Structure and research performance of Spanish universities

The aim of this paper is to describe Spanish universities by means of structural, input and output indicators, to explore the relationship between those indicators and to analyse university behaviour in different dimensions. Seniority of the universities and environmental conditions are taken into account, together with input and output indicators, as well as others related to the networks and links established. Our results will contribute to the knowledge of the university research system in Spain, producing data that could be useful for research management at the institutional, regional and national level.     

Characterization of the frying process of fresh and blanched potato strips using response surface methodology

r ² was better and the lack of fit was not significant, although high-temperature short-time blanching before frying resulted in loss of firmness and discolouring, and increased the percentage of oil retained by the strips, causing sensorial quality loss. Received: 4 October 1999 / Revised version: 15 December 1999     

Modeling adsorption-desorption processes of Cu on edge and planar sites of montmorillonite

The effect of the ionic strength on adsorption of Cu on calcium montmorillonite was studied at concentrations ranging from 31 to 516 microM. An adsorption model was employed in the analysis of the data. When the background electrolyte was NaClO4, the ionic exchange was suppressed at 0.5 M concentration, and Cu adsorption took place on edge sites, reaching a plateau at about 24 mmol/kg. A further increase in ionic strength did not have any effect on Cu adsorption, suggesting that the heavy metal was adsorbed by inner-sphere complexes on the edge sites of the clay. A binding coefficient for Cu2+ on the edge sites K = 2 x 10(4) M(-1) was determined, indicating very high affinity of Cu2+ for these sites. When the electrolyte used was NaCl, the amounts of Cu adsorbed were reduced. The model predicted well the adsorption data by considering the adsorption of CuCl+ species. Adsorption-desorption processes of Cu on calcium montmorillonite in media of 0.01 and 0.1 M NaCl showed hysteresis. Model calculations also predict the desorption fairly well. According to the model, the hysteresis is mainly attributed to the heterogeneity of sites for the adsorption of Cu. The hysteresis arising from the planar sites is largely due to reduced competition of ion species for adsorption and enhancement in the magnitude of the surface potential.     

On Dynamic Distribution of Private Keys over MANETs

Identity-Based cryptography has been proposed in mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) to provide security. However, the figure of the Private Key Generator (PKG) is not adequate in the MANET setting, since it may not be reachable by all nodes, can fail during the life-time of the protocol or can even be attacked, compromising the whole system. Previous works distribute the task of the PKG among a set of nodes by means of a secret sharing scheme.In this paper we propose an efficient solution to emulate in a dynamic and distributed way the role of the PKG in so that even new nodes joining the network are able to issue shares of the master key of an Identity-Based scheme. In this way, the distributed PKG spreads dynamically among the nodes as the network increases. Furthermore, the techniques we propose may be suitable for other protocols over MANETs.     

A cooperative-ARQ protocol with frame combining

This article presents a low coordination overhead cooperative Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) scheme with an integrated frame combiner, which exploits space diversity and cooperation between neighbouring nodes. A comparison between cooperation with and without frame combiner is also performed. In channels with a strong Line of Sight (LOS) component and low Signal-to-Noise ratio (SNR), the efficiency of the proposed protocol is many times higher than for other ARQ schemes. For non-LOS scenarios, the cooperative ARQ without frame combiner achieves the best efficiency results, and the overhead introduced by the frame combiner mechanism leads to results that can be even below the classical ARQ mechanism. In AWGN channels, the saturation throughput of the proposed scheme integrated into a IEEE 802.11 DCF based MAC is also studied. When the number of active stations is high, the cooperative ARQ without frame combiner shows to be the best option, while for light network loads, the presented scheme performs better.