A social stigma model of child labor

This paper constructs a model in which a social norm is internalized. The social disapproval of people who violate the norm -stigmatization-- is incorporated as a reduction in their utility. That reduction in utility is lower as the proportion of the population that violates the norm increases. In the model, society disapproves of people sending their children to work and parents care about that “embarrassment”. An equilibrium is constructed in which the expected and realized stigma costs are the same; and the wages rates of child and adult labor are such as to equate demand and supply for each kind of labor.

Yield Management under the Real Options Scheme for Optimal Decision Making in Hotels

Yield management is the process of actively managing inventory to maximize revenues. In this paper we present a model demised to apply yield management techniques using real options to the problem of optimal decision making when assigning rooms to hotel customers. Two different methods are proposed to carry out the evaluation: numerical resolution with the PDEs and Monte Carlo simulation. The achieved results using both methods are similar demonstrating the robustness of the simulation in this field and the model lends itself to be a tool for helping the hotel manager in his operational decision of whether or not giving a room to a potential client

On Offline Evaluation of Vision-based Driving Models

Autonomous driving models should ideally be evaluated by deploying them on a fleet of physical vehicles in the real world. Unfortunately, this approach is not practical for the vast majority of researchers. An attractive alternative is to evaluate models offline, on a pre-collected validation dataset with ground truth annotation. In this paper, we investigate the relation between various online and offline metrics for evaluation of autonomous driving models. We find that offline prediction error is not necessarily correlated with driving quality, and two models with identical prediction error can differ dramatically in their driving performance. We show that the correlation of offline evaluation with driving quality can be significantly improved by selecting an appropriate validation dataset and suitable offline metrics. The supplementary video can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8K8Z-iF0cYComment: Published at the ECCV 2018 conferenc

Exploring the Limitations of Behavior Cloning for Autonomous Driving

Driving requires reacting to a wide variety of complex environment conditions and agent behaviors. Explicitly modeling each possible scenario is unrealistic. In contrast, imitation learning can, in theory, leverage data from large fleets of human-driven cars. Behavior cloning in particular has been successfully used to learn simple visuomotor policies end-to-end, but scaling to the full spectrum of driving behaviors remains an unsolved problem. In this paper, we propose a new benchmark to experimentally investigate the scalability and limitations of behavior cloning. We show that behavior cloning leads to state-of-the-art results, including in unseen environments, executing complex lateral and longitudinal maneuvers without these reactions being explicitly programmed. However, we confirm well-known limitations (due to dataset bias and overfitting), new generalization issues (due to dynamic objects and the lack of a causal model), and training instability requiring further research before behavior cloning can graduate to real-world driving. The code of the studied behavior cloning approaches can be found at https://github.com/felipecode/coiltraine

Proposal of a novel design for linear superconducting motor using 2G tape stacks

This paper presents a new design for a su- perconducting linear motor (SLM). This SLM uses stacks of second-generation (2G) superconducting tapes, which are responsible for replacing yttrium barium copper oxide bulks. The proposed SLM may operate as a synchronous motor or as a hysteresis motor, depending on the load force magnitude. A small-scale linear machine prototype with 2G stacks was constructed and tested to investigate the proposed SLM topology. The stator traveling magnetic field wave was represented by several Nd-Fe-B permanent magnets. A relative movement was produced between the stator and the stack, and the force was measured along the displacement. This system was also simulated by the finite element method, in order to calculate the induced currents in the stack and determine the electromagnetic force. The H-formulation was used to solve the problem, and a power law relation was applied to take into account the intrin- sically nonlinearity of the superconductor. The simulated and measured results were in accordance. Simulated re- sults were extrapolated, proving to be an interesting tool to scale up the motor in future projects. The proposed motor presented an estimated force density of almost 500 N/kg, which is much higher than any linear motor.This work was supported in part by the following agencies: CNPq/CAPES/INERGE, CNPq—Ci ˆ encias sem Fronteiras, FAPERJ, Catalan Government 2014- SGR-753, CONSOLIDER Excellence Network MAT2014-56063-C2-1-R and MAT2015-68994-REDC, Eurofusion EU COST ACTIONS MP1201/ MP1014/PPPT-WPMAG 2014, EUROTAPES FP7-NMP-Large-2011- 280432, FORTISSIMO FP7-2013-ICT-609029, and Spanish Govern- ment Agencies—Severo Ochoa Programme Centres of Excellence in R&D. (Corresponding author: Guilherme G. Sotelo.

Selección, ensamble e implementación de un sistema sostenible de generación de calor y energía eléctrica para un módulo de vivienda construída a partir de botella reciclada

Se propuso seleccionar, ensamblar e implementar un sistema fotovoltaico que aporte energía eléctrica y térmica para una vivienda construida de botellas plásticas recicladas haciendo uso de energías renovables que aporten en el cuidado del medio ambiente y la calidad de vida, los recursos empleados para la realización de este proyecto, fueron tomados de proyectos anteriores, como el colector solar que está situado en la azotea del edificio de la facultad de mecánica , un panel solar que fue tomado de otra vivienda en la fundación kyrios y por ultimo un panel solar presentado como proyecto de grado de la Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira

End-to-end Driving via Conditional Imitation Learning

Deep networks trained on demonstrations of human driving have learned to follow roads and avoid obstacles. However, driving policies trained via imitation learning cannot be controlled at test time. A vehicle trained end-to-end to imitate an expert cannot be guided to take a specific turn at an upcoming intersection. This limits the utility of such systems. We propose to condition imitation learning on high-level command input. At test time, the learned driving policy functions as a chauffeur that handles sensorimotor coordination but continues to respond to navigational commands. We evaluate different architectures for conditional imitation learning in vision-based driving. We conduct experiments in realistic three-dimensional simulations of urban driving and on a 1/5 scale robotic truck that is trained to drive in a residential area. Both systems drive based on visual input yet remain responsive to high-level navigational commands. The supplementary video can be viewed at https://youtu.be/cFtnflNe5fMComment: Published at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 201

Significant Subgraph Mining with Multiple Testing Correction

The problem of finding itemsets that are statistically significantly enriched in a class of transactions is complicated by the need to correct for multiple hypothesis testing. Pruning untestable hypotheses was recently proposed as a strategy for this task of significant itemset mining. It was shown to lead to greater statistical power, the discovery of more truly significant itemsets, than the standard Bonferroni correction on real-world datasets. An open question, however, is whether this strategy of excluding untestable hypotheses also leads to greater statistical power in subgraph mining, in which the number of hypotheses is much larger than in itemset mining. Here we answer this question by an empirical investigation on eight popular graph benchmark datasets. We propose a new efficient search strategy, which always returns the same solution as the state-of-the-art approach and is approximately two orders of magnitude faster. Moreover, we exploit the dependence between subgraphs by considering the effective number of tests and thereby further increase the statistical power.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure, accepted to the 2015 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM15

Economic Crises, Maternal and Infant Mortality, Low Birth Weight and Enrollment Rates: Evidence from Argentina’s Downturns

Este estudio investiga el impacto de las recientes crisis en Argentina (incluyendo la grave recesión de 2001-2002) en la salud y la educación. La estrategia de identificación se basa en la covarianza entre los cambios en el PIB regional y los resultados por provincia en términos intertemporales e interprovinciales. Estos resultados indican efectos significativos e importantes de las fluctuaciones agregadas en la mortalidad materna e infantil y en el bajo peso al nacer, así como un patrón contracíclico aunque no significativo para las tasas de matrícula. Finalmente, el gasto público provincial en salud y educación se correlacionan con la incidencia del bajo peso al nacer y la matriculación escolar de los adolescentes, con peores resultados ante una disminución del PIB.crisis, infant mortality, maternal mortality, low birth weight, poverty, Argentina

Semántica y discursividad de la legislación chilena sobre temas migratorios. Una aproximación crítica

this paper aims to analyze the semantic and discursive network betweenthe Western notion of State, Nation and Citizenship in the Chilean laws on immigration issues. this review is provided in the context of modernity and late capitalism, theoretical and conceptual references that are subsumed under this regulation. The absence of grand narratives and identities defined reread forces in the legal code, the migratory insertion of human capital in the country. From this point off the charges and cultural processes that entails.la presente investigación tiene por objeto analizar la red semántica y discursiva que existe entre la noción occidental de Estado, Nación y Ciudadanía en la legislación chilena sobre temas migratorios. Para ello se ha dispuesto revisar, en el contexto de la modernidad y capitalismo tardío, las referencias teóricas y conceptuales que se subsumen en esta normativa. La ausencia de grandes narrativas y de identidades denidas obliga a releer, en clave jurídica, la inserción del capital humano trashumante en el país. De este punto se desprenden las tipicaciones y los procesos culturales que esto conlleva