Public employment and regional redistribution in Spain

We study the determinants, beyond the process of decentralisation, of the regional allocation of public jobs by the Central Government and the increase in the number of public employees at the Regional Governments in Spain during 1990-1999. Using standard panel data econometric procedures we show that the Central Government might have been increasing the number of public jobs in those regions with lower levels of GDP per capita. Also we show that the number of public employees is larger in those regions in which there has been a coincidence between the political orientation of the ruling parties in the Regional and Central Governments. Finally, we find that political variables might explain part of the increase in the number of public employees in the Regional Governments, together with the process of decentralisation and GDPpc.Public Employment; Regional Redistribution; Fiscal Policy Instruments

La Simulación Molecular como Herramienta para estudiar procesos de Adsorción y Difusión en Cu-BTC

Peer reviewe

Experimental study for the determination of the turbulence onset in natural convection on inclined plates

In June, 8th, 2009 the balloon-borne solar telescope SUNRISE was launched from the Swedish Space Corporation balloon facility Esrange. A telescope with a mirror of 1 m in diameter ob-served the Sun during six days until the mission was terminated in Canada. The design process of SUNRISE and of any optical telescope requires the analysis of the effect of surrounding air on the quality of images. The turbulence encountered in the local telescope environment de-grades its optical performance. This phenomenon called `seeing' consists of optical aberrations produced by density non-homogeneities in the air along the optical path. The refraction index of air changes due to thermal non-uniformities so that the wavefront incident on the mirror is randomly distorted, and therefore, images are altered. When telescope mirrors are heated, as it happens in solar telescopes, and therefore they are at a temperature different from the environment's, natural convection occurs. It is then crucial to know whether the flow in front of the mirror is laminar or turbulent. After reviewing the literature, it was found that the scattering of results about the onset of the transition gives only rough orders of magnitude of the values of the critical Grashof numbers. Aiming to obtain more information about it, the problem of determination of the turbulence onset in natural convection on heated inclined plates in air environment was experimentally revisited. The transition has been determined from hot wire velocity measurements. The onset of turbulence has been considered to take place where velocity perturbations start to grow. Experiments have shown that the onset depends not only on the Grashof number, but also on other parameters as the temperature difference between the heated plate and the surrounding air. A correlation between dimensionless Grashof and Reynolds numbers has been obtained, fitting extraordinarily well the experimental data. The results are obtained in terms of non-dimensional numbers, this way they apply to any air pressure and therefore to any floating altitud

Experimental study and modelling of Networked Virtual Environment server traffic

The paradigm of virtual world environment arises as an useful tool in diverse fields such as e-Health or education, where they provide a new way of communication and interaction with end users. Networking capabilities play an important role in these systems, which motivates the study and understanding of the gaming network traffic. The present work focuses on Open Wonderland, a system that provides the basis for the development of Networked Virtual Environments with educational or health purposes. The goal of this paper is defining a testing environment and modelling the behaviour of the outgoing network traffic at the server side.Ministerio de Industria, Comercio y Turismo AAL-010000-2012-10Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TEC2009-10639-C04-0

Open Source Virtual Worlds and Low Cost Sensors for Physical Rehab of Patients with Chronic Diseases

For patients with chronic diseases, exercise is a key part of rehab to deal better with their illness. Some of them do rehabilitation at home with telemedicine systems. However, keeping to their exercising program is challenging and many abandon the rehabilitation. We postulate that information technologies for socializing and serious games can encourage patients to keep doing physical exercise and rehab. In this paper we present Virtual Valley, a low cost telemedicine system for home exercising, based on open source virtual worlds and utilizing popular low cost motion controllers (e.g. Wii Remote) and medical sensors. Virtual Valley allows patient to socialize, learn, and play group based serious games while exercising

Improving the Evolutionary Coding for Machine Learning Tasks

The most influential factors in the quality of the solutions found by an evolutionary algorithm are a correct coding of the search space and an appropriate evaluation function of the potential solutions. The coding of the search space for the obtaining of decision rules is approached, i.e., the representation of the individuals of the genetic population. Two new methods for encoding discrete and continuous attributes are presented. Our “natural coding” uses one gene per attribute (continuous or discrete) leading to a reduction in the search space. Genetic operators for this approached natural coding are formally described and the reduction of the size of the search space is analysed for several databases from the UCI machine learning repository.Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC1143–C03–0

The Usefulness of Activity Trackers in Elderly with Reduced Mobility: A Case Study

This study was conducted to determine the accuracy and usefulness of two current commercially available activity trackers in rollator dependent elderly with reduced mobility (RME), compared with elderly with normal mobility (NME) and healthy adults (HA). Methods: Accuracy of pedometers placed at hip (Fitbit Ultra and Samsung GT-I9300 mobile phone) and wrist (Fitbit Ultra) were evaluated against actual steps (video) in RME (n=5), NME (n=7) and HA (n=6). Walk speed, Tinetti gait score and device percent error was calculated and analyzed in SPSS using Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney U and correlation tests. Results: NME and HA walked significantly faster (p = 0.001) than RME, had significantly higher gait score (p < 0.05). Gait scores were correlated with walking speed and negatively with pedometer percent error (p < 0.01). Estimation error in RME were >60% at all device locations Conclusions: Slow walking speed and gait disorders hamper the utility of pedometers for physical activity measurement in rollator dependent elderly, with estimation errors >60%. The tested devices are better suited for use by ostensibly healthy elderly or adult populations.European Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) Project AAL-2011-4- 09

AmbienNet: An Intelligent Environment to Support People with Disabilities and Elderly People

AmbienNet is an ongoing project aiming to demonstrate the viability of accessible intelligent environments to support people with disabilities and elderly people living autonomously. Based on the Ambient Intelligence paradigm, it tries to study in depth its advantages and disadvantages for people with sensory, physical or cognitive restrictions. To this end diverse supporting technologies and applications have been designed, in order to test their accessibility, usability and validity. After introducing the objectives and findings of the project, in this paper a number of preliminary results are presented and discussed

Relación de las emociones y la actividad física dentro de la teoría de la conducta planificada

This paper aims to extend the model of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) by adding emotional variables to increase predictive power of physical activity (PA). In this study with 175 adolescents (M age = 18.5 years, SD = 1.5; 57% women), we analyzed a traditional model (based on TPB) and the extended model with the variable "emotions" through structural equation modeling. The results provided a high level of fit (RMSEA = .05) for the analyzed models and a considerable increase in the total explained variance with 14% for the extended model in predicting PA. This result suggests expanding the traditional model for predicting the practice of PA that considers only cognitive parameters, with the variable "emotions". Finally it outlines the implications of the findings for future research.El presente trabajo pretende ampliar el modelo de la Teoría de la Conducta Planificada (TCP) mediante la adición de variables emocionales para aumentar su fuerza predictiva de la práctica de actividad física. En este estudio con 175 adolescentes (M edad = 18.5 años, DT = 1.5; 57% mujeres), se comprobó el modelo tradicional de la TCP y un modelo ampliado con la variable "emociones" mediante modelos de ecuaciones estructurales. Los resultados ofrecen un alto grado de ajuste (RMSEA = .05, para sendas estructuras) en los modelos analizados, y muestran un aumento considerable de la varianza total explicada con un 14% para el modelo ampliado en la predicción de la práctica de actividad física. Este resultado sugiere extender el modelo tradicional para la predicción de la práctica de actividad física que sólo considera parámetros cognitivos, con la variable "emociones". Finalmente, se esbozan las implicaciones de los resultados para futuros trabajos de investigación

Influence of Input/output Operations on Processor Performance

Nowadays, computers are frequently equipped with peripherals that transfer great amounts of data between them and the system memory using direct memory access techniques (i.e., digital cameras, high speed networks, . . . ). Those peripherals prevent the processor from accessing system memory for significant periods of time (i.e., while they are communicating with system memory in order to send or receive data blocks). In this paper we study the negative effects that I/O operations from computer peripherals have on processor performance. With the help of a set of routines (SMPL) used to make discrete event simulators, we have developed a configurable software that simulates a computer processor and main memory as well as the I/O scenarios where the periph-erals operate. This software has been used to analyze the performance of four different processors in four I/O scenarios: video capture, video capture and playback, high speed network, and serial transmission