Public business incubators are services placed at the disposal of original, generally newly-created projects, to which physical accompaniment, supervision, and location are offered at prices below market value. They have as their aim to help set in motion and consolidate these firms during the stages in which they are weaker. The ultimate goal consists in favouring the generation of innovative firms, inducers of high-quality jobs, which can diversify the local business fabric, thus becoming a key tool in local development.The present paper provides a methodology to study the economic -but above all social-impact of business incubators, based on the examination of 40 from the 42 incubators existing in the Valencian Community (a Spanish autonomous region with five million inhabitants). Data analysis allows us to state that, although business incubators are not economically profitable since they need financial aids and public investment to start operating, they do have social profitability, insofar as the activity developed by entrepreneurs permits to provide public administrations -via taxes-with returns exceeding what was invested in these incubators. It has been determined that 2.8 euros (which can be applied to a variety of social areas) are collected via taxes for each euro spent to start them up.

In the Mediterranean region, the availability of water many times does not meet the demand on existing resources in terms of quantity and quality owing to the scarce rainfall there. Many of the sources of natural water used for supplying the local population contain considerable amounts of Natural Organic Matter. The NOM found in the water can react with Chlorine to form Disinfection By-products such as trihalomethanes, haloacetic acids, etc. that deteriorate the water quality, rendering it unfit for human consumption because it could lead to adverse health effects [1] This investigation involved the study of THM and HAA formation potential by nanofiltration. Natural waters from two different sources in Alicante province were analyzed. The study was carried out using three commercial NF membranes denoted by NF-270, NF-90 and Desal-HL-51. The influence of conductivity was also analyzed. Sentana, I.; Rodríguez ,M.; Sentana, E.; C. M'Birek and Prats, D.

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Business incubators can be defined as a service meant to promote entrepreneurship and firm creation, especially within sectors characterised by a high innovative content. The present paper takes as its starting point a review of previous studies dedicated to the profitability of investments in general, and particularly to that of business incubators, seeking to propose an own method which can make it possible to measure both the economic and the social profitability of business incubators. The subsequent application of this method to the incubators based in a specific Spanish region will lead to the conclusion that incubators are undoubtedly profitable, since society recovers 2.8 euros via taxes from each euro invested. Nevertheless, a number of lacks become visible amongst our findings which should definitely be corrected. Hence our decision to make a number of suggestions aimed at improving both the operation of business incubators and their economic and social profitability levels.