More Income Equality or Not? An Empirical Analysis of Individuals' Preferences for Redistribution

Do people prefer a society with an extensive social welfare system with high taxes, or low taxes but lax redistributive policies? Although economists have for a long time investigated the trade-off mechanism between equity and efficiency, surprisingly little information is available about citizens’ preferences over the distribution of income in a society. The aim of this paper is reduce this shortcoming, investigating in an empirical study working with World Values Survey, what shapes individuals' preferences for income equality in Spain. We present evidence that not only traditional economic variables are relevant to be considered, but also factors such as ideology, political interest, fairness perception about others or trust in institutions, are key determinants to understand preferences towards redistribution and equality. Furthermore, we also find that regional conditions affect the citizens’ preferences for income equality. Higher income inequality leads to stronger preferences for equality. On the other hand, there is the tendency that higher social expenditures reduce the preferences for income equality.redistribution, inequality, welfare state, social capital, regional conditions

Data-Analytics Modeling of Electrical Impedance Measurements for Cell Culture Monitoring

High-throughput data analysis challenges in laboratory automation and lab-on-a-chip devices’ applications are continuously increasing. In cell culture monitoring, specifically, the electrical cell-substrate impedance sensing technique (ECIS), has been extensively used for a wide variety of applications. One of the main drawbacks of ECIS is the need for implementing complex electrical models to decode the electrical performance of the full system composed by the electrodes, medium, and cells. In this work we present a new approach for the analysis of data and the prediction of a specific biological parameter, the fill-factor of a cell culture, based on a polynomial regression, data-analytic model. The method was successfully applied to a specific ECIS circuit and two different cell cultures, N2A (a mouse neuroblastoma cell line) and myoblasts. The data-analytic modeling approach can be used in the decoding of electrical impedance measurements of different cell lines, provided a representative volume of data from the cell culture growth is available, sorting out the difficulties traditionally found in the implementation of electrical models. This can be of particular importance for the design of control algorithms for cell cultures in tissue engineering protocols, and labs-on-a-chip and wearable devices applicationsEspaña, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación y Universidades project RTI2018-093512-B-C2

Partial coordination in clustered base station MIMO transmission

This proceeding at: IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC, 2013), took place 2013, April, 7-10, in Shaghai (China)We present partial coordination strategies in a clustered cellular environment, evaluating the achievable rate in the downlink transmission. Block Diagonalization is employed for the coordinated users within the cluster to remove interference, while the interference from non-coordinated users remains. The achievable rate is evaluated resorting to an analytical expression conditioned on the position of the users in the cluster. A partial coordination approach is proposed to reduce the coordination complexity and overhead, where users close to the base station are not coordinated. Two approaches are considered, namely the non-coordinated users can be grouped and assigned separated resources from the coordinated ones, or they can be mixed.This work was supported by projects CSD2008-00010 “COMONSENS” and TEC2011-29006-C03-03 “GRE3N”

Achievable rate and fairness in coordinated base station transmission

This work focuses on the fairness in the distribution of the achievable rate per user in a cellular environment where clusters of base stations coordinate their transmissions in the downlink. Block Diagonalization is employed within the cluster to remove interference among users while the interference coming from other clusters remains. The probability distribution of the achievable rate per user shows a perfect match with a Gamma distribution so that a characterization in terms of mean and variance can provide a useful tool for the design of the clusters and the implementation of fairness strategies in a coordinated base station network with Block Diagonalization.This work is partly funded by the projects “GRE3N”: TEC2011-29006- C03-03, and “COMONSENS”: CSD2008-00010.Publicad

Non spontaneous saccadic movements identification in clinical electrooculography using machine learning

In this paper we evaluate the use of the machine learning algorithms Support Vector Machines, K-Nearest Neighbors, CART decision trees and Naive Bayes to identify non spontaneous saccades in clinical electrooculography tests. Our approach tries to solve problems like the use of manually established thresholds present in classical methods like identification by velocity threshold (I-VT) or identification by dispersion threshold (I-DT). We propose a modification to an adaptive threshold estimation algorithm for detecting signal impulses without the need of any user input. Also, a set of features were selected to take advantage of intrinsic characteristics of clinical electrooculography tests. The models were evaluated with signals recorded to subjects affected by Spinocerebellar Ataxia type 2 (SCA2). Results obtained by the algorithm shows accuracies over 97%, recalls over 97% and precisions over 91% for the four models evaluated.Universidad de Málaga, Campus de excelencia de Andalucía Tec

Efficiency and elusion: both sides of public enterprises in Spain

The main objective of this research consists on analyzing regional públic sector enterprises (PSEs) in Spain. We describe a general view on Spanish Autonomous Communities (ACs) financial resources, in the context of the Stability and Growth Pact and Budgetary Stability Act. From 2002, such regulation imposes several constraints to ACs’ indebtness. In this paper, we find out about the roll of PSEs as an alternative way to traditional debt mechanisms. Thus, according to Eurostat criteria, PSEs’ debt can be taken off the public sector’s consolidated budget. Descriptive and econometric results confirm our expectations. ACs’ have used public enterprises to avoid the stringent financial rules. Additionally, it seems that low productivity ACs are accumulating more public debt outside the scope of consolidation. The paper concludes with some recommendations and policy implications

Constrained power allocation schemes for coordinated base station transmission using block diagonalization

In this study, we propose several power allocation schemes in a coordinated base station downlink transmission with per antenna and per base station power constraints. Block Diagonalization is employed to remove interference among users. For each set of power constraints, two schemes based on the waterfilling distribution are proposed and compared to the optimal solution, which can only be obtained numerically by using convex optimization. We show that the proposed schemes achieve a performance, in terms of weighted sum rate, very close to the optimal, without the heavy computational complexity required by the latter. The sum rates are compared first in a simplified two-user two-cell case where we also compare our approach to the previous solutions available in the literature. Then, we examine the performance in a multi-cell scenario where we also evaluate the degradation of the performance caused by imperfect channel state informationThis study has been partly funded by projects TEC2008-06327-C03-02, CCG10-UC3M/TIC-4620, and CSD2008-00010.Publicad

Preparación y propiedades de láminas ultradelgadas policristalinas ferroeléctricas de PbTiO3

El objetivo de esta tesis es la preparación y caracterización de láminas ultradelgadas de titanato de plomo mediante el depósito de disoluciones sintetizadas por un método sol-gel basado en la denominada ruta de los dioles. La reducción progresiva del tamaño de los dispositivos hasta la nanoescala, hace necesario un análisis de los métodos de preparación de láminas ultradelgadas, con espesores por debajo de los 100 nm. En este caso la futura integración de láminas ferroeléctricas de composiciones basadas en el titanato de plomo como elementos transductores en sistemas nanoelectromecánicos, requiere en primer lugar la preparación de láminas ultradelgadas de alta calidad, para lo cual, los métodos de depósito de disoluciones pueden ser una excelente opción. En esta tesis se demuestra la viabilidad de preparar láminas ultradelgadas ferroeléctricas de alta calidad por medio del depósito de disoluciones. Su comportamiento ferroeléctrico y piezoeléctrico es prometedor para sus posibles aplicaciones en nanodispositivos, aunque debido a su carácter policristalino, el tamaño de grano juega un papel esencial a la hora de determinar los efectos de tamaño sobre sus propiedades.Peer reviewe