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To study the first impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the results obtained by students belonging to the School of Agricultural Engineering and Environment at the Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain), the average of the marks corresponding to three academic years (2016–2019) was compared to those obtained in 2019–2020 for a total of four bachelor’s degrees and two semesters. Our results suggest a positive effect on the marks obtained during the activation of emergency remote teaching during the spring semester of 2019–2020 in three out of the four degrees, with these differences being significant for the whole study. Moreover, just at the end of that period, instructors and students were surveyed regarding teaching methodologies, evaluation modalities, and difficulties found throughout the process of adapting to distance teaching. Our results allow us to sensibly think about that exceptional situation in order to propose a set of counterweighting measures which could improve the implementation of distance learning in engineering colleges.

The institutional organizers of IDS 2018 are the Department of Food Technology at the Universitat Politècnica de València and the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illes Balears. Like its previous biannual IDS conferences, the objective of 21th IDS is to provide the most advanced and comprehensive global forum for disseminating results and data in research, development, and applications in drying/dewatering sciences and technologies.This Symposium will be held in the main campus of the Universitat Politècnica de València and aims to bring together leading researchers and engineers from academia and from industry from all around the world in this university environment. It is also planned during the meeting an exposition of industrial equipment and developments. An Award program will be also part of the event for the international drying community. This Symposium is the 21th event in the series founded by Professor Arun S. Mujumdar at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, in 1978

Salting and subsequent curing are part of the traditional processing method used in the meat and fish industry. Different preserving agents (sodium chloride, nitrite, nitrate, among others) are added in this process. Nowadays, more attention is paid to the amount of salts added and the salting time employed. For this reason, it is important to know the factors governing salt penetration and the most convenient process conditions. The transfer mechanism of the salts through the structure is an interesting aspect in meat and fish processing technology. Mathematical models are the best way to discover the factors, which govern this process, which may represent and explain the observed data and predict the behaviour under different conditions. The objective of this review is to describe the use of the mathematical models to simulate meat and fish salting and the benefits derived from their use. Most of the models used to describe the salting process are diffusional, based on Fick's second law, although empirical ones are also used. For modelling purposes a good description of the experimental results should be guaranteed. The complexity of the model will depend on the objective to be reached and will be analysed in each case. El salado y posterior curado forman parte del procesado tradicional de conservación de carne y pescado. En él se añaden diferentes conservantes (cloruro sódico, nitritos, nitratos, entre otros). En la actualidad se está aumentando el control sobre la cantidad de sales añadidas y el tiempo de salado. Por ello es importante conocer los factores que controlan la penetración de sal y las condiciones de proceso más adecuadas. Los mecanismos de transferencia de las sales en el sólido son aspectos muy interesantes a considerar en las industrias de procesado de carne y pescado. Los modelos matemáticos son la mejor manera de conocer los factores controlantes en estos procesos. Éstos representan y explican los datos observados y predicen el comportamiento bajo diferentes condiciones. El objetivo de este trabajo es describir el uso de modelos matemáticos para similar el salado de carne y pescado y los beneficios derivados de su uso. La mayoría de los modelos utilizados para describir el proceso de salado son difusionales, basados en la segunda ley de Fick, aunque también son utilizados los modelos empíricos. Para propósitos de modelización debe ser garantizada una buena descripción de los resultados experimentales. La complejidad del modelo dependerá del objetivo a alcanzar será analizado en cada caso.