Inequality aversion among gypsies: a field investigation

This paper presents a first attempt to measure inequality aversion among gypsies. We conducted an experiment among adult gypsies living at slums outside Vallecas (Madrid). To analyze this variable we use the mechanism provided by Kroll & Davidovitz (2003) among 38 voluntary participants. Results indicate that: i) 52.6% of the individuals are inequality averse; ii) there is a positive relationship between inequality aversion and some features of the population such as individual religious practise, marital status, family size, position in the hierarchy of the family or club association and, iii) neither wealth, nor participation in voluntary activities affect inequality aversion.inequality aversion, gypsies, field experiment.

Diseño de un sistema de comunicaciones para satélite de órbita baja basado en modulaciones de fase contínua

Los pequeños satélites han estado presentes desde los comienzos de la era espacial. Pero ahora, los avances en la microelectrónica, en especial los microprocesadores, y el menor coste de lanzamiento que los satélites geoestacionarios (GEO) tradicionales, han hecho que los pequeños satélites de órbita baja [LEO) sean una alternativa viable y atractiva. No sólo desarrollos científicos y militares, sino además aplicaciones comerciales en el campo de las comunicaciones personales y móviles basadas en estos sistemas son ahora una realidad. Las ventajas que supone el uso de este tipo de satélites se pueden resumir con el eslogan "más rápido, mejor, más pequeño y más barato". El gran desarrollo que han sufrido en los últimos años los sistemas de comunicaciones basados en pequeños satélites de órbita baja ha provocado el aumento tanto del número de proyectos orientados ai lanzamiento de constelaciones de satélites que proporcionen comunicaciones globales a lo largo de la Tierra como del número de servicios ofrecidos por estos satélites, uno de los cuales es el de mensajería diferida. Así, se han concedido licencias para constelaciones que ofrecerán comunicaciones que no son en tiempo real, llamadas "pequeños sistemas LEO', en las bandas VHFy UHF, y que planean proporcionar una variedad de servicios adecuados para satélites pequeños y baratos. Fruto del interés por estos sistemas surge esta tesis, centrada fundamentalmente en el diseño e implementación eficiente de un módem para un sistema de comunicaciones por satélite de órbita baja. Actualmente, y gracias a la rápida evolución de los procesadores digitales de señal {DSPs), la tendencia es la de implementar de forma digital todos los algoritmos que deben llevarse a cabo en un módem. Es el punto de vista conocido como "software radio", consistente en reducir los componentes analógicos en la medida de lo posible y acercar las técnicas digitales lo más posible a la antena. La implementación eficiente de algoritmos software para modems, reduce al máximo el número de funciones que se realizan de forma analógica. Esto supone conocer en profundidad los aspectos teóricos que rodean al conjunto de funciones implementadas en el módem. Es necesario, en primer lugar, el estudio del canal de comunicaciones, lo que nos permitirá conocer qué clases de efectos, interferencias y perturbaciones se producirán sobre la señal transmitida y elegir los esquemas de transmisión y recuperación de datos más adecuados en el demodulador. En nuestro caso, se realiza un análisis de las modulaciones de fase continua CPM, así como de los algoritmos empleados en el receptor para demodular la señal, incluyendo la recuperación de los sinaonismos dé bit y portadora. El uso de técnicas de procesado digital de señal permite una gran versatilidad en el diseño de algoritmos óptimos que realicen las funciones del módem. La importancia que han adquirido los diseños hardware cuyo corazón es un: procesador digital de señales (DSPs) hace necesario el conocimiento de la metodología existente para la realización de este tipo de desarrollos software-hardware basados en el procesado digital de señales. Así, se presenta un prototipo hardware del módem de comunicaciones en el que se han reducido al máximo el coste y el consumo de cada uno de los componentes, de acuerdo siempre con la tendencia actual en las comunicaciones por satélite. La tesis finaliza con la evaluación experimental de los estudios realizados sobre la simulación y la plataforma hardware implementada. Se trata de evaluar el sistema en tiempo real, introduciendo los algoritmos en el procesador digital de señal y efectuando un conjunto de pruebas al módem digital para verificar su funcionamiento. Este ha sido otro de los objetivos fundamentales de la tesis, el verificar que los algoritmos estudiados son válidos y son capaces de adaptarse a las condiciones del canal de comunicaciones de forma eficiente y verificando las especificaciones

Development of a custom scripting language and a custom scripting system

The problem being addressed by this particular project lies in programming territory. The learning curve of programming effectively at a professional level is excruciatingly steep, in big part due to the complexity of the environment programmers work in. This environment involves both hardware and software, each with its own unique set of specifications and protocols that need to be learned in order to be effective. The general objectives that have been set are learning how to single-handedly manage a project from start to finish successfully and testing all the skills learned through the course of the degree, delivering at the end of this project a fully-functional product. The scope only considers developing a functional scripting language prototype featuring all the base, and only the base, functionalities expected of a state-of-the-art language. This decision has been made taking in consideration to the fact that a commercial product of the same type requires an amount of work that is unfeasible for a four-month project with only a single developer in charge. The methodology chosen to be applied for this project is the Iterative Model (SDLC model). This means that the project has been developed in cycles, after which the product has expanded and become more complex. Tool-wise, Visual Studio has been chosen as the main IDE and the project has been developed in C. The end result of this project is, on one hand, an Interpreter prototype that closely follows the clox implementation that is proposed in Crafting Interpreters and that can be fed one line of source code at a time and outputs the corresponding operations and on the other hand a Scripting System that can read Script Files and execute the code within. With the completion of the project, it has been concluded that the product has significant potential as a learning tool to deepen one’s understanding of programming and programming languages alike. For those interested in the inner workings of this project and its result, the links to the repositories can be found in the Links section

Rewarding cooperation in social dilemmas

One of the most direct human mechanisms of promoting cooperation is rewarding it. We study the effect of sharing a reward among cooperators in the most stringent form of social dilemma. Thus, individuals confront a new dilemma: on the one hand, they may be inclined to choose the shared reward despite the possibility of being exploited by defectors; on the other hand, if too many players do that, cooperators will obtain a poor reward and defectors will outperform them. By appropriately tuning the amount to be shared we can cast a vast variety of scenarios, including traditional ones in the study of cooperation as well as more complex situations where unexpected behavior can occur. We provide a complete classification of the equilibria of the nplayer game as well as of the evolutionary dynamics. Beyond, we extend our analysis to a general class of public good games where competition among individuals with the same strategy exists

A new direct technique for visualizing and measuring gas–liquid mass transfer around bubbles moving in a straight millimetric square channel

The present paper focuses on the local characterization of gas–liquid mass transfer in a straight millimetric square channel, as constituting the preliminary step required for performing gas–liquid reactions in such devices. For this purpose, a new colourimetric technique using an oxygen sensitive dye was developed. It was based on the reduction of a colourimetric indicator in presence of oxygen, this reduction being catalysed by sodium hydroxide and glucose. In this study, resazurin was selected as the colourimetric indicator as it offered various reduced forms, the colours of which ranged from colourless (without oxygen) to pink (when oxygen was present). Thus the mass transfer around bubbles flowing in a straight millimetric square channel could be visualized in space and time. Some pictures were recorded by a monochromatic CCD high speed camera and, after post-processing, the shape, size and velocity of the bubbles, and the grey-level maps around them were measured. A calculation method was also developed to determine the transferred oxygen fluxes around the bubbles and the associated liquid-side mass transfer coefficients. The results compared satisfactorily with global measurements made using oxygen microsensors (Roudet et al., 2011. Hydrodynamics and mass transfer in inertial gas–liquid flow regimes through straigth and meandering millimetric square channels. Chem. Eng. Sci. 66, 2974–2990). This study constitutes a striking example of how interesting a tool this new colourimetric method could be for investigating gas–liquid mass transfer in transparent fluids with a view to quick millireactor design

Extending FuzAtAnalyzer to approach the management of classical negation

FuzAtAnalyzer was conceived as a Java framework which goes beyond of classical tools in formal concept analysis. Specifically, it successfully incorporated the management of uncertainty by means of methods and tools from the area of fuzzy formal concept analysis. One limitation of formal concept analysis is that they only consider the presence of properties in the objects (positive attributes) as much in fuzzy as in crisp case. In this paper, a first step in the incorporation of negations is presented. Our aim is the treatment of the absence of properties (negative attributes). Specifically, we extend the framework by including specific tools for mining knowledge combining crisp positive and negative attributes.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Development of the instrumentation of the botafoc breakwater nº 8 caisson

Balearic Port Authority has developed an instrumentation system for the #8 caisson of the Botafoc breakwater that integrates 12 pressure sensors located at three surfaces, two in contact with the sea water and another with the bottom. This design was completed with an inertial system that measures the angular velocities and the accelerations over the three Cartesian axes. Consequently, the system measures actions (pressures) and reactions (movements and accelerations) experimented by the caisson, due to sea waves and/or other service loads. R+D department of the Port Authority and Polytechnic University of Madrid are working on two directions, the development of new theories on vertical breakwater design that go beyond Goda and Sainflou, and on the creation of a real-time critical structure alarm system, based on the instrumentation installed. This alarm system has two main parts: the instrumentation itself that collects data and processes it on real-time (the data processing compares the pressure law suffered by the caisson in every step process with the design critical state of the caisson, in this case the Goda pressure law for a 6.5 m wave), giving a security coefficient that points out the risk level on real-time; and the alarm system consisting of a monitoring panel located in the Port Control Center that shows the risk level and advises in case of an incidental evacuation of this critical portuary installation

Reduction of average lead time in outpatient service of obstetrics through six sigma methodology

In hospital services, operations efficiency and healthcare quality are two critical factors since both define the financial sustainability of the hospitals as well as patient health, safety and satisfaction. For this reason, it is necessary to explore different strategies for the improvement of quality and efficiency indicators in the provision of healthcare services. Specifically, this paper focuses on the application of Six Sigma methodology as an important option to solve this problematic. This methodology begins with the identification of improving opportunities that are aligned with the organization goals. Then, a portfolio of potential improvement projects is created. Later, these projects are prioritized with basis on multicriteria decision making techniques, with the purpose of choosing the project with the highest impact on the organization quality and efficiency. Finally, the selected project is developed through DMAIC cycle. An application case related to the process of obstetric outpatient in a maternal-child hospital located in the city of Barranquilla (Colombia) is presented to prove the validity of the proposed approach. The results show that the average lead time in the obstetric outpatient service in which pregnant women are monitored, was reduced from about 7 days/appointment to approximately 4 days/appointment

Análisis del drop en baloncesto a través del estudio de los tiros libres

Este estudio analizó el rendimiento de los jugadores de baloncesto en los lanzamientos de tiro libre realizados en el último minuto de juego, en los partidos ajustados (diferencia en el marcador menor a 2 puntos), durante 4 temporadas de la liga ACB. Mediante un análisis descriptivo y la creación de tablas de contingencia, se demostró una disminución del rendimiento del jugador durante el último minuto, y última serie de tiros libres del partido, respecto a su rendimiento general. Esta disminución del rendimiento se observó fundamentalmente en los pívots, menores de 31 años, con menos de 13 años de experiencia profesional, y yendo por encima en el marcador. Lo que permite extraer información relevante de cara a la planificación de los entrenamientos, así como de cara a la gestión de este tipo de momentos críticos durante un partido de baloncesto