Nuevos datos sobre la sedimentación terciaria en La Mancha (Ciudad Real)

Los datos obtenidos de la investigación geofísica y perforación de sondeos en la parte occidental de La Mancha han permitido determinar la estructura del sustrato del Neógeno: un conjunto de fosas controladas por fallas, que se generaron en periodos de tectónica distensiva. Se han separado tres  unidades litoestratigráficas: Unidad detrítica de la base, Unidad lutítica roja intermedia y Unidad carbonatada superior

Nuevos datos sobre la sedimentación terciaria en La Mancha (Ciudad Real)

Los datos obtenidos de la investigación geofísica y perforación de sondeos en la parte occidental de La Mancha han permitido determinar la estructura del sustrato del Neógeno: un conjunto de fosas controladas por fallas, que se generaron en periodos de tectónica distensiva. Se han separado tres  unidades litoestratigráficas: Unidad detrítica de la base, Unidad lutítica roja intermedia y Unidad carbonatada superior

Large scale risk-assessment of wind-farms on population viability of a globally endangered long-lived raptor

Wind-farms receive public and governmental support as an alternative energy source mitigating air pollution. However, they can have adverse effects on wildlife, particularly through collision with turbines. Research on wind-farm effects has focused on estimating mortality rates, behavioural changes or interspecific differences in vulnerability. Studies dealing with their effects on endangered or rare species populations are notably scarce. We tested the hypothesis that wind-farms increase extinction probability of long-lived species through increments in mortality rates. For this purpose, we evaluate potential consequences of wind-farms on the population dynamics of a globally endangered long-lived raptor in an area where the species maintains its greatest stronghold and wind-farms are rapidly increasing. Nearly one-third of all breeding territories of our model species are in wind-farm risk zones. Our intensive survey shows that wind-farms decrease survival rates of this species differently depending on individual breeding status. Consistent with population monitoring, population projections showed that all subpopulations and the meta-population are decreasing. However, population sizes and, therefore, time to extinction significantly decreased when wind-farm mortality was included in models. Our results represent a qualitative warning exercise showing how very low reductions in survival of territorial and non-territorial birds associated with wind-farms can strongly impact population viability of long-lived species. This highlights the need for examining long-term impacts of wind-farms rather than focusing on short-term mortality, as is often promoted by power companies and some wildlife agencies. Unlike other non-natural causes of mortality difficult to eradicate or control, wind-farm fatalities can be lowered by powering down or removing risky turbines and/or farms, and by placing them outside areas critical for endangered birds. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Peer Reviewe

Civil society participation in international governance : the UN and the WTO compared

Civil society participation has become a buzzword in the debate about the legitimacy and accountability of international governance. Many organizations, prominently among them the World Trade Organization (WTO), have come under considerable pressure to open up their policy-making process towards non-state actors. Although the WTO has become more transparent in recent years, direct stakeholder access to its policy making is still denied. This situation is often contrasted with that at the United Nations (UN), where there is (allegedly) much more formally regulated and more substantial participation of civil society. In this paper, we compare the patterns of participation in these two organizations and seek to identify some common dynamics. We present a general framework for analysis based on a model of the policy cycle that allows us to distinguish ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors that determine cooperation in different phases of policy making. In our empirical study, we find that in the WTO, there are few incentives for the organization itself to pull civil society actors into its policy-making process. Agendasetting is the task of governments; research and analysis is delivered by the Secretariat; compliance control is undertaken jointly by the organization and its members. To push the door to trade policy making open, civil society can only rely on public shaming, that is, threatening to undermine the organization’s legitimacy as it violates widely accepted standards of good governance. In the UN system, there is in fact more cooperation, but it remains largely limited to the policy phases of agenda-setting, research and analysis and compliance control. Quite like the WTO, the UN protects an intergovernmental core of policy making in which cooperation with civil society remains at the discretion of state parties. Evidence for this are informal and ad hoc ways of collaboration and a lack of participatory rights for non-state actors in the Security Council and the General Assembly. We conclude that studying civil society participation in international public organizations through the lens of the policy cycle can give us a fine-grained picture of cooperative arrangements and enables us to identify potentials for cooperation as well as exclusion. Yet, we also observed two other factors at work that were not really grasped by the model of the policy cycle. First, the institutional culture of organizations can be more or less amenable to civil society. Second, organizations are susceptible to campaigns for ‘good governance’ that invoke standards of due process and may open the door to nonstate actors

Supercurrent flow through an effective double barrier structure

Supercurrent flow is studied in a structure that in the Ginzburg-Landau regime can be described in terms of an effective double barrier potential. In the limit of strongly reflecting barriers, the passage of Cooper pairs through such a structure may be viewed as a realization of resonant tunneling with a rigid wave function. For interbarrier distances smaller than $d_0=\pi\xi(T)$ no current-carrying solutions exist. For distances between $d_0$ and $2d_0$, four solutions exist. The two symmetric solutions obey a current-phase relation of $\sin(\Delta\varphi/2)$, while the two asymmetric solutions satisfy $\Delta\varphi=\pi$ for all allowed values of the current. As the distance exceeds $nd_0$, a new group of four solutions appears, each contaning $(n-1)$ soliton-type oscillations between the barriers. We prove the inexistence of a continuous crossover between the physical solutions of the nonlinear Ginzburg-Landau equation and those of the corresponding linearized Schr\"odinger equation. We also show that under certain conditions a repulsive delta function barrier may quantitatively describe a SNS structure. We are thus able to predict that the critical current of a SNSNS structure vanishes as $\sqrt{T'_c-T}$, where $T'_c$ is lower than the bulk critical temperature.Comment: 20 pages, RevTex, to appear in Phys. Rev. B, 6 figures on request at [email protected]

Ensilaje de cogollo de caña quemado y ensilaje de maíz en la ceba de novillos

Se ensiló cogollo de caña quemado, usando como aditivos melazas al 3% y úrea al 1% en base fresca. Los tratamientos consistieron en una combinación de ensilaje de cogollo quemado y ensilaje de maíz como dieta básica a voluntad y dos suplementos que contenían 1.5 kg de gallinaza, 1.0 kg de melaza y/o 0.1 kg de úrea para el tratamiento uno y 0.4 kg de torta de soya para el tratamiento dos, con nueve novillos cebú mestizos por tratamiento. Las ganancias de peso diario fueron de 0.52 y 0.54 kg; y los consumos de materia seca por animal de 11.37 y 11.01 kg/día para los tratamientos uno y dos respectivamente. La factibilidad del uso del cogollo de caña depende de la eficiencia de los procesos de ensilado y de la suplementación adecuada y de bajo costo.Were used burned sugar cane tops silage with 3 % of molasses and 1% of urea on fresch base and com silage as basic diet. The treatments were as follow: Treatment 1 (t1) - Burned sugar cane tops silage + Com Silage + 1.5 kg of poultry litter + 1.0 kg of molasse + 0.1 kg of urea and 0.4 kg of soybean meal by urea for treatment 2 (T2), with nine crossbreed steers for treatment. The average daily gains were 0.52 and 0.54 and 0.54 kg/day and the total consumption per animal were 11.37 and 11.01 kg/day for TI and T2 respectively. The use of sugar cane tops depends on silage process efficiency and the adition of adecuate supplements with low prices

Apex scavengers from different European populations converge at threatened savannah landscapes

Over millennia, human intervention has transformed European habitats mainly through extensive livestock grazing. “Dehesas/Montados” are an Iberian savannah-like ecosystem dominated by oak-trees, bushes and grass species that are subject to agricultural and extensive livestock uses. They are a good example of how large-scale, low intensive transformations can maintain high biodiversity levels as well as socio-economic and cultural values. However, the role that these human-modified habitats can play for individuals or species living beyond their borders is unknown. Here, using a dataset of 106 adult GPS-tagged Eurasian griffon vultures (Gyps fulvus) monitored over seven years, we show how individuals breeding in western European populations from Northern, Central, and Southern Spain, and Southern France made long-range forays (LRFs) of up to 800 km to converge in the threatened Iberian “dehesas” to forage. There, extensive livestock and wild ungulates provide large amounts of carcasses, which are available to scavengers from traditional exploitations and rewilding processes. Our results highlight that maintaining Iberian “dehesas” is critical not only for local biodiversity but also for long-term conservation and the ecosystem services provided by avian scavengers across the continent

Application of molecular topology to the prediction of the repellent activity of a group of carboxyamides against Aedes aegypti

El mosquito Aedes aegypti presenta características biológicas que lo convierten en un vector importante en el ciclo de transmisión de diferentes patógenos, en especial arbovirus. Durante la última década, la carga de dengue y otras enfermedades tales como la fiebre del zika o fiebre chikungunya se han incrementado. La expansión de dengue ocasionada por este vector, principalmente en América, representa actualmente uno de los problemas más grandes de salud pública, siendo endémico en más de 30 países. Frente a la falta de tratamientos específicos para tratar las infecciones transmitidas por este mosquito, los esfuerzos por hacerle frente se han focalizado en el control vectorial, aplicando diversas estrategias de combate, entre las que se incluye la aplicación de insecticidas y larvicidas para conseguir su eliminación, así como el uso de repelentes como estrategia de protección individual. La búsqueda de nuevos repelentes puede realizarse mediante diferentes herramientas, donde se incluye la topología molecular. En este contexto, computacionalmente a través de un modelo topológico-matemático, evaluamos la potencial actividad repelente de una serie de carboxiamidas preseleccionadas mediante el uso de análisis discriminante lineal y de regresión multilineal. Tras este cribado virtual basado en el modelo seleccionado, proponemos nuevas estructuras químicas con una actividad potencialmente activa como repelentes contra Aedes aegypti.Due to its biological characteristics, the mosquito Aedes aegypti is an important vector in the transmission cycle of various pathogens, especially of arboviruses. The burden of dengue and other diseases such as the Zika virus infection or the chikungunya fever has increased over the last decade. The spread of dengue caused by this vector, mainly in America, represents one of the greatest public health problems, being endemic in more than 30 countries. Faced with the lack of specific treatments to treat the infections caused by this mosquito, efforts have focused on controlling the vector, applying various combat strategies, including the application of Due to its biological characteristics, the mosquito Aedes aegypti is an important vector in the transmission cycle of various pathogens, especially of arboviruses. The burden of dengue and other diseases such as the Zika virus infection or the chikungunya fever has increased over the last decade. The spread of dengue caused by this vector, mainly in America, represents one of the greatest public health problems, being endemic in more than 30 countries. Faced with the lack of specific treatments to treat the infections caused by this mosquito, efforts have focused on controlling the vector, applying various combat strategies, including the application of insecticides and larvicides to directly eliminate the mosquito population, as well as the use of repellants, as an individual protection strategy. The search for new repellants can be done using different tools, including molecular topology. In this context, using a topological-mathematical model, we evaluated the potential repellent activity of a series of preselected carboxyamides by using linear discriminant and multilinear regression analysis. After carrying out a virtual screening based on the selected model, new chemical structures with potential activity as repellants against Aedes aegypti are proposed.Ciencias Experimentale