Long-Term Analysis of Aerosol Concentrations Using a Low-Cost Sensor: Monitoring African Dust Outbreaks in a Suburban Environment in the Canary Islands

This study presents the results of the long-term monitoring of PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations using a low-cost particle sensor installed in a suburban environment in the Canary Islands. A laser-scattering Nova Fitness SDS011 sensor was operated continuously for approximately three and a half years, which is longer than most other studies using this type of sensor. The impact of African dust outbreaks on the aerosol concentrations was assessed, showing a significant increase in both PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations during the outbreaks. Additionally, a good correlation was found with a nearby reference instrument of the air quality network of the Canary Islands’ government. The correlation between the PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations, the effect of relative humidity, and the stability of the sensor were also investigated. This study highlights the potential of this kind of sensor for long-term air quality monitoring with a view to developing extensive and dense low-cost air quality networks that are complementary to official air quality networks

Caracterización de las intrusiones de polvo africano en Canarias

Memoria presentada para optar al Grado de Doctor en Ciencias Físicas por la Universidad de La Laguna. Departamento de Física BásicaEn este trabajo multidisciplinar se caracterizan los episodios de intrusión de masas de aire con elevada carga de polvo africano en Canarias desde el punto de vista de su impacto en niveles de partículas, origen del material particulado y escenarios meteorológicos a escala sinóptica que favorecen estos episodios. Asimismo, se aborda el estudio de la relación de estos episodio con índices de teleconexión, evaluación de tendencias temporales de los episodios de polvo y utilización de los isótopos 137Cs, 40K y 7Be como trazadores de estos episodios. Además, se presentan los resultados de la validación para Canarias del sistema de predicción y alerta de episodios de polvo africano que desde 2003 se encuentra operativo para toda España

La educación emocional en Educación Infantil

Este trabajo de fin de grado está dividido en cinco secciones principales que se desarrollarán tras realizar la introducción, nombrar los objetivos y realizar la justificación: La fundamentación teórica, el diseño, la propuesta didáctica, el contexto y las conclusiones. En la fundamentación teórica, en primer lugar, se analiza brevemente el recorrido del concepto de inteligencia emocional hasta nuestros días. Tras una pequeña contextualización mediante el análisis del concepto de inteligencia emocional y emoción, nos adentraremos en el concepto principal, la educación emocional. Se explicará cómo se ha puesto en práctica y como se ha ido desarrollando esta educación en las últimas décadas y se analizará la formación que recibe el profesorado para educar las emociones. Estudiaremos los beneficios que tiene la implementación de una educación emocional en el aula y después nos centraremos en un recurso para trabajar las emociones, el mindfulness. En segundo lugar, se describirá la metodología explicando las estrategias utilizadas para elaborar mi propuesta didáctica. En tercer lugar, se realizará la propuesta didáctica basándonos en la teoría constructivista del aprendizaje de Lev Vygotski, en la zona de desarrollo próximo y en el andamiaje como fundamentos para desarrollar la unidad. Por último, se describirán las conclusiones halladas a lo largo de la elaboración del trabajo.This final thesis is divided into five main sections that I will develop after the introduction, the objectives, and the justification: Theoretical foundation, design, didactic proposal, context and conclusions. Firstly, in the theoretical foundation, I briefly analyze the concept of emotional intelligence throughout time. After a small contextualization through the analysis of the concept of emotional intelligence and emotion, I will go into the main concept, emotional education. I will explain how it has been implemented and how this education has developed in recent decades. I also will analyze the training that teachers receive to educate emotions and I will study the benefits of implementing an emotional education in the classroom. Finally, I will focus on a resource to work on the emotions, the mindfulness. In the second place, I will describe the methodology explaining the strategies used to elaborate my teaching proposal. Thirdly, I will base my didactic proposal on the constructivist theory of Lev Vygotsky, based on the area of near development and scaffolding as the fundamentals to develop the unity. Finally, I will describe the conclusions found throughout the work.Grado en Educación Infanti

A study of the artistic corpus of red cave paintings in El Buxu cave (Cangas de Onís, Asturias, Spain)

El Buxu cave, which is located in the village of Cardes (Cangas de Onís, Asturias), has been studied since the 1980s, with multiple excavations taking place inside the cave. This work has uncovered a complete artistic corpus, marking out several phases of occupation, with paintings dating to the first phases of the Upper Palaeolithic, Solutrean and Lower and Middle Magdalenian periods. This paper presents a new review of its rock art, documenting all of the red paintings inside the cave, most of which have never been published up until this point. The most notable inclusion is the new description of a zoomorphic figure painted in red, which has previously been interpreted as an aurochs, but whose features are in fact closer to those of a deer or reindeer. In addition, stratigraphic analysis of some of the paintings has revealed that they are overlapped by Solutrean and Magdalenian engravings and black paintings inside the cave. Elemental analysis was performed on series of red pigments and ochre samples, recovered from various strata using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. The resulting dataset was treated using Principal Component Analysis, providing a deeper understanding of the composition of the rock art in El Buxu cave, while uncovering potential correlations between the samples ac- cording to their elemental composition. After comparing additional evidences from other red cave paintings in the region with the red pictographs in the cave, along with the stratification of paint pigments and their relationship with the ochre samples in each stratum, it appears that the red paintings comprise the oldest group of pictures inside the cave and can be broadly dated to the pre-Magdalenian cultural period.Our special aknowledgment to the National University of Distance Education (UNED), for its funding for open-access publishin

Evaluación de la mejora del sentimiento de soledad en pacientes geriátricos institucionalizados mediante la realización de actividades socioculturales a través de la escala ESTE II

Introducción: En la actualidad, el sentimiento de soledad en el anciano se plantea como un desafío importante relacionado con la evolución demográfica. Según un estudio realizado en el año 2000 por CIS-IMSERSO, el 27% de las personas de 65 a 69 años dice sentirse sola. Este porcentaje asciende a 36% entre los individuos mayores de 80 años, influyendo notablemente el género y el estado civil del anciano. Además, la percepción de la soledad es mayor en los individuos que se encuentran institucionalizados en residencias de ancianos. Este sentimiento puede llevar a un deterioro en la calidad de vida, el bienestar, la independencia del anciano y en su dignidad, por lo que es necesario prevenir esta situación. La realización de actividades socioculturales busca la mejora del funcionamiento físico, social, emocional y cognitivo, siendo así, una intervención beneficiosa y dinámica para el paciente geriátrico institucionalizado. Objetivo: Evaluar la mejora del sentimiento de soledad en pacientes geriátricos institucionalizados, que siguen un programa de salud basado en la realización de actividades socioculturales. Metodología: Se ha diseñado un estudio de grupo control pretest-postest. La asignación de los sujetos en los grupos se realizará aleatoriamente y la variable independiente se medirá antes y después de la intervención. Conclusiones: La realización de actividades socioculturales disminuye o mejora la percepción del sentimiento de soledad en los ancianos institucionalizados, además, de mejorar su estado físico, mental y sus capacidades funcionales. Combate los sentimientos de tristeza y soledad, mejorando así su estado de ánimo y favoreciendo las relaciones interpersonales con los demás residentes.<br /

Statistical study on tropospheric ozone and total ozone column under Saharan outbreaks

Comunicación presentada en: V Reunión Española de Ciencia y Tecnología de Aerosoles – RECTA 2011 celebrada del 27 al 29 de junio de 2011 en CIEMAT, Madrid

Trend changes of African airmass intrusions in the marine boundary layer over the subtropical Eastern North Atlantic region in winter

African dust intrusions in the marine mixing layer of the Eastern North Atlantic subtropical region (23.5°N to 35°N) are favoured in winter when the eastern edge of the Azores High covers Southwestern Europe and North Africa. In situ ground pressure observations and reanalysis from National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) indicate that the Azores High has strengthened and shifted eastward in winter over the last three decades. This is evidenced by the increase over time of the Madrid–Tenerife Index which is defined as the geopotential height anomaly difference at 1000 mb between Tenerife (28.5°N; 16.3°W) and Madrid (40.5°N; 3.5°W) in winter and of the African Index which is defined as the residence time over Africa of air mass trajectories entering the subtropical Eastern North Atlantic Ocean. Barcelona Supercomputing Center/Dust Regional Atmospheric Model (BSC-DREAM) dust regional model simulations from 1958 to 2006 were performed, assuming that the soil characteristics of dust sources remained unchanged over time. Simulated winter dust concentration levels are well correlated (0.67) with the available background observations for the 1998–2004 period. The model results show a two-fold increase in winter dust concentrations over the 1980–2006 period with respect to the 1958–1979 period, corresponding to the strengthening and eastward shift of the Azores High

Amphibian loss alters periphyton structure and invertebrate growth in montane streams

Amphibians are declining worldwide due to a combination of stressors such as climate change, invasive species, habitat loss, pollution and emergent diseases. Although their losses are likely to have important ecological consequences on the structure and functioning of freshwater ecosystems, this issue has been scarcely explored. We conducted an experiment in three montane streams-where primary production is the main source of energy and carbon-to assess the effects of amphibian disappearance (i.e. presence or absence of the common midwife toad Alytes obstetricans, a common species found in pools of these streams) on several aspects of ecosystem functioning and structure: periphyton biomass and chlorophyll a concentration, algal assemblage structure, and growth of macroinvertebrate grazers. We compared four types of experimental enclosures: (i) without macroinvertebrates or amphibians; (ii) with larvae of the caddisfly Allogamus laureatus; (iii) with A. obstetricans tadpoles; and (iv) with both A. laureatus larvae and A. obstetricans tadpoles. The absence of tadpoles increased periphyton biomass, but did not cause differences on inorganic sediment accrual. The algal assemblage had a higher diversity in the absence of tadpoles, and their characteristic taxa differed from the assemblages in presence of tadpoles. A. laureatus presented higher mass in presence of tadpoles; however, tadpole length was not affected by presence of macroinvertebrates. Our results suggest that presence of tadpoles is a driver of periphyton accrual and assemblage structure, acting as top-down control and with key potential consequences on the functioning of montane stream ecosystems.This study was funded by the Spanish Ministry for Science, Innovation and Universities and FEDER (BioLoss project, Ref. RTI2018-095023-B-I00 to L.B.) and the Basque Government (Ref. IT951-16 to the Stream Ecology Group at the UPV/EHU). A.A. was supported by UPV/EHU predoctoral fellowships

Decomposition and biological colonization of native and exotic leaf litter in a Central Spain stream

Riparian invasion by exotic trees may lead to changes in the quality of leaf-litter inputs to freshwater ecosystems. Leaflitter inputs are especially important in headwater streams, where aquatic food webs largely depend on the organic matter provided by the terrestrial vegetation. In a headwater stream of Central Spain, North of Guadalajara Province (Tagus basin) we compared the decomposition and biological colonization of leaf litter among two exotic (Ailanthus altissima Mill. Swingle and Robinia pseudoacacia L.) and two native trees (Fraxinus angustifolia Vahl. and Populus alba L.) co-existing in riparian zones. We hypothesized a lower biological colonization of exotic leaves due to organisms have not co-evolved with the exotic trees according to the Novel Weapons Hypothesis (NWH) and, consequently, lower decomposition rates of exotic leaves. To test our hypothesis, litter bags with different mesh sizes (coarse (C) and fine (F)), were used to distinguish between the total and microbial decomposition. The litter bags were placed in the stream and recovered after 2, 20, 39, 62 and 82 days of incubation. After each collection, we assessed the amount of remaining litter, analysed the nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P) in the litter, identified the macroinvertebrates and quantified the fungal biomass. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found greater fungal biomass buildup on native leaves than on exotic leaves. However, decomposition rates (k) were species-specific, being the ranking in C-bags (A. altissima = F. angustifolia > P. alba > R. pseudoacacia) slightly different than in F-bags (A. altissima > F. angustifolia > P. alba > R. pseudoacacia). The k in both the C-bags and F-bags were correlated with leaf traits, such as lignin, acid detergent fibre (ADF) and lignin:P. There was not a clear effect of the exotic species on macroinvertebrate variables, but the contribution of macroinvertebrates to litter decomposition was lower in exotic litter than in native litter, as shown by a lower ratio between k in C-bags and k in F-bags (kC : kF). Our results supported that invasive species might impact both biological colonization and decomposition rates in stream ecosystems by the addition of different quality leaf litter when compared to native vegetation. The differences in the biological colonization may be explained by the NWH, but differences in the decomposition rates were better explained by litter quality

PCB Origami: A Material-Based Design Approach to Computer-Aided Foldable Electronic Devices

Origami is traditionally implemented in paper, which is a passive material. This research explores the use of material with embedded electronics such as printed circuit boards (PCB) as the medium for origami folding to create an interactive folding experience and to generate foldable objects with added functionalities. PCBs are produced as 2D shapes. By folding PCB arrays, it is possible to create 3D objects that contain electronic functions. Conductivity, output devices (such as light emitting diodes) and microcontroller computation can create an interactive folding experience, for user guidance and verification of the folding. We call this approach and methodology PCB origami. The work presented in this paper describes two unique interaction and fabrication techniques for creating and folding electronic materials. We demonstrate prototypes and present verification/evaluation strategies for guiding the user through the folding process