Understanding the impacts of gig economy platforms on freelancers’ work practices

Freelancing platforms have enabled opportunities for millions of knowledge workers worldwide to pursue a freelance career. Freelancing platforms are part of an emerging work model characterised by technology companies mediating work relationships through algorithms that manage, monitor, and evaluate work – the gig economy. Previous literature has studied freelance workers’ practices, for instance, how they go about getting work, cultivating their reputation, and managing their work. However, most of this research has been conducted prior to the emergence of freelancing platforms, leaving a gap in our understanding of how platforms impact freelancers’ work. This thesis comprises of three qualitative studies, engaging with views from a total of 476 freelancers, to understand the opportunities and challenges freelancing platforms introduce for their work practices. The first study explores how freelancers view online freelancing platforms through a qualitative analysis of discussions in four freelancing subforums. The findings suggests that platforms can enable opportunities to source clients, gain experience, and mitigate precarity while constraining control over their work choices, reputation, and client relationships. The second study focuses on understanding the impact of platforms on freelancers’ everyday work-life through a qualitative diary study followed by semi-structured interviews. Findings from this study illustrate how platform features and individual circumstances shape freelancers’ everyday life. Importantly platform features introduce new constraints on work availability, autonomy, and detachment. The last study builds from the previous two studies and literature recommendations to develop a design fiction that explored a model of online freelancing where platform features are designed to support (rather than constrain) freelancers’ work preferences. This design fiction is used as the basis for five focus groups, identifying novel areas for research and development to support freelancers’ autonomy, entrepreneurship, and peer support. This thesis makes contributions to knowledge, design, and policy. Firstly, it contributes novel empirical knowledge to the impacts freelancing platforms have had on freelance work by unpacking core challenges and opportunities. Secondly, it contributes design implications that move towards thinking about ‘worker-centred’ research interventions, platform configurations, and features to mitigate challenges stemming from platforms. Thirdly, it contributes policy implications to regulate and hold platforms accountable, rethink social institutions to better support freelancers, and legislate emerging technologies that manage work

Integrated Pest Management Education: a Video-Game to Improve Management of Drosophila suzukii, Soft-Skin Fruit Pest

The transition from the conventional global agriculture to an agroecological model poses a teaching and learning challenge to facilitate the wide variety of practices and the many biological processes involved. Games, such as board games, video-games, or mobile apps, are elements that may be used for teaching agroecology, environmental education, or animal conservation. Here, we present a video-game designed to contribute to integrated pest management education. The Spotted-Stop-It video-game is a single-player game which encourages participation, disseminates knowledge on the pest problem and its potential solutions (i.e., harvest frequency, sanitation, and management of alternative non-crop plants), and highlights the importance of good practices from an agroecological perspective at the farmer scale. In a farm-tech regional fair, we presented the game to its users and performed a simple retrospective survey. The survey results showed that most participants did not know about the fly prior to playing the game (34 ind., 68%), but were able to recognize the species among other flies after playing (23 ind., ~ 65%). Also, 21 individuals correctly responded about the effects of this pest on soft-skin fruits (“the fly lays eggs inside the fruit”). The training of future generations on new insect invasions and IPM practices with elements of their own environment may prove to be important to transmit concepts and practices at the service of sustainable crop protection.Fil: de la Vega, Gerardo José. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Patagonia Norte. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria San Carlos de Bariloche. Instituto de Investigaciones Forestales y Agropecuarias Bariloche. - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigaciones Forestales y Agropecuarias Bariloche; ArgentinaFil: Falconaro, Antonella Carla. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Patagonia Norte. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria San Carlos de Bariloche. Instituto de Investigaciones Forestales y Agropecuarias Bariloche. - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigaciones Forestales y Agropecuarias Bariloche; ArgentinaFil: Soria, Lihuen. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Centro Regional Universitario Bariloche; ArgentinaFil: Corley, Juan Carlos. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Patagonia Norte. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria San Carlos de Bariloche. Instituto de Investigaciones Forestales y Agropecuarias Bariloche. - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigaciones Forestales y Agropecuarias Bariloche; Argentin

Ondas Planas

Se analizan un determinado tipo de soluciones de las ecuaciones de Maxwell en un medio homogéneo, lineal, isótropo y sin fuentes: las denominadas ondas planas homogéneas. Se estudian también sus propiedades, sin considerar cuáles podrían ser las distribuciones de carga y corriente necesarias para generarlas

Energy-Aware Low-Power CMOS LNA with Process-Variations Management

A reconfigurable low-noise amplifier (LNA) with digitally controllable gain and power consumption is presented.This architecture allows increasing power consumption only when required, that is, to improve LNA’s radiofrequency performance at extreme communication-channel conditions and/or to counteract the effect of process, voltage, and temperature variations.The proposed design leads to significant power saving when a relaxed operation is acceptable. The LNA is implemented in a 130nm 1.2V CMOS technology for a 2.4GHz IEEE-802.15.4 application. Simulated LNAperformance (taking into account theworst cases under process variations) is comparable to recently published worksCAPES-Brazil 176/12Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores y Cooperación D/024124/09Junta de Andalucía P09-TIC- 5386Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2011-2830

The Gig Economy in Times of COVID-19: Designing for Gig Workers’ Needs

Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected gig economy workers due to the contingent and precarious nature of their work. Many gig economy workers have had to adapt quickly to new forms of working, and even learn new skills, to sustain their livelihood. At the same time, gig economy companies have prioritised profit and customers’ needs over workers’ safety. In this position paper, we draw insights from recent academic literature, policy papers, and media reports from across the globe to explore broad implications the pandemic has had on gig economy workers. We then discuss how gig economy platforms might be re-designed to support better working conditions and foster workers’ development

Ejercicios resueltos de matemáticas I : exámenes propuestos en la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales

Matemáticas I aporta los conocimientos básicos de Álgebra Lineal e Integración que son necesarios en los estudios en Economía (L.E.) y Administración y Dirección de Empresas (L.A.D.E.). Esta publicación recoge problemas resueltos propuestos en exámenes de Matemáticas I de ambas licenciaturas en la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales de la U.P.V. entre los años 2001 y 2010. Los problemas están organizados en diferentes secciones siguiendo el esquema de los temarios de ambas asignaturas

Arrays planares basados en el elemento strip-slot complementario

Recently, the authors introduced a novel planar radiating element that exploits the characteristics of the slotline microstrip coupling to obtain a microstrip-fed slot with broadband matching. This paper reviews the main characteristics of the so-called complementary strip-slot element and comments on its use for building series-fed planar arrays. In this way, two different configurations of series-fed arrays are described: a traveling-wave array of five elements and a circularly-polarized ring array with four elements. The scanning capabilities of the former, together with the multiband behaviour of the circularlypolarized array are highlighted.Este trabajo ha sido financiado por el Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovaci ón (Programa CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010) bajo los proyectos CSD2008-00066, EMET, y CSD2008-00068, Terasense, y por la Junta de Andalucía bajo el proyecto P10- TIC-6883

The Complementary Strip-Slot: From the Unit-Cell of Artificial Transmission Lines to the Basic Element of Novel Antennas

The complementary strip-slot radiating element and its applications are reviewed. The element is a modified version of the conventional microstrip-fed slot that presents very broad matching. Its inherent lattice equivalent circuit, its use as unit-cell of artificial transmission lines and its utility as radiating element are described. Promising experimental results for prototypes of a phased uniform array, a sequentially-rotated ring array and a log-periodic array based on the element for microwave frequencies are included.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

X chromosome inactivation during grasshopper spermatogenesis

Regulation of transcriptional activity during meiosis depends on the interrelated processes of recombination and synapsis. In eutherian mammal spermatocytes, transcription levels change during prophase-I, being low at the onset of meiosis but highly increased from pachytene up to the end of diplotene. However, X and Y chromosomes, which usually present unsynapsed regions throughout prophase-I in male meiosis, undergo a specific pattern of transcriptional inactivation. The interdependence of synapsis and transcription has mainly been studied in mammals, basically in mouse, but our knowledge in other unrelated phylogenetically species is more limited. To gain new insights on this issue, here we analyzed the relationship between synapsis and transcription in spermatocytes of the grasshopper Eyprepocnemis plorans. Autosomal chromosomes of this species achieve complete synapsis; however, the single X sex chromosome remains always unsynapsed and behaves as a univalent. We studied transcription in meiosis by immunolabeling with RNA polymerase II phosphorylated at serine 2 and found that whereas autosomes are active from leptotene up to diakinesis, the X chromosome is inactive throughout meiosis. This inactivation is accompanied by the accumulation of, at least, two repressive epigenetic modifications: H3 methylated at lysine 9 and H2AX phosphorylated at serine 139. Furthermore, we identified that X chromosome inactivation occurs in premeiotic spermatogonia. Overall, our results indicate: (i) transcription regulation in E. plorans spermatogenesis differs from the canonical pattern found in mammals and (ii) X chromosome inactivation is likely preceded by a process of heterochromatinization before the initiation of meiosi

A model for risk alert in the management of call option issues on the IBEX-35 Spanish index

En este trabajo se analizan las posibilidades de formación de carteras réplicas y el establecimiento de estrategias de cobertura basadas en la delta neutral. La idea consiste en estudiar el grado de exposición al riesgo de los emisores de opciones call sobre el índice IBEX-35, intentando diseñar un modelo que lo recoja, e idear un sistema o indicador que dé la voz de alerta cuando el riesgo sea grande. Tras la simulación por ordenador de los resultados de pérdidas y ganancias de las distintas estrategias de cobertura, con ayuda de funciones matemáticas primarias y transformadas y de un análisis de filtros para los parámetros delta, gamma y gamma modificada, proponemos, y contrastamos, un modelo de alerta de utilidad, que sirve como herramienta de gestión del riesgo a los emisores de opciones, basado en una estrategia de cobertura dinámica con cartera réplica.This paper analyses the possibilities of forming replicating portfolio and establishing a hedge strategy based on neutral delta. The idea is based on a study of the degree of risk to which the issuers of call options on the IBEX- 35 stock index are exposed. The goal is to design a model that alerts issuers to an increase in risk. Several useful indicators based on this model are tested. After a computer simulation of gains and losses of different hedge strategies, with primary and transformed mathematics equations, and a filter analysis to delta, gamma and modified gamma parameters, we compare the results obtained. Finally, we recommend a valuable tool for managing the risk of call options issues as a dynamic hedge strategy with replicating portfolio