ALBERT

Description: In order to achieve greater enhancements in energy sustainability for housing, the function and efficiency of two different passive cooling systems were studied: encapsulated water in recycled bottles of Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polystyrene plates, in comparison with standard concrete slab systems, which are customarily used in housing. Experiments were placed over a tile surface, in which temperature changes were monitored for a period of 20 days from 08:00 to 20:00. The efficiency of passive thermal storage systems was endorsed through statistical analysis using the “SPSS” software. This resulted in a 17% energy saving, thus promoting energy sustainability in housing units, which reduces the use of electrical appliances required to stabilize conditions to achieve optimum thermal comfort for the human body inside a house, therefore, reducing electrical power consumption, CO2 emissions to the atmosphere and generating savings. Due to the complexity of a system with temperature changes, a fractal analysis was performed for each experimental system, using the “Benoit” software (V.1.3 with self-compatible tools of rescaled range (R/S) and a wavelets method), showing that the thermal fluctuations on the tiles with the thermal storage system adapt to the rescaled range analysis and the regular tiles adapt to the wavelets method.

Description: Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) is a state of the art technology to assess forest aboveground biomass (AGB). To date, methods developed to relate Lidar metrics with forest parameters were built upon the vertical component of the data. In multi-layered tropical forests, signal penetration might be restricted, limiting the efficiency of these methods. A potential way for improving AGB models in such forests would be to combine traditional approaches by descriptors of the horizontal canopy structure. We assessed the capability and complementarity of three recently proposed methods for assessing AGB at the plot level using point distributional approach (DM), canopy volume profile approach (CVP), 2D canopy grain approach (FOTO), and further evaluated the potential of a topographical complexity index (TCI) to explain part of the variability of AGB with slope. This research has been conducted in a mountainous wet evergreen tropical forest of Western Ghats in India. AGB biomass models were developed using a best subset regression approach, and model performance was assessed through cross-validation. Results demonstrated that the variability in AGB could be efficiently captured when variables describing both the vertical (DM or CVP) and horizontal (FOTO) structure were combined. Integrating FOTO metrics with those of either DM or CVP decreased the root mean squared error of the models by 4.42% and 6.01%, respectively. These results are of high interest for AGB mapping in the tropics and could significantly contribute to the REDD+ program. Model quality could be further enhanced by improving the robustness of field-based biomass models and influence of topography on area-based Lidar descriptors of the forest structure.

Description: Cytotoxicity of titanium dioxide (TiO2) thin films on Chinese hamster ovary (CHO-K1) cells was evaluated after 24, 48 and 72 h of culture. The TiO2 thin films were deposited using direct current magnetron sputtering. These films were post-deposition annealed at different temperatures (300, 500 and 800 °C) toward the anatase to rutile phase transformation. The root-mean-square (RMS) surface roughness of TiO2 films went from 2.8 to 8.08 nm when the annealing temperature was increased from 300 to 800 °C. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) results showed that the TiO2 films’ thickness values fell within the nanometer range (290–310 nm). Based on the results of the tetrazolium dye and trypan blue assays, we found that TiO2 thin films showed no cytotoxicity after the aforementioned culture times at which cell viability was greater than 98%. Independently of the annealing temperature of the TiO2 thin films, the number of CHO-K1 cells on the control substrate and on all TiO2 thin films was greater after 48 or 72 h than it was after 24 h; the highest cell survival rate was observed in TiO2 films annealed at 800 °C. These results indicate that TiO2 thin films do not affect mitochondrial function and proliferation of CHO-K1 cells, and back up the use of TiO2 thin films in biomedical science.

Description: Northeastern Mexico is a semiarid region with water scarcity and a strong pressure on water sources caused by the rapid increase of population and industrialization. In this region, rainwater harvesting alone is not enough to meet water supply demands due to the irregular distribution of rainfall in time and space. Thus, in this study the reliability of integrating rainwater harvesting with greywater reuse to reduce water consumption and minimize wastewater generation in the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Monterrey Campus, was assessed. Potable water consumption and greywater generation in main facilities of the campus were determined. Rainwater that can be potentially harvested in roofs and parking areas of the campus was estimated based on a statistical analysis of the rainfall. Based on these data, potential water savings and wastewater minimization were determined. Characterization of rainwater and greywater was carried out to determine the treatment necessities for each water source. Additionally, the capacity of water storage tanks was estimated. For the selected treatment systems, an economic assessment was conducted to determine the viability of the alternatives proposed. Results showed that water consumption can be reduced by 48% and wastewater generation can be minimized by 59%. Implementation of rainwater harvesting and greywater reuse systems in the Monterrey Campus will generate important economic benefits to the institution. Amortization of the investments will be achieved in only six years, where the net present value (NPV) will be on the order of US $50,483.2, the internal rate of return (IRR) of 4.6% and the benefits–investment ratio (B/I) of 1.7. From the seventh year, the project will present an IRR greater than the minimum acceptable rate of return (MARR). In a decade, the IRR will be 14.4%, more than twice the MARR, the NPV of US $290,412.1 and the B/I of 3.1, denoting economic feasibility. Based on these results, it is clear that integrating rainwater harvesting with greywater reuse resulted in a more feasible and reliable strategy than those strategies based only on rainwater harvesting. Furthermore, the investments can be amortized in a shorter period of time.

Description: Gebhardt et al. (2014) presented the Monitoring Activity Data for the Mexican REDD+ program (MAD-MEX), an automatic nation-wide land cover monitoring system for the Mexican REDD+ MRV. Though MAD-MEX represents a valuable first effort toward establishing a national reference emissions level for the implementation of REDD+ in Mexico, in this paper, we argue that this land cover system has important limitations that may prevent it from becoming operational for REDD+ MRV. Specifically, we show that (1) the accuracy assessment of MAD-MEX land cover maps is optimistically biased; (2) the ability of MAD-MEX to monitor land cover change, including deforestation and forest degradation; is poor and (3) the use of an entirely automatic classification approach, such as that followed by MAD-MEX, is highly problematic in the case of a large and heterogeneous country like Mexico. We discuss these limitations and call into question the ability of a land cover monitoring system, such as MAD-MEX, both to elaborate a national reference emissions level and to monitor future forest cover change, as part of a REDD+ MRV system. We provide some insights with the aim of improving the development of nation-wide land cover monitoring systems in Mexico and elsewhere.

Description: In a previous paper, we introduced a way to generate a time coordinate system for classical and quantum systems when the potential function has extremal points. In this paper, we deal with the case in which the potential function has no extremal points at all, and we illustrate the method with the harmonic and linear potentials.

Description: Smart spaces foster the development of natural and appropriate forms of human-computer interaction by taking advantage of home customization. The interaction potential of the Smart Home, which is a special type of smart space, is of particular interest in fields in which the acceptance of new technologies is limited and restrictive. The integration of smart home design patterns with sensitive solutions can increase user acceptance. In this paper, we present the main challenges that have been identified in the literature for the successful deployment of sensitive services (e.g., telemedicine and assistive services) in smart spaces and a software architecture that models the functionalities of a Smart Home platform that are required to maintain and support such sensitive services. This architecture emphasizes user interaction as a key concept to facilitate the acceptance of sensitive services by end-users and utilizes activity theory to support its innovative design. The application of activity theory to the architecture eases the handling of novel concepts, such as understanding of the system by patients at home or the affordability of assistive services. Finally, we provide a proof-of-concept implementation of the architecture and compare the results with other architectures from the literature.

Description: ITU-T G.9904 standard, also known as PoweRline Intelligent Metering Evolution (PRIME), is a Power Line Communications standard for advanced metering, grid control and asset monitoring defined by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). In this paper, an analysis about how different characteristics of the communication channel and types of noise might affect the system performance is carried out. This study is based on simulations of the PRIME physical layer using different channel characteristics and transmission parameters. The conclusions obtained are very valuable for better understanding the behavior of the ITU-T G.9904 (PRIME) standard in the field, allowing future improvements in deployment strategies and equipment design.

Description: Bacterial pathogens are a leading cause of waterborne disease, and may result in gastrointestinal outbreaks worldwide. Inhabitants of the Bassaseachic Falls National Park in Chihuahua, Mexico show seasonal gastroenteritis problems. This aim of this study was to detect enteropathogenic microorganisms responsible for diarrheal outbreaks in this area. In 2013, 49 surface water samples from 13 selected sampling sites along the Basaseachi waterfall and its main rivers, were collected during the spring, summer, autumn, and winter seasons. Fecal and total coliform counts were determined using standard methods; the AutoScan-4 system was used for identification of isolates and the antibiotic resistance profile by challenging each organism using 21 antibiotics. Significant differences among seasons were detected, where autumn samples resulted in the highest total (p 〈 0.05) and fecal (p 〈 0.001) coliform counts, whereas the lowest total coliform counts were recorded in spring. Significant differences between sampling sites were observed, where samples from sites 6, 8, and 11 had the highest total coliform counts (p 〈 0.009), whereas samples from site 9 exhibited the lowest one. From the microbiological analysis, 33 bacterial isolates from 13 different sites and four sampling seasons were selected; 53% of isolates were resistant to at least one antibiotic, and 15% exhibited a multidrug resistance (MDB) phenotype. MDB were identified as Klebsiella oxytoca (two out of four identified isolates), Escherichia coli (2/7), and Enterobacter cloacae (1/3). In addition, some water-borne microorganisms exhibited resistance to cefazoline, cefuroxime, ampicillin, and ampicillin-sulbactam. The presence of these microorganisms near rural settlements suggests that wastewater is the contamination source, providing one possible transmission mechanism for diarrheal outbreaks.

Description: Human-caused wildfires are often regarded as unpredictable, but usually occur in patterns aggregated over space and time. We analysed the spatio-temporal configuration of 7790 anthropogenic wildfires (2007–2013) in nine study areas distributed throughout Peninsular Spain by using the Ripley’s K-function. We also related these aggregation patterns to weather, population density, and landscape structure descriptors of each study area. Our results provide statistical evidence for spatio-temporal structures around a maximum of 4 km and six months. These aggregations lose strength when the spatial and temporal distances increase. At short time lags after a wildfire (〈1 month), the probability of another fire occurrence is high at any distance in the range of 0–16 km. When considering larger time lags (up to two years), the probability of fire occurrence is high only at short distances (>3 km). These aggregated patterns vary depending on location in Spain. Wildfires seem to aggregate within fewer days (heat waves) in warm and dry Mediterranean regions than in milder Atlantic areas (bimodal fire season). Wildfires aggregate spatially over shorter distances in diverse, fragmented landscapes with many small and complex patches. Urban interfaces seem to spatially concentrate fire occurrence, while wildland-agriculture interfaces correlate with larger aggregates.