Abundancia y uso del hábitat del cangrejo azul (Callinectes sapidus) en la Albufera de Valencia

[ES] Callinectes sapidus (Rathbun 1896), es un voraz crustáceo originario de las costas occidentales del Océano Atlántico, que se ha establecido en distintos lugares del mundo como especie invasora. El objetivo de estudio es estimar la abundancia y su distribución en diferentes hábitats en el Parque Natural de la Albufera de Valencia. Para ello se realizaron muestreos en 3 zonas entre mayo y octubre y se utilizaron técnicas como el marcaje-recaptura, utilizando el modelo Jolly-Seber, y la CPUE. Se encontraron diferencias en la proporción de sexos y tamaños en las diferentes zonas de muestreo así como una diferente distribución a lo largo del periodo de estudio debido a causa de la migración de las hembras al mar para desovar y la permanencia de los machos en aguas menos salinas. En la zona del Perelló se obtuvo una densidad media de 0,03 ind/m2 , dando resultados similares a los de su zona nativa, y la abundancia temporal fluctuó principalmente a causa de la migración y no debido de la intensa actividad pesquera que se registró en el periodo de estudio. En el mes de octubre se encontraron en la Gola del Perelló megalopas y juveniles de esta especie, probablemente proviniendo de las hembras registradas en esta zona a finales del mes de junio.[EN] Callinectes sapidus (Rathbun 1896), is a voracious crustacean native from the western coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, which has established in different parts of the world as an invasive species. The study objective is to estimate abundance and distribution in different habitats in the Albufera of Valencia Natural Park. To do that, samplings were carried out in 3 zones between May and October, and techniques like markingrecapture, using the Jolly-Seber model, and the CPUE were used. Differences were found in the proportion of sexes and sizes at different sampling areas as well as a different distribution along the study period due to the migration of females to the sea to spawn and the permanence of males in less salinity waters. An average density of 0,03 ind/m 2 was obtained in the Perelló area, getting similar results than its native zone, and temporal abundance fluctuated mainly due to migration and not because intense fishing activity that was recorded at the study period. In October megalopae and juvenile of this species were found at the Perelló Gola, probably coming from the females registered in this area at the end of June.Mocholí Soriano, V. (2020). Abundancia y uso del hábitat del cangrejo azul (Callinectes sapidus) en la Albufera de Valencia. Universitat Politècnica de València. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/138858TFG

Abundancia y estructura de tallas de la población de cangrejo atlántico azul (Callinectes sapidus) en la Albufera de Valencia

El cangrejo azul, Callinectes sapidus (Rathbun 1896), originario de las costas occidentales del Océano Atlántico, ha sido introducido en aguas mediterráneas desde mediados del siglo XX donde actualmente se considera una especie invasora. Este estudio brinda información sobre las tallas, la abundancia y distribución de C. sapidus en el Parque Natural de l'Albufera de Valencia, en el que se utilizaron diferentes métodos de captura. En el lago, donde las aguas tienen salinidad muy baja, el porcentaje de machos capturados fue mayor que el de las hembras, a diferencia de en las desembocaduras del lago o ¿golas¿, en el que ocurrió lo contrario. Estos hechos coinciden con la información biológica existente de dicha especie. Un mayor conocimiento de la especie en la zona y la comercialización de C. sapidus podrían ser útiles para establecer los planes de manejo de esta especie potencialmente invasora.The blue crab, Callinectes sapidus (Rathbun 1896), originally from the western coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, has been introduced into Mediterranean waters since the mid-twentieth century where it is currently considered an invasive species. This study provides information about the sizes, abundance and distribution of C. sapidus in the Albufera Natural Park of Valencia, where different methods of capture were used. In the lagoon, where the waters have very low salinity, the percentage of males captured was greater than females, unlike in the mouths of the lagoon or ¿golas¿, in which the opposite occurred. These facts coincide with the existing biological information of this species. Greater knowledge of the species in the area and commercialization of C. sapidus could be useful for establishing management plans for this potential invasive species.Mocholí Soriano, V. (2017). Abundancia y estructura de tallas de la población de cangrejo atlántico azul (Callinectes sapidus) en la Albufera de Valencia. Universitat Politècnica de València. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/97526TFG

De la vida de sant Onofre valenciana i anònima, de principis del XVI, a la recreació d’Onofre Salt (Barcelona, 1620)

La devoció en terres de parla catalana a l’anacoreta sant Onofre es troba bastant difosa i compta amb nombrosos testimonis. Entre els literaris, en destaquen dos. Un, en català, publicat a principis del segle XVI, a València —anònim i amb clares evidències de ser un treball que recull textos elaborats en estadis anteriors—, i l’altre publicat a Barcelona —malgrat que obra del valencià Onofre Salt—, del 1620, i en castellà. Ens proposem veure les diferències entre l’un i l’altre i, encara, els punts en comú de dos textos devocionals hagiogràfics que es troben als extrems de la cruïlla de l’edat moderna: de l’edat mitjana al Renaixement, el primer, i ja al barroc, el segon

Expanding student engagement in SDG 13 'Climate Action'

[EN] In September 2019, the UN Secretary-General called on all sectors of society to mobilize for a Decade of Action. The Decade of Action calls for accelerating sustainable solutions to all the world¿s biggest challenges by 2030. At the heart of Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development are 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDGs aim to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure peace and prosperity for all by 2030. The SDG 13 ¿Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts¿ has the target 13.3 ¿Improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning¿. Nowadays, many universities are engaged in achieving SDGs. It is crucial that climate change is included as part of universities¿ teaching, and also the development of SDG 13 awareness activities for students. The objective of this study is to demonstrate the activity performed as part of a course in Meteorology that intends to increase students' awareness of the climate change problem. This action took place with students of the Bachelor¿s Degree in Environmental Sciences at the Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain). The prepared activity was entitled: Students committed to climate change. Its learning outcomes were to describe what happens to the temperature and CO¿ concerning climate change; explain how global warming is dominated by past and future CO¿ emissions; argue the importance of acting against global warming and cutting greenhouse gas emissions; and to enlighten students about the impact that our daily habits have on the environment. Performing this activity consisted in finding out about SDG 13 and the European CO2MVS initiative to accurately measure the amount of anthropogenic CO¿ emissions, and completing a questionnaire. The results obtained from the questionnaire show that 84% of university students are aware that climate change is happening now and it is caused mainly by human activities. Many students agreed with the following affirmations: a university must have a climate change policy (96%); a university must contribute in its operation to achieve the adaptation strategies to climate change set by the government (92%); a university must educate its students about the causes (100%) and impacts (100%) of climate change; a university should encourage its students to seek solutions to climate change problems (100%). A high percentage of the students (80%) confirmed that they adopt the necessary initiatives to reduce CO¿ as much as possible in their everyday lives. Twenty-four percent of them stated that they could not explain to other students the origin of CO¿ in the atmosphere, and 36% of the students did not have enough arguments to explain why adopting a wide range of technological measures and behavioral changes could limit the rise in the global average temperature to 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Finally, the students answered various open questions about how to reduce atmospheric CO¿ levels, individual actions to reduce the carbon footprint, social problems that climate change entails, and how citizens can be made aware of the importance of reducing CO¿. These results show the need to improve climate change knowledge in education.This work has been sponsored by the Vice-Rectorate for Organization of Studies, Quality and Accreditation of the Universitat Poltècnica de València (Valencia, Spain) as part of the UPV¿s Educational Innovation and Improvement Projects (Reference PIME 20-21/224) entitled Moving towards Sustainable Development Goals at the UPV: the poliODS Project.Lull, C.; Llinares Palacios, JV.; Soriano Soto, MD. (2022). Expanding student engagement in SDG 13 'Climate Action'. IATED. 5611-5617. https://doi.org/10.21125/edulearn.2022.13185611561

Energy Recovery from Microstrip Passive Circuits

In this paper, the energy recovery in microstrip passive circuits from the power losses into heat is studied. For this purpose, a thermoelectric generator (TEG) based on the Seebeck effect principle is used, which converts part of the power dissipated into heat to dc electrical power. A solution integrating the TEG with the microstrip circuit is proposed, and design guidelines in order to optimize the recovered power keeping a good isolation between the RF signal and the TEG system are provided. As will be shown, under moderate applied signal powers of just 1–5 W, the levels of recovered power in microstrip passive circuits can be notable. As a demonstrator circuit, an integration device formed by an embedded microstrip bandpass filter for WiMAX applications and a TEG is designed, fabricated, and characterized (thermal and electrically). Different scenarios are considered, depending on frequency and thermal loads. For an applied inband CW input signal power of 2 W at 3.48 GHz, a recovered power of around 250 μW has been continuously supplied to the electrical load. Several aspects, such as efficiency and future improvements, are also discussed.This work was supported by the Euripides European Project MIDIMU-HD

Influence of fibre and matrix characteristics on properties and durability of wood-plastic composites in outdoor applications

[EN] The awareness of society on environmental issues has increased in recent years. This article focuses on the wood-plastic composites (WPCs), obtained from recycled plastics and natural fibres waste, and their application in architecture. In order to give some recommendations to architects regarding the choice of a WPC as an alternative to wood for uses in outdoor decking, a series of standardized physical, mechanical and chemical tests have been carried out on two commercial WPC materials: one with a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) - PVC matrix and rice husk filler and a second one with a polyethylene (PE) - PE matrix and pine wood reinforcement. Mechanical, thermal and ageing behaviour of these commercial WPC has been broadly studied. This research provides value information to find out which WPC material best support durability aspects, those that most concern in an architectural application of outdoor decking. In general terms, WPC developed by PVC matrix and rice husk as filler shown greater physical-mechanical properties, better resistance to chemical agents and greater resistance to ageing behaviour and changes in visual aspect.Vercher Sanchis, J.; Fombuena, V.; Díaz, A.; Soriano Cubells, MJ. (2020). Influence of fibre and matrix characteristics on properties and durability of wood-plastic composites in outdoor applications. Journal of Thermoplastic Composite Materials. 33(4):477-500. https://doi.org/10.1177/0892705718807956S477500334Arenas FJ. El impacto ambiental en la edificación. Criterios para una edificación sostenible, 1st ed. Madrid: Edisofer, 2007, p. 248.Miravete A. Los nuevos materiales en la construcción, 1st ed. Barcelona: Reverté, 1995, p. 394.Kaseem, M., Hamad, K., Deri, F., & Ko, Y. G. (2015). Material properties of polyethylene/wood composites: A review of recent works. Polymer Science Series A, 57(6), 689-703. doi:10.1134/s0965545x15070068Najafi, S. K., Hamidinia, E., & Tajvidi, M. (2006). Mechanical properties of composites from sawdust and recycled plastics. Journal of Applied Polymer Science, 100(5), 3641-3645. doi:10.1002/app.23159La Mantia, F. P., & Morreale, M. (2011). Green composites: A brief review. Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, 42(6), 579-588. doi:10.1016/j.compositesa.2011.01.017Mahboob, Z., El Sawi, I., Zdero, R., Fawaz, Z., & Bougherara, H. (2017). Tensile and compressive damaged response in Flax fibre reinforced epoxy composites. Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, 92, 118-133. doi:10.1016/j.compositesa.2016.11.007Paynel, F., Morvan, C., Marais, S., & Lebrun, L. (2013). Improvement of the hydrolytic stability of new flax-based biocomposite materials. Polymer Degradation and Stability, 98(1), 190-197. doi:10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2012.10.010Badia, J. D., Kittikorn, T., Strömberg, E., Santonja-Blasco, L., Martínez-Felipe, A., Ribes-Greus, A., … Karlsson, S. (2014). Water absorption and hydrothermal performance of PHBV/sisal biocomposites. Polymer Degradation and Stability, 108, 166-174. doi:10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2014.04.012Alvarez, V. A., & Vázquez, A. (2004). Thermal degradation of cellulose derivatives/starch blends and sisal fibre biocomposites. Polymer Degradation and Stability, 84(1), 13-21. doi:10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2003.09.003Liu, L., Yu, J., Cheng, L., & Yang, X. (2009). Biodegradability of poly(butylene succinate) (PBS) composite reinforced with jute fibre. Polymer Degradation and Stability, 94(1), 90-94. doi:10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2008.10.013Valdés García, A., Ramos Santonja, M., Sanahuja, A. B., & Selva, M. del C. G. (2014). Characterization and degradation characteristics of poly(ε-caprolactone)-based composites reinforced with almond skin residues. Polymer Degradation and Stability, 108, 269-279. doi:10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2014.03.011Sanyang, M. L., Sapuan, S. M., Jawaid, M., Ishak, M. R., & Sahari, J. (2016). Recent developments in sugar palm ( Arenga pinnata ) based biocomposites and their potential industrial applications: A review. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 54, 533-549. doi:10.1016/j.rser.2015.10.037Abdul Khalil, H. P. S., Bhat, I. U. H., Jawaid, M., Zaidon, A., Hermawan, D., & Hadi, Y. S. (2012). Bamboo fibre reinforced biocomposites: A review. Materials & Design, 42, 353-368. doi:10.1016/j.matdes.2012.06.015Boronat, T., Fombuena, V., Garcia-Sanoguera, D., Sanchez-Nacher, L., & Balart, R. (2015). Development of a biocomposite based on green polyethylene biopolymer and eggshell. Materials & Design, 68, 177-185. doi:10.1016/j.matdes.2014.12.027Maciá, A., Baeza, F. J., Saval, J. M., & Ivorra, S. (2016). Mechanical properties of boards made in biocomposites reinforced with wood and Posidonia oceanica fibers. Composites Part B: Engineering, 104, 1-8. doi:10.1016/j.compositesb.2016.08.018Das, O., Bhattacharyya, D., Hui, D., & Lau, K.-T. (2016). Mechanical and flammability characterisations of biochar/polypropylene biocomposites. Composites Part B: Engineering, 106, 120-128. doi:10.1016/j.compositesb.2016.09.020Fowler, P. A., Hughes, J. M., & Elias, R. M. (2006). Biocomposites: technology, environmental credentials and market forces. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 86(12), 1781-1789. doi:10.1002/jsfa.2558Dányádi, L., Janecska, T., Szabó, Z., Nagy, G., Móczó, J., & Pukánszky, B. (2007). Wood flour filled PP composites: Compatibilization and adhesion. Composites Science and Technology, 67(13), 2838-2846. doi:10.1016/j.compscitech.2007.01.024Gurunathan, T., Mohanty, S., & Nayak, S. K. (2015). A review of the recent developments in biocomposites based on natural fibres and their application perspectives. Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, 77, 1-25. doi:10.1016/j.compositesa.2015.06.007Tascioglu, C., Tufan, M., Yalcin, M., & Sen, S. (2016). Determination of biological performance, dimensional stability, mechanical and thermal properties of wood–plastic composites produced from recycled chromated copper arsenate-treated wood. Journal of Thermoplastic Composite Materials, 29(11), 1461-1479. doi:10.1177/0892705714565704Bhaskar, J., Haq, S., & Yadaw, S. (2011). Evaluation and testing of mechanical properties of wood plastic composite. Journal of Thermoplastic Composite Materials, 25(4), 391-401. doi:10.1177/0892705711406158Friedrich, D., & Luible, A. (2016). Investigations on ageing of wood-plastic composites for outdoor applications: A meta-analysis using empiric data derived from diverse weathering trials. Construction and Building Materials, 124, 1142-1152. doi:10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2016.08.123Gourier, C., Bourmaud, A., Le Duigou, A., & Baley, C. (2017). Influence of PA11 and PP thermoplastic polymers on recycling stability of unidirectional flax fibre reinforced biocomposites. Polymer Degradation and Stability, 136, 1-9. doi:10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2016.12.003Pickering, K. L., Efendy, M. G. A., & Le, T. M. (2016). A review of recent developments in natural fibre composites and their mechanical performance. Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, 83, 98-112. doi:10.1016/j.compositesa.2015.08.038Muthuraj, R., Misra, M., Defersha, F., & Mohanty, A. K. (2016). Influence of processing parameters on the impact strength of biocomposites: A statistical approach. Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, 83, 120-129. doi:10.1016/j.compositesa.2015.09.003Gil-Castell, O., Badia, J. D., Kittikorn, T., Strömberg, E., Martínez-Felipe, A., Ek, M., … Ribes-Greus, A. (2014). Hydrothermal ageing of polylactide/sisal biocomposites. Studies of water absorption behaviour and Physico-Chemical performance. Polymer Degradation and Stability, 108, 212-222. doi:10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2014.06.010Campos, A., Marconcini, J. M., Martins-Franchetti, S. M., & Mattoso, L. H. C. (2012). The influence of UV-C irradiation on the properties of thermoplastic starch and polycaprolactone biocomposite with sisal bleached fibers. Polymer Degradation and Stability, 97(10), 1948-1955. doi:10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2011.11.010Azwar, E., Vuorinen, E., & Hakkarainen, M. (2012). Pyrolysis-GC–MS reveals important differences in hydrolytic degradation process of wood flour and rice bran filled polylactide composites. Polymer Degradation and Stability, 97(3), 281-287. doi:10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2011.12.017Soccalingame, L., Perrin, D., Bénézet, J.-C., Mani, S., Coiffier, F., Richaud, E., & Bergeret, A. (2015). Reprocessing of artificial UV-weathered wood flour reinforced polypropylene composites. Polymer Degradation and Stability, 120, 313-327. doi:10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2015.07.013Soccalingame, L., Perrin, D., Bénézet, J.-C., & Bergeret, A. (2016). Reprocessing of UV-weathered wood flour reinforced polypropylene composites: Study of a natural outdoor exposure. Polymer Degradation and Stability, 133, 389-398. doi:10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2016.09.011Azwa, Z. N., Yousif, B. F., Manalo, A. C., & Karunasena, W. (2013). A review on the degradability of polymeric composites based on natural fibres. Materials & Design, 47, 424-442. doi:10.1016/j.matdes.2012.11.025Zabel RA, Morrell JJ. Wood microbiology: Decay and its prevention. Cambridge, MA: Academic Press, 2012, p. 498

HUMAN T-LYMPHOTROPIC VIRUS 1 (HTLV-1) AND HUMAN T-LYMPHOTROPIC VIRUS 2 (HTLV-2): GEOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH TRENDS AND COLLABORATION NETWORKS (1989-2012)

Publications are often used as a measure of research work success. Human T-lymphotropic virus (HTLV) type 1 and 2 are human retroviruses, which were discovered in the early 1980s, and it is estimated that 15-20 million people are infected worldwide. This article describes a bibliometric review and a coauthorship network analysis of literature on HTLV indexed in PubMed in a 24-year period. A total of 7,564 documents were retrieved, showing a decrease in the number of documents from 1996 to 2007. HTLV manuscripts were published in 1,074 journals. Japan and USA were the countries with the highest contribution in this field (61%) followed by France (8%). Production ranking changed when the number of publications was normalized by population (Dominican Republic and Japan), by gross domestic product (Guinea-Bissau and Gambia), and by gross national income per capita (Brazil and Japan). The present study has shed light on some of the defining features of scientific collaboration performed by HTLV research community, such as the existence of core researchers responsible for articulating the development of research in the area, facilitating wider collaborative relationships and the integration of new authors in the research groups

NASca and NASes: Two Monolingual Pre-Trained Models for Abstractive Summarization in Catalan and Spanish

[EN] Most of the models proposed in the literature for abstractive summarization are generally suitable for the English language but not for other languages. Multilingual models were introduced to address that language constraint, but despite their applicability being broader than that of the monolingual models, their performance is typically lower, especially for minority languages like Catalan. In this paper, we present a monolingual model for abstractive summarization of textual content in the Catalan language. The model is a Transformer encoder-decoder which is pretrained and fine-tuned specifically for the Catalan language using a corpus of newspaper articles. In the pretraining phase, we introduced several self-supervised tasks to specialize the model on the summarization task and to increase the abstractivity of the generated summaries. To study the performance of our proposal in languages with higher resources than Catalan, we replicate the model and the experimentation for the Spanish language. The usual evaluation metrics, not only the most used ROUGE measure but also other more semantic ones such as BertScore, do not allow to correctly evaluate the abstractivity of the generated summaries. In this work, we also present a new metric, called content reordering, to evaluate one of the most common characteristics of abstractive summaries, the rearrangement of the original content. We carried out an exhaustive experimentation to compare the performance of the monolingual models proposed in this work with two of the most widely used multilingual models in text summarization, mBART and mT5. The experimentation results support the quality of our monolingual models, especially considering that the multilingual models were pretrained with many more resources than those used in our models. Likewise, it is shown that the pretraining tasks helped to increase the degree of abstractivity of the generated summaries. To our knowledge, this is the first work that explores a monolingual approach for abstractive summarization both in Catalan and Spanish.This work was partially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades and FEDER founds under the project AMIC (TIN2017-85854-C4-2-R), and by the Agencia Valenciana de la Innovacio (AVI) of the Generalitat Valenciana under the GUAITA (INNVA1/2020/61) project.Ahuir-Esteve, V.; Hurtado Oliver, LF.; González-Barba, JÁ.; Segarra Soriano, E. (2021). NASca and NASes: Two Monolingual Pre-Trained Models for Abstractive Summarization in Catalan and Spanish. Applied Sciences. 11(21):1-16. https://doi.org/10.3390/app11219872S116112

Energy Assessment of Pressurized Water Systems

[EN] This paper presents three new indicators for assessing the energy efficiency of a pressurized water system and the potential energy savings relative to the available technology and economic framework. The first two indicators are the ideal and real efficiencies of the system and reflect the values of the minimum energy required by users the minimum amount of energy to be supplied to the system (because of its ideal behavior) and the actual energy consumed. The third indicator is the energy performance target, and it is estimated by setting an ambitious but achievable level of energy loss attributable to inefficiencies in the system (e.g., pumping stations, leakage, friction loss). The information provided by these three key performance indicators can make a significant contribution towards increasing system efficiency. The real efficiency indicator shows the actual performance of the system; the energy performance target provides a realistic goal on how the system should be performing; and finally, the ideal efficiency provides the maximum and unachievable level of efficiency (limited by the topographic energy linked to the network topography). The applicability and usefulness of these metrics will be demonstrated with an application in a real case study.The authors acknowledge the very valuable contributions made by the reviewers of this paper, because their comments and suggestions have helped to significantly improve the contents. Additionally, we thank the staff of Aguas de Valencia for providing helpful advice and real case studies used to tune the software tool developed based on this paper. And last but not least, the research leading to these results received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement number 265122. The translation of this paper was funded by the Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain.Cabrera Marcet, E.; Gomez Selles, E.; Cabrera Rochera, E.; Soriano Olivares, J.; Espert Alemany, VB. (2014). Energy Assessment of Pressurized Water Systems. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management. 141(8):1-12. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0000494S112141