Modernizing discourse and public infrastructure in the province of Alicante during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera

En septiembre de 1923 el general Miguel Primo de Rivera asumió el control del país tras un golpe de Estado amparado por el monarca y los sectores acomodados y tradicionalistas de la sociedad española. La Dictadura acogida a un discurso modernizador y regeneracionista tratará de incentivar el desarrollo material del país. El cambio en la estructura del Estado se pretendió a través de un intervencionismo paternalista y corporativista, que si bien no completó sus objetivos, en las comarcas alicantinas vino acompañado del impulso de una gran cantidad de infraestructuras y servicios que repercutirán en la estructura económica, social y presupuestaria de la provincia.In September 1923, General Primo de Rivera took control of the country following a coup d'état supported by the monarch and wealthy and conservative sectors of Spanish society. The dictatorship developed a modernizing and regenerative discourse which sought to promote the material development of the country. The change in the structure of the state was devised around paternalistic and corporate interventionism. Despite not achieving all its aims, the regime fostered the development of major infrastructures and services in the province of Alicante, which were to influence the economic, social and budgetary structures of the province

El Convento de los Padres Capuchinos de Monóvar. Aproximación histórico-artística al patrimonio monumental monovero

La fundación del convento de los Padres Capuchinos de Monóvar supuso, para esta localidad del Vinalopó, la edificación de uno de los edificios históricos, artísticos y espirituales más importantes de la comarca en el siglo XVIII. Este trabajo trata de analizar las circunstancias que motivaron su erección, el conjunto de intrigas y pugnas en torno a su fundación y la importancia histórica que tuvo este complejo para la vida espiritual y material de su feligresía.The founding of the Convent of the Capuchin Fathers of Monóvar had as a result, for this locality of the Vinalopó, the construction of one of the most important conventual complex in that territory by the 18th century, which stand out for its historical, artistic and spiritual character. This paper analyses the circumstances that promoted its building, all intrigues and rivalry about its founding and what historical importance had the convent for the spiritual and material life of the village

Corruption, Auditing and camaleonismo político during the Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship in Alicante

La imposición de la dictadura de Primo de Rivera tuvo como fundamento discursivo el saneamiento y regeneración de la vida política del país. Este propósito político, que explica, en parte, la pasividad y falta de oposición inicial a la Dictadura, se plasmó a través de una labor inicial de vigilancia y fiscalización de las estructuras políticas y administrativas del país. Como en el conjunto del Estado, la provincia de Alicante se vio sacudida por una fiebre anticaciquil y anticorruptiva que se fue diluyendo conforme el régimen se institucionalizaba y precisaba de la connivencia de los sectores más influyentes del territorio. Este trabajo trata de revisar las peculiaridades de la política anticaciquil y fiscalizadora desarrollada por la Dictadura en Alicante. Para ello, analizaremos la actuación de los gobernadores, de los delegados gubernativos, el papel activo de la prensa y toda la pléyade de disposiciones normativas y sustituciones políticas dirigidas a constituir una “administración pública honesta” (en palabras de los primorriveristas). Finalmente, haremos un balance general de esa estrategia política en Alicante: si se hizo efectiva la depuración de responsabilidades, si se avanzó hacía una mayor integridad administrativa y si se consiguió reducir la influencia de los grupos de poder territoriales.The imposition of Primo de Rivera dictatorship had as its fundamental objective the sanitation and regeneration of the political life of the country. This political proposal, which explained somehow the apathy and lack of initial opposition against the dictatorship, was reflected by an initial task of surveillance and auditing of the political and administrative structures of the country. As in the rest of Spain, the province of Alicante experienced an anti-corruption and anticaciquil fever that was reduced at the same time the regime promoted its process of institutionalization and needed the connivance of the most influential segments of the territory. This paper tries to revise the peculiarities of the anticaciquil and audit policy developed by the Dictatorship in Alicante. We will analyse the action of the Civil Government of Alicante, the active press behaviour and all the laws directed towards building an “honest public administration” (in words of the primorriveristas). Finally, we will make a general balance about this political strategy in Alicante: Was it possible to clarify responsibilities? Did the regime achieve an enhanced administrative integrity? Was it possible to reduce the influence of the territorial power groups

Grislas: un algoritmo genético paralelo que combina los modelos de grillas e islas para encontrar soluciones óptimas cercanas al problema del agente viajero

Este trabajo implementa un modelo de Algoritmo Genético Par alelo llamado modelo de Gris-Las, mejorado con optimización local 2opt. Este modelo está enfocado a encontrar soluciones óptimas cercanas al problema del Agente Viajero sobre un ambiente de cómputo distribuido. Gris-Las se basa esencialmente en dos modelos comunes de Algoritmos Genéticos Paralelos, el modelo de Grillas (modelo celular ) y el modelo de Islas. El algoritmo heurístico de optimización local 2opt también es utilizado para reducir el dominio de búsqueda en el problema

Automated curation of brand-related social media images with deep learning

This paper presents a work consisting in using deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to facilitate the curation of brand-related social media images. The final goal is to facilitate searching and discovering user-generated content (UGC) with potential value for digital marketing tasks. The images are captured in real time and automatically annotated with multiple CNNs. Some of the CNNs perform generic object recognition tasks while others perform what we call visual brand identity recognition. When appropriate, we also apply object detection, usually to discover images containing logos. We report experiments with 5 real brands in which more than 1 million real images were analyzed. In order to speed-up the training of custom CNNs we applied a transfer learning strategy. We examine the impact of different configurations and derive conclusions aiming to pave the way towards systematic and optimized methodologies for automatic UGC curation.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Real-time logo detection in brand-related social media images

This paper presents a work consisting in using deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for real-time logo detection in brand-related social media images. The final goal is to facilitate searching and discovering user-generated content (UGC) with potential value for digital marketing tasks. The images are captured in real time and automatically annotated with two CNNs designed for object detection, SSD InceptionV2 and Faster Atrous InceptionV4 (that provides better performance on small objects). We report experiments with 2 real brands, Estrella Damm and Futbol Club Barcelona. We examine the impact of different configurations and derive conclusions aiming to pave the way towards systematic and optimized methodologies for automatic logo detection in UGC.This work is partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity under contract TIN2015-65316-P and by the SGR programme (2014- SGR-1051 and 2017-SGR-962) of the Catalan Government.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Rhizosphere mycobiome diversity in four declining Mediterranean tree species

IntroductionForests in the Mediterranean basin are currently in decline. Their resilience has been eroded as a result of climate change and anthropogenic impacts, making them vulnerable to increasingly frequent episodes of drought, fire and the spread of pests and diseases. The impact of these natural and anthropogenic events on soil biodiversity is of particular concern, as the soil fungal community plays a key role in ecosystem homeostasis.Objectives and methodsIn order to analyse the relationship between soil health status and fungal diversity, soil samples were collected from declining Mediterranean forests of Castanea sativa (chestnut), Quercus ilex (holm oak), Quercus suber (cork oak) and Quercus pyrenaica (Pyrenean oak). A metabarcoding study was carried out by sequencing the ITS genomic region.ResultsA total of 674 fungal genera were found. It has not been possible to explain the differences in health status from the fungal genera found exclusively on declining forest soils, as none of them have been described as pathogenic. Healthy chestnut soils were characterized by a high alpha diversity and a higher abundance of the genus Metarhizium. No differentially abundant genera were found in any of the other forest species tested. Declining chestnut soils harbored more abundance of ectomycorrhizae and soil saprotrophs than healthy samples. Ectomycorrhizae were the dominant lifestyle in all oak species regardless of health status, whereas arbuscular mycorrhizae were preferentially found in declining cork oak soils.DiscussionThis work highlights the resilience of fungal communities of soil against decline and highlights the need to further investigate its relationship with the forest’s ability to cope with the challenges of climate change

The Influence of Recovery and Training Phases on Body Composition, Peripheral Vascular Function and Immune System of Professional Soccer Players

Professional soccer players have a lengthy playing season, throughout which high levels of physical stress are maintained. The following recuperation period, before starting the next pre-season training phase, is generally considered short but sufficient to allow a decrease in these stress levels and therefore a reduction in the propensity for injury or musculoskeletal tissue damage. We hypothesised that these physical extremes influence the body composition, blood flow, and endothelial/immune function, but that the recuperation may be insufficient to allow a reduction of tissue stress damage. Ten professional football players were examined at the end of the playing season, at the end of the season intermission, and after the next pre-season endurance training. Peripheral blood flow and body composition were assessed using venous occlusion plethysmography and DEXA scanning respectively. In addition, selected inflammatory and immune parameters were analysed from blood samples. Following the recuperation period a significant decrease of lean body mass from 74.4±4.2 kg to 72.2±3.9 kg was observed, but an increase of fat mass from 10.3±5.6 kg to 11.1±5.4 kg, almost completely reversed the changes seen in the pre-season training phase. Remarkably, both resting and post-ischemic blood flow (7.3±3.4 and 26.0±6.3 ml/100 ml/min) respectively, were strongly reduced during the playing and training stress phases, but both parameters increased to normal levels (9.0±2.7 and 33.9±7.6 ml/100 ml/min) during the season intermission. Recovery was also characterized by rising levels of serum creatinine, granulocytes count, total IL-8, serum nitrate, ferritin, and bilirubin. These data suggest a compensated hypo-perfusion of muscle during the playing season, followed by an intramuscular ischemia/reperfusion syndrome during the recovery phase that is associated with muscle protein turnover and inflammatory endothelial reaction, as demonstrated by iNOS and HO-1 activation, as well as IL-8 release. The data provided from this study suggest that the immune system is not able to function fully during periods of high physical stress. The implications of this study are that recuperation should be carefully monitored in athletes who undergo intensive training over extended periods, but that these parameters may also prove useful for determining an individual's risk of tissue stress and possibly their susceptibility to progressive tissue damage or injury

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements