Literary portraits of basque-american women from shadow to presence

268 p.This doctoral dissertation proposes an analysis of the portraits of Basque women in Basque-American literature by means of a comprehensive comparative study of a selection of fictional and non-fictional literary works. These will be analyzed in chronological order with the intention of exposing the perception of Basque-American women and the roles they played in order to identify any existing patterns as well as changes and developments throughout time. The study will utilize an interdisciplinary approach drawing, among others, from the methodolgy and resources of cultural studies, gender studies, and feminist theory

Study of optimal shapes for lightweight material design

The present end of studies project tries to assimilate the connections between the geometrical and physical domain in order to design optimal microstructures with the desired properties in 2D. The link between both domains is established by means of the crystallographic point groups, which relate the topology of the minimum volume unit and its symmetries with the elastic tensor. Therefore, there are two pre-processing variables that play a determining role on the way to the optimal topology: the shape of the mesh and the symmetries of the material distribution inside it. For this reason, in the present study a shape generator and unit cell meshing algorithm is implemented and a topological optimizer code is used to distribute geometrically the material inside the unit cells in order to obtain the desired elastic tensor (resolution of the inverse problem) while minimizing the amount of material used. In order to obtain the desired material properties, the capacity of the topological optimizer to generate the necessary geometric symmetries in the microstructure that guarantee the physical symmetries required by the design target tensor is evaluated. Therefore, during the course of the study there will be a theoretical review of topological optimization, crystallography and geometric and tensor symmetries, the development of the structure and operation of the mesh generator code and a practical study of the optimizer’s capacity to obtain the tensors designed with the selected lattice topologies. At the same time, the essential organizational concepts and main differences between the programming used in the meshing algorithm, that is object-oriented programming, and modular or functional programming, are also reviewed

Urban history and working-class history

El artículo examina algunas cuestiones básicas de relación entre clase obrera y espacio urbano. El espacio urbano y la vida cotidiana en la ciudad, especialmente en la gran ciudad europea de la primera mitad del siglo XX, no fueron elementos pasivos en el proceso de formación de la clase obrera. Desde la Primera Guerra Mundial sobre todo, vida obrera y espacio urbano experimentaron un giro importantísimo. Se consolidaron nuevos suburbios donde las clases trabajadoras se segregaron en mayor medida que las demás clases sociales. Los cambios en el ámbito de la vivienda fueron muy destacables y las distancias entre lugar de trabajo y lugar de residencia se dilataron. Aunque las redes de sociabilidad primaria en el barrio -el parentesco, el vecindario, la amistad- lograron sobrevivir, el asociacionismo barrial comenzó poco a poco a declinar. Ni los distintos estratos obreros, ni las distintas ciudades acusaron tales cambios por igual. El obrero cualificado y el empleado fueron muchas veces los protagonistas avanzados de esas mutaciones, mientras que el obrero no cualificado mantuvo en mayor medida las viejas pautas de inserción en el espacio urbano. Las grandes "ciudades del sur" acusaron los cambios de manera bastante menos acusada. Mientras que en esas ciudades las viejas pautas espaciales lograron mantenerse todavía con fuerza, las "ciudades del norte" fueron en cambio escenario de una fragmentación progresiva: de los distintos estratos de clase en áreas cada vez más diferenciadas, de la vieja unidad trabajo residencia, de las redes de sociabilidad territorial tejidas en torno al barrio. Se plantea como hipótesis que esa nueva relación de la clase obrera con el espacio urbano pudo ser un elemento condicionante del reflujo posterior a la excepcional coyuntura revolucionaria de 1917-1920.The article provides some keys to relate City and Working-Class. Urban space, specialy in the great city of the first twentieth Century, was not a pasive element in Working-Class formation. Social segregation, housing, journey to work and neigbourhood community of European cities are examined in a comparative approach. The Second World War was a turning point for working-class life in these issues. Workers were more segregated from the non-manual social classes specially in the new suburban council housing. Journey to work were longer. Primary community networks -kinship, neighbours, friendship- survived, but secondary networks started their decline. Nor the different Working sectors neither the different cities changed in the same way. Skilled and white collar workers were often the protagonists of the transformations. Unskilled workers preserved the old patterns to a great extent. In the "cities of the South" transformations were not so profound as in the "cities of the North". These cities were the stage of a gradual fragmentation of the different Working-Class strata in urban areas more and more separated. A fragmentation wich also affected the old geographical unity between work and home and the social networks in the neigbourhood. The article finally suggests a relation of these issues with the lowering of labour after the revolutionary 1917-1920 moment

The Stability of the Roommate Problem Revisited

The lack of stability in some matching problems suggests that alternative solution concepts to the core might be applied to find predictable matchings. We propose the absorbing sets as a solution for the class of roommate problems with strict preferences. This solution, which always exists, either gives the matchings in the core or predicts some other matchings when the core is empty. Furthermore, it satisfies an interesting property of outer stability. We also characterize the absorbing sets, determine their number and, in case of multiplicity, we find that they all share a similar structure.roommate problem, core, absorbing sets

An EEG based ‐ stochastic dynamical systems model of brain dynamics

Treballs Finals de Grau d'Enginyeria Informàtica, Facultat de Matemàtiques, Universitat de Barcelona, Any: 2022, Director: Ignasi Cos Aguilera i Josep Vives i Santa Eulàlia[en] How does the human brain work? How do different brain areas interact with each other when performing specific function? These questions have sharply increased in interest over the last decades, as the more it is known about human cognition and cognitive process distribution the more accurate some procedures will be, such as neuro-pathologies diagnosis, prediction of reaction to stimuli or influence of motivation/rewards on decisions. To analyze human cognition, neuroimaging techniques are commonly used, like Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Magnetoencephalography (MEG) or Electroencephalograms (EEGs). The aim of this project is to build a theoretical model, able to capture the neural dynamics of cortical interactions, which we referred to as effective connectivity. Neural data are high-density EEGs, recorded during a decision-making task (Cos et al. 2022). This approach overcomes the limitations that are presented when directly using correlation based connectivity metrics. The framework we created consists of a model-based whole-brain effective connectivity, based on the multivariate Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (MOU) process (MOU-EC). The goal of the model, once fitted, is to provide a directed connectivity estimate that reflects the dynamical state of the EEG signals and a method to generate signals that follow the connectivity

Lessons learned from the implementation of a Service Management Office: the case of a World Food company in Latin America

[EN] This paper presents the case of evolution and lessons learned in information technology service management (ITSM) of a World Food Company in Latin America, with an emphasis on their process-driven strategy for integral transformation through the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), as well as the creation of their Service Management Office (SMO). Their experience in implementing ITIL and an SMO presenting their roadmap and main challenges. As an extra added value, service quality has been enhanced through the use of business indicators and commitments from three perspectives: people, processes and technologies. These results reveal that the SMO has become a strategic complement for IT, in addition to being a fundamental element to ensure quality and efficiency in technology service management.Lucio Nieto, T.; Gonzalez-Bañales, D. (2020). Lessons learned from the implementation of a Service Management Office: the case of a World Food company in Latin America. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 21-34. https://doi.org/10.4995/INN2019.2019.10048OCS213

The effect of initial inequality on meritocracy: a voting experiment on tax redistribution

According to Alesina and Angeletos (2005), societies are less redistributive but more efficient when the median voter believes that effort and talent are much more important than luck in determining income. We test these results through a lab experiment in which participants vote over the tax rate and their pre-tax income is determined according to their performance in a real-effort task with leisure time. Subjects receive either a high or a low wage and this condition is either obtained through their talent in a tournament or randomly assigned. We compare subjects' decisions in these two different scenarios, taking into consideration different levels of wage inequality. In our framework, this initial income inequality turns out to be crucial to support the theoretical hypothesis of Alesina and Angeletos (2005). Overall, we find that, only if the wage inequality is high, subjects choose a lower level of income redistribution and provide a higher effort level in the scenario in which high-wage subjects are selected based on their talent through a tournament (than when it is randomly assigned). Thus, we confirm almost all theoretical results in Alesina and Angeletos (2005) when the wage inequality is high enough. The big exception is for efficiency (measured as the sum of total payoffs), since theoretical results are not significant for both wage inequality scenarios

El espacio como variable explicativa

El espacio como variable explicativa: una nueva historia urbana del París obrero pre-haussmanniano (Resumen) Desde su nacimiento en la década de 1960, uno de los retos de la historia urbana ha sido el de demostrar la utilidad de relacionar espacio y sociedad a la hora de entender los procesos históricos. Por lo general, ese desafío ha sido más postulado que puesto realmente en práctica por la historiografía urbana. La entrada de las consideraciones espaciales en la historia social obrera ha sido todavía más reciente y contamos con muy pocos estudios serios que relacionen el mundo social de trabajadores y trabajadoras con sus espacios cotidianos. Nuestro texto repasa el último libro del historiador italiano Mauricio Gribaudi Paris ville ouvrière. Une histoire occultée, 1789-1848 para informar a historiadores e historiadoras de las grandes ciudades del siglo XIX de la utilidad de usar metodología y fuentes que manejen el espacio urbano como una variable clave al interpretar procesos como la industrialización temprana, la formación de la clase trabajadora, el surgimiento del movimiento obrero, los estallidos revolucionarios del Ochocientos o las primeras transformaciones urbanísticas de reforma de los centros históricos.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Transatlantic knowledge in the history of science Barcelona/Buenos Aires: notes on relational urban history

La reciente publicación del libro Saberes transatlánticos representa la consolidación en los últimos años de una historia urbana de la ciencia. Para analizar la novedad del reciente “giro espacial” en la historia urbana de la ciencia, la tecnología y la medicina, se recuerda primero el surgimiento de la variable espacial como factor constitutivo en la consolidación de historia urbana. Tras pasar revista a los distintos textos del libro, el artículo presenta después una serie de referencias bibliográficas sobre historia urbana transnacional que pretenden enriquecer una historia urbana menos atenta a la ciudad en sí y a su contexto nacional que a las relaciones con otras ciudades en un marco transnacional. Se ha puesto especial interés en reflejar historiografía relevante escrita en lenguas latinas, tradicionalmente ignoradas en la historia urbana. El objetivo último es reflexionar sobre la posible construcción de una historia urbana relacional.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Exploring business competitiveness in high technology sectors: an empirical analysis of the mexican software industry

The objective of this study is to explore business competitiveness in a high technology sector through the analysis of the relationship among technological innovation, relational capital and market orientation, and their influence on companies' business performance of the Mexican Software Industry. This study is analyzed under a positivistic and deductive approach, using multivariate statistical analysis on the data gathered via an online survey from 198 software industry companies. The outcomes suggest that technological innovation and relational capital significantly influence business performance, while market orientation indirectly influences performance through its interaction with technological innovation