Análisis del comportamiento de los indecisos en procesos electorales: propuesta de investigación funcional predictivo-normativa

Analiza la importancia, causas y factores asociados al fenómeno de la indecisión en los procesos electorales

Las cooperativas de vivienda como alternativa al problema de la vivienda en la actual crisis económica

Markets are not equitable providers of basic need goods and social rights and this also applies to the field of housing. In the Basque Autonomous Community, house prices have stopped rising after two decades and the current real estate crisis has resulted in a dramatic drop of privately provided housing. At the same time, austerity measures have seriously constricted public housing policies and the possibilities for public housing provision. In this paper, we therefore propose to reinforce the role of housing cooperatives as an alternative for publicly or privately provided housing. We present various models of such cooperatives in order to find ‘best practices’ that could be implemented in our local context.Es sabido que los mercados no son equitativos distribuidores de los bienes de primera necesidad ni de derechos sociales, y tampoco lo han sido en el ámbito de la vivienda. El mercado de la vivienda ha frenado su escalada de precios después de casi dos lustros de continuas subidas, y las políticas públicas de vivienda en la CAPV también se han visto frenadas y mermadas en el contexto de la restricción crediticia y parón de la construcción, y por los recortes en los presupuestos de la administración. Es por ello, que en este artículo, los autores proponen el modelo de las cooperativas de vivienda como alternativa a la vivienda libre privada y a la vivienda de iniciativa pública, ya que ninguna de las dos opciones garantiza el cumplimiento de dicho derecho. Así, se presentan diversos modelos de cooperativas de vivienda, con ánimo de ofrecer ejemplos y experiencias internacionales con un posible encaje en nuestro entorno más próximo

Plan de negocios : Comercialización de productos de cuidado cutáneo masculino

Because of the World Wide tendency and the continuous climatic changes force the actual men to take care of their skin and body; not solely due for the vanity; but also by medical prescriptions. In Ecuador, the business of selling specialized masculine cosmetic products doesn’t exist, but rather, feminine products are being used by men for their care and appearance. The present document tries to demonstrate the existence of an opportunity of business in the proposed sector, as well as it suggests the pillars necessary to construct a company able to remove benefit from this opportunity. The study of market realized for the present businesses plan indicates that the sector of the masculine cutaneous care in Ecuador esteem that the market approximately has a size among of 7 to 31 million dollars annually, number that is verified with information of secondary sources. The objective market to take care of is approximately 19 million dollars.La tendencia mundial y los continuos cambios climáticos obligan a los hombres al cuidado de su piel y cuerpo, no únicamente debido a la vanidad, sino también, por cuestiones médicas. En el Ecuador, en la actualidad no existen productos cosméticos masculinos, sino que priman los productos femeninos, mismos que están siendo utilizados por hombres para su cuidado y apariencia. El presente documento pretende demostrar la existencia de una oportunidad de negocio en el sector propuesto, así como sugiere los pilares necesarios para construir una empresa capaz de sacar provecho de dicha oportunidad. El estudio de mercado realizado para el presente plan de negocios indica que el sector del cuidado cutáneo masculino en Ecuador se estima con un mercado entre 7 y 31 millones de dólares anuales aproximadamente, cifra que es comprobada con información de fuentes secundarias. El mercado objetivo al que se va a atender es de aproximadamente 19 millones de dólares

Las cooperativas de vivienda como alternativa al problema de la vivienda en la actual crisis económica

Es sabido que los mercados no son equitativos distribuidores de los bienes de primera necesidad ni de derechos sociales, y tampoco lo han sido en el ámbito de la vivienda. El mercado de la vivienda ha frenado su escalada de precios después de casi dos lustros de continuas subidas, y las políticas públicas de vivienda en la CAPV también se han visto frenadas y mermadas en el contexto de la restricción crediticia y parón de la construcción, y por los recortes en los presupuestos de la administración. Es por ello, que en este artículo, los autores proponen el modelo de las cooperativas de vivienda como alternativa a la vivienda libre privada y a la vivienda de iniciativa pública, ya que ninguna de las dos opciones garantiza el cumplimiento de dicho derecho. Así, se presentan diversos modelos de cooperativas de vivienda, con ánimo de ofrecer ejemplos y experiencias internacionales con un posible encaje en nuestro entorno más próximo

Interspecific variation in the relationship between clutch size, laying date and intensity of urbanization in four species of hole-nesting birds

Marie Vaugoyeau [et al.]The increase in size of human populations in urban and agricultural areas has resulted in considerable habitat conversion globally. Such anthropogenic areas have specific environmental characteristics, which influence the physiology, life history, and population dynamics of plants and animals. For example, the date of bud burst is advanced in urban compared to nearby natural areas. In some birds, breeding success is determined by synchrony between timing of breeding and peak food abundance. Pertinently, caterpillars are an important food source for the nestlings of many bird species, and their abundance is influenced by environmental factors such as temperature and date of bud burst. Higher temperatures and advanced date of bud burst in urban areas could advance peak caterpillar abundance and thus affect breeding phenology of birds. In order to test whether laying date advance and clutch sizes decrease with the intensity of urbanization, we analyzed the timing of breeding and clutch size in relation to intensity of urbanization as a measure of human impact in 199 nest box plots across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East (i.e., the Western Palearctic) for four species of hole-nesters: blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus), great tits (Parus major), collared flycatchers (Ficedula albicollis), and pied flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca). Meanwhile, we estimated the intensity of urbanization as the density of buildings surrounding study plots measured on orthophotographs. For the four study species, the intensity of urbanization was not correlated with laying date. Clutch size in blue and great tits does not seem affected by the intensity of urbanization, while in collared and pied flycatchers it decreased with increasing intensity of urbanization. This is the first large-scale study showing a species-specific major correlation between intensity of urbanization and the ecology of breeding. The underlying mechanisms for the relationships between life history and urbanization remain to be determined. We propose that effects of food abundance or quality, temperature, noise, pollution, or disturbance by humans may on their own or in combination affect laying date and/or clutch size.E. Barba acknowledges funding of project CGL2013-48001-C2-1-P (Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation).Peer Reviewe

Activation energy in particle suspensions

Assuming that the molar activation energy in a fluid is interpreted as a measure of the potential energy barrier required for the molecular movement [1], the viscosity of a fluid depends on the actual size of the molecules, and the presence of solid particles in a suspension increases the dissipation of energy when the system flows, therefore it is expected that the viscosity of the suspension is higher than that of the pure solvent at a given temperature. The dependence of the viscosity of some silica/glycol suspensions with the temperature can be fitted using an empirical function analogous to the Arrhenius equation, ln⁡η=E/RT-ln⁡C, where η is the viscosity, C is a system-dependent constant, E is the molar activation energy for the viscous flow, T is the absolute temperature and R is the gas universal constant. When the temperature of the suspension decreases two effects are observed. First, larger aggregates of particles are formed due to the reduction of the thermal agitation and, second, the number of links among the molecules of the liquid phase increases. These two effects give place to a higher increase in the viscosity with the temperature compared to the pure solvent. Assuming that a higher viscosity value is due to a smaller free volume available for the molecular movement, and taking into account that the free suspension volume is limited only to the liquid fraction [2], it should be expected that the viscosity of the suspension is less sensitive to temperature than that of the pure solvent. In this work the dependence on the temperature of the viscosity values of the silica/glycol suspensions is compared to that of the liquid media. The results have shown a lower activation energy when the solid volume fraction increases, which has been explained with a scheme that assumes that the particle links are less sensitive to thermal energy absorption than the joining bonds among the solvent molecules. Our conclusion is that, for a given mechanical energy applied to the system, the thermal energy absorbed by the system is mainly used in the rupture of bonds between the solvent molecules. This study can be useful to understand the mechanisms that govern the differences in the activation energy values found between samples of foods, in which many factors are connected with sample composition [3]. [1] Briscoe B, Luckham P, Zhu S. Rheological properties of poly (ethylene oxide) aqueous solutions. J Appl Polym Sci 70 (1998) 419-429. [2] Shenoy AV. Rheology of filled polymer systems. Kluwer Acad Pub, 1999, The Netherlands. [3] Alvarez MD, Canet W. Time-independent and time-dependent rheological characterization of vegetable-based infant purees. J Food Eng 114 (2013) 449-464.Universidad de Málaga, Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Posibilidades del cooperativismo en un nuevo modelo de servicios públicos sociosanitarios y su concreción en el País Vasco

El artículo pretende reflexionar sobre las posibilidades de la fórmula cooperativa en relación a la prestación de los servicios públicos sociosanitarios en el País Vasco. Así, se comienza con un repaso al concepto jurídico de servicio público, atendiendo a las líneas de reforma que se están produciendo en el mismo, para pasar a continuación a las nuevas tendencias doctrinales sobre la gestión pública, la cual debe caracterizarse, a nuestro entender, por la eficacia y la participación de los administrados. Se abordan los diferentes instrumentos de gestión pública, y por ende de contratación pública, para atender a continuación a la necesaria justificación de la fórmulacooperativa como la herramienta más adecuada para la gestión de lo público en el ámbito sociosanitario, algo que,si bien parte de un aspecto general, se concreta en el ámbito territorial vasco (Comunidad Autónoma del PaísVasco). En este marco territorial se analizan las políticas de promoción de las sociedades cooperativas, así comola singular normativa que regula las Cooperativas de Utilidad Pública y las de Iniciativa Social, sin olvidar las experienciashabidas en nuestro entorno más cercano. El artículo finaliza con la obligada fase conclusiva que nosproyectará al futuro con la esperanza del liderazgo de esta fórmula participativa

Phase reduction beyond the first order: The case of the mean-field complex Ginzburg-Landau equation

Phase reduction is a powerful technique that makes possible to describe the dynamics of a weakly perturbed limit-cycle oscillator in terms of its phase. For ensembles of oscillators, a classical example of phase reduction is the derivation of the Kuramoto model from the mean-field complex Ginzburg-Landau equation (MF-CGLE). Still, the Kuramoto model is a first-order phase approximation that displays either full synchronization or incoherence, but none of the nontrivial dynamics of the MF-CGLE. This fact calls for an expansion beyond the first order in the coupling constant. We develop an isochron-based scheme to obtain the second-order phase approximation, which reproduces the weak-coupling dynamics of the MF-CGLE. The practicality of our method is evidenced by extending the calculation up to third order. Each new term of the power-series expansion contributes with additional higher-order multibody (i.e., nonpairwise) interactions. This points to intricate multibody phase interactions as the source of pure collective chaos in the MF-CGLE at moderate coupling.We acknowledge support by MINECO (Spain) under Project No. FIS2016-74957-P. IL acknowledges support by Universidad de Cantabria and Government of Cantabria under the Concepción Arenal programme

Enlarged Kuramoto model: Secondary instability and transition to collective chaos

The emergence of collective synchrony from an incoherent state is a phenomenon essentially described by the Kuramoto model. This canonical model was derived perturbatively, by applying phase reduction to an ensemble of heterogeneous, globally coupled Stuart-Landau oscillators. This derivation neglects nonlinearities in the coupling constant. We show here that a comprehensive analysis requires extending the Kuramoto model up to quadratic order. This “enlarged Kuramoto model” comprises three-body (nonpairwise) interactions, which induce strikingly complex phenomenology at certain parameter values. As the coupling is increased, a secondary instability renders the synchronized state unstable, and subsequent bifurcations lead to collective chaos. An efficient numerical study of the thermodynamic limit, valid for Gaussian heterogeneity, is carried out by means of a Fourier-Hermite decomposition of the oscillator density.We acknowledge Support by Agencia Estatal de Investigación and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional under Project No. FIS2016-74957-P (AEI/FEDER, EU). IL acknowledges support by Universidad de Cantabria and Government of Cantabria under the Concepción Arenal programme