Ciudades monumentales y entornos paisajísticos. El caso de Trujillo y su tierra (Extremadura, España)

El texto se ocupa de las relaciones visuales, históricas y funcionales entre ciudades monumentales y sus entornos como paisajes urbanos históricos. Analiza el caso de la ciudad de Trujillo (Extremadura, España). De acuerdo con la definición de paisaje del Convenio Europeo del Paisaje y del Plan Nacional de Paisaje Cultural, se caracteriza y valora el paisaje del entorno urbano y sus relaciones con la ciudad, se establecen objetivos de calidad paisajística y directrices y acciones para la protección, gestión, recualificación y acceso público al paisaje, parte de las cuales se han incorporado al Plan General Municipal de Trujillo, recientemente redactado.This text deals with visual, historical and functional relations between monumental cities and their environments as a historic urban landscapes. It analyses the case of the city of Trujillo (Extremadura, Spain). According to the definition of the European Landscape Convention and the National Plan of Cultural Landscape, the text characterizes and assesses the landscape of the urban environment and its relationship with the monumental city, and establishes landscape quality objectives, guidelines and actions for the protection, management, planning and promotion the public access to the landscape, part of which have been incorporated into the Master Plan of Trujillo, recently approved.Proyecto I+D+I CSO2012 39564-CO7-03, Paisajes Patrimoniales de España

El conocimiento geográfico de la Patagonia interior y la construcción de la imagen de Torres del Paine como patrimonio natural a conservar

Torres del Paine National Park (12th Region, Chile), the Paine Massif and its surroundings are a major milestone concerning three issues: the perception of nature in the Patagonian-Andean environment, the first steps of conservationism in South America and the first scientific studies in this part of the planet. In addition, ever since scientists and travelers were to “discover” this region, Paine has been a benchmark of both the first proposals for nature tourism linked with conservationism, as well as a major challenge for alpine expeditions. Due to these circumstances, the doctoral dissertation of the author devotes one entire chapter to analysing the main contributions of the Paine phenomenon to the geographical knowledge of inland Patagonia and to the perception of Torres del Paine as a natural heritage worth preserving. This is precisely the subject of this paper, which gives an insight into the geographical reconnaissance explorations that took place between 1877 and 1896 in the Patagonian inland, under the initiatives of Chilean and Argentinean governments; the first known touristic travel in the Chilean region of Magallanes; the role of the first “visionaries” of Patagonian-Andean tourism in Chile, gathered around Werner Gromsch and the Touring Club; or the geographical, scientific and informative work carried out by Alberto Maria De Agostini. Finally, the article discusses the first alpine expeditions which targeted the summits of the Paine Massif.El Parque Nacional de las Torres del Paine (XII Región, Chile), el Macizo Paine y su entorno, constituye un hito en la imagen de la naturaleza del mundo andino patagónico, en los inicios del primer conservacionismo de América del Sur y en los estudios científicos sobre esa parte del Planeta. En relación con ello, además, el Paine ha sido, desde su “descubrimiento” científico y viajero hace más de un siglo, un referente fundamental de las primeras propuestas de turismo de naturaleza asociado a la idea de la conservación y un reto de primer orden para las expediciones alpinas. Esas circunstancias explican que en la tesis doctoral del autor del presente artículo se dedicase un capítulo completo a analizar las principales aportaciones en el proceso de conocimiento geográfico de la Patagonia interior y construcción de la imagen de Torres del Paine como patrimonio natural a conservar. Sobre este tema versa precisamente este texto, en el que se aporta una información original sobre las exploraciones de reconocimiento geográfico que tuvieron lugar entre 1877 y 1896 en la Patagonia interior, por iniciativa de los gobiernos de Chile y Argentina; el primer viaje turístico conocido a la región chilena de Magallanes; el papel de los primeros “visionarios” del turismo andino-patagónico chileno, agrupados en torno a la figura de Werner Gromsh y el Touring Club; o la labor geográfica, científica y divulgativa desempeñada por el salesiano italiano Alberto Maria De Agostini. El artículo concluye con algunas consideraciones relativas a las primeras expediciones alpinísticas que tuvieron como objetivo las cumbres del Macizo del Paine

Green infrastructure planning in metropolitan regions to improve the connectivity of agricultural landscapes and food security

Green infrastructure (GI), as a concept and as a tool for environmental land-use planning at various scales, has burst onto the academic, political, and policy-making scenes in the last two decades. This tool, associated with strategic planning, offers integrated solutions for improving the ecological connectivity and urban resilience of open spaces, especially those affected by processes of urban sprawl, the abandonment of agriculture, and the territorial fragmentation of habitats and traditional agricultural landscapes. In spite of the advantages of GI, its design and implementation face a range of challenges and limitations. In this context, this paper has two objectives: Firstly, to address a critical review of recent literature on the subject, which, among other things, highlights the lack of references to the role of peri-urban agriculture in GI planning, and the positive contribution made by peri-urban agriculture to the local food supply and other regulatory and cultural services. Secondly, to propose a methodology to contribute to integrating practical GI planning in metropolitan regions to maximize the activation of traditional agricultural landscapes and the improvement of landscape connectivity in metropolitan regions for the reconnection of rural-urban relationshipsThis research has received funding from the research project “Paisaje y Huerta de Madrid” (PDRR-I8 agreement Autonomous University-IMIDRA) co-financed by the European Union through the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Foodstuffs and the Environment and the Community of Madrid-IMIDRA Rural Development Program 2014–2020, and the ongoing research project SAMUTER from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Foodstuffs and the Environment, in the 2018 call, submeasure 16.1 within the framework of National Rural Development Program 2014–202

Historical monument and landscape. Study and land planning proposal for the neglected section of Segovia’s aqueduct

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Landscape protection, management and improvement in Spain. Comparative study

The renewed interest in landscape, promoted by the European Landscape Convention of the Council of Europe (2000) (CEP), has been incorporated into the political agenda and into the legislative and instru-mental developments of Spanish public administrations, particularly those of the Autonomous Communities and some local administrations. Despite the topicality of the landscape issue, landscape as an object of protection has traditionally been present in Spanish legislation, both in the protection of nature and cultural heritage, as well as in urban planning and other types of sectoral regulations. This comparative study synthesizes the profuse and diverse treatment of landscape in state and autonomous community legislation. The last part deals with the advances and innovations introduced by certain specific laws on landscape approved by the Autonomous Communities for the protection, management and planning of landscape as an element of quality of life and territorial heritage in accordance with the CEP and within the horizon of the Spanish Urban Agenda.El renovado interés por el paisaje, impulsado por el Convenio Europeo del Paisaje del Consejo de Europa (2000) (CEP), se ha incorporado a la agenda política y a los desarrollos legislativos e instrumentales de las administraciones públicas españolas, en particular, de las Comunidades Autónomas y de algunas administraciones locales. Pese a la actualidad de la cuestión paisajística, el paisaje como objeto de tutela ha estado presente tradicionalmente en la legislación española, tanto en la de protección de la naturaleza y del patrimonio cultural, como en la urbanística y en otro tipo de normas sectoriales. Este Estudio comparado sintetiza el profuso y diverso tratamiento del paisaje en la legislación estatal y autonómica. En la última parte se abordan los avances e innovaciones introducidos por determinadas leyes específicas sobre paisaje aprobadas por las Comunidades Autónomas para la protección, gestión y ordenación del paisaje como elemento de calidad de vida y patrimonio territorial, de acuerdo con el CEP y en el horizonte de la Agenda Urbana Española

A new strategy to maximize organic matter valorization in municipalities: combination of urban wastewater with kitchen food waste and its treatment with AnMBR technology

[EN] The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of treating the kitchen food waste (FW) jointly with urban wastewater (WW) in a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) by anaerobic membrane technology (AnMBR). The experience was carried out in six different periods in an AnMBR pilot-plant for a total of 536 days, varying the SRT, HRT and the food waste penetration factor (PF) of food waste disposers. The results showed increased methane production of up to 190% at 70 days SRT, 24 hours HRT and 80% PF, compared with WW treatment only. FW COD and biodegradability were higher than in WW, so that the incorporation of FW into the treatment increases the organic load and the methane production and reduces sludge production (0.142 vs 0.614 kg VSSkg removed COD-1, at 70 days SRT, 24 hours HRT and 80% PF, as compared to WW treatment only).This research work was possible thanks to financial support from Generalitat Valenciana (project PROMETE0/2012/029) which is gratefully acknowledged. Besides, support from FCC Aqualia participation in INNPRONTA 2011 IISIS IPT-20111023 project (partially funded by The Centre for Industrial Technological Development (CDTI) and from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) is gratefully acknowledged.Moñino Amorós, P.; Aguado García, D.; Barat, R.; Jiménez, E.; Giménez, J.; Seco, A.; Ferrer, J. (2017). A new strategy to maximize organic matter valorization in municipalities: combination of urban wastewater with kitchen food waste and its treatment with AnMBR technology. Waste Management. 62:274-289. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2017.02.006S2742896

Sensible energy accounting with abstract metering for multicore systems

Chip multicore processors (CMPs) are the preferred processing platform across different domains such as data centers, real-time systems, and mobile devices. In all those domains, energy is arguably the most expensive resource in a computing system. Accurately quantifying energy usage in a multicore environment presents a challenge as well as an opportunity for optimization. Standard metering approaches are not capable of delivering consistent results with shared resources, since the same task with the same inputs may have different energy consumption based on the mix of co-running tasks. However, it is reasonable for data-center operators to charge on the basis of estimated energy usage rather than time since energy is more correlated with their actual cost. This article introduces the concept of Sensible Energy Accounting (SEA). For a task running in a multicore system, SEA accurately estimates the energy the task would have consumed running in isolation with a given fraction of the CMP shared resources. We explain the potential benefits of SEA in different domains and describe two hardware techniques to implement it for a shared last-level cache and on-core resources in SMT processors. Moreover, with SEA, an energy-aware scheduler can find a highly efficient on-chip resource assignment, reducing by up to 39% the total processor energy for a 4-core system.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Effect of pH and HNO2 concentration on the activity of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria in a partial nitritation reactor

Ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) are very sensitive to environmental conditions and wastewater treatment plant operational parameters. One of the most important factors affecting their activity is pH. Its effect is associated with: NH3/NH4 þ and HNO2/NO2 chemical equilibriums and biological reaction rates. The aim of this study was to quantify and model the effect of pH and free nitrous acid (FNA) concentration on the activity of AOB present in a lab-scale partial nitritation reactor. For this purpose, two sets of batch experiments were carried out using biomass from this reactor. Fluorescent in situ hybridization analysis showed that Nitrosomona eutropha and Nitrosomona europaea species were dominant in the partial nitritation reactor (>94%). The experimental results showed that FNA inhibits the AOB activity. This inhibition was properly modelled by the noncompetitive inhibition function and the half inhibition constant value was determined as 1.32 mg HNO2-N L 1. The optimal pH for these AOB was found to be in the range 7.4 7.8. The pH inhibitory effect was stronger at high pH values than at low pH values. Therefore, an asymmetric inhibition function was proposed to represent the pH effect on these bacteria. A combination of two sigmoidal functions was able to reproduce the experimental results obtained.Claros Bedoya, JA.; Jiménez Douglas, E.; Aguado García, D.; Ferrer, J.; Seco Torrecillas, A.; Serralta Sevilla, J. (2013). Effect of pH and HNO2 concentration on the activity of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria in a partial nitritation reactor. Water Science and Technology. 67(11):2587-2594. doi:10.2166/wst.2013.132S25872594671

A fast synthesis route of boron-carbon-nitrogen ultrathin layers towards highly mixed ternary B-C-N phases

We report a direct and fast synthesis route to grow boron-carbon-nitrogen layers based on microwave-assisted plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) by using methylamine borane as a single source molecular precursor. This easy and inexpensive method allows controlled and reproducible growth of B-C-N layers onto thin Cu foils. Their morphological, structural, chemical, optical and transport properties have been thoroughly characterized by a number of different microscopies, transport and spectroscopic techniques. Though disorder and segregation into C-rich and h-BN-rich domains have been observed in ultrathin flat few layers, high doping levels have been reached, inducing strong modifications of the electronic, optical and transport properties of C-rich and h-BN-rich phases. This synthesis procedure can open new routes towards the achievement of homogeneous highly mixed ternary B-C-N phase