Does illegal immigration empower rightist parties?

The main goal of this paper is to analyze the political outcome in countries where the relevant issue in elections is the control of immigration. In particular we explore the consequences on the political outcome of the fact that parties are either ideological or opportunistic with respect to this issue. In order to do that we use a simple two-party political competition model in which the issues over which parties take positions are the level of border enforcement and the way it has to be financed. We show that an ideological rather than a pure opportunistic behavior gives parties an advantage to win the election. In particular, in most of the cases we consider we find that rightist parties have an advantage to win in countries where the relevant issue in election is illegal immigration. This result may help us to understand the recent success of anti-immigrant and rightist parties in several countries.illegal immigration, skilled, unskilled, ideology

Blockchain: A Graph Primer

Bitcoin and its underlying technology Blockchain have become popular in recent years. Designed to facilitate a secure distributed platform without central authorities, Blockchain is heralded as a paradigm that will be as powerful as Big Data, Cloud Computing and Machine learning. Blockchain incorporates novel ideas from various fields such as public key encryption and distributed systems. As such, a reader often comes across resources that explain the Blockchain technology from a certain perspective only, leaving the reader with more questions than before. We will offer a holistic view on Blockchain. Starting with a brief history, we will give the building blocks of Blockchain, and explain their interactions. As graph mining has become a major part its analysis, we will elaborate on graph theoretical aspects of the Blockchain technology. We also devote a section to the future of Blockchain and explain how extensions like Smart Contracts and De-centralized Autonomous Organizations will function. Without assuming any reader expertise, our aim is to provide a concise but complete description of the Blockchain technology.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure

Politics, Governance, and Zigzags of the “Power Vertical”: Toward a Framework for Analysis of Russia\u27s Local Regimes

In the wake of multiple political and economic transformations in the 1990s and the 2000s, new patterns of subnational politics and governance emerged across Russia’s regions and large cities in the form of local regimes. These patterns could be analyzed through the theoretical and comparative lenses of international research on the subject. I argue that the major changes of local regimes in Russia’s regions and large cities – unlike those analyzed in the literature on American and European sub-national politics and governance – are heavily affected by structural factors such as trends of local as well as national economic development. Also, major political and institutional changes in Russia and, especially, the process of cooptation of previously semi-autonomous local regimes into the hierarchy of the power vertical during the wave of re-centralization of politics and governance in the 2000s led to the emergence of the dual model of sub-national governance, which combines some featured characteristics of subnational authoritarianism and crony capitalism that partly resembles developmental trends in some Third World countries as well as late-Soviet practices of territorial politics and governance

HPC applications for data-driven agent-based models of pedestrian movement

La gestió de grans instal·lacions multiús és un procés complicat, que té a veure en trobar un equilibri entre la satisfacció del client, aspectes de seguretat i els interessos comercials. Aquest repte s'accentua en períodes de transició, com èpoques de construcció o la millora i manteniment de la instal·lació. Tot i això, amb el creixement de l'Internet of Things(IoT) i l'accés a HPC per a usos comercials als darrers anys ha proporcionat una manera d'adreçar aquest repte a través d'aquestes tecnologies. Les dades provinents d'aquests sistemes fortament monitorats, combinats amb IA i tècniques de simulació, permeten una nova manera d'abordar la gestió de grans instal·lacions. En aquest Treball de Fi de Grau s'ha desenvolupat un Digital Twin del recinte insígnia del Futbol Club Barcelona: el Camp Nou. L'aspecte més important en el funcionament del recinte són els fluxos de vianants i la seva optimització, assegurar un pla robust enfront de les emergències i gestionar els canvis relacionats amb el projecte de construcció que consisteix en la renovació del recinte del Camp Nou també són prioritaris. Aquest prototip de Model de Moviment de Vianants mostra la viabilitat de combinar diverses fonts de dades amb l'objectiu de representar diversos escenaris relacionats amb la gestió de multituds. Aquest model servirà com a referència per integrar les dades provinents de sensors i preprocessades utilitzant tècniques de Machine Learning. Aquest model estarà integrat amb l'estructura de tot IoTwins dins els test-beds 5 i 11 que se centren en les instal·lacions del FCB. El mètode escollit per la simulació del projecte és la Simulació Basada en Agents. Un paradigma de simulació cada vegada més popular que és capaç de representar poblacions heterogènies que estan formades per agents individuals que representen els vianants, per exemple. El seu moviment està definit per un algoritme desenvolupat específicament que representa l'espai al voltant dels Agents de manera matemàtica, derivada d'una funció de cost que combina diferents factors que afecten els vianants. Els Agents entren al recinte, es mouen seguint les seves prioritats i després en surten seguint el seu camí individual. El model es validarà i calibrarà amb les dades accessibles en aquest moment. Diversos escenaris d'exemple han demostrat la viabilitat del model per optimitzar l'evacuació en cas d'emergència i les afectacions que comporten les renovacions del recinte.The management of large multinational facilities is a complex process involving finding the balance between customer satisfaction, safety concerns and commercial interests. This challenge is particularly pronounced in periods of transitions, such as stages construction work, facility upgrade and maintenance. However, with the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and unlocking of HPC for commercial endeavours in recent years offers to address this challenge through the use of technology. The increasing amount of data coming from these heavily monitored system, combined with AI and simulation techniques offers a new approach to the management of large facilities. In this Bachelor Thesis' a Digital Twin of the Football Club Barcelona flagship sports venue: the Camp Nou has been developed. The most important aspect in the functioning of the venue are pedestrian flows and optimising them, ensuring robust emergency planning and managing change related to phased construction project involving a full renovation of the Camp Nou precinct are the main priorities. This prototype of Pedestrian Movement Model shows the feasibility of combining various data streams to represent multiple scenarios of crowd management. This model will serve as a baseline for integrating data coming from a number of sensors and preprocessed with Machine Learning techniques. This model will be integrated as a part of the whole IoTwins structure of test-beds 5 and 11 that focus on the FCB facilities. The approach taken in the simulation part of the project is Agent Based Modelling. An increasingly popular simulation technique that is able to represent heterogeneous population consisting of individual Agents, for example, representing pedestrians. Their movement is defined with an specially developed algorithm that represent the space around the Agents as a mathematically derived cost function that combines multiple factors affecting the movement of pedestrians. The Agents enter the precinct, move around it and leave it following their independent paths. The model is validated and calibrated using currently available data. Several example scenarios have been run to show the feasibility of the approach for optimising emergency evacuation and construction-caused disruptions to normal operations