A consistency test of the time trade-off

This paper tests the internal consistency of time trade-off utilities. We find significant violations of consistency in the direction predicted by loss aversion. The violations disappear for higher gauge durations. We show that loss aversion can also explain that for short gauge durations time trade-off utilities exceed standard gamble utilities. Our results suggest that time trade-off measurements that use relatively short gauge durations, like the widely used EuroQol algorithm (Dolan 1997), are affected by loss aversion and lead to utilities that are too high.Cost-Utility Analysis, Time Trade-Off, Loss Aversion

Antecedents of academic performance of university students: academic engagement and psychological capital resources

Predicting academic performance is of key importance to the success, wellbeing and prosperity of students, their families, the economy, and the society at large. This study investigates the relationship between academic engagement, psychological capital (PsyCap) and academic performance. Data were collected in two different universities, one in Spain and another in Portugal. Students completed two self-report questionnaires regarding academic engagement and Psychological Capital. Academic performance was assessed through Grade Point Average, provided by the universities at the end of the exam period. The samples consisted of 389 and 243 undergraduate students, respectively. Results showed a positive relationship between academic engagement and PsyCap, on the one hand, and academic performance on the other, in both samples. Results also supported PsyCap as a full mediator in the relationship between academic engagement and academic performance. Exploration of alternative models yielded superior fit for the proposed model. Accordingly, academically engaged students were likely to experience higher levels of PsyCap, which in turn positively impacted their academic performance. The results point to the importance of considering psychological predictors, rather than the prevalent reliance on traditional predictors of academic performance

Resolving inconsistencies in utility measurement under risk: Tests of generalizations of expected utility

This paper explores biases in the elicitation of utilities under risk and the contribution that generalizations of expected utility can make to the resolution of these biases. We used five methods to measure utilities under risk and found clear violations of expected utility. Of the theories studies, prospect theory was most consistent with our data. The main improvement of prospect theory over expected utility was in comparisons between a riskless and a risky prospect(riskless-risk methods). We observed no improvement over expected utility in comparisons between two risky prospects (risk-risk methods). An explanation why we found no improvement of prospect theory over expected utility in risk-risk methods may be that there was less overweighting of small probabilities in our study than has commonly been observed.Utility Measurement, Nonexpected Utility, Prospect Theory, Health., Leex

Improving scope sensitivity in contingent valuation: joint and separate evaluation of health states

We present data of a contingent valuation survey, testing the effect of evaluation mode on the monetary valuation of preventing road accidents. Half of the interviewees was asked to state their willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce the risk of having only 1 type of injury (separate evaluation, SE), and the other half of the sample was asked to state their WTP for 4 types of injuries evaluated simultaneously (joint evaluation, JE). In the SE group, we observed lack of sensitivity to scope while in the JE group WTP increased with the severity of the injury prevented. However, WTP values in this group were subject to context effects. Our results suggest that the traditional explanation of the disparity between SE and JE, namely, the so-called “evaluability,” does not apply here. The paper presents new explanations based on the role of preference imprecision

Percepción de las experiencias de cooperación y gobierno del territorio en zonas de baja densidad

El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en determinar cómo percibe la población de las zonas de baja densidad su realidad territorial, y cómo interpreta las diferentes prácticas de gobierno y el sentimiento de pertenencia geográfico. Para ello hemos elegido dos zonas rurales de Castilla y León con baja densidad y una larga tradición de programas de desarrollo y se ha recurrido a una encuesta. Las conclusiones hablan de la pervivencia del localismo, el relativo desconocimiento de las actuaciones de los Grupos de Acción Local y la valoración de los ediles y del gobierno regional como responsables y artífices de los problemas y soluciones y, por ende, del gobierno de los territorios.The aim of this study is to determine how the population of the low density areas perceives its territorial reality, and how to interpret the different practices of government and the geographical sense of ownership. We have chosen two rural areas of Castile and Leon (Spain) with low density and a long tradition of rural development programs and have resorted to a survey. Findings speak about persistence of localism, the relative lack of knowledge about Local Action Groups’ activities, and the appreciation of majors and regional autonomous government as responsible both of problems and solutions and, therefore, of territorial governance

Consideraciones y propuestas de mejora de la comunicación en las instituciones públicas

The results and conclusions of two researches on the youth’s image in the media and their relationship with the Spanish Instituto de la Juventud (Injuve) public information, raised some questions and considerations about the treatment of institutional information on youth issues. This article describes these considerations, as well as some critical reflections about the institutional production, in order to achieve visibility in the mass media concerning the key messages generated from public organizations.Los resultados y conclusiones de dos investigaciones realizadas en torno al análisis mediacional del universo juvenil y su relación con la información institucional pública promovidas por el Instituto de la Juventud de España (Injuve), plantearon algunos interrogantes y consideraciones sobre el tratamiento de la información institucional sobre la juventud. En el presente trabajo se recogen dichas consideraciones y se ofrecen algunas reflexiones críticas sobre la producción comunicativa institucional, con el objeto de optimizar las posibilidades de visibilidad en los medios de los mensajes generados desde los organismos público

Pre-intervention studies of the chapel dedicated to Virgen de la Antigua in the parish church of San Miguel, in Morón de la Frontera (Seville)

Los problemas que aquejan a la pequeña capilla renacentista dedicada a la Virgen de la Antigua, en la iglesia parroquial de San Miguel de Morón de la Frontera, la han llevado a un estado de degradación cercano a la ruina. Al plantearnos la intervención sobre este edificio surgió la necesidad de conocer las causas de la inestabilidad estructural que llevó a su urgente apuntalamiento en 1998. Para ello entendíamos que no era suficiente tomar como punto de partida el estado actual del edificio y calcular sobre él los refuerzos necesarios. El precario estado en que se encuentra muestra, a simple vista, las cicatrices y huellas de un complejo devenir que debíamos descodificar, diseñando para ello una serie de trabajos de auscultación y reconocimiento. Todos estos trabajos nos han permitido conocer y comprender sus etapas constructivas y destructivas, esto es, contar con las referencias necesarias, aunque nunca suficientes, para la realización del proyecto de restauración arquitectónica.The problems affecting the small Renaissance chapel dedicated to Virgen de la Antigua in the parish church of San Miguel in Morón de la Frontera have led to a state of decay verging on total ruin. When we addressed the intervention required by the building, we realized that we needed to know what had caused the structural instability which had led to urgent bracing in 1998. We knew that we could not simply take the current state of the building as our starting point for calculating the necessary reinforcements. The precariousness of its current state reveals the scars and traces of a complex fate which we would have to decode by designing and programming a series of examinations to arrive at a diagnosis. All of these processes have enabled us to identify and understand the various phases of construction and destruction, that is, to acquire the necessary - although never sufficient - references to conduct the architectural restoration project

A programmable accelerator for streaming automatic speech recognition on edge devices

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is quickly becoming a mainstream technology, mainly driven by the outstanding accuracy achieved by modern systems based on machine learning. However, these systems often require billions of arithmetic operations to decode a second of audio and relying on cloud services for ASR is usually inconvenient. Even though deployment of ASR systems directly on the edge is highly desirable, the requirements for high performance and low energy consumption, combined with the fast pace of evolution and heterogeneity of existing ASR systems, result in challenges for effective deployment of ASR on edge devices. In this work, we propose a programmable accelerator to efficiently support a variety of ASR implementations. We estimate the performance of our system by implementing a recently proposed streaming ASR system and show that it can perform real-time streaming decoding with a tight power budget and low area footprint while offering great flexibility to implement a variety of different models.This work has been supported by the CoCoUnit ERC Advanced Grant of the EU’s Horizon 2020 program (grant No 833057), the Spanish State Research Agency (MCIN/AEI) under grant PID2020-113172RB-I00, the ICREA Academia program and the Spanish MICINN Ministry under grant BES-2017-080605.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version