The economic geography of football success: empirical evidence from european cities

Introduction. – 1. The geography of successful football teams: an analytical framework – 2. Empirical analysis – 2.1. Data, model estimation and results – 2.2. Cities and teams: some remarks about market size and teams’ performance – 3. Conclusions – 4. Annex

The production process in basketball: Empirical evidence from Spanish league

The main objective of this paper is to provide an empirical assessment of the production process in a basketball team. We estimate a logit model in which the output produced by a team is the game outcome (win or loss) and the inputs are those play characteristics that impact on that outcome. From the results obtained it is clear that, on average, there is a substantial difference between the impact of each play characteristic on a basketball team’s winning probability and that probability varies as the quality/quantity of the inputs used changes, albeit not proportionally.sports economics, team sport, professional basketball, productive process, logit model

Evolution over time of the determinants of preferences for redistribution and the support for the welfare state

[Abstract:] The objective of this article is to analyse the determinants of preferences for redistribution in Spain both at an aggregate and regional level. Using country level data, we put to the test the Alesina and Angeletos’ (2005) hypothesis, the strong and positive relationship between the ‘belief that luck determines income’ and the support for redistributive policies. As an innovative contribution, we contrast this hypothesis using a set of panel data models with regional and time fixed effects. Our main finding is the existence of a structural change in preferences formation for redistribution in Spain between 1995 and 2007. Furthermore, the empirical results provide some evidence suggesting that (1) the belief that society is unfair have a moderate effect on the individuals’ preferences for redistribution and (2) regional beliefs in Spanish regions are not equally important when determining demand for redistribution

Subjective wellbeing, income and relational goods: the determinants of happiness in Spain

[Resumen:] En el presente trabajo se analizan los determinantes de la felicidad, entendida esta como satisfacción subjetiva revelada. El principal objetivo tiene un doble componente: por un lado, se trata de contrastar la paradoja de Easterlin para la sociedad española (ausencia de un vínculo directo entre el incremento de la renta per capita y la evolución del bienestar subjetivo revelado a nivel agregado) y, por otro, evaluar el papel que desempeñan los bienes relacionales como determinantes de la felicidad. El marco analítico adoptado se encuadra dentro de la denominada happiness economics y la evidencia empírica se deriva de la estimación de una función microeconométrica de la felicidad aplicando un modelo Logit tanto en cortes temporales como en datos de panel. Los resultados obtenidos permiten concluir que en España el ingreso desempeña un papel secundario y subjetivo, mientras que se revelan como importantes las variables asociadas directa o indirectamente a los bienes relacionales.[Abstract:] In the present paper we analyze the determinants of happiness proxying by subjective welfare. The main objective is twofold: on the one hand, to put to the test the Easterlin’s paradox (the lack of a direct relationship between income and subjective wellbeing at aggregate level) and, on the other hand, to weight influence of relational goods in determining happiness. The analytical framework adopts the perspective of happiness economics and the empirical evidence is derived from the estimation of a microeconometric function of happiness applying a Logit model both when using cross sectional and panel data. The results show that in Spanish society income plays a secondary and subjective role, while other variables that are associated directly or indirectly to relational goods are revealed to be very important

Characterization of GFAP expression and cell proliferation in the rat median eminence following hypophysectomy

[EN]To analyze whether the reorganization of the rat median eminence after hypophysectomy might be related to changes in glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP)- and cellular proliferation, the distribution of cells immunoreactive for GFAP and the proliferation rate of such cells were analyzed at 20, 40 and 60 days posthypophysectomy. For this study, four rostro-caudal regions of the median eminence were differentiated: the retrochiasmatic, preinfundibular, infundibular and postinfundibular regions. In each of these regions, three layers were studied: the ependymal, the internal and the external. At 20 and 40 days after hypophysectomy, significant increases in cellular proliferation affecting all three layers studied in the preinfundibular and infundibular regions were found. At the same time points, increases in GFAP expression were also observed. However, after 60 days, GFAP and proliferative cellular nuclear antigen (PCNA) expression decreased. Although variations of PCNA and GFAP levels were evident, no colocalisation of PCNA and GFAP was found in the cells of the median eminence in untreated or hypophysectomized rats when sections were analyzed by double immunohistochemical staining. Our results suggest that reorganization of median eminence involves alterations (or modulation) of GFAPimmunoreactive cells together with a proliferation of cells that are not GFAP-immunoreactive. This study also demonstrates that this reorganization is completed within the first two months after hypophysectomy

Lorentz violation, Two times physics and Strings

We study a recently proposed generalization of the relativistic particle by Kosteleck\'y, that includes explicit Lorentz violation. We present an alternative action for this system and we show that this action can be interpreted as a particle in curved space with a metric that depends on the Lagrange multipliers. Furthermore, the following results are established for this model: (i) there exists a limit where this system has more local symmetries that the usual relativistic particle; (ii) in this limit if we restore the Lorentz symmetry we obtain a direct relationship with the two time physics; (iii) also we show that if we intent to restore the Poincar\'e symmetry we obtain the action of the relativistic bosonic string.Comment: 13 page

Creatividad y Personalidad a través de Dominios: Una revisión crítica

Este artículo tiene por objetivo ofrecer una visión completa y actualizada de las relaciones entre creatividad y personalidad. Se presenta una revisión crítica de las relaciones entre los distintos rasgos de personalidad, fundamentalmente desde los modelos de los Cinco Grandes (FFM) y de los Tres Gigantes, y la creatividad. Se reflexiona en torno a las repercusiones que el debate sobre la generalidad-especificidad de dominio conlleva sobre la relación entre creatividad y personalidad, y se presentan los hallazgos de los estudios más recientes con muestras por dominios. Se revisan propuestas teóricas que tienen como objetivo superar la fragmentación y el estancamiento del campo, conciliar las evidencias empíricas aparentemente contradictorias, y progresar hacia una teoría integrada sobre la relación entre personalidad y creatividad. Finalmente se describen los retos y líneas de investigación futuras que el campo tiene por delante

Temperature-Frequency Converter Using a Liquid Crystal Cell as a Sensing Element

A new temperature-frequency converter based on the variation of the dielectric permittivity of the Liquid Crystal (LC) material with temperature has been demonstrated. Unlike other temperature sensors based on liquid crystal processing optical signals for determining the temperature, this work presents a system that is able to sense temperature by using only electrical signals. The variation of the dielectric permittivity with temperature is used to modify the capacitance of a plain capacitor using a LC material as non-ideal dielectric. An electric oscillator with an output frequency depending on variable capacitance made of a twisted-nematic (TN) liquid crystal (LC) cell has been built. The output frequency is related to the temperature of LC cell through the equations associated to the oscillator circuit. The experimental results show excellent temperature sensitivity, with a variation of 0.40% of the initial frequency per degree Celsius in the temperature range from −6 °C to 110 °C

IAA : Información y actualidad astronómica (6)

Sumario : Investigación: Colisiones entre galaxias.-- Pulsación estelar: nuevas técnicas, nuevos avances.-- Ventana Abierta: The Black Hoyle.-- Charlas con...Ricardo Amils.-- Actualidad Científica: El “impactante” nacimiento de la Luna.-- Descubrimiento de agua en una nebulosa planetaria.-- Actividades IAA.-- Agenda.Esta revista se publica con la ayuda de la Acción Especial DIF 2001-4284-E del Programa Nacional de Difusión de la Ciencia y la Tecnología, del Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología.N

Automatic pre-alignment of multimodality rat brain images using principal axes transformation

Abstract of: AMI Annual Conference 2006, March 25-29The use of small animal studies of different modalities isnowadays widespread, since functional studies like positron emission tomography (PET) or single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) are better analyzed when mapped to the underlying anatomical structure coming from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computed tomography (CT). The different positioning of the animals in the scanners results in the need for automated image registration methods. One important drawback of the existing algorithms is their limited capture range: if case of large initial misregistration (large translations and rotations) the optimization may not converge to the right solution, and the images do not become correctly coregistered. To avoid this problem we propose the use of a pre-alignment step based on the principal axes transformation.Publicad