About Catalan Surrealism

Catalan Surrealism has local roots, although it also has an international dimension. Even though doubts have been cast as to whether some Surrealistic artists fully fit within the theoretical definition of Surrealism, the history of this artistic trend could not be written without Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró, who extend beyond its boundaries. However, it is not fitting to limit ourselves to these two artists, the most famous ones; rather we must also consider other artists like Leandre Cristòfol, Esteban Francés and others discussed in this article

BPR based on Data Mining Tools: Redesigning the Sales Promotion Process in Retailing

This in-progress research project involves developing data analysis tools based on statistical analysis techniques, artificial intelligence and data mining, which can be used to support decision-making in the field of retailing. During the first stages of the project, research will be carried out to determine which tools are best suited to the characteristics of this sector

CIO herds and user gangs in the adoption of open source software

Open Source Software (OSS) has received wide attention from the research community, analyzing both the innovation process of software development by distributed and unrelated teams, and the market dynamics at play between "free" and proprietary software. Up until now, OSS adoption has been irregular, although it seems to be breaking the dominance of existing players in some market segments. In this paper, we contend that due to the particularities of its development process, traditional ways of explaining IT adoption -rational decision making, technology diffusion models, and the psychology of the decision maker- are insufficient to explain the case of OSS diffusion. We believe that the existence of a strong and diffused development community leads to a new role of the user community, as both are intertwined. In addition, new concerns for social corporate responsibility and welfare create a new context, in which "user gangs" may exert some degrees of pressure on the IT decision maker. By analyzing some significant cases we depict under what conditions significant OSS adoption may unfold, showing that in two of the cases studied user gangs play a significant role. The resulting preliminary framework will inform future work, in which we aim at validating the emerging insights gained in this research.Open source software; IT adoption; user communities; CIO herding;

Planar unclustered scale-free graphs as models for technological and biological networks

Many real life networks present an average path length logarithmic with the number of nodes and a degree distribution which follows a power law. Often these networks have also a modular and self-similar structure and, in some cases - usually associated with topological restrictions- their clustering is low and they are almost planar. In this paper we introduce a family of graphs which share all these properties and are defined by two parameters. As their construction is deterministic, we obtain exact analytic expressions for relevant properties of the graphs including the degree distribution, degree correlation, diameter, and average distance, as a function of the two defining parameters. Thus, the graphs are useful to model some complex networks, in particular several families of technological and biological networks, and in the design of new practical communication algorithms in relation to their dynamical processes. They can also help understanding the underlying mechanisms that have produced their particular structure.Comment: Accepted for publication in Physica

Entorn del Surrealisme català

El Surrealisme català té arrels autòctones, per bé que també té una dimensió internacional. Encara que s’hagin formulat dubtes sobre si alguns dels seus autors s’ajusten completament a la definició teòrica del Surrealisme, no es pot escriure la història d’aquest corrent artístic sense Salvador Dalí i Joan Miró, que en desborden el marc. Però no és correcte limitar-se a aquestes figures més famoses, sinó que cal tenir en compte altres artistes com Leandre Cristòfol, Esteban Francés i altres que aquí s’esmenten