Daniel Alaniz-Lumbreras

Grafting of multiwalled carbon nanotubes with chicken feather keratin

Keratin, obtained from chicken feathers, was grafted on the surface of commercially available carbon nanotubes. The original procedure developed allows a covalent interaction between some specific chemical groups characteristic of the keratin, with some functional groups introduced on purpose on the surface of the nanotubes, as revealed by infrared and Raman spectroscopies, which also allowed to determine structural changes introduced during the process, such as crystallinity, which lead to changes in other properties, as well.

A LED-based smart illumination system for studying plant growth

A smart illumination system for greenhouses and growing rooms capable of controlling the quantity and quality of light emitted by a number of LEDs is described. The system uses lamps containing blue and red LEDs programmed to emit various spectra at sixteen different frequencies and ten different pulse widths. The performance of the system is evaluated by determining the effect of pulsed light emission at different frequencies with a pulse width of 50% on tomato plants (Lycopersicon esculentum). The results show that low frequencies (0.1, 1, 10 Hz) have higher quantum efficiency in photosystem II compared to higher frequencies (50 and 100 kHz) and continuous light. They also show that the electron transport rate decreases when the frequency of pulses increases.

A 2D continuous wavelet transform method for InSAR phase-maps denoising

Analysis of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) phase–maps with large wide band is still a challenging problem that requires the development of robust methods. This paper presents a 2–D Continuous Wavelet Transform method for denoising InSAR phase-maps. Owing to its high directionality, sensitivity and anisotropy, multiresolution analysis with 2–D Continuous Wavelet Transform (2–D CWT) is potentially a useful tool to construct appropriate filtering algorithms for detecting and identifying images with specific features, transient information content, or other properties. The 2-D Gabor wavelets naturally model the phase fringes, which means that can properly reconstruct the image. We describe the theoretical basis of the proposed technique and some experimental results with real InSAR phase–maps. As can be verified the proposal is robust and effective.

Evolutionary Algorithms in Modelling of Biosystems

Globally there is a land area of 13000 million ha, of which the area used for agricultural production is 1500 million ha (Naciones Unidas sobre el Desarrollo de los Recursos Hidricos en el mundo [NUDRHM], 2006), that is 12% of the total surface. Because the productivity of the agricultural sector is reduced, in general, the intensive production in controlled environments is an alternative to increase productivity in the aforementioned sector. For this reason, the use of greenhouses for agricultural production has increased in recent years. In the world, currently some 265,000 hectares are cultivated in greenhouses. Asia, with more than 138,000, represents at this moments the leading world power in intensive production under plastic cover. In the second place, with 95,000 ha, the Mediterranean basin is placed. Northern Europe (16,000 ha) and the American Continent (15,600 ha) share the rest. Holland remains the maximum exponent in agriculture under high-tech cover, especially so that which refers to crystal greenhouses. The crop inside greenhouse allows to obtain productions of better quality and higher yields, at any time of the year, while it permits extending the cycle of farming, enabling production in the most difficult times of the year and getting better prices. Due to the benefits that provide crops inside greenhouse, crops should have a controlled microclimate using different systems to regulate environmental conditions, limiting the excesses and filling shortcomings in terms of crop needs, in order to take place in every moment the optimal conditions of different stages of plant development. In addition to the advantages that production has in controlled environments it is important to reduce production costs, such as heating costs, irrigation and fertilization. To achieve this it is necessary to have a system that controls the environment inside the greenhouse that allows improving production and crop quality, product quality, time of the production process and improving production costs. Moreover, the system should allow the farmer to have sufficient information about requirements and changes observed over time in crop development. These control systems are based on mathematical models that describe the behavior of variables, such as air temperature, the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) and absolute humidity. Therefore, to improve the productivity of the crop under greenhouse it is necessary to study the process