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Los países de América Latina contienen una tradición hispánica que posee dos características problemáticas: por un lado, un sistema político pensado para un presidente fuerte; por otro lado, una realidad socio-económica que genera inestabilidad en el sistema político. Argentina es un ejemplo representativo: desde la concepción alberdiana en las "Bases y Puntos de Partida para la Organización Política de la República Argentina" (1), el Poder Ejecutivo ha estado pensado para convertir al presidente en un rey sin corona. Es decir, en un actor político que tenga las herramientas suficientes para enfrentar la crónica inestabilidad y desafíos a su poder que llevaban a cabo diversos grupos de interés.La literatura ha comenzado a alcanzar un consenso sobre las características mayormente negativas que ha tenido para el desarrollo argentino la construcción de un hiper presidencialismo (2). Sin embargo, esa misma literatura ha demostrado un peculiar desinterés para argumentar las bondades del parlamentarismo. En la lógica que emana de los críticos del hiper presidencialismo argentino, las virtudes del parlamentarismo se reducen meramente a expresar lo opuesto del presidencialismo. La dinámica es particularmente nociva porque las criticas que se realizan del hiper presidencialismo argentino son rigurosas. Luego, existe el peligro de una confusión analítica importante: pensar que el parlamentarismo es bueno o mejor para Argentina porque el presidencialismo ha demostrado ser muy malo. Paso seguido, la pregunta no debiera ser si el presidencialismo es bueno o malo para Argentina sino, en cambio, si hay una mejor alternativa. ¿Por qué el parlamentarismo sería mejor que el presidencialismo de mala calidad que padece? ¿Cuáles son las características relevantes de la economía política argentina? ¿Están ellas relacionadas con el sistema presidencialista o lo trascienden? Por ejemplo, podemos mencionar que el asimétrico y estable federalismo, los distintos peronismos y la complejidad del área metropolitana de Buenos Aires (donde conviven 14 de los 40 millones de habitantes) son características de la economía política argentina que poco o nada tiene que ver con las estructurales dificultades que refleja su hiper-presidencialismo (3).Sin embargo, surge una pregunta subsecuente y aún mas relevante: asumiendo que las mencionadas características (federalismo, peronismo, complejidad del área metropolitana buenos aires (AMBA)) no están directamente relacionadas al sistema presidencialista, ¿Podríamos pensar que la aparición del parlamentarismo profundizaría aún mas esos problemas? Para ello, recurrimos a variables políticas e institucionales existentes. ¿Cuáles son? Por ejemplo, una representación parlamentaria de 258 diputados, un sistema electoral que sobre representa a las provincias chicas y las mencionadas condiciones: un conurbano hiper-poblado y un movimiento político (el peronismo), que posee distintas expresiones que cooperan o se enfrentan dependiendo de la coyuntura. Este ultimo punto es clave: el peronismo se ha consolidado desde 1983 como la expresión política-electoral principal de la Argentina (4). A partir de la matriz presidencialismo-parlamentarismo, podemos pensar cuales son los incentivos que uno y otro sistema han generado o generarán en el peronismo.En primer lugar, vemos que la vigencia de un sistema hiper-presidencialista no construyó los suficientes incentivos a todas las vertientes peronistas como para permanecer bajo el ala protectora del presidente todo poderoso. La pregunta que sigue es: ¿Si el hiper presidencialismo no construyó los suficientes incentivos para permanecer en la coalición gobernante, no generaría un sistema parlamentario aún menos incentivos a permanecer en la coalición gobernante para este tipo de movimientos políticos atrapatodos y populares?Otra manera de preguntar lo mismo sería: ¿Hay una relación entre peronismo, presidencialismo y parlamentarismo? Si es así, ¿Cuál es? Mas aún, la relación entre peronismo y sistema político de gobierno (presidencialismo y parlamentarismo) no sería analíticamente anterior a la correcta percepción del hiper-presidencialismo como problema en la polis argentina?Inestabilidad, hiper presidencialismo y parlamentarismo¿La inestabilidad política es anterior o posterior al hiper presidencialismo? La historia política argentina contemporánea nos informa que el hiper presidencialismo ha estado analíticamente ligado a la inestabilidad porque, cuando un líder poderoso se debilita o es percibido como débil, el resto de los actores políticos relevantes no encuentra mecanismos institucionales para dialogar (y eventualmente co-gobernar), por lo que se generan incentivos para profundizar una inestabilidad que, eventualmente, degenerará en la caída del presidente. En este sentido, el hiper presidencialismo sería la causa y la inestabilidad la consecuencia. Por ende, argumentan, es necesario cambiar la causa principal para modificar la consecuencia, es decir la inestabilidad política argentina.Paso seguido, es necesario cuestionar la lógica de este razonamiento. Por un lado, aceptamos como valida la causalidad hiper presidencialismo-inestabilidad. Sin embargo, marcamos que es una causalidad analíticamente incompleta. Una causalidad mas rigurosa sería 1) inestabilidad 2) hiper-presidencialismo 3) inestabilidad. Si esta dinámica es correcta y la primera que mencionamos (hiper-presidencialismo-inestabilidad) es consecuentemente incompleta, luego, modificar el hiper-presidencialismo no llevaría necesariamente a maniatar o abolir la inestabilidad. Mas aún, podemos pensar un escenario donde la introducción de un régimen parlamentario potenciaría esa estructural inestabilidad política.Para ello, debemos primero comprender la dinámica inestabilidad-hiper presidencialismo e hiper presidencialismo (5) -inestabilidad. Como mencionamos, en esta lógica el hiper presidencialismo ayudaría a generar inestabilidad política porque no permitiría la construcción de un ámbito de negociación entre los actores políticos relevantes cuando una crisis o sucesivos errores del presidente generaran un marco de debilidad. En las democracias presidencialistas sólidas como EE.UU., Chile, Uruguay o Costa Rica, un presidente que se ha debilitado puede recurrir a la oposición para dialogar. Ese dialogo podrá o no ayudar a solucionar la crisis, pero la alternativa existe realmente como tal. Dado que los actores políticos en el gobierno y en la oposición perciben al otro como leal en su respectivo rol, el ámbito de negociación existe, independientemente sea exitoso o no.En cambio, la dinámica previa en el ejercicio del poder en Argentina genera des-incentivos para que los actores políticos relevantes en la oposición perciban que un ámbito de negociación no será utilizado por el presidente para negociar genuinamente sino para encontrar un mecanismo para volver a ser un "hiper-presidente". Por ende, para quienes defienden la necesidad de una reforma, la implementación de un sistema parlamentario obligaría, de alguna manera, al primer ministro a negociar cuando se genera una crisis y, mas importante aún, a respetar lo pactado ya que, si así no fuera, los miembros del parlamento tendrían la capacidad legal de revocarle inmediatamente el mandato.Sin embargo, un ejemplo histórico reciente ayuda a refutar esta posible dinámica. En marzo de 2008, el gobierno presidido por Cristina Fernández de Kirchner intentó imponer nuevos impuestos a las exportaciones agropecuarias. La medida generó fuerte rechazo y comenzó un período de 4 meses donde los actores políticos y sociales confrontaron fuertemente. Por primera vez desde su llegada al poder, el kirchnerismo enfrentaba a una coalición articulada. Por un lado, había una batalla política y cultural. Por otro lado, el conflicto ofrece la oportunidad de comparar retrospectivamente un hipotético funcionamiento de un sistema parlamentario.Cristina Fernández de Kirchner alcanzó el 46% de los votos en las elecciones presidenciales de octubre de 2007 y el 54% en las elecciones presidenciales de octubre de 2011. Es decir, hoy sabemos que entre 2007 y 2011 se vivió en Argentina un proceso político que mayoritariamente satisfizo a la ciudadanía. Cristina ha obtenido en su reelección un porcentaje de votos solo superado por el caudillo Juan Domingo Perón. Sin embargo, ¿Qué habría pasado con Cristina si en Argentina hubiera estado vigente un sistema parlamentario? Cristina hubiera caído con el voto negativo del congreso a la ley que incrementaba los impuestos a las exportaciones agropecuarias. Esta explicación no es contra-fáctico. Efectivamente, en las horas posteriores a la votación en el Congreso, el líder del kirchnerismo y esposo de la presidenta, el ex presidente Néstor Kirchner, amenazó con hacer renunciar a su esposa. El punto no es anecdótico en cuanto semejante amenaza habría sido innecesaria si hubiera estado vigente un sistema parlamentario, ya que el gobierno habría caído, quisiera Kirchner irse o no, por propia lógica de ese sistema de gobierno. Es decir, hoy sabemos que el sistema presidencialista salvó a la actual administración de haber caído en julio de 2008 y, por ende, no haber respetado la voluntad popular que, hemos comprobado, mayoritariamente quiere que la administración en curso continúe hasta el año 2015. La profunda crisis de 2008 en Argentina ayuda a comprender, a través de un contra-fáctico, que los problemas del parlamentarismo podrían ser incluso mayores a los (enormes) problemas que ha demostrado tener el presidencialismo.Podemos pensar el mismo punto desde otra perspectiva: supongamos por un momento que Argentina introdujera una reforma en las reglas del federalismo (sancionando, por ejemplo, una nueva ley de coparticipación, una nueva ley electoral que aboliera la sobre representación parlamentaria y una regionalización), una reforma estructural en el AMBA (generando incentivos para que la inmigración al conurbano se transformase en emigración hacia el interior del país). Por su parte, supongamos que el peronismo articula un profundo cambio en su dinámica, dejando de ser un partido atrapatodo y deviniendo un actor que respete el juego de la alternancia en los tres niveles de gobierno. Paso seguido, es posible ver que, asumiendo la existencia de estos 3 cambios estructurales en la economía política argentina, la posterior existencia de un régimen presidencialista o parlamentario no sería irrelevante pero si secundaria. El ejemplo de la existencia de estas 3 características estructurales de la Argentina alcanza para comprobar que el hiper presidencialismo puede ser causa de determinadas inestabilidades pero que no es causa de otras variables relevantes (como las mencionadas) que han devenido factores mas estructurales de la baja calidad de la democracia argentina. Si la inestabilidad política no solo se encuentra (analíticamente) después sino también antes de la aparición del hiper presidencialismo, la decisión de modificar un factor o sistema que es consecuencia de un problema no solo no solucionará la situación sino que, incluso, podría empeorarla. (1) Es posible acceder a una versión online en http://es.wikisource.org/wiki/Bases_y_puntos_de_partida_para_la_organizaci%C3%B3n_pol%C3%ADtica_de_la_Rep%C3%BAblica_Argentina(2) Es posible escuchar una provocadora crítica desarrollada por el Profesor Martin Bohmer al papel de Alberdi en la construcción de la Argentina moderna, en tanto impulsor del hiper presidencialismo, en: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR_KBLrp-Vk(3) La Universidad Di Tella posee un Centro de Investigaciones sobre Federalismo y Política Provincial (CIFEPRO), donde puede accederse a trabajos de uno de los principales expertos en el tema, Carlos Gervasoni. Ver http://www.utdt.edu/ver_contenido.php?id_contenido=5833&id_item_menu=11999. Por su parte, la problemática del conurbano bonaerense es tratada por el profesor Javier Auyero en "La política de los pobres. Las prácticas clientelistas del peronismo". Editorial Manantial. Buenos Aires, 2001. CIPPEC y la Fundación Metropolitana han publicado el libro "La gran buenos aires", editado por Antonio Cicioni. Buenos Aires, 2011.(4) Sobre el peronismo, ver el artículo escrito por Luis Alberto Romero "La democracia peronista", enhttp://www.lanacion.com.ar/1423249-la-democracia-peronista. Romero ha escrito en los últimos meses en el Diario La Nación sobre el peronismo como problema estructural de la Argentina. Por su parte, ver Novaro, Marcos: "Historia de la Argentina Contemporánea. De Peron a Kirchner". Editorial Edhasa. Buenos Aires-Argentina. 2005. Halperin Donghi, Tulio: "La larga agonía de la argentina peronista". Editorial Ariel. Buenos Aires. 1994. Altamirano, Carlos: "Bajo el Signo de las Masas (1943-1973)" y Sarlo, Beatriz: "La batalla de las ideas (1943-1973)", Tomos VII de la colección Biblioteca del Pensamiento Argentino. Editorial Ariel. Buenos Aires. 2001. Un clásico libro es Page, Joseph: "Perón. Primera Parte (1895-1952)". Javier Vergara Editores. Buenos Aires. 1984 y Page, Joseph: "Perón. Segunda Parte (1952-1974)". Javier Vergara Editores. Buenos Aires. 1984. Horowicz, Alejandro: "Los cuatro peronismos". Editorial Edhasa. Buenos Aires.2005. Sidicaro Ricardo: "Los tres peronismos. Estado y Poder Económico". Siglo XXI Editores. Buenos Aires. 2010. Torre, Juan Carlos (editor): "Introducción a los años peronistas", en Nueva Historia Argentina, Tomo VIII. Editorial Sudamericana. Buenos Aires. 2002. *Profesor Depto. Estudios Internacionales, FACS - Universidad ORT Uruguay.Master en Filosofía Política, London School of Economics and Political Science.

We report the discovery of a Neptune-like planet (LP 714-47 b, P = 4.05204 d, mb = 30.8 ± 1.5Mpdbl, Rb = 4.7 ± 0.3 Rpdbl) located in the "hot Neptune desert". Confirmation of the TESS Object of Interest (TOI 442.01) was achieved with radial-velocity follow-up using CARMENES, ESPRESSO, HIRES, iSHELL, and PFS, as well as from photometric data using TESS, Spitzer, and ground-based photometry from MuSCAT2, TRAPPIST-South, MONET-South, the George Mason University telescope, the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope network, the El Sauce telescope, the TÜBITAK National Observatory, the University of Louisville Manner Telescope, and WASP-South. We also present high-spatial resolution adaptive optics imaging with the Gemini Near-Infrared Imager. The low uncertainties in the mass and radius determination place LP 714-47 b among physically well-characterised planets, allowing for a meaningful comparison with planet structure models. The host star LP 714-47 is a slowly rotating early M dwarf (Teff = 3950 ± 51 K) with a mass of 0.59 ± 0.02Mpdbl and a radius of 0.58 ± 0.02Rpdbl. From long-term photometric monitoring and spectroscopic activity indicators, we determine a stellar rotation period of about 33 d. The stellar activity is also manifested as correlated noise in the radial-velocity data. In the power spectrum of the radial-velocity data, we detect a second signal with a period of 16 days in addition to the four-day signal of the planet. This could be shown to be a harmonic of the stellar rotation period or the signal of a second planet. It may be possible to tell the difference once more TESS data and radial-velocity data are obtained. © ESO 2020. ; CARMENES is an instrument for the Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman de Calar Alto (CAHA, Almeria, Spain). CARMENES is funded by the German Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), the European Union through FEDER/ERF FICTS-2011-02 funds, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Landessternwarte Konigstuhl, Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai, Institut fur Astrophysik Gottingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thuringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiologia and Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman), with additional contributions by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, the German Science Foundation through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and DFG Research Unit FOR2544 "Blue Planets around Red Stars", the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Wurttemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucia. Based on data from the CARMENES data archive at CAB (INTA-CSIC). We acknowledge the use of public TESS Alert data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office and at the TESS Science Processing Operations Center. This research has made use of the Exoplanet Follow-up Observation Program website, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center for the production of the SPOC data products. Some of the observations in the paper made use of the High-Resolution Imaging instrument Zorro. Zorro was funded by the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program and built at the NASA Ames Research Center by Steve B. Howell, Nic Scott, Elliott P. Horch, and Emmett Quigley. Zorro was mounted on the Gemini South telescope of the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF's OIR Lab, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), National Research Council (Canada), Agencia Nacional de Investigacion y Desarrollo (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnologia e Innovacion (Argentina), Ministerio da Ciencia, Tecnologia, Inovacoes e Comunicacoes (Brazil), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea). This work makes use of observations from the LCOGT network. This article is based on observations made with the MuSCAT2 instrument, developed by ABC, at Telescopio Carlos Sanchez operated on the island of Tenerife by the IAC in the Spanish Observatorio del Teide. This paper is also based on observations made in the Observatorios de Canarias del IAC with the Nordic Optical Telescope operated on the island of La Palma by NOTSA in the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos. Data were partly obtained with the MONET/South telescope of the MOnitoring NEtwork of Telescopes, funded by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, Essen, and operated by the Georg-August-Universitat Gottingen, the McDonald Observatory of the University of Texas at Austin, and the South African Astronomical Observatory. This research has made use of the NASA Exoplanet Archive, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. This research made use of Lightkurve, a Python package for Kepler and TESS data analysis (Lightkurve Collaboration 2018). We acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigacion of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades and the European FEDER/ERF funds through projects AYA2015-69350-C3-2-P, PGC2018098153-B-C31/C33, AYA2016-79425-C3-1/2/3-P, AYA2018-84089, BES-2017080769, ESP2016-80435-C2-1/2-R, ESP2017-87676-C5-1/2/5-R, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709), the Generalitat de Catalunya through CERCA programme, the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council through grant ST/P000592/1, the JSPS KAKENHI through grants 17H04574, JP18H01265, and 18H05439, and the JST PRESTO through grant JPMJPR1775, the "la Caixa" INPhINIT Fellowship Grant LCF/BQ/IN17/11620033 for Doctoral studies at Spanish Research Centres of Excellence, V.M.P. acknowledges support from NASA Grant NNX17AG24G, Support for this work was provided to J.K.T. by NASA through Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2-51399.001 awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555. The research leading to these results has received funding from the ARC grant for Concerted Research Actions, financed by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. TRAPPIST is funded by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (Fond National de la Recherche Scientifique, FNRS) under the grant FRFC 2.5.594.09.F, with the participation of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF). M.G. and E.J. are FNRS Senior Research Associates. S.D. acknowledges support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under Research Unit FOR2544 "Blue Planets around Red Stars", project no. RE 281/32-1. M.Z. acknowledges support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under DFG RE 1664/12-1 and Research Unit FOR2544 "Blue Planets around Red Stars", project no. RE 1664/14-1. M.S. was supported by the DFG Research Unit FOR2544 "Blue Planets around Red Stars", project no. RE 2694/4-1. I.J.M.C. and E.M. acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation through grant AST-1824644. B.B. thanks the European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant 757 448-PAMDORA) for their financial support. D.D. acknowledges support from NASA through Caltech/JPL grant RSA-1006130 and through the TESS Guest Investigator Program Grant 80NSSC19K1727. P.P. acknowledges support from NASA (16-APROBES16-0020 and the Exoplanet Exploration Program) and the National Science Foundation (Astronomy and Astrophysics grant 1716202), the Mt Cuba Astronomical Foundation, and George Mason University start-up and instructional equipment funds. The NASA Infrared Telescope Facility is operated by the University of Hawaii under contract NNH14CK55B with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. M.R.K is supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, grant No. DGE 1 339 067. M.Y. and H.V.S. thank to TUB.ITAK for a partial support in using T100 telescope with project number 19AT100-1474. J.N.W. thanks the Heising-Simons Foundation for support. D.H. acknowledges support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NSSC18K1585, 80NSSC19K0379), and the National Science Foundation (AST-1 717 000). T.D. acknowledges support from MIT's Kavli Institute as a Kavli postdoctoral fellow. This work made use of tpfplotter (developed by J. Lillo-Box, which also made use of the python packages astropy, lightkurve, matplotlib and numpy. Part of this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The authors wish to recognise and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Mauna Kea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. Finally, we thank the referee for detailed and helpful comments. ; Peer reviewed

Environmental interlinked problems such as human-induced land cover change, water scarcity, loss in soil fertility, and anthropogenic climate change are expected to affect the viability of agriculture and increase food insecurity in many developing countries. Climate change is certainly the most serious of these challenges for the twenty-first century. The poorest regions of the world – tropical West Africa included – are the most vulnerable due to their high dependence on climate and weather sensitive activities such as agriculture, and the widespread poverty that limits the institutional and economic capacities to adapt to the new stresses brought about by climate change. Climate change is already acting negatively on the poor smallholders of tropical West Africa whose livelihoods dependent mainly on rain-fed agriculture that remains the cornerstone of the economy in the region. Adaptation of the agricultural systems to climate change effects is, therefore, crucial to secure the livelihoods of these rural communities. Since information is a key for decision-making, it is important to provide well-founded information on the magnitude of the impacts in order to design appropriate and sustainable adaptation strategies. Considering the case of agricultural production in the Republic of Benin, this study aims at using large-scale climatic predictors to assess the potential impacts of past and future climate change on agricultural productivity at a country scale in West Africa. Climate signals from large-scale circulation were used because state-of-the art regional climate models (RCM) still do not perfectly resolve synoptic and mesoscale convective processes. It was hypothesised that in rain-fed systems with low investments in agricultural inputs, yield variations are widely governed by climatic factors. Starting with pineapple, a perennial fruit crops, the study further considered some annual crops such as cotton in the group of fibre crops, maize, sorghum and rice in the group of cereals, cowpeas and groundnuts belonging to the legume crops, and cassava and yams which are root and tuber crops. Thus the selected crops represented the three known groups of photosynthetic pathways (i.e. CAM, C3, and C4 plants). In the study, use was made of the historical agricultural yield statistics for the Republic of Benin, observed precipitation and mean near-surface air temperature data from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU TS 3.1) and the corresponding variables simulated by the regional climate model (RCM) REMO. REMO RCM was driven at its boundaries by the global climate model ECHAM 5. Simulations with different greenhouse gas concentrations (SRES-A1B and B1 emission scenarios) and transient land cover change scenarios for present-day and future conditions were considered. The CRU data were submitted to empirical orthogonal functions analysis over the north hemispheric part of Africa to obtain large-scale observed climate predictors and associated consistent variability modes. REMO RCM data for the same region were projected on the derived climate patterns to get simulated climate predictors. By means of cross-validated Model Output Statistics (MOS) approach combined with Bayesian model averaging (BMA) techniques, the observed climate predictors and the crop predictand were further on used to derive robust statistical relationships. The robust statistical crop models perform well with high goodness-of-fit coefficients (e.g. for all combined crop models: 0.49 ≤ R2 ≤ 0.99; 0.28 ≤ Brier-Skill-Score ≤ 0.90). Provided that REMO RCM captures the main features of the real African climate system and thus is able to reproduce its inter-annual variability, the time-independent statistical transfer functions were then used to translate future climate change signal from the simulated climate predictors into attainable crop yields/crop yield changes. The results confirm that precipitation and air temperature governed agricultural production in Benin in general, and particularly, pineapple yield variations are mainly influenced by temperature. Furthermore, the projected yield changes under future anthropogenic climate change during the first-half of the 21st century amount up to -12.5% for both maize and groundnuts, and -11%, -29%, -33% for pineapple, cassava, and cowpeas respectively. Meanwhile yield gain of up to +10% for sorghum and yams, +24% for cotton, and +39% for rice are expected. Over the time period 2001 – 2050, on average the future yield changes range between -3% and -13% under REMO SRES–B1 (GHG)+LCC, -2% and -11% under REMO SRES–A1B (GHG only),and -3% and -14% under REMO SRES–A1B (GHG)+LCC for pineapple, maize, sorghum, groundnuts, cowpeas and cassava. In the meantime for yams, cotton and rice, the average yield gains lie in interval of about +2% to +7% under REMO SRES–B1 (GHG)+LCC, +0.1% and +12% under REMO SRES–A1B (GHG only), and +3% and +10% under REMO SRES–A1B (GHG)+LCC. For sorghum, although the long-term average future yield depicts a reduction there are tendencies towards increasing yields in the future. The results also reveal that the increases in mean air temperature more than the changes in precipitation patterns are responsible for the projected yield changes. As well the results suggest that the reductions in pineapple yields cannot be attributed to the land cover/land use changes across sub-Saharan Africa. The production of groundnuts and in particular yams and cotton will profit from the on-going land use/land cover changes while the other crops will face detrimental effects. Henceforth, policymakers should take effective measures to limit the on-going land degradation processes and all other anthropogenic actions responsible for temperature increase. Biotechnological improvement of the cultivated crop varieties towards development of set of seed varieties adapted to hotter and dry conditions should be included in the breeding pipeline programs. Amongst other solutions, application of appropriate climate-smart agricultural practices and conservation agriculture are also required to offset the negative impacts of climate change in agriculture. ; In vielen Entwicklungsländern gefährden Umweltprobleme wie die tiefgreifende Veränderung der Landoberfläche, Wasserknappheit, Bodendegradation und der anthropogene Klimawandel die Leistung¬sfähigkeit der Landwirtschaft und erhöhen so das Risiko von Nahrungs-mittelknappheit. Von diesen miteinander verwobenen Bedrohungen ist der Klimawandel im 21. Jahrhundert sicherlich die bedeutendste. Die höchste Vulnerabilität weisen die ärmsten Regionen der Welt – unter anderen Westafrika – auf, sowohl wegen der großen Bedeutung von klima- und wettersensitiven Wirtschaftsektoren wie der Landwirtschaft als auch wegen der verbreiteten Armut. Diese schränkt die staatlichen und wirtschaftlichen Anpassungs¬kapazitäten an die neuen Herausforderungen durch den Klimawandel ein. Westafrikanische Kleinbauern, deren Lebensunterhalt wesentlich vom traditionellen Regenfeldbau – dem Eckpfeiler der regionalen Wirtschaft – abhängt, bekommen die negativen Auswirkungen bereits zu spüren. Die Adaption der agroökonomischen Systeme an den Klimawandel ist eine unbedingte Notwendigkeit für die Sicherung der Lebensgrundlage dieser ländlichen Gebiete. Da Wissen die Basis für Entscheidungen darstellt, sind belastbare Informationen über das Ausmaß der Auswirkungen wichtig, um angemessene und nachhaltige Anpassungsstrategien zu entwickeln. Am Beispiel der Republik Benin untersucht diese Studie das Potenzial von makroskaligen klimatischen Prädiktoren zur Erfassung und Quantifizierung des potentiellen Einflusses von beobachteten und künftigen Klimaänderungen auf die landwirtschaftliche Produktion eines westafrikanischen Landes. Die Auswirkungen der großskaligen Zirkulation wurden herangezogen, da auch moderne Regionale Klimamodelle (RCMs) Schwierigkeiten haben, klein- oder mesoskalige synoptische und insbesondere konvektive Prozesse überzeugend zu simulieren. Zugrunde liegt die Annahme, dass Schwankungen des landwirtschaftlichen Ertrags in auf Regenfeldbau basierenden landwirtschaftlichen Systemen mit geringen Kapitaleinsatz zu weiten Teilen auf klimatische Faktoren zurückzuführen sind. Untersucht werden die Ananas als perennierende Pflanze sowie einige einjährige Feldfrüchte wie Baumwolle aus der Gruppe der Faserpflanzen, die Getreidearten Mais, Sorghumhirse und Reis, die Hülsenfrüchte Augenbohne und Erdnuss sowie die Knollen- und Wurzelfrüchte Maniok und Yams. Somit repräsentieren die ausgewählten Feldfrüchte die drei bekannten Photosynthese-Wege, nämlich CAM, C3 und C4. Die vorliegende Studie verwendet historische Ertragsstatistiken der Republik Benin, Beobachtungsdaten der Climate Research Unit für den monatlichen Niederschlag sowie die bodennahe Mitteltemperatur (CRU TS 3.1) und die entsprechenden Variablen simuliert durch das REMO RCM. Dieses Regionalmodell wird an seinen Rändern durch das globale Klimamodell ECHAM 5 angetrieben. Es werden Modellsimulationen mit unterschiedlichen Randbedingungen im Hinblick auf Treibhausgaskonzentrationen (die Szenarien SRES-B1 und SRES-A1B) und Veränderungen der Landbedeckung (LCC) berücksichtigt. Mittels Hauptkomponentenanalyse werden aus den CRU-Daten für den nordhemisphärischen Teil Afrikas Zeitreihen und räumliche Muster für großskalige Prädiktoren gewonnen. Um mit diesen konsistente Prädiktoren für die Simulationen zu erhalten, werden die Datenfelder des REMO RCMs auf die so gewonnenen Raummuster projiziert. Für die beobachteten Zeitreihen der Prädiktoren und die zeitliche Entwicklung der unterschiedlichen Feldfrüchte als Prädiktant werden mittels eines kombinierten Ansatzes aus kreuzvalidierten Model Output Statistics (MOS) und Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) Techniken robuste statistische Zusammenhänge erfasst. Die resultierenden statistischen Modelle zeigen gute Performance, beispielsweise gilt für alle erzeugten Modelle 0,49 ≤ R² ≤ 0,99 und 0,28 ≤ Brier-Skill-Score ≤ 0,90. Da das REMO RCM die Hauptcharakteristika des beobachteten Klimas in Afrika erzeugt und daher die interannuelle Variabilität realistisch reproduziert, können mithilfe der zeitunabhängigen statistischen Transferfunktionen Klimaänderungssignale, gewonnen aus den simulierten Prädiktoren, in zu erwartende Veränderungen der Ernteerträge übersetzt werden. Die Ergebnisse bestätigen, dass Niederschlag und bodennahe Temperatur allgemein die landwirtschaftliche Produktion bestimmen und insbesondere die Schwankungen in den Ananas¬-erträgen primär thermisch bedingt scheinen. Weiterhin finden sich unter den simulierten künftigen Klimabedingungen projizierte Ertragsänderungen von bis zu -12,5% für Mais und Erdnuss und -11% , -29% und -33% für Ananas, Maniok und Augenbohne. Zugleich werden Ertragssteigerungen von +10% für Sorghumhirse und Yams, +24% für Baumwolle und +39% für Reis projiziert. Diese Änderungen sind abhängig von den Randbedingungen. Im Mittel betragen die simulierten Änderungen der Erträge während der Periode von 2001 bis 2050 zwischen -13% und -3% für SRES-B1 + LCC, -11% und -2% für SRES-A1B sowie -14% bis -3% für SRES-A1B + LCC für Ananas, Mais, Sorghumhirse, Erdnuss, Augenbohne und Maniok. Daneben finden sich für Yams, Baumwolle und Reis Zuwächse im Ernteertrag, die in Intervallen zwischen +2% bis +7% für SRES-B1 + LCC, +0.1% bis +12% für SRES-A1B und +3% bis +10% für SRES-A1B + LCC liegen. Obwohl die durchschnittliche Veränderung im Ertrag der Sorghumhirse negativ ist, lassen sich auch Tendenzen hin zu positiven Veränderungen feststellen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen zudem, dass die projizierte Zunahme der mittleren Lufttemperatur die simulierten Ernteerträge stärker beeinflusst als Veränderungen in den Niederschlagsmustern. Weiterhin scheint im Fall der Ananas der simulierte Rückgang im Ertrag nicht auf Veränderungen bei Landnutzung oder Landoberflächenbedeckung im subsaharischen Afrika zurückführbar. Die Erdnuss- und insbesondere Yams- und Baumwollerzeugung werden von den Veränderungen in der Landoberflächenbedeckung, die für die übrigen Feldfrüchte nachteilige Effekte bedeuten, profitieren. Zukünftig sollten politische Entscheidungsträger wirksame Maßnahmen einleiten, um die fortschreitende Landdegradation sowie alle anderen anthropogenen Prozesse, die zur globalen Erwärmung beitragen, einzuschränken. Biotechnologische Verbesserungen der verwendeten Nutzpflanzen, um an heißere und trockenere Bedingungen angepasste Varianten zu erzeugen, sollten in die bestehenden Aufzuchtprogramme integriert werden. Weiterhin sind unter anderem die Anwendung von geeigneten, klimaintelligenten landwirtschaftlichen Verfahren sowie eine nachhaltige Agrarwirtschaft notwendig, um die Schäden des Klimawandels auf die Landwirtschaft auszugleichen.

We determined effective temperatures, surface gravities, and metallicities for a sample of 343 M dwarfs observed with CARMENES, the double-channel, high-resolution spectrograph installed at the 3.5 m telescope at Calar Alto Observatory. We employed STEPARSYN, a Bayesian spectral synthesis implementation particularly designed to infer the stellar atmospheric parameters of late-type stars following a Markov chain Monte Carlo approach. We made use of the BT-Settl model atmospheres and the radiative transfer code turbospectrum to compute a grid of synthetic spectra around 75 magnetically insensitive Fe I and Ti I lines plus the TiO γ and ∈ bands. To avoid any potential degeneracy in the parameter space, we imposed Bayesian priors on Teff and logg based on the comprehensive, multi-band photometric data available for the sample. We find that this methodology is suitable down to M7.0 V, where refractory metals such as Ti are expected to condense in the stellar photospheres. The derived Teff, logg, and [Fe/H] range from 3000 to 4200 K, 4.5 to 5.3 dex, and -0.7 to 0.2 dex, respectively. Although our Teff scale is in good agreement with the literature, we report large discrepancies in the [Fe/H] scales, which might arise from the different methodologies and sets of lines considered. However, our [Fe/H] is in agreement with the metallicity distribution of FGK-type stars in the solar neighbourhood and correlates well with the kinematic membership of the targets in the Galactic populations. Lastly, excellent agreement in Teff is found for M dwarfs with interferometric angular diameter measurements, as well as in the [Fe/H] between the components in the wide physical FGK+M and M+M systems included in our sample. © 2021 ESO. ; CARMENES is an instrument for the Centro Astronomico Hispano en Andalucia at Calar Alto (CAHA). CARMENES is funded by the German Max-Plank Gesellschaft (MPG), the Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), the European Union through FEDER/ERF FICTS-2011-02 funds, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Plank-Institut fur Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Landessternwarte Konigstuhl, Institut de Ciences de l'Espai, Institut fur Astrophysik Gottingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thuringer Landessternwarte Tautenberg, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiologia and Centro Astronomico Hispano-Andaluz), with additional contributions by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, the German Science Foundation through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and DFG Research Unit FOR2544 "Blue Planets around Red Stars", the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of BadenWurttemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucia. The authors acknowledge financial support from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) through the research grants UID/FIS/04434/2019, UIDB/04434/2020 and UIDP/04434/2020, national funds PTDC/FIS-AST/28953/2017, by FEDER (Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional) through COMPETE2020 Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalizacao (POCI-01-0145FEDER-028953), and the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades, Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER/ERF) through fellowship FPU15/01476, and projects AYA2016-79425-C3-1/2/3-P, PID2019-109522GB-C5[1:4]/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, AYA2014-56359-P, BES-2017-080769, and RYC-2013-14875. The authors also acknowledge financial support from the Centre of Excellence "Severo Ochoa" and "Maria de Maeztu" awards to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (SEV-2015-0548), Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astrobiologia (MDM-2017-0737), and the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme. This work has made use of the VALD database, operated at Uppsala University, the Institute of Astronomy RAS in Moscow, and the University of Vienna, and of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium).Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. V.M.P. acknowledges financial support from NASA through grant NNX17AG24G. S.V.J. acknowledges the support of the DFG priority program SPP 1992 "Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets" (JE 701/5-1). E.M. would also like to warmly thank the staff at the Hamburger Sternwarte for their hospitality during his stay funded by project EST18/00162. Based on data from the CARMENES data archive at CAB (INTA-CSIC). ; Peer reviewed

Full list of authors: Wong, O.; Stevens, A. R. H.; For, B. -Q.; Westmeier, T.; Dixon, M.; Oh, S. -H.; Józsa, G. I. G.; Reynolds, T. N.; Lee-Waddell, K.; Román, J.; Verdes-Montenegro, L.; Courtois, H. M.; Pomarède, D.; Murugeshan, C.; Whiting, M.; Bekki, K.; Bigiel, F.; Bosma, A.; Catinella, B.; Dénes, H.; Elagali, A.; Holwerda, B. W.; Kamphuis, P.; Kilborn, V. A.; Kleiner, D.; Koribalski, B. S.; Lelli, F.; Madrid, J. P.; McQuinn, K. B. W.; Popping, A.; Rhee, J.; Roychowdhury, S.; Scott, T. C.; Sengupta, C.; Spekkens, K.; Staveley-Smith, L.; Wakker, B. P. ; We present the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) WALLABY pre-pilot observations of two 'dark' H i sources (with H i masses of a few times 108 {M}_\odot and no known stellar counterpart) that reside within 363 kpc of NGC 1395, the most massive early-type galaxy in the Eridanus group of galaxies. We investigate whether these 'dark' H i sources have resulted from past tidal interactions or whether they are an extreme class of low surface brightness galaxies. Our results suggest that both scenarios are possible, and not mutually exclusive. The two 'dark' H i sources are compact, reside in relative isolation, and are more than 159 kpc away from their nearest H i-rich galaxy neighbour. Regardless of origin, the H i sizes and masses of both 'dark' H i sources are consistent with the H i size-mass relationship that is found in nearby low-mass galaxies, supporting the possibility that these H i sources are an extreme class of low surface brightness galaxies. We identified three analogues of candidate primordial 'dark' H i galaxies within the TNG100 cosmological, hydrodynamic simulation. All three model analogues are dark matter dominated, have assembled most of their mass 12-13 Gyr ago, and have not experienced much evolution until cluster infall 1-2 Gyr ago. Our WALLABY pre-pilot science results suggest that the upcoming large-area H i surveys will have a significant impact on our understanding of low surface brightness galaxies and the physical processes that shape them. © 2021 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. ; Parts of this research was supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) through project number CE170100013. SHO acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (Ministry of Science and ICT: MSIT) (No. NRF-2020R1A2C1008706). LVM and JR acknowledges financial support from the grants AYA2015-65973-C3-1-R and RTI2018-096228-B-C31 (MINECO/FEDER, UE), as well as from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the 'Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa' award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). JR acknowledges support from the State Research Agency (AEI-MCINN) of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the grant 'The structure and evolution of galaxies and their central regions' with reference PID2019-105602GB-I00/10.13039/501100011033. FB acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 - Research and Innovation Framework Programme (grant agreement No.726384/Empire). AB acknowledges support from the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), France. PK is partially supported by the BMBF project 05A17PC2 for D-MeerKAT. This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) through the research grants UIDB/04434/2020 and UIDP/04434/2020. TCS acknowledges support from FCT through national funds in the form of a work contract with the reference DL 57/2016/CP1364/CT0009. The Australian SKA Pathfinder is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility which is managed by CSIRO. Operation of ASKAP is funded by the Australian Government with support from the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. ASKAP uses the resources of the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre. Establishment of ASKAP, the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, and the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre are initiatives of the Australian Government, with support from the Government of Western Australia and the Science and Industry Endowment Fund. ; Peer reviewed

Context. In recent decades, several multiwavelength studies have been dedicated to exploring the properties of the obscuring material in active galactic nuclei (AGN). Various models have been developed to describe the structure and distribution of this material and constrain its physical and geometrical parameters through spectral fitting techniques. However, questions around the way in which torus mid-infrared (mid-IR) and X-ray emission are related remain unanswered. Aims. In this work, we aim to study whether the dust continuum at mid-IR and gas reflection at X-rays have the same distribution in a sample of AGN. Methods. We carefully selected a sample of 36 nearby AGN with NuSTAR and Spitzer spectra available that satisfy the following criteria: (1) the AGN component dominates the mid-IR spectra (i.e., the stellar and interstellar medium components contribute less than 50% to the spectrum), and (2) the reflection component contributes significantly to the X-ray spectrum. Furthermore, we discarded the sources whose reflection component could be produced by ionized material in the disk. We derived the properties of the nuclear dust and gas through a spectral fitting, using models developed for mid-IR and X-ray wavelengths assuming smooth and clumpy distributions for this structure. Results. We find that a combination of smooth and clumpy distributions of gas and dust, respectively, is preferred for ∼80% of sources with good spectral fits according to the Akaike criterion. However, considering extra information about each individual source, such as the absorption variability, we find that ∼50% of our sources are best described by a clumpy distribution of both dust and gas. The remaining ∼50% of our sources can still be explained with a smooth distribution of gas and a clumpy distribution of dust. Furthermore, we explored the torus dust-to-gas ratio, finding that it is [0.01–1] times that of the interstellar medium. Conclusions. The results presented in this paper suggest that the distribution of the gas and dust in AGN is complex. We find at least six scenarios to explain the observed properties of our sample. In these scenarios, three gas–dust distribution combinations are possible: clumpy–clumpy, smooth–smooth, and smooth–clumpy. Most of them are in agreement with the notion that gas could also be located in the dust-free region, which is consistent with the dust-to-gas ratio found. © ESO 2021. ; This work made use of data from the NuSTAR mission, a project led by CalTech, managed by JPL, and funded by NASA. We thank the NuSTAR Operations, Software and Calibration teams for support with the execution and analysis of these observations. This research has made use of the NuSTAR Data Analysis Software (NuSTAR-DAS) jointly developed by the ASI Science Data Center (ASDC, Italy) and CalTech. This work is based in part on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA. D.E.-A. and N.O.-C. acknowledge support from a CONACYT scholarship. This research is mainly funded by the UNAM PAPIIT projects IN105720 and IA113719 (PI O.G.-M. and PI D.D.). J.M. acknowledges financial support by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MEC) under grant no. AYA2016-76682-C3 and from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709). C.R.-A. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU) under grant with reference RYC-2014-15779, from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 860744 (BiD4BESt), from the State Research Agency (AEI-MCINN) of the Spanish MCIU under grants "Feeding and feedback in active galaxies" with reference PID2019-106027GB-C4 and "Quantifying the impact of quasar feedback on galaxy evolution (QSOFEED)" with reference EUR2020-112266. CRA also acknowledges support from the Consejeria de Economia, Conocimiento y Empleo del Gobierno de Canarias and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under grant with reference ProID2020010105 and from IAC project P/301404, financed by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, through the State Budget and by the Canary Islands Department of Economy, Knowledge and Employment, through the Regional Budget of the Autonomous Community. I.G.-B. acknowledges support from STFC through grant ST/S000488 1. ; Peer reviewed

Context. While some galactic bars show recent massive star formation (SF) along them, some others do not. Whether bars with low level of SF are a consequence of low star formation efficiency, low gas inflow rate, or dynamical effects remains a matter of debate. Aims. In order to study the physical conditions that enable or prevent SF, we perform a multi-wavelength analysis of 12 strongly barred galaxies with total stellar masses log10(M⊙/M⊙)? [10.2, 11], chosen to host different degrees of SF along the bar major axis without any prior condition on gas content. We observe the CO(1-0) and CO(2-1) emission within bars with the IRAM-30 m telescope (beam sizes of 1.7-3.9 kpc and 0.9-2.0 kpc, respectively; 7-8 pointings per galaxy on average). Methods. We estimated molecular gas masses (Mmol) from the CO(1-0) and CO(2-1) emissions. SF rates (SFRs) were calculated from GALEX near-ultraviolet (UV) and WISE 12 μm images within the beam-pointings, covering the full bar extent (SFRs were also derived from far-UV and 22 μm). Results. We detect molecular gas along the bars of all probed galaxies. Molecular gas and SFR surface densities span the ranges log10(ςmol/[M⊙ pc-2]) ? [0.4,2.4] and log10(ςSFR/[M⊙ pc-1 kpc-2]]) ? [-3.25, -0.75], respectively. The star formation efficiency (SFE; i.e., SFR/Mmol) in bars varies between galaxies by up to an order of magnitude (SFE ? [0.1, 1.8] Gyr-1). On average, SFEs are roughly constant along bars. SFEs are not significantly different from the mean value in spiral galaxies reported in the literature (∼0.43 Gyr-1), regardless of whether we estimate Mmol from CO(1-0) or CO(2-1). Interestingly, the higher the total stellar mass of the host galaxy, the lower the SFE within their bars. In particular, the two galaxies in our sample with the lowest SFE and ςSFR (NGC 4548 and NGC 5850, SFE ? 0.25 Gyr-1, ςSFR ? 10-2.25 M⊙ yr-1 kpc-2, M⊙ ? 1010.7 M⊙) are also those hosting massive bulges and signs of past interactions with nearby companions. Conclusions. We present a statistical analysis of the SFE in bars for a sample of 12 galaxies. The SFE in strong bars is not systematically inhibited (either in the central, middle, or end parts of the bar). Both environmental and internal quenching are likely responsible for the lowest SFEs reported in this work. © ESO 2021. ; This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska Curie grant agreement No 893673. We acknowledge financial support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 721463 to the SUNDIAL ITN network, from the State Research Agency (AEI-MCINN) of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the grant "The structure and evolution of galaxies and their central regions" with reference PID2019-105602GB-I00/10.13039/501100011033, and from IAC project P/300724, financed by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, through the State Budget and by the Canary Islands Department of Economy, Knowledge and Employment, through the Regional Budget of the Autonomous Community. SDG acknowledges support from the Spanish Public Employment Service (SEPE). Furthermore, we acknowledge support by the research project AYA2017-84897-P from the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, from the European Regional Development Funds (FEDER) and the Junta de Andalucia (Spain) grants FQM108. DE acknowledges support from a Beatriz Galindo senior fellowship (BG20/00224) from the Ministry of Science and Innovation. LVM acknowledges financial support from the grants AYA2015-65973-C3-1-R and RTI2018-096228-B-C31 (MINECO/FEDER, UE), as well as from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa award to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709). This research makes use of python (http://www.python.org), Matplotlib (Hunter 2007), and Astropy (Astropy Collaboration 2013, 2018). We acknowledge the usage of the HyperLeda database (http://leda.univ-lyon1.fr). ; Peer reviewed

Characterising the atmospheres of exoplanets is key to understanding their nature and provides hints about their formation and evolution. High resolution measurements of the helium triplet absorption of highly irradiated planets have been recently reported, which provide a new means of studying their atmospheric escape. In this work we study the escape of the upper atmospheres of HD 189733 b and GJ 3470 b by analysing high resolution HeI triplet absorption measurements and using a 1D hydrodynamic spherically symmetric model coupled with a non-local thermodynamic model for the HeI triplet state. We also use the H density derived from Ly alpha observations to further constrain their temperatures, mass-loss rates, and H/He ratios. We have significantly improved our knowledge of the upper atmospheres of these planets. While HD 189733 b has a rather compressed atmosphere and small gas radial velocities, GJ 3470 b, on the other hand with a gravitational potential ten times smaller, exhibits a very extended atmosphere and large radial outflow velocities. Hence, although GJ 3470 b is much less irradiated in the X-ray and extreme ultraviolet radiation, and its upper atmosphere is much cooler, it evaporates at a comparable rate. In particular, we find that the upper atmosphere of HD 189733 b is compact and hot, with a maximum temperature of 12 400(-300)(+400) K, with a very low mean molecular mass (H/He = (99.2/0.8) +/- 0.1), which is almost fully ionised above 1.1 R-P, and with a mass-loss rate of (1.1 +/- 0.1) x 10(11) g s(-1). In contrast, the upper atmosphere of GJ 3470 b is highly extended and relatively cold, with a maximum temperature of 5100 +/- 900 K, also with a very low mean molecular mass (H/He = (98.5/1.5)(-1.5)(+1.0)-1.5+1.0 ), which is not strongly ionised, and with a mass-loss rate of (1.9 +/- 1.1) x 10(11) g s(-1). Furthermore, our results suggest that upper atmospheres of giant planets undergoing hydrodynamic escape tend to have a very low mean molecular mass (H/He greater than or similar to 97/3). © ESO 2021. ; We thank the referee for very useful comments. CARMENES is an instrument for the Centro Astronomico HispanoAleman (CAHA) at Calar Alto (Almeria, Spain), operated jointly by the Junta de Andalucia and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (CSIC). CARMENES was funded by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through projects FICTS-2011-02, ICTS-2017-07-CAHA-4, and CAHA16-CE-3978, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Landessternwarte Konigstuhl, Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai, Institut fur Astrophysik Gottingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thuringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiologia and Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman), with additional contributions by the MINECO, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and Research Unit FOR2544 "Blue Planets around Red Stars", the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Wurttemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucia. We acknowledge financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades and the ERDF through projects ESP2016-76076-R, ESP2017-87143-R, PID2019-110689RB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, BES-2015-074542, PGC2018-099425-B-I00, PID2019-109522GB-C51/2/3/4, PGC2018-098153-BC33, AYA2016-79425-C3-1/2/3-P, ESP2016-80435-C2-1-R, and the Centre of Excellence "Severo Ochoa" and "Maria de Maeztu" awards to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (SEV-2015-0548), Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astrobiologia (MDM-2017-0737), and the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme. T.H. acknowledges support from the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program via the ERC Advanced Grant Origins 832428. A.S.L. acknowledges funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 694513. ; Peer reviewed

Resumen: Los dispositivos móviles han irrumpido con fuerza en el sistema familiar delSiglo XXI,concretamente los Smartphones y las Tablet por su versatilidad, estánimpactando en todas las dinámicas familiares, por lo que constituye un desafíoeducar a todos los miembros de la familia para integrarlos responsablemente. La presente investigación tiene la finalidad de describir el conocimiento que poseen las familias españolas en relación a los Smartphone y las Tablet, así como abordar la influencia de dichos dispositivos en la comunicación intrafamiliar. Para ello, se desarrolla una investigación cuantitativa no experimental de corte transversal, en la que han participado 1082 sujetos pertenecientes a las 17 comunidades autónomas y las 2 ciudades autonómicas que conforman el territorio nacional, a través de la cumplimentación de un cuestionario diseñado ad hoc, denominado ?Smartphone y Tablet en familia?, enviado a través de dos vías y, en dos momentos diferentes. La estructura de dicha herramienta, está compuesta por 7 dimensiones con un total de 91 ítems, analizándose en este artículo dos de las escalas del cuestionario. Los principales resultados muestran que las familias españolas tienen un conocimiento alto sobre los Smartphone y las Tablet, siendo los hombres y los miembros de la familia de menor edad, los que mayor conocimiento presentan. Igualmente, las familias valoran positivamente las posibilidades comunicativas que ofrece el Smartphone. Sin embargo, consideran que tanto la Tablet como el Smartphone repercuten negativamente en la atención de los menores del hogar. También se ha llegado a la conclusión de que es preciso promocionar, desde el ámbito político, educativo y familiar, tiempos y espacios comunicativos intrafamiliares presenciales y de calidad, a la vez que educar en el uso responsable de los dispositivos móviles con fines comunicativos, siendo los miembros de la familia de mayor edad, los garantes de un buen ejemplo a los menores. ; Abstract: Mobile devices have impacted on the family system of the 21st century, specifically Smartphone and Tablet for their versatility, are impacting on all family dynamics, so it is a challenge to educate all family members to integrate them responsibly. The purpose of this research is to describe the knowledge that Spanish families have in relation to Smartphone and Tablet, as well as to address the influence of these devices on intra-family communication. To this end, a nonexperimental quantitative research cross-sectional is being carried out, in which 1082 persons, belonging to the 17 Spanish autonomous communities and the 2 autonomous cities that make up the national territory have participated, by the answering of a questionnaire designed ad hoc. Tus toll called ?Smartphone and Tablet in the Family?, sent through two ways and, at two different times. The structure of this tool is composed of 7 dimensions with a total of 91 items, analyzing in this article two of the scales of the questionnaire. The main results show that Spanish families have a high level of knowledge about Smartphone and Tablet, with men and members of the younger family having the highest level of knowledge. Likewise, the families value positively the communicative possibilities offered by the Smartphone. However, they consider that both, the Tablet and the Smartphone, have a negative impact on the care of minors in the home. The conclusion has also been reached that it is necessary to promote, from the political, educational and family spheres, times and communicative spaces within the family that are presential and of quality, at the same time as educating in the responsible use of mobile devices for communicative purposes, ; Este trabajo se ha elaborado en el marco de Alfamed (Red Interuniversitaria Euroamericana de Investigación en Competencias Mediáticas para la Ciudadanía), con el apoyo del Proyecto I+D+I Coordinado "Competencias mediáticas de la ciudadanía en medios digitales emergentes (Smartphones y Tablets): practicas innovadoras y estrategias educomunicativas en contextos múltiples" (EDU2015-64015-C3-1-R) (MINECO/FEDER), y de la "Red de Educación Mediática" del Programa Estatal de Investigación Científica-Técnica de Excelencia, Subprograma Estatal de Generación de Conocimiento (EDU2016-81772-REDT), financiados por el Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) y Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad de España.

A robust and extended characterization of the point spread function (PSF) is crucial to extract the photometric information produced by deep imaging surveys. Here, we present the extended PSFs of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), one of the most productive astronomical surveys of all time. By stacking similar to 1000 images of individual stars with different brightness, we obtain the bidimensional SDSS PSFs extending over 8 arcmin in radius for all the SDSS filters (u, g, r, i, z). This new characterization of the SDSS PSFs is near a factor of 10 larger in extension than previous PSFs characterizations of the same survey. We found asymmetries in the shape of the PSFs caused by the drift scanning observing mode. The flux of the PSFs is larger along the drift scanning direction. Finally, we illustrate with an example how the PSF models can be used to remove the scattered light field produced by the brightest stars in the central region of the Coma cluster field. This particular example shows the huge importance of PSFs in the study of the low-surface brightness Universe, especially with the upcoming of ultradeep surveys, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). Following a reproducible science philosophy, we make all the PSF models and the scripts used to do the analysis of this paper publicly available (snapshot v0.4-0-gd966ad0). ©2019 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society ; We thank the referee for a constructive report that helped to improve the presentation of the manuscript. This research has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under grants AYA2016-77237-C3-1-P and AYA2016-76219-P. We also acknowledge support from the Fundacion BBVA under its 2017 programme of assistance to scientific research groups, for the project 'Using machine-learning techniques to drag galaxies from the noise in deep imaging'. This work was partly done using the reproducible template project (Akhlaghi et al. in preparation). The reproducible template was also supported by European Union's Horizon 2020 (H2020) research and innovation programme via the RDA EU 4.0 project (ref. GA no. 777388). We thank Mohammad Akhlaghi for all his time spent in explaining how to make the core part of this project reproducible. We thank Roelof de Jong for kindly providing us the PSF profiles obtained in his work. We thank Alejandro Borlaff, Nushkia Chamba, and Simon Diaz-Garcia for their comments. This work was partly done using GNU Astronomy Utilities (Gnuastro, ascl.net/1801.009) version 0.10. Work on Gnuastro has been funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) scholarship and its Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (21244012, 24253003), the European Research Council (ERC) advanced grant 339659-MUSICOS, European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 721463 to the SUNDIAL ITN. Funding for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, and the Participating Institutions. SDSS-IV acknowledges support and resources from the Center for High-Performance Computing at the University of Utah. The SDSS web site is www.sdss.org.SDSS-IV is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions of the SDSS Collaboration including the Brazilian Participation Group, the Carnegie Institution for Science, Carnegie Mellon University, the Chilean Participation Group, the French Participation Group, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, The Johns Hopkins University, Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU) / University of Tokyo, the Korean Participation Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Leibniz Institut fur Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie (MPIA Heidelberg), Max-Planck-Institut fur Astrophysik (MPA Garching), Max-Planck-Institut fur Extraterrestrische Physik (MPE), National Astronomical Observatories of China, New Mexico State University, New York University, University of Notre Dame, Observatario Nacional/MCTI, The Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, United Kingdom Participation Group, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, University of Arizona, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Oxford, University of Portsmouth, University of Utah, University of Virginia, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin, Vanderbilt University, and Yale University. ; Peer reviewed

The Javalambre Photometric Local Universe Survey (J-PLUS) is an ongoing 12-band photometric optical survey, observing thousands of square degrees of the Northern Hemisphere from the dedicated JAST/T80 telescope at the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre (OAJ). The T80Cam is a camera with a field of view of 2 deg 2 mounted on a telescope with a diameter of 83 cm, and is equipped with a unique system of filters spanning the entire optical range (3500-10 000 Å). This filter system is a combination of broad-, medium-, and narrow-band filters, optimally designed to extract the rest-frame spectral features (the 3700-4000 Å Balmer break region, Hδ, Ca H+K, the G band, and the Mg b and Ca triplets) that are key to characterizing stellar types and delivering a low-resolution photospectrum for each pixel of the observed sky. With a typical depth of AB ∼21.25 mag per band, this filter set thus allows for an unbiased and accurate characterization of the stellar population in our Galaxy, it provides an unprecedented 2D photospectral information for all resolved galaxies in the local Universe, as well as accurate photo-z estimates (at the δ z/(1 + z)∼0.005-0.03 precision level) for moderately bright (up to r∼20 mag) extragalactic sources. While some narrow-band filters are designed for the study of particular emission features ([O II]/λ3727, Hα/λ6563) up to z< 0.017, they also provide well-defined windows for the analysis of other emission lines at higher redshifts. As a result, J-PLUS has the potential to contribute to a wide range of fields in Astrophysics, both in the nearby Universe (Milky Way structure, globular clusters, 2D IFU-like studies, stellar populations of nearby and moderate-redshift galaxies, clusters of galaxies) and at high redshifts (emission-line galaxies at z≈0.77, 2.2, and 4.4, quasi-stellar objects, etc.). With this paper, we release the first ∼1000 deg 2 of J-PLUS data, containing about 4.3 million stars and 3.0 million galaxies at r< 21 mag. With a goal of 8500 deg 2 for the total J-PLUS footprint, these numbers are expected to rise to about 35 million stars and 24 million galaxies by the end of the survey. © ESO 2019. ; Funding for the J-PLUS Project has been provided by the Governments of Spain and Aragon through the Fondo de Inversiones de Teruel, by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO; under grants AYA2012-30789, AYA2013-40611-P, AYA2015-66211-C2-1-P, AYA2015-66211-C2-2, AYA2016-77846-P, AYA2016-77237-C3-1-P, AYA2016-75931-C2-1-P, AYA2017-86274-P, AGAURgrantSGR-661/2017, andICTS-2009-14), byFAPERJ the Government of Aragon, through the Grupo de Investigacion E16_17R, and by European FEDER funding (FCDD10-4E-867, FCDD13-4E-2685). Further support has been provided by the Ramon y Cajal programmes RYC-2016-20254, RYC-2011-08262 and RYC-2011-08529. This research has made use of the Spanish Virtual Observatory (http://svo.cab.inta-csic.es) supported from the Spanish MINECO through grant AYA2014-55216. We also acknowledge Spanish CSIC (I-COOP+ 2016 program) through grant COOPB20263. The Brazilian agencies FAPESP and the National Observatory of Brazil have also contributed to this project. We acknowledge financial support from the Fundacao Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro - FAPERJ (fellowship Nota 10, PDR-10), from CNPq through BP grant 312307/2015-2 and Universal Grants 459553/20143, PQ 302037/2015-2, and PDE 200289/2017-9), FINEP grants REF. 1217/13 -01.13.0279.00 and REF 0859/10 -01.10.0663.00, from FAPERJ grant E-26/202.835/2016, and CAPES (Science without Borders program, Young Talent Fellowship, BJT) through grants A062/2013 and CAPES-PNPD 2940/2011. The FAPESP grants no. 2015/12745-6, 2014/11338-5, 2014/07684-5, 2013/04582-4 and 2009/54202-8 are also acknowledged. Finally, the authors acknowledge partial support from grant PHY 14-30152; Physics Frontier Center/JINA Center for the Evolution of the Elements (JINA-CEE), awarded by the US National Science Foundation. ; Peer Reviewed

New scientific instruments are starting to generate an unprecedented amount of data. The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), one of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) pathfinders, is already producing data on a petabyte scale. The calibration of these data presents a huge challenge for final users: (a) extensive storage and computing resources are required; (b) the installation and maintenance of the software required for the processing is not trivial; and (c) the requirements of calibration pipelines, which are experimental and under development, are quickly evolving. After encountering some limitations in classical infrastructures like dedicated clusters, we investigated the viability of cloud infrastructures as a solution. We found that the installation and operation of LOFAR data calibration pipelines is not only possible, but can also be efficient in cloud infrastructures. The main advantages were: (1) the ease of software installation and maintenance, and the availability of standard APIs and tools, widely used in the industry; this reduces the requirement for significant manual intervention, which can have a highly negative impact in some infrastructures; (2) the flexibility to adapt the infrastructure to the needs of the problem, especially as those demands change over time; (3) the on-demand consumption of (shared) resources. We found that a critical factor (also in other infrastructures) is the availability of scratch storage areas of an appropriate size. We found no significant impediments associated with the speed of data transfer, the use of virtualization, the use of external block storage, or the memory available (provided a minimum threshold is reached). Finally, we considered the cost-effectiveness of a commercial cloud like Amazon Web Services. While a cloud solution is more expensive than the operation of a large, fully-utilized cluster completely dedicated to LOFAR data reduction, we found that its costs are competitive if the number of datasets to be analysed is not high, or if the costs of maintaining a system capable of calibrating LOFAR data become high. Coupled with the advantages discussed above, this suggests that a cloud infrastructure may be favourable for many users. ; We acknowledge the useful comments of the anonymous referee. We would like to acknowledge the work of all the developers and packagers of the LOFAR software that constitute the core of the processing pipelines (including factor, prefactor, LSMTool, LoSoTo, and the Kern Suite), as well as the useful discussions with the participants in the LOFAR blank fields and direction dependent calibration teleconferences over the years. JS and PNB are grateful for financial support from STFC via grant ST/M001229/1. This work has been also supported by the projects 'AMIGA5: gas in and around galaxies. Scientific and technological preparation for the SKA' (AYA2014-52013-C2-1-R) and 'AMIGA6: gas in and around galaxies. Preparation for SKA science and contribution to the design of the SKA data flow' (AYA2015-65973-C3-1-R) both of which were co-funded by MICINN and FEDER funds and the Junta de Andalucía (Spain) grants P08-FQM-4205 and TIC-114. We would like to explicitly acknowledge Dr Jose Ruedas – chief of the computer centre and responsible of the computing and communications infrastructures at IAA-CSIC – and Rafael Parra – system administrator of the IAA computing cluster – for their technical assistance. We acknowledge the joint SKA and AWS Astrocompute proposal call that was used to fund all the tests in the AWS infrastructure with the projects "Calibration of LOFAR ELAIS-N1 data in the Amazon cloud" and "Amazon Cloud Processing of LOFAR Tier-1 surveys: Opening up a new window on the Universe". This work made use of the University of Hertfordshire's high-performance computing facility and the LOFAR-UK computing facility, supported by STFC [grant number ST/P000096/1]. This work benefited from services and resources provided by the fedcloud.egi.eu Virtual Organization, supported by the national resource providers of the EGI Federation. We acknowledge the resources and support provided by the STFC RAL Cloud infrastructure. LOFAR, the Low Frequency Array designed and constructed by ASTRON, has facilities in several countries, that are owned by various parties (each with their own funding sources), and that are collectively operated by the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) foundation under a joint scientific policy. ; Peer Reviewed ; Award-winning ; Postprint (author's final draft)

New scientific instruments are starting to generate an unprecedented amount of data. The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), one of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) pathfinders, is already producing data on a petabyte scale. The calibration of these data presents a huge challenge for final users: (a) extensive storage and computing resources are required; (b) the installation and maintenance of the software required for the processing is not trivial; and (c) the requirements of calibration pipelines, which are experimental and under development, are quickly evolving. After encountering some limitations in classical infrastructures like dedicated clusters, we investigated the viability of cloud infrastructures as a solution. We found that the installation and operation of LOFAR data calibration pipelines is not only possible, but can also be efficient in cloud infrastructures. The main advantages were: (1) the ease of software installation and maintenance, and the availability of standard APIs and tools, widely used in the industry; this reduces the requirement for significant manual intervention, which can have a highly negative impact in some infrastructures; (2) the flexibility to adapt the infrastructure to the needs of the problem, especially as those demands change over time; (3) the on-demand consumption of (shared) resources. We found that a critical factor (also in other infrastructures) is the availability of scratch storage areas of an appropriate size. We found no significant impediments associated with the speed of data transfer, the use of virtualization, the use of external block storage, or the memory available (provided a minimum threshold is reached). Finally, we considered the cost-effectiveness of a commercial cloud like Amazon Web Services. While a cloud solution is more expensive than the operation of a large, fully-utilized cluster completely dedicated to LOFAR data reduction, we found that its costs are competitive if the number of datasets to be analysed is not high, or if the costs of maintaining a system capable of calibrating LOFAR data become high. Coupled with the advantages discussed above, this suggests that a cloud infrastructure may be favourable for many users. ; We acknowledge the useful comments of the anonymous referee. We would like to acknowledge the work of all the developers and packagers of the LOFAR software that constitute the core of the processing pipelines (including factor, prefactor, LSMTool, LoSoTo, and the Kern Suite), as well as the useful discussions with the participants in the LOFAR blank fields and direction dependent calibration teleconferences over the years. JS and PNB are grateful for financial support from STFC via grant ST/M001229/1. This work has been also supported by the projects 'AMIGA5: gas in and around galaxies. Scientific and technological preparation for the SKA' (AYA2014-52013-C2-1-R) and 'AMIGA6: gas in and around galaxies. Preparation for SKA science and contribution to the design of the SKA data flow' (AYA2015-65973-C3-1-R) both of which were co-funded by MICINN and FEDER funds and the Junta de Andalucía (Spain) grants P08-FQM-4205 and TIC-114. We would like to explicitly acknowledge Dr Jose Ruedas – chief of the computer centre and responsible of the computing and communications infrastructures at IAA-CSIC – and Rafael Parra – system administrator of the IAA computing cluster – for their technical assistance. We acknowledge the joint SKA and AWS Astrocompute proposal call that was used to fund all the tests in the AWS infrastructure with the projects "Calibration of LOFAR ELAIS-N1 data in the Amazon cloud" and "Amazon Cloud Processing of LOFAR Tier-1 surveys: Opening up a new window on the Universe". This work made use of the University of Hertfordshire's high-performance computing facility and the LOFAR-UK computing facility, supported by STFC [grant number ST/P000096/1]. This work benefited from services and resources provided by the fedcloud.egi.eu Virtual Organization, supported by the national resource providers of the EGI Federation. We acknowledge the resources and support provided by the STFC RAL Cloud infrastructure. LOFAR, the Low Frequency Array designed and constructed by ASTRON, has facilities in several countries, that are owned by various parties (each with their own funding sources), and that are collectively operated by the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) foundation under a joint scientific policy. ; Peer Reviewed ; Award-winning ; Postprint (author's final draft)

Energy efficiency is one of the two pillars to decrease the use of non-renewable energy besides the use of renewables energies. In fact, buildings are central to the EU's energy efficiency policy, as nearly 40% of the final energy consumption and 36% of greenhouse gas emissions take place in houses, offices, shops and other buildings. The 2030 Energy Efficiency Communication published by the European Commission in July 2014 underpins the key role of the building sector, stating that "the majority of the energy-saving potential is in the building sector". Improving the energy performance of Europe's building stock is crucial, not only to achieve the EU's 2020 targets, but also to meet the longer term objectives of our climate strategy as laid down in the low carbon economy roadmap 2050. In order to profit from this energy-saving potential, a methodology is needed to estimate the savings of new and refurbished buildings. The methodology internationally recognized for the energy efficiency estimation is the International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP) issued by Efficiency Valuation Organization (EVO). The key point of IPMVP for estimating the savings is to develop a verifiable and reproducible method to estimate energy efficiency. This method should suppress the main technological barrier for energy efficiency estimation, which is to separate, by objective measurements, the intrinsic performance of the building from weather conditions and user behavior, since it has been observed that the energy consumption of similar buildings may vary from 30% to 300%, and about 70% of this variability may be explained by the user behavior. Therefore, the goal is to build a mathematical model with physical meaning considering only the building's intrinsic behavior. For this purpose, buildings may be considered as dynamic systems and heat transfer in buildings may be represented using dynamic models. In this way, heat transfer in buildings may be described by thermal networks which may be stated considering graph theory and thermodynamics, and may be deduced from the classical heat equation. Thermal networks may be expressed as a system of linear differential algebraic equations (DAE) and the system of linear DAE may be transformed into a state-space representation from which an autoregressive model with exogenous (ARX) can be obtained. These different model structures may be used for identifying the physical parameters of thermal networks which implies that this methodology may be useful for identifying the intrinsic performance of buildings and tackling the reduction of non-renewable energy consumption in buildings. This may facilitate the assessment of energy efficiency of buildings within a reproducible framework which allows the comparison between different constructive solutions. The main original contributions of this dissertation are: 1) thermal networks are stated from graph theory and thermodynamics, leaving back the thermal-electrical analogy; 2) classical heat equation is connected explicitly to a system of DAE (thermal network) by using the finite elements; 3) the transformations for deducing heat transfer models with physical meaning from the classical heat equation are put altogether; 4) transformations between models may are done from thermal networks to autoregressive models with exogenous (ARX) and back; and 5) a criterion for selecting the order of the model by frequency analysis of measurements is proposed. Las principales contribuciones originales de esta tesis son: 1) la red térmica se expresa a partir de la teoría de grafos y de la termodinámica sin utilizar la analogía termo-eléctrica; 2) la ecuación del calor clásica se transforma en un sistema de DAE (red térmica) utilizando elementos finitos; 3) las transformaciones para deducir diferentes modelos de transferencia de calor con significado físico son presentadas conjuntamente en una cadena iniciada en la ecuación del calor clásica; 4) las transformaciones entre modelos son mostradas desde las redes térmicas hasta modelos autorregresivos con variables exógenas (ARX) y viceversa; y 5) un criterio para la selección del orden del modelo utilizando un análisis de frecuencia de las mediciones es presentado. ; Tesis Univ. Granada. Programa Oficial de Doctorado en: Ingeniería Civil ; LABEX IMU (ANR- 10-LABX-0088) of Université de Lyon, within the programme "Investissements d'Avenir" (ANR- 11-IDEX-0007) operated by the French National Research Agency (ANR), by a grant from the Region Rhône-Alpes and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under the projects TEC2012-38883-C02-02 and TIN2015-64776-C3-1-R.