Have Spanish companies built greater entrepreneurship after privatization?

This study analyses some of the strategic and organizational changes experienced in public firms following privatization in its double facet: sale of companies and deregulation. Specifically, we analyse the process of innovation in terms of products, processes and organization. We also look into the development of new businesses and strategic renewal, which in the end shape the entrepreneurial capacity of a company. A sample of Spanish firms which were privatized between 1985 and 2000 shows that after privatization, these companies have experienced a significant increase in entrepreneurship. These changes are even more appreciable when a high sector competition is added to the ownership shift. Once they join the private sector, their level of product, process and organizational innovation is higher. They also develop new businesses at national level, reinforce their international activity and embark on strategic renewal processes by shedding the lesser profitable businesses and modifying their competitive strategy so as to gain efficiency

Adaptive multi-stage integrators for optimal energy conservation in molecular simulations

We introduce a new Adaptive Integration Approach (AIA) to be used in a wide range of molecular simulations. Given a simulation problem and a step size, the method automatically chooses the optimal scheme out of an available family of numerical integrators. Although we focus on two-stage splitting integrators, the idea may be used with more general families. In each instance, the system-specific integrating scheme identified by our approach is optimal in the sense that it provides the best conservation of energy for harmonic forces. The AIA method has been implemented in the BCAM-modified GROMACS software package. Numerical tests in molecular dynamics and hybrid Monte Carlo simulations of constrained and unconstrained physical systems show that the method successfully realises the fail-safe strategy. In all experiments, and for each of the criteria employed, the AIA is at least as good as, and often significantly outperforms the standard Verlet scheme, as well as fixed parameter, optimized two-stage integrators. In particular, the sampling efficiency found in simulations using the AIA is up to 5 times better than the one achieved with other tested schemes

An evaluation of urban consolidation centers through continuous analysis with non-equal market share companies

This paper analyzes the logistic cost savings caused by the implementation of Urban Consolidation Centers (UCC) in a dense area of a city. In these urban terminals, freight flows from interurban carriers are consolidated and transferred to a neutral last-mile carrier to perform final deliveries. This operation would reduce both last-mile fleet size and average distance cost. Our UCC modeling approach is focused on continuous analytic models for the general case of carriers with different market shares. Savings are highly sensitive to the design of the system: the increment of capacity in interurban vehicles and the proximity of the UCC terminal to the area in relation to current distribution centers. An exhaustive collection of possible market shares distributions are discussed. Results show that market shares distribution does not affect cost savings significantly. The analysis of the proposed model also highlights the trade-off between savings in the system and a minimum market share per company when the consolidation center is established.Postprint (published version

A Sustainable West? Analyzing Clusters of Public Opinion in Sustainability Western Discourses in a Collection of Multilingual Newspapers (1999-2018)

In this article, we analyze the temporal and geographic evolution of sustainability-related discourses over a time frame of twenty years (1999-2018). We use a collection of multilingual newspapers in English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian, as a proxy. We filter documents using four key terms: sustainable development, climate change, environment, and pollution, seeking to explore how different newspapers encode the same message, aiming to detect points of contact (agreement) and rupture (polarity). Our methodology includes Topic Modelling (Pachinko Allocation [1]), word embeddings [2], Ward’s hierarchical cluster analysis [3], and network analysis [4]. Our results show a progressive simplification of semantic fields over time, reflecting less polarizing views across countries and, therefore, showing an increasing agreement on sustainability-related discourses in our contemporary societies. Moreover, we also notice little variation of newspapers rhetorics over time. Therefore, this article also contributes with a meta-reflection about newspapers behaviour as information containers

Heroínas de cine

Concretament la Guerra del Francès (1808-1814) como tema argumental ha estat portada al cine en numerosas ocasions al llarg dels anys, sobre tot durant la primera mitad del franquisme, i no només en España. En el present estudi s'analitza els tipus femenins representats a la producció filmica sobre la Guerra del Francès.Concretamente la Guerra de la independencia Española (1808-1814) como tema argumental ha sido llevada al cine en numerosas ocasiones a lo largo de los años, sobre todo durante la primera mitad del franquismo, y no sólo en España. En el presente estudio se analizan los tipos femeninos representados en la producción filmica sobre la Guerra de la Independencia.Specifically, the Peninsular War (1808-1814) as a subject of argument has been made into a film on numerous occasions over the years, especially during the first half of the Franco regime, not only in Spain. In the present study explores the feminine types represented in film production on the Peninsular War