT variations and are suitable for chaotic secure communication applications.Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala CACyPI-UATx-2017Program to Strengthen Quality in Educational Institutions C/PFCE-2016-29MSU0013Y-07-23National Council for Science and Technology 237991 22284

Termination and Cost Analysis with COSTA and its User Interfaces

COSTA is a static analyzer for Java bytecode which is able to infer cost and termination information for large classes of programs. The analyzer takes as input a program and a resource of interest, in the form of a cost model, and aims at obtaining an upper bound on the execution cost with respect to the resource and at proving program termination. The costa system has reached a considerable degree of maturity in that (1) it includes state-of-the-art techniques for statically estimating the resource consumption and the termination behavior of programs, plus a number of specialized techniques which are required for achieving accurate results in the context of object-oriented programs, such as handling numeric fields in value analysis; (2) it provides several nontrivial notions of cost (resource consumption) including, in addition to the number of execution steps, the amount of memory allocated in the heap or the number of calls to some user-specified method; (3) it provides several user interfaces: a classical command line, a Web interface which allows experimenting remotely with the system without the need of installing it locally, and a recently developed Eclipse plugin which facilitates the usage of the analyzer, even during the development phase; (4) it can deal with both the Standard and Micro editions of Java. In the tool demonstration, we will show that costa is able to produce meaningful results for non-trivial programs, possibly using Java libraries. Such results can then be used in many applications, including program development, resource usage certification, program optimization, etc

Increasing significance of external quality assurance in higher education: current strategies applied by European agencies

[EN] Quality assurance of higher education programmes and institutions has been one of the cornerstones of the Bologna process since its creation. However, after more than one decade of implementation of the European quality assurance framework, many national systems are suffering from the so-called “evaluation fatigue”. From a thorough revision of key sectorial sources, this paper identifies a number of strategies currently being tested by European quality assurance agencies aimed at increasing significance and reducing bureaucracy of external quality assurance processes. http://ocs.editorial.upv.es/index.php/HEAD/HEAD18Sánchez Chaparro, T.; Gomez Frías, V. (2018). Increasing significance of external quality assurance in higher education: current strategies applied by European agencies. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 1413-1420. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD18.2018.8215OCS1413142

Hysteresis Switching Loops in Ag-manganite memristive interfaces

Multilevel resistance states in silver-manganite interfaces are studied both experimentally and through a realistic model that includes as a main ingredient the oxygen vacancies diffusion under applied electric fields. The switching threshold and amplitude studied through Hysteresis Switching Loops are found to depend critically on the initial state. The associated vacancy profiles further unveil the prominent role of the effective electric field acting at the interfaces. While experimental results validate main assumptions of the model, the simulations allow to disentangle the microscopic mechanisms behind the resistive switching in metal-transition metal oxide interfaces.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, to be published in Jour. of Appl. Phy

Cynipid wasps inducing galls on plants of the genus Picris (Asteraceae) in Europe, with a description of a new species of Phanacis Foerster (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae) from the Iberian Peninsula.

The cynipid species (Hymenoptera, Cynipidae), which induceing galls on plants of the genus Picris (Asteraceae) in Europe, are revised. A key for the identification of adult wasps and galls of the three known species is provided. Phanacis helminthiae (De Stefani) is recorded from Sicily for the first time after since its description, and re-described with newly collected materials. The final instar larva of Phanacis caulicola is described and new biological data on the sex ratio and life-cycle of this species are given. A new species, Phanacis comosae nov. sp., is described from the Southwest portion of the Iberian Peninsula. The new species is closely allied related to P. caulicola and induces conspicuous galls in flower receptacles of Picris comosa

The Use of Magnetic Susceptibility as a Technique to Measure the Impact of Wildfires on Archaeological Heritage

Wildfires are one of the main threats of natural areas and often fires can affect protected or heritage areas and properties, in which the preservation requirements demand the use of non-destructive techniques (NDTs). The magnetic susceptibility is an NDT that provides information on the mineralogical composition of the materials but has never been applied to the evaluation of fires. Here, we combine laboratory with field analysis to test the applicability of the magnetic susceptibility for the assessment of the impacts of wildfires. The laboratory results showed an increase in the magnetic susceptibility with the temperature, more evident in the samples heated to 600 °C and above. The in situ measures revealed a spatial variation in the magnetic susceptibility, which was related to the behaviour of the fire in the area. The samples were later analysed with other magnetic destructive techniques that were used to confirm the mineralogical processes that occurred in the materials. The increase in the susceptibility values were due to the formation of iron oxides. The destructive analysis also showed the presence of minerals such as hematite and magnetite in the samples. Overall, the study allowed a first approach to test the magnetic susceptibility as a simple and fast way to measure the impacts of wildfires

RoboToy Demoulding: Robotic Demoulding System for Toy Manufacturing Industry

Industrial environments and product manufacturing processes are currently being automated and robotized. Nowadays, it is common to have robots integrated in the automotive industry, robots palletizing in the food industry and robots performing welding tasks in the metal industry. However, there are many traditional and manual sectors out of date with technology, such as the toy manufacturing industry. This work describes a new robotic system able to perform the demoulding task in a toy manufacturing process, which is a tedious labor-intensive and potentially hazardous task for human operators. The system is composed of specialised machinery about the rotational moulding manufacturing process, cameras, actuators, and a collaborative robot. A vision-based algorithm makes this system capable of handling soft plastic pieces which are deformable and flexible during demoulding. The system reduces the stress and potential injuries to human operators, allowing them to perform other tasks wit h higher dexterity requirements or relocate to other sub-tasks of the process where the physical effort is minor