The Mexican intertemporal budget constraint: Persistent signals of an eventual collapse

This paper examines the sustainability of the Mexican current account deficit prior to the December 1994 crisis. It tests whether or not the Mexican economy was satisfying its intertemporal budget constraint, and finds that signals of possible trouble without a change in policies were present long before the crisis. The tests used are based on the Wickens-Uctum criterion for the sustainability of current account deficits, extended to include the case of possible interventions.intertemporal budget constraint, current account, sustainability of current account deficit, Mexico

1D Convolutional Neural Network for Detecting Ventricular Heartbeats

This paper shows a novel approach for detecting ventricular heartbeats using a 1D Convolutional Neural Network (1D-CNN). The algorithm input is the raw ECG signal, i.e., no signal pre-processing nor feature extraction are involved. The output of the 1D-CNN is filtered using a combination of linear and nonlinear filters to produce the final output. The MIT-BIH arrhythmia database was used for both algorithm training/tuning and evaluation. The assessment methodology followed the interpatient paradigm, where the algorithm was trained and evaluated using independent subsets. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated for two tasks; QRS detection, and heartbeat classification. QRS detection resulted in a sensitivity of 99.0% and a positive predictivity of 96.5%. The performance assessment of the ventricular ectopic beat detection resulted in a sensitivity of 85.8% and a positive predictivity of 64.5%. Although there is still room for improvement, the results suggest that convolutional neural networks are a promising approach for building heartbeat classifiers

The Mexican intertemporal budget constraint: Persistent signals of an eventual collapse

This paper examines the sustainability of the Mexican current account deficit prior to the December 1994 crisis. It tests whether or not the Mexican economy was satisfying its intertemporal budget constraint, and finds that signals of possible trouble without a change in policies were present long before the crisis. The tests used are based on the Wickens-Uctum criterion for the sustainability of current account deficits, extended to include the case of possible interventions.Mexican crisis, sustainability, Mexican current account deficit

Dereito e persoas con discapacidade. Unha experiencia universitaria

[Resumo] A Universidade da Coruña dispón dun servizo para a promoción da accesibilidade e a igualdade de oportunidades das persoas con discapacidade: a Unidade universitaria de atención á diversidade (ADI). Nela participa un grupo de estudantes, persoal de administración e servizos e persoal docente e investigador da Facultade de Dereito (Grupo de Dereito-ADI). A súa actuación se reflicte na elaboración de tres informes, nos que se reflexiona desde unha perspectiva xurídica sobre diversos aspectos relacionados co desenvolvemento cotián das persoas con discapacidade, sobre a remoción de barreiras para a súa integración na comunidade universitaria e sobre a tutela dos seus dereitos.[Abstract] The University Diversity Attention Service (ADI) is a Service of the University of A Coruña for improving the accessibility and equality in opportunities for people with disabilities. The Faculty of Law is represented by the Law-ADI Group, which consists of some members of the administrative and service staff, some members of the teaching and research staff, and a group of students. The Law-ADI Group has drawn up three reports, reflecting from the legal point of view on some matters related to the daily development of disabled people at the University, the removal of different barriers in order to encourage the integration of people with disability in the university community and the protection of their rights

Multichannel detection of acoustic emissions and localization of the source by using a hybrid programming system

The detection of acoustic emissions with multiple channels and different kind of sensors (ultrasound electronic sensors and optical fiber sensors) is presented. The source localization based on the times of arrival is also carried out and different strategies for solving the location equations are compared. The most efficient strategy in terms of computational and complexity costs versus performance has been selected and the error propagation is analyzed. The errors of the acoustic emission source location (localization process) are evaluated from the errors of the times of arrival (detection process). For that, a hybrid programming architecture is proposed. It is formed by a virtual instrumentation system for the acquisition and the detection of multiple acoustic channels and an algorithms-oriented programming system for the implementation of the localization techniques (back-propagation and multiple-source separation algorithms could also be implemented in this system). Finally the communication between both systems is performed by a packet transfer protocol that allows remote operation (e.g. a local monitoring and a remote analysis and diagnosis).This work has been supported by the Spanish National Ministry of Science and Innovation, under the R&D project No. DPI 2009-14628-C03-01 and the scholarship FPI No. BES-2010-042083

Generalized harmonic spatial coordinates and hyperbolic shift conditions

We propose a generalization of the condition for harmonic spatial coordinates analogous to the generalization of the harmonic time slices introduced by Bona et al., and closely related to dynamic shift conditions recently proposed by Lindblom and Scheel, and Bona and Palenzuela. These generalized harmonic spatial coordinates imply a condition for the shift vector that has the form of an evolution equation for the shift components. We find that in order to decouple the slicing condition from the evolution equation for the shift it is necessary to use a rescaled shift vector. The initial form of the generalized harmonic shift condition is not spatially covariant, but we propose a simple way to make it fully covariant so that it can be used in coordinate systems other than Cartesian. We also analyze the effect of the shift condition proposed here on the hyperbolicity of the evolution equations of general relativity in 1+1 dimensions and 3+1 spherical symmetry, and study the possible development of blow-ups. Finally, we perform a series of numerical experiments to illustrate the behavior of this shift condition.Comment: 18 pages and 12 figures, extensively revised version explaining in the new Section IV how the shift condition can be made 3-covarian

El aprendizaje autorregulado como medio y meta de la educación

En la actualidad, en los comienzos del siglo XXI, las principales necesidades a las que deben dar respuesta el sistema educativo y las leyes que lo amparen, y a las que trata de dar respuesta en la LOE son básicamente dos. Por un lado, proporcionar una educación de calidad a todos los niveles del sistema educativo, lo que conlleva la necesidad de asumir un importante desafío: conseguir el éxito escolar de todos los jóvenes, que se traduce básicamente en mejorar el nivel educativo de todo el alumnado y lograr que alcancen el máximo desarrollo de todas sus capacidades. Por otro lado, actualmente, más que nunca, la educación debe preparar adecuadamente para vivir en la nueva sociedad del conocimiento y para afrontar los retos que de ella se deriven. En este artículo se aborda este tema central a todos los niveles educativos, analizando, principalmente, qué implica estar capacitado para un aprendizaje autónomo y cómo promover dichas competencias en el aula.Nowadays, at the beginning of the XXI century, the main needs to be fulfilled by an educational system and the laws that support it, and which the LOE expects to meet, are basically two. On the one hand, the first need is to provide with a high quality education to all the educational system levels; which means the need to assume an important challenge: to achieve academic success for young people; this idea basically means to improve the educational level of all students, and to obtain the highest development of all their abilities. On the other hand, nowadays, more than ever, education must prepare appropriately people both to live in the new society of knowledge and to face the challenges derived from it. In this article, we tackle this main topic to all the educational levels; we essentially analyze what to be prepared for a self-governing learning means, and how to promote these competences in the classroom

Evaluación de los procesos de autorregulación mediante autoinforme

La evaluación de los procesos de autorregulación del aprendizaje escolar se encuentra hoy en un momento crítico debido a los problemas que presenta su estimación a través de instrumentos tipo autoinforme. En este artículo presentamos los resultados obtenidos en un trabajo de investigación en el que se trató de averiguar en qué medida el mayor o menor grado de conciencia que el alumno tenga sobre el proceso de autorregulación del aprendizaje y estudio (y las estrategias y actividades implicadas en el mismo) tiene efectos significativos sobre la calidad de las respuestas dadas en instrumentos de evaluación tipo autoinforme. Para comprobar esta hipótesis se ha diseñado y realizado un experimento con medida pretest y postest, sin grupo control, en el cual han participado 90 estudiantes de diferentes cursos y licenciaturas. La intervención ha tenido una duración de 45 horas, distribuidas en 8 sesiones de 5 horas cada una, y ha consistido en el trabajo teórico-práctico de las estrategias y tareas implicadas en el proceso de autorregulación del aprendizaje y estudio académico. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que la información aportada por un instrumento autoinforme es significativamente más precisa después de la intervención y han sido interpretados en el sentido de que este tipo de intervención previo a la evaluación mejora sustancialmente la información obtenida mediante este tipo de instrumentos.Self regulation processes measurement through self-report methodology. Nowadays the evaluation of self-regulated learning processes is having a critical time due to the problems concerning the assessment instruments. This paper presents the outcomes of a research study having a main goal: evaluate to what extent student’s consciousness of his/her own self-regulated learning and study processes (and the involved strategies and activities) has a significant impact on the quality of his/her answers on selfreport type instruments. In order to prove this hypothesis an experimental study was designed and built including a pre and a post-test, having no control group, using a sample of 90 college students from different degree courses. The intervention program lasted 45 hours, divided into 8 work sessions of 5 hours each. The developed work included both theoretical and practical tasks dealing with strategies and activities involved in the self-regulated learning and study processes. The results show that the collected data using a self-report instrument is much more significant and accurate after the intervention program has taken place and that the intervention greatly improves the obtained information using these kind of instruments

Technological and infrastructure collaborative seismic research in Western Mexico

In February and March 2014, Spanish, Mexican and British scientists and technicians explored the western margin of Mexico, a region with a high occurrence of large earthquakes (> Mw = 7.5) and tsunami generation, on board the British Royal Research Ship James Cook. This successful joint cruise, named TSUJAL, was made possible thanks to a cooperative agreement between NERC and CSIC as part of the Ocean Facilities Exchange Group (OFEG), a major forum of European oceanographic institutions for the exchange of ship time, equipment and personnel. A dense geophysical data set was acquired using for the first time 6 km length seismic streamer facilities from Spain’s Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), usually operating in the Spanish RV Sarmiento de Gamboa, onboard the British RRS James Cook by solving all mechanical, electrical and electronic problems. The RRS James Cook in turn provides the seismic source and the acoustic, hullmounted echosounder operated by the British Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Multiscale seismic and echosounder images unravel the subduction geometry, nature of the crust, and evidence faults and mass wasting processes. The data are crucial to estimating fault seismic parameters, and these parameters are critical to carrying out seismic hazard in Mexico, especially when considering largemagnitude earthquakes (Mw 8.0), and to constrain tsunami models.Peer Reviewe