Comparing Semi-Urban and Forest Populations of the Jalisco Mud Turtle (\u3ci\u3eKinosternon chimalhuaca\u3c/i\u3e)

Mud turtles (family Kinosternidae) are primarily threatened by climate change, overexploitation, and land development. To survive in increasingly urbanized and arid regions, mud turtles often inhabit man-made water sources such as cattle troughs and irrigation ditches. These bodies of water are critical in urban habitat where they may offer some of the last remaining refugia; however, the effect of these conditions on population structure is poorly understood. The Jalisco mud turtle (Kinosternon chimalhuaca) was described in 1997 from a small range south of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Since its description, critical ecological research has remained largely nonexistent, hindering effective conservation and management. Recent satellite imagery surrounding our study sites in has shown the loss of lowland deciduous forest and an increase in human activity through deforestation and fragmentation with a dramatic increase in population and tourism. Our research reports the first comparative analysis of K. chimalhuaca’s populations from a pristine forested arroyo habitat in the Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve, and a semi-urban habitat in a nearby small town. In July and December of 2019, our team surveyed a small ~1km irrigation ditch in the middle of town and astonishingly captured, marked, and measured 226 turtles, estimating a population of 741 ± 132 individuals. Similar trapping effort in the forest habitat surrounding the Chamela field station yielded 12 turtles, added to a collection of 25 prior opportunistic captures. In town, turtles exhibited a iii female-biased ratio (1:2.16; 68% female; N = 174), contrasting the male-biased forest population (2.63:1; 28% female; N = 29). The carapace length (CL) of forest males was more bimodally distributed and significantly larger (p = 0.036) than their semi-urban counterparts. Forest females were also significantly larger than female turtles from the town (p = 0.012). The findings of this preliminary dataset warrant further investigation into the driving factors supporting abundant semi-urban populations and the effects of human-turtle interactions in the face of global turtle declines

Revenue Insurance as an Income Stabilization Policy: An Application to the Spanish Olive Oil Sector

Various forms of revenue insurance have been applied in Canada and in the US with relative success. In this paper different combinations of traditional agricultural policies and revenue and yield insurance are analysed for the Spanish olive oil sector. Taking a database containing about half million Spanish olive growers during 8 campaigns, five possible policies are studied and the results are examined according to different criteria including average revenue and its variability, growers utility gains, taxpayers cost and the transfer efficiency of support. The policies analysed are: (1) non-intervention; (2) the policy currently in force in Spain that combines a production aid with a yield insurance; (3) a revenue insurance, only; (4) revenue insurance combined with a production aid; and (5) an aid per tree in combination with revenue insurance. The methodology is based on Monte-Carlo simulations performed on about 100 groups of growers that have been grouped according to their expected yields and variability. Assuming and estimating olive oil price and yields correlations for each group of growers, the analysis allows for consistent policy comparisons at a very disaggregate level. Using the results for all analysed groups, policies are ranked based on the above criteria at the provincial and national levels. Results show that the current regime of EU production aids of olive oil eliminates the advantage of extending the current yield insurance to a revenue insurance. It is also shown that the level of support delivered by production aids cannot be reached with revenue insurance even with completely subsidised premiums. Finally, it is shown that the policy that combines tree aids with revenue insurance exhibits good results for all examining criteria.Agricultural policy, revenue insurance, olive oil sector, Risk and Uncertainty,

Scalable video transcoding for mobile communications

Mobile multimedia contents have been introduced in the market and their demand is growing every day due to the increasing number of mobile devices and the possibility to watch them at any moment in any place. These multimedia contents are delivered over different networks that are visualized in mobile terminals with heterogeneous characteristics. To ensure a continuous high quality it is desirable that this multimedia content can be adapted on-the-fly to the transmission constraints and the characteristics of the mobile devices. In general, video contents are compressed to save storage capacity and to reduce the bandwidth required for its transmission. Therefore, if these compressed video streams were compressed using scalable video coding schemes, they would be able to adapt to those heterogeneous networks and a wide range of terminals. Since the majority of the multimedia contents are compressed using H.264/AVC, they cannot benefit from that scalability. This paper proposes a technique to convert an H.264/AVC bitstream without scalability to a scalable bitstream with temporal scalability as part of a scalable video transcoder for mobile communications. The results show that when our technique is applied, the complexity is reduced by 98 % while maintaining coding efficiency

Probabilistic localization of gas emission areas with a mobile robot in indoor environments

This work deals with the problem of gas source localization by a mobile robot with gas-sensing capabilities. Particularly, we address the problem for the case of indoor environments, where the presence of obstacles and the possibly complex structure with multiple rooms, inlets and outlets provoke the chaotic dispersion of the gases. Under these challenging conditions, where traditional approaches based on tracking or mathematical modeling of the plume cannot be applied, we propose a two-stage methodology to split the search into coarse and fine localization. Focusing on the broad localization, we contribute with a novel approach to estimate, from a set of sparse observations, the likelihood of different regions in the environment to hold a gas source. Experiments demonstrate that our approach is suitable to locate gas emission sources.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Trademark cancellation for non use in EU

The report focuses on the peculiarities of trademark cancellation i

Conceptualising value for construction: experience from social housing projects in Chile

Through the years, the concept of Value has been widely discussed covering diverse fields of knowledge, such as marketing, business management, strategy, engineering, design, and the like. Within the construction industry field, highly praised management approaches have been used to deliver Value such as Value Engineering, Value Management and Lean Thinking. As a result of the complex nature of this concept, different definitions, equations and models have been proposed to mainly deliver Value from a customer focused perspective. Therefore, the potential of the construction industry has been usually limited by the fulfilment of individual requirements. Thus, environmental and social issues have been generally managed from a bill payer perspective. During the course of this research, Chilean experience in Social Housing Projects was investigated. Initial author observation, analysis of governmental policies and data collected from three case studies allowed to evidence an emergent phenomenon in developing countries such as Chile and in the construction sector experience in general. This phenomenon considers Value as an oscillating concept, which means Value delivered by a particular construction project continuously impacts society in a wide sense, and provides a legacy for future generations. In the same way, Value delivered for particular projects affects in turn those judgments concerning future projects and contribute with the permanent improvement of the construction sector s performance (learning from experience). Consequently, the construction industry contributes to the development of society through the alleviation of environmental & society issues such as drug consumption, social risk, public safety and so forth. Along the time, the decisions and activities of the construction industry have influenced more than a reduced set of customers. Therefore, there is no reasoning against the fact that the human species depends on many sorts of building and infrastructure projects to perform their activities and that the more developed a society or country is, the more such structures are needed. This is an absolute matter of fact. Consequently, building projects as the outcome of build environment could be considered as the physical reflection of our current decisions. They represent major investments in the future delivery, where several human, natural, monetary and technological resources are devoted. Those projects provide a legacy to future generations based on what we have valued today, and how much we care about tomorrow and the stability of our ecosystem. Therefore, the concept of Value in the construction management field should be visualised from a wider perspective towards the consideration of universal environmental & social issues. The consideration of this phenomenon is even more important in developing countries, where opportunities still exist to create a well-balanced built environment that supports society. In an attempt to conceptualise a wider view of Value in the construction industry, different approached to manage Value were investigated. As a result, Lean Thinking arose as a potential philosophy to expand common customer focused Value perspectives. Additionally, different features and multidimensional attributes of the concept of Value were identified. To aid the visualisation of Value in the construction industry, a conceptual model was developed and named the First and Last Value Model F&LVM. According to this model, the delivery of Value spans across two different contexts: First context, which refers to Value delivery to the society (First Value: Environmental & Social issues), and Last context, which deals with Value delivery at project level (Last Value: Production process). This model also considers the interaction between three Value domains: Production & Delivery capacity; Stakeholders perspective; and Social perspective. From this interaction, four central perspectives are included towards a wider visualisation of Value: Technological, economic, environmental and political. Moreover, this model considers Value as an objective, subjective, dynamic, context dependent, relative, and oscillating concept. Finally, the F&LVM was evaluated under the criteria of both researchers and practitioners from Lean Construction, whose potential contributes to a sustainable development. Evaluator s feedback demonstrated that this model contributes to a wider conceptualisation of Value in the construction industry

Implementation of an end-to-end coupled model including small pelagic fish in the Canary Current Upwelling System

Eastern Boundary Current Upwelling Systems are extraordinary productive regions of the World Ocean that are essential to the world’s fisheries. These upwelling ecosystems are subject to substantial variability ranging from few days to decades, and are sensitive to the expected climate change via modification of the global wind patterns. Due to their broad biological and commercial relevance, understanding the source of fluctuations and the likely climate drift of these regions is of major interest. Here we present progresses in the implementation of an end-to-end biophysical coupled model including pelagic fish in the Canary Current upwelling ecosystem. With this model approach we aim at getting new insights into how the physics, biochemistry and biology combine to give rise to the observed variability.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech