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This paper analyses the intercooperation between public administration, small agricultural producers and the supermarket cooperative Eroski in the Basque and Navarre to promote a local agrifood system. Through a case study with 22 interviews with different members of the system, certain advantages and limitations of intercooperation are identified. The retailer emerges as the main agent with the potential to drive the supply of the local agro-livestock sector and promote its professionalisation through the formation of agricultural cooperatives and other associative networks. The relevance of a correct organisational culture alignment between the retailer and its suppliers and the influence of codependence and power imbalances between these two parties are highlighted. The case offers clues to other retailers who are interested in improving their local positioning, to small local producers wishing to develop their business in a sustainable way with large scale distribution, and to public institutions wishing to promote local agrifood systems in collaboration with large retailers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mediaeval historiographical memory of the Crusades in the Kingdom of Navarre is unique precisely because two of its monarchs, the Counts of Champagne—Theobald I and II—actively participated in the Crusader campaigns during 1239–1241 and in 1270, respectively. Despite the importance of the Crusades which, starting from the early twelfth century, also encompassed the connection of this kingdom with Jerusalem's paradigms of the warrior and religious pilgrimage, it can be asserted that there are scarcely any traces of narrative communication in Navarre about the Crusades, either politically or ideologically. This paper analyses the question of documentation and communication about the Crusades from the study of the chronicles of the Kingdom of Navarre in the Late Middle Ages. The purpose is to identify the characteristics and keys of the texts, dissimilar to the welcoming impact of the Crusades in Hispanic and European political, cultural and religious spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the politicisation process that took place in the Hispanic monarchy towards the end of the Ancien Régime, with a special focus on analysing the actors involved in the Bourbon reformism. Our approach enables us to overcome the "upward politicisation/downward politicisation" dichotomy which is commonplace in current historiography. Based on this approach, we propose to reconstruct the connections between these actors and the circles in which modern forms of politics arose. Said connections transformed these actors culturally, and distanced them from the non-politicised culture of traditional communities. In that sense, throughout the 18th century the reformist endeavours of the crown were a major driver of politicisation but affected only a minority, coming as they did before the age of massive politicisation in the 19th and 20th centuries. We take a detailed look at the case of the traditional societies of the Basque Country and Navarre to demonstrate the scope of this first politicisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Forensic entomology applies the knowledge of arthropods to obtain useful information for the resolution of forensic investigations. In legal medicine, one of the methods used for the dating of death is the faunal succession, which is based on the orderly and predictable changes of the species associated with a corpse over time. The potential of insects for this purpose has been known for more than seven centuries, but mites are only currently being incorporated. Mites can provide useful information on the time and place of death because: they are a very diverse group, ubiquitous, abundant, and frequent; they contribute to the faunal succession; they are indicators of location and transfer of the corpse; they can be present in unfavorable conditions or environments for insects; they complement the information obtained from insects; and they are tracking evidence. Due to the absence of knowledge regarding the sarcosaprophagous fauna in the Mediterranean region, it is necessary to highlight the diversity of insects, together with their phoretic mites, present in decomposing animal organic matter, and their interaction network in this region, in order that the results obtained can be applied in future forensic investigations and contribute to the estimation of the time and place of death. The potential of insects for forensic investigations has been known for more than 700 years. However, arthropods such as mites could also play a role in these investigations. The information obtained from insects, together with their phoretic mites, is of special interest in terms of estimating the time and geographical location of death. This paper presents the first interaction network between phoretic mites and their host insects in Navarra. It also reports the first time that an interaction network was applied to animal remains of forensic relevance. The data reveal the degrees of specificity of the interactions established, the biological and ecological characteristics of the mites at the time of association, and factors that played important roles in the mites' dispersion. Fauna was collected using 657 traps baited with 20 g of pig carrion over a year. Only 0.6% of insects collected carried phoretic mites. The network comprised 312 insects (275 beetles, 37 flies) and 1533 mites and was analyzed using various packages of the R programming language. We contribute new host insect records for 15 mites, 3 new records of insects as hosts, 5 new mite records for the Iberian Peninsula, and 2 new mites records and 8 new insect records for Navarra. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trepanation is considered one of the oldest surgical procedures in the world, of which the earliest evidence goes back to the Mesolithic. Over 130 cases of trepanated crania have been documented in the recent prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula, one of the areas with the highest number of cases. This paper analyses and discusses a new case from northern Spain. The cranium was found in the site of La Saga, Cáseda, Navarre, a small tomb where nine individuals were simultaneously placed at the end of the Bronze Age. It belongs to an adult female and displays a pentagonal hole in the central area of the cranial vault over the sagittal suture. The pentagonal shape of the injury, its regular outline, and the presence of 10 fusiform and two rounded grooves suggest that the bone was intentionally removed by means of cutting and leverage, a technique documented in another example from the Iberian Peninsula. Neither cranial lesions nor pathological evidence have been identified to justify the surgical procedure. Furthermore, the case is exceptional due to the presence of superficial and parallel cut marks in longitudinal and transversal directions across the parietal and temporal bones, unequivocally associated with scalping practice, and which would be performed prior to the trepanation in order to facilitate it. The absence of any kind of healing or bone regeneration points towards the death of the individual during the procedure. Together with the presence of marks of violence and manipulation of the skeletal remains of some individuals buried in the same grave, this leads us to propose that the trepanation was possibly performed to heal a previous trauma resulting from a violent conflict that caused the death of this and eight other individuals from the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One constraint when dealing with food security problems is the absence of measurement tools that allow for mitigation strategies to be targeted on each region individually. The elasticities can be used as a good exploratory instrument of food security. This paper presents a proposal for measuring the food insecurity dimensions of access and stability, integrating the values of the different kinds of elasticities. The methodology was applied to Spain, using data from nine groups of protein-rich foods of animal origin during the 2004-2015 period in 17 regions. The results suggest that, as regards foods rich in animal proteins, Navarra and Galicia are the regions with the highest food insecurity, and pork meat is the most insecure food product. Comparisons can be carried out between and within regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disease risk maps for areal unit data are often estimated from Poisson mixed models with local spatial smoothing, for example by incorporating random effects with a conditional autoregressive prior distribution. However, one of the limitations is that local discontinuities in the spatial pattern are not usually modelled, leading to over-smoothing of the risk maps and a masking of clusters of hot/coldspot areas. In this paper, we propose a novel two-stage approach to estimate and map disease risk in the presence of such local discontinuities and clusters. We propose approaches in both spatial and spatio-temporal domains, where for the latter the clusters can either be fixed or allowed to vary over time. In the first stage, we apply an agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithm to training data to provide sets of potential clusters, and in the second stage, a two-level spatial or spatio-temporal model is applied to each potential cluster configuration. The superiority of the proposed approach with regard to a previous proposal is shown by simulation, and the methodology is applied to two important public health problems in Spain, namely stomach cancer mortality across Spain and brain cancer incidence in the Navarre and Basque Country regions of Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When monitoring time series of remote sensing data, it is advisable to fill gaps, i.e., missing or distorted data, caused by atmospheric effects or technical failures. In this paper, a new method for filling these gaps called interpolation of the mean anomalies (IMA) is proposed and compared with some competitors. The method consists of: 1) defining a neighborhood for the target image from previous and subsequent images across previous and subsequent years; 2) computing the mean target image of the neighborhood; 3) estimating the anomalies in the target image by subtracting the mean image from the target image; 4) filtering the anomalies; 5) averaging the anomalies over a predefined window; 6) interpolating the averaged anomalies; and 7) adding the interpolated anomalies to the mean image. To assess the performance of the IMA method, both a real example and a simulation study are conducted with a time series of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) TERRA and MODIS AQUA images captured over the region of Navarre (Spain) from 2011 to 2013. We analyze the land surface temperature (LST) day and night, and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). In the simulation study, seven sizes of artificial clouds are randomly introduced to each image in the studied time series. The square root of the mean-squared prediction error (RMSE) between the original and the filled data is chosen as an indicator of the goodness of fit. The results show that the IMA method outperforms Timesat, Hants, and Gapfill (GF) in filling small, moderate, and big cloud gaps in both the day and night LST and NDVI data, reaching RMSE reductions of up to 23%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The retail pharmaceutical sector has been characterized in the last decades by profound deregulation policies, aiming at fostering the entry process of new competitors in the market to improve users' access and quality of services. This paper explores the effects of such reforms in the Navarre Region (Spain), where the existing entry restrictions were relaxed in 2000. Using a GIS-based methodology and very disaggregated real data, we show that the massive entry of new pharmacies improved users' access in urban and rural areas but led to intense agglomeration of competitors within limited distances, thus failing to result in a more fair spatial competition. We then propose solving a mathematical programming model that can support policy-makers for an ex-ante assessment of the (spatial) effects determined by changing regulatory frameworks. Results from our computational experiments demonstrate that, if adequately oriented at guaranteeing predefined minimum profitability to new entrants, spatial deregulation policies may result in win-win scenarios for both users and pharmacies. Indeed, the obtained solutions (almost) perfectly replicate the current accessibility conditions while ensuring more equitable market shares' distribution. • We analyze the effects of deregulation policies in the retail pharmaceutical sector. • We investigate the real case study of the Navarre Region (Spain). • We observe that deregulation led to poor users' accessibility improvements and unfair competition. • We propose a mathematical model to determine optimal pharmacies' locations. • Guaranteeing minimum profitability to new entrants leads to more fair spatial competition under deregulation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The retail pharmaceutical sector has been characterized in the last decades by profound deregulation policies, aiming at fostering the entry process of new competitors in the market to improve users' access and quality of services. This paper explores the effects of such reforms in the Navarre Region (Spain), where the existing entry restrictions were relaxed in 2000. Using a GIS-based methodology and very disaggregated real data, we show that the massive entry of new pharmacies improved users' access in urban and rural areas but led to intense agglomeration of competitors within limited distances, thus failing to result in a more fair spatial competition. We then propose solving a mathematical programming model that can support policy-makers for an ex-ante assessment of the (spatial) effects determined by changing regulatory frameworks. Results from our computational experiments demonstrate that, if adequately oriented at guaranteeing predefined minimum profitability to new entrants, spatial deregulation policies may result in win-win scenarios for both users and pharmacies. Indeed, the obtained solutions (almost) perfectly replicate the current accessibility conditions while ensuring more equitable market shares' distribution. • We analyze the effects of deregulation policies in the retail pharmaceutical sector. • We investigate the real case study of the Navarre Region (Spain). • We observe that deregulation led to poor users' accessibility improvements and unfair competition. • We propose a mathematical model to determine optimal pharmacies' locations. • Guaranteeing minimum profitability to new entrants leads to more fair spatial competition under deregulation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a directional distance model for efficient resource allocation when there is a centralized decision maker who oversees all units. The model is designed to allocate grants from an upper-tier government to the municipalities under its jurisdiction. Local governments employ the grants together with levied local taxes to provide services to their citizens. The objective of our formulation is to optimize grants allocation across municipalities taking into account efficiency, effectiveness and horizontal fiscal equity criteria. The model easily allows the setting of alternative priorities of the central decision maker, thus permitting quantification of the trade-off between the potential increase in the provision of local services and its associated cost. The model is applied to the allocation of current grants in the autonomous community of Navarre in northern Spain. • A directional distance model for centralized resource allocation and efficient target setting is proposed. • The model is designed to allocate grants from an upper-tier government to municipalities under its jurisdiction. • Grant allocation across municipalities achieves financial sufficiency and horizontal equity or fiscal equalization. • The model is applied to simulate the allocation of grants to municipalities by the regional government of Navarre, Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The usefulness of the parameters (e.g., slope, aspect) derived from a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) is limited by its accuracy. In this paper, a thematic-like quality control (class-based) of aspect and slope classes is proposed. A product can be compared against a reference dataset, which provides the quality requirements to be achieved, by comparing the product proportions of each class with those of the reference set. If a distance between the product proportions and the reference proportions is smaller than a small enough positive tolerance, which is fixed by the user, it will be considered that the degree of similarity between the product and the reference set is acceptable, and hence that its quality meets the requirements. A formal statistical procedure, based on a hypothesis test, is developed and its performance is analyzed using simulated data. It uses the Hellinger distance between the proportions. The application to the slope and aspect is illustrated using data derived from a 2 × 2 m DEM (reference) and 5 × 5 m DEM in Allo (province of Navarra, Spain). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The leather industry is an example of circular economy, as it uses meat industry wastes (hides and skins) as raw materials. However, the process of tanning also produces a substantial amount of organic waste. This research project studies the case of a tannery located in Navarra, in the North of Spain, committed to a circular economy and environmental protection, which produces around 2 tons per day of leather shavings and buffing dust and 10 tons per day of discarded bullock hair. The study tackles the challenge of whether the discarded waste material might be used as a new resource for products or processes related with the building sector. Three different types of solid wastes (chromium free tanned shavings, chromium buffing dust, and discarded hair) were categorized and analyzed. The paper examines two proposals to reuse the weekly tons of leftovers (both shavings and hair) produced by the tannery, instead of taking them to an external composting plant or to the landfill. The first exploration path proposed to use the discarded material to obtain biomass for the company's thermal production plant. After establishing the calorific values of the discarded hair and the shavings, these were found to offer competitive value in comparison with the biomass products used at present, such as wood pellets. The second approach to the waste upcycling involved seeking new products in the building sector, acoustic panels in this case. After a mechanical behavior analysis, different binders were blended with diverse proportions and particle sizes of shavings to obtain samples for a sound absorption coefficient determination. The results show coefficients close to those of cork panels or carpets. This experimental experience serves as a preliminary study for the use of leather industry wastes in the construction sector. • Further circular economy in leather industry: two proposals for industrial symbiosis. • Holistic approach for waste material recycling challenge. • Recycling tools for a market of more than US$100 billion per year. • Use of waste as biomass might reduce by more than half the dependency on natural gas. • Competitive performance of leather by-products as acoustic absorption panels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detecting change-points and trends are common tasks in the analysis of remote sensing data. Over the years, many different methods have been proposed for those purposes, including (modified) Mann–Kendall and Cox–Stuart tests for detecting trends; and Pettitt, Buishand range, Buishand U, standard normal homogeneity (Snh), Meanvar, structure change (Strucchange), breaks for additive season and trend (BFAST), and hierarchical divisive (E.divisive) for detecting change-points. In this paper, we describe a simulation study based on including different artificial, abrupt changes at different time-periods of image time series to assess the performances of such methods. The power of the test, type I error probability, and mean absolute error (MAE) were used as performance criteria, although MAE was only calculated for change-point detection methods. The study reveals that if the magnitude of change (or trend slope) is high, and/or the change does not occur in the first or last time-periods, the methods generally have a high power and a low MAE. However, in the presence of temporal autocorrelation, MAE raises, and the probability of introducing false positives increases noticeably. The modified versions of the Mann–Kendall method for autocorrelated data reduce/moderate its type I error probability, but this reduction comes with an important power diminution. In conclusion, taking a trade-off between the power of the test and type I error probability, we conclude that the original Mann–Kendall test is generally the preferable choice. Although Mann–Kendall is not able to identify the time-period of abrupt changes, it is more reliable than other methods when detecting the existence of such changes. Finally, we look for trend/change-points in land surface temperature (LST), day and night, via monthly MODIS images in Navarre, Spain, from January 2001 to December 2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we consider the D2D (Device-to-Device) communication taking place between Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) elements operating in vegetation environments in order to achieve the radio channel characterization at 2.4 GHz, focusing on the radio links blocked by oak and pine trees modelled from specimens found in a real recreation area located within forest environments. In order to fit and validate a radio channel model for this type of scenarios, both measurements and simulations by means of an in-house developed 3D Ray Launching algorithm have been performed, offering as outcomes the path loss and multipath information of the scenarios under study for forest immersed isolated trees and non-isolated trees. The specific forests, composed of thick in-leaf trees, are called Orgi Forest and Chandebrito, located respectively in Navarre and Galicia, Spain. A geometrical and dielectric model of the trees were created and introduced in the simulation software. We concluded that the scattering produced by the tree can be divided into two zones with different dominant propagation mechanisms: an obstructed line of sight (OLoS) zone far from the tree fitting a log-distance model, and a diffraction zone around the edge of the tree. 2D planes of delay spread value are also presented which similarly reflects the proposed two-zone model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]