Emerging Latin American markets in world of trade: Exporting old goods into a new era

Se puede afirmar que las economías latinoamericanas son atractivas en el largo plazo, se explica revisando las cifras de los últimos 7 anos donde se presentaron crecimientos hasta del 4,5% como ocurrió en el año 2009, según fuentes presentadas por calificadoras de riesgos como Standard and Poor. Sin embargo, en opinión de analistas, la profundidad y amplitud de la crisis financiera global y sus implicaciones en la economía fueron de tal magnitud que fomentaron una fuerte ralentización de la economía mundial durante buena parte del último quinquenio, justificando asi un ajuste a las economías de los mercados emergentes. El presente trabajo presenta un análisis de las economías emergentes latinoamericanas vistas desde su devenir histórico hasta el panorama de la Crisis Financiera ello explicaría su papel en el contexto de los mercados internacionales así como también tratara de explicar sus tendencias y aproximaciones actuales finalizando con una propuesta que identifique tendencias y acciones que probablemente se puede implementar.Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociale

Importance Sampling for Coded-Modulation Error Probability Estimation

This paper proposes an efficient simulation method based on importance sampling to estimate the random-coding error probability of coded modulation. The technique is valid for complex-valued modulations over Gaussian channels, channels with memory, and naturally extends to fading channels. The simulation method is built on two nested importance samplers to respectively estimate the pairwise error probability and generate the channel input and output. The effect of the respective number of samples on the overall bias and variance of the estimate of the error probability is characterized. For a memoryless channel, the estimator is shown to be consistent and with a small variance, growing with the square root of the code length, rather than the exponential growth of a standard Monte Carlo estimator.This work has been funded in part by the European Research Council under ERC grant agreement 725411, and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under grant TEC2016-78434-C3-1-R

Assessing Changes in Intercultural Sensitivity among Agricultural Students Exposed to International Experiences

The purpose of this study was to assess changes in intercultural sensitivity among Agriculture college students at a land-grant university who participated in a designated international I-course or a faculty-led short study abroad program to America, Asia/Oceania, and Europe. Using the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI).A nonequivalent group design pretest, posttest, with a comparison group, was used for data collection and analysis. One hundred and sixty-two students, clustered into five groups, participated in the study. The data were analyzed using split-plot factorial design 5 x 2. Findings indicated that all five groups were in the Ethnocentric Phase of the developmental continuum for both the pre and posttest, among the groups regarding development of intercultural sensitivity as a result of an international experience or I-course. The authors recommend that course facilitators include facets of intercultural dimensions in the curriculum as a means for assisting students acquire intercultural competence. Interventions should be designed according to individual levels of intercultural sensitivity. Reflexive journaling and group discussions should be used as an integral partof institutional curricular enhancement plans to increase intercultural competence. Institutional, intercultural goals should include moving students toward the acceptance stage of the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS). Further research should identify specific variables related to developing intercultural sensitivity among college students

Animal Identification and Records Monitoring Tool using RFID (AIRMTR)

This study was conducted to design, develop and initially implement the Animal Identification and Records Monitoring Tool using RFID. Specifically, it identified the problems encountered in conducting Manual Tagging for Animal Clinic; the appropriate features of the tool that can be developed to address the problems encountered, and the respondents’ level of acceptance of the user toward the developed tool in termsof functionality, reliability, usability, and performance. The research used the qualitative-quantitative research method that utilized a researcher-made questionnaire and interview questions. The respondents of the studywere one (1) Animal Care Specialist representative, one (1) Pretty Paws representative, five (5) veterinarian representatives and eighty (80) pet owners from different places. The problems encountered in conducting tagging for animal clinic were traditional animal tag may cause death to some animals; animal diseases and injuries by animal tagging; duplication and confusion in using animal tagging; and difficulty in maintainingrecords of vaccination, medication health check-ups using animal tagging. The appropriate features of the tool that can be developed to address the problems encountered were: RFID can make the process of animal tagging faster and easier; and online scheduling and identification of pets in pet clinics are more convenient to use for both pet owners and veterinarians rather than the manual process. The respondents’ ratings for Animal Identification and Record Monitoring Tool using RFID were highly acceptable in terms of functionality (4.62); reliability (4.52); usability (4.68); and performance (4.59). The government agencies may suggest that animals should be tagged using the developed system for monitoring purposes. Further research on Internet controlleddevices may be conducted other than stand-alone offline software programs. This study may also be developed considering the following features: UHF as a tracking device for animals; individual registered users to make page where the client can edit, rate and price; displaying hex value using LCD; access to the shop’s system to bevalidated; contraction number of the project with logo and clinic’s validation. Keywords: Animal Identification, Manual Tagging, RFI

Concentration of Random-Coding Error Exponents

This paper studies the error exponent of i.i.d. randomly generated codes used for transmission over discrete memoryless channels with maximum likelihood decoding. Specifically, this paper shows that the error exponent of a code, defined as the negative normalized logarithm of the probability of error, converges in probability to the typical error exponent. For high rates, the result is a consequence of the fact that the random-coding error exponent and the sphere-packing error exponent coincide. For low rates, instead, the proof of convergence is based on the fact that the union bound accurately characterizes the probability of error

Multi-technique approach to rockfall monitoring in the Montserrat massif (Catalonia, NE Spain)

Montserrat Mountain is located near Barcelona in Catalonia, in the northeast of Spain, and its massif is formed by conglomerate interleaved by siltstone/sandstone with steep slopes very prone to rockfalls. The increasing number of visitors in the monastery area, reaching 2.4 million per year, has highlighted the risk derived from rockfalls for this building area and also for the terrestrial accesses, both roads and the rack railway. A risk mitigation plan has been launched, and its first phase during 2014-2016 has been focused largely on testing several monitoring techniques for their later implementation. The results of the pilot tests, performed as a development from previous sparse experiences and data, are presented together with the first insights obtained. These tests combine four monitoring techniques under different conditions of continuity in space and time domains, which are: displacement monitoring with Ground-based Synthetic Aperture Radar and characterization at slope scale, with an extremely non-uniform atmospheric phase screen due to the stepped topography and atmosphere stratification; Terrestrial Laser Scanner surveys quantifying the frequency of small or even previously unnoticed rockfalls, and monitoring rock block centimetre scale displacements; the monitoring of rock joints implemented through a wireless sensor network with an ad hoc design of ZigBee loggers developed by ICGC; and, finally, monitoring singular rock needles with Total Station.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Mismatched decoding: Error exponents, second-order rates and saddlepoint approximations

This paper considers the problem of channel coding with a given (possibly suboptimal) maximum-metric decoding rule. A cost-constrained random-coding ensemble with multiple auxiliary costs is introduced, and is shown to achieve error exponents and second-order coding rates matching those of constant-composition random coding, while being directly applicable to channels with infinite or continuous alphabets. The number of auxiliary costs required to match the error exponents and second-order rates of constant-composition coding is studied, and is shown to be at most two. For independent identically distributed random coding, asymptotic estimates of two well-known non-asymptotic bounds are given using saddlepoint approximations. Each expression is shown to characterize the asymptotic behavior of the corresponding random-coding bound at both fixed and varying rates, thus unifying the regimes characterized by error exponents, second-order rates, and moderate deviations. For fixed rates, novel exact asymptotics expressions are obtained to within a multiplicative 1+o(1) term. Using numerical examples, it is shown that the saddlepoint approximations are highly accurate even at short block lengths.This work was supported in part by the European Research Council under Grant 259663, in part by the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme under Grant 303633, and in part by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Grants RYC-2011-08150 and TEC2012-38800-C03-03

Mismatched Multi-Letter Successive Decoding for the Multiple-Access Channel

This paper studies channel coding for the discrete memoryless multiple-access channel with a given (possibly suboptimal) decoding rule. A multi-letter successive decoding rule depending on an arbitrary non-negative decoding metric is considered, and achievable rate regions and error exponents are derived both for the standard MAC (independent codebooks), and for the cognitive MAC (one user knows both messages) with superposition coding. In the cognitive case, the rate region and error exponent are shown to be tight with respect to the ensemble average. The rate regions are compared with those of the commonly considered decoder that chooses the message pair maximizing the decoding metric, and numerical examples are given for which successive decoding yields a strictly higher sum rate for a given pair of input distributions.This work was supported in part by the European Research Council through ERC under Grant 259663 and Grant 725411, in part by the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme under Grant 303633, and in part by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Grant RYC-2011-08150, Grant TEC2012-38800-C03- 03, and Grant TEC2016-78434-C3-1-R

Multiuser Random Coding Techniques for Mismatched Decoding

This paper studies multiuser random coding techniques for channel coding with a given (possibly suboptimal) decoding rule. For the mismatched discrete memoryless multiple-access channel, an error exponent is obtained that is tight with respect to the ensemble average, and positive within the interior of Lapidoth's achievable rate region. This exponent proves the ensemble tightness of the exponent of Liu and Hughes in the case of maximum-likelihood decoding. An equivalent dual form of Lapidoth's achievable rate region is given, and the latter is shown to immediately extend to channels with infinite and continuous alphabets. In the setting of single-user mismatched decoding, similar analysis techniques are applied to a refined version of superposition coding, which is shown to achieve rates at least as high as standard superposition coding for any set of random-coding parameters