The Strength of the Deed: Notarial Credit Markets and Contract Enforcement Institutions in Early Modern Spain

[eng] The present study aims to contribute to the analysis on the capacity of contract enforcement institutions in early modern Spain to protect private property rights, thus encouraging the development of markets. In order to do this I focus on the role played by the aforementioned institutions within the notarial credit market of the city of Malaga in the second half of the eighteenth century. Chapter 1 studies the legal advantages that notarized contracts offered in the Crown of Castile, as well as those financial segments that benefited from them the most. Chapter 2 measures the degree of flexibility enjoyed by the notarial credit market in introducing legal adaptations in the absence of changes to Castilian statutory law. Finally, chapter 3 assesses whether the public mortgage registries, created in 1768, contributed to the better functioning of the notarial credit market.[spa] El presente trabajo pretende contribuir al análisis sobre la capacidad de las instituciones contractuales españolas durante el Antiguo Régimen para proteger los derechos de propiedad privados, incentivando así el desarrollo de los mercados. Para ello, me centro en el papel desempeñado por dichas instituciones dentro del mercado notarial de crédito de la ciudad de Málaga en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII. El capítulo 1 estudia las ventajas legales de los contratos notarizados en la Corona de Castilla, así como aquellos segmentos financieros que más se beneficiaron de ellas. El capítulo 2 analiza el grado de flexibilidad del mercado notarial de crédito para introducir adaptaciones legales en ausencia de modificaciones en la ley escrita castellana. Finalmente, el capítulo 3 evalúa si los oficios de hipotecas, creados en 1768, contribuyeron a un mejor funcionamiento del mercado notarial de crédito

El impacto económico de la planificación urbana. El caso de Sevilla

En el presente trabajo se plantea una metodología para el cálculo del impacto económico de la planifi cación urbana tomando como referencia el Plan General de Ordenación Urbana de Sevilla de 2006. Para ello se utiliza un método basado en tablas input-output que permite estimar el impacto del plan en su conjunto y por ramas actividad, obteniendo estimaciones tanto en términos de producción como de empleo. Por último, se analiza la viabilidad económica del proyecto a la luz de la actividad urbanística previa en la propia ciudad y del tamaño del sector de la construcción en el entorno de la ciudad.This paper raises a methodology for calculating the economic impact of the urban planning. For that we use the Sevilla General Urban Planning of 2006. The method is based in the input-output analysis which allows estimating the impact of the whole planning and also among branches of economic activity. We also can get estimations both in terms of output and employment. Finally, we study the economic viability of the project using the prior urban activity of the town itself and the size of the building industry in the town surrounding

The image of the Primer Ensanche of Teruel through historical cartography

The city of Teruel was in the 1920s without an extension plan that would allow it to grow beyond the limits of the hill that occupied the medieval city. The town’s architect, Luis González Gutiérrez, was commissioned to carry out the project of the Primer Ensanche of Teruel in 1930, where a new urban concept for the city was materialized, far from the medieval streets of the urban area. The importance of this neighbourhood meant the inclusion of it in the delimitation of the Historic Site of Teruel, declared as an Asset of Cultural Interest in 2010. The lack of a specific protection plan, along with its uniqueness, which endow it with its own identity within the whole set, it determined the need to elaborate a study that would allow to identify, revalue and preserve its historical, cultural, architectural, urban and landscape values, and for this purpose this research was carried out. The analysis of the different sources, mainly archival and hemerographic, has allowed to elaborate a discourse that gathers the formative process of the neighbourhood, recovering the evolution of its image, essential to be able to understand the main values of the historical consolidated image. In this process, the study of aerial photography and historical cartography, part of which remains unpublished, has been fundamental to establish its morphological and landscape development. Fortunately, the Primer Ensanche of Teruel meaningfully conserves the values of its original arrangement, as well as those that the development of the history has printed on it, which endows it with a high degree of authenticity, by which it deserves and it must be conserved

Floquet topological phase transitions in a periodically quenched dimer

We report on the theoretical investigation of the topological properties of a periodically quenched one-dimensional dimerized lattice where a piece-wise constant Hamiltonian switches from $h_1$ to $h_2$ at a partition time $t_p$ within each driving period $T$. We examine different dimerization patterns for $h_1$ and $h_2$ and the interplay with the driving parameters that lead to the emergence of topological states both at zero energy and at the edge of the Brillouin-Floquet quasi-energy zone. We illustrate different phenomena, including the occurrence of both edge states in a semimetal spectrum, the topological transitions, and the generation of zero-energy topological states from trivial snapshots. The role of the different symmetries in our results is also discussed.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure

Del censo a la obligación: la transformación de los mercados de créditos en el tránsito del Antiguo Régimen al Estado Liberal

Màster Oficial d'Història Econòmica, Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2014-2015, Tutora: Yolanda Blasco MartelEl presente trabajo pretende ser una reflexión acerca del grado de transformación de los mercados financieros, en el marco de una coyuntura económica cambiante como es el siglo XVIII, para lo cual se plantean varios objetivos. En primer lugar realizar un estado de la cuestión sobre la situación de los mercados de crédito europeo y español durante el citado periodo. A continuación nos centraremos en la observación de un mecanismo financiero específico: la obligación-préstamo, al considerarla un indicador clave para el estudio de la historia financiera, tal y como referencia el debate historiográfico en el que se inserta. Por último procederemos a analizar con detalle el papel que el citado instrumento desempeñó en la economía malagueña, así como los factores que potenciaron su expansión, para lo cual emplearemos una muestra obtenida tras el vaciado de varios legajos procedentes del Archivo Histórico Provincial de Málaga

Jaw tissues segmentation in dental 3D CT images using fuzzy-connectedness and morphological processing

The success of oral surgery is subject to accurate advanced planning. In order to properly plan for dental surgery or a suitable implant placement, it is necessary an accurate segmentation of the jaw tissues: the teeth, the cortical bone, the trabecular core and over all, the inferior alveolar nerve. This manuscript presents a new automatic method that is based on fuzzy connectedness object extraction and mathematical morphology processing. The method uses computed tomography data to extract different views of the jaw: a pseudo-orthopantomographic view to estimate the path of the nerve and cross-sectional views to segment the jaw tissues. The method has been tested in a groundtruth set consisting of more than 9000 cross-sections from 20 different patients and has been evaluated using four similarity indicators (the Jaccard index, Dice's coefficient, point-to-point and point-to-curve distances), achieving promising results in all of them (0.726 ± 0.031, 0.840 ± 0.019, 0.144 ± 0.023 mm and 0.163 ± 0.025 mm, respectively). The method has proven to be significantly automated and accurate, with errors around 5% (of the diameter of the nerve), and is easily integrable in current dental planning systems. © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd.This work has been supported by the project MIRACLE (DPI2007-66782-C03-01-AR07) of Spanish Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia.Llorens Rodríguez, R.; Naranjo Ornedo, V.; López-Mir, F.; Alcañiz Raya, ML. (2012). Jaw tissues segmentation in dental 3D CT images using fuzzy-connectedness and morphological processing. Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine. 108(2):832-843. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmpb.2012.05.014832843108

Support System for the Assessment and Intervention During the Manual Material Handling Training at the Workplace: Contributions From the Systematic Observation

Efficacy of classical manual material handling (MMH) training nterventions on back pain prevention at the workplace has been called into question. The way that observation (self-observation or hetero-observation) is used in other areas to create feedback addressed to modify motor activities can justify innovative components for these interventions. However, their implementation and evaluation cannot be done without tackling the methodological challenge of developing a reliable observational instrument to measure manual handling practice during the training process. The aims of this study were: (1) justify and develop an hetero-observation (H-O) instrument to assess changes in the worker behavioral patterns with a level of analysis convenient to derive a parallel version for the systematic self-observation (S-O) during training on MMH; (2) provide evidence on the inter-rater reliability of the H-O instrument; (3) provide evidence on the usability of the S-O instrument and its perceived usefulness; and (4) provide evidence on the benefits that can be derived with the use of the H-O instrument to create feedback based on T-pattern and polar coordinate analysis. A mixed method approach mainly grounded on systematic observation was used. A convenience sample composed by blue-collar workers participated in the study. Based on literature review and expert opinion, the H-O instrument proposed was composed by six dimensions (feet, knee joints, back, elbow joints, load position, and interaction between back tilt and displacement) plus a structural dimension which defined MMH phases. The inter-rater reliability of this instrument was almost perfect for all dimensions using a tolerance level of 2 s (the range of time-unit kappa was from 0.93 to 0.97 and the range of event-based kappa was from 0.82 to 0.9). The usability and usefulness of the S-O instrument was highly valued by workers. Regarding the way to use hetero-observations to create feedback, the paper shows the great potential of T-pattern and polar coordinate analysis. The observational instruments developed combined with these techniques make it possible to characterize the body positions adopted during manual handling performance, and this is crucial to create feedback on performance instead of only feedback on results

BRAIM: A computer-aided diagnosis system for neurodegenerative diseases and brain lesion monitoring from volumetric analyses

[EN] Background and objective: This paper presents BRAIM, a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system to help clinicians in diagnosing and treatment monitoring of brain diseases from magnetic resonance image processing. BRAIM can be used for early diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson, Alzheimer or Multiple Sclerosis and also for brain lesion diagnosis and monitoring. Methods: The developed CAD system includes different user-friendly tools for segmenting and determining whole brain and brain structure volumes in an easy and accurate way. Specifically, three types of measurements can be performed: (1) total volume of white, gray matter and cerebrospinal fluid; (2) brain structure volumes (volume of putamen, thalamus, hippocampus and caudate nucleus); and (3) brain lesion volumes. Results: As a proof of concept, some study cases were analyzed with the presented system achieving promising results. In addition to be used to quantify treatment effectiveness in patients with brain lesions, it was demonstrated that BRAIM is able to classify a subject according to the brain volume measurements using as reference a healthy control database created for this purpose. Conclusions: The CAD system presented in this paper simplifies the daily work of clinicians and provides them with objective and quantitative volume data for prospective and retrospective analyses. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This work has been supported by the Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnologico Industrial (CDTI) under the project BRAIM (IDI-20130020)Morales, S.; Bernabeu-Sanz, A.; López-Mir, F.; Gonzalez, P.; Luna, L.; Naranjo Ornedo, V. (2017). BRAIM: A computer-aided diagnosis system for neurodegenerative diseases and brain lesion monitoring from volumetric analyses. Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine. 145:167-179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmpb.2017.04.006S16717914

L'intercanvi de llavors com a mecanisme per a la conservació de l'agrobiodiversitat : estudi de cas al Pallars

La recerca en la conservació de les varietats locals ha crescut en les últimes dècades centrant-se en el manteniment in situ de l'agrobiodiversitat en els tròpics. Tot i que s'ha argumentat que els horts domèstics contribueixen al manteniment in situ de l'agrobiodiversitat, pocs estudis analitzen com es pot evitar l'erosió d'aquesta diversitat. En aquest treball s'estudia l'agrobiodiversitat present a la Vall Fosca (Pallars Jussà), el coneixement ecològic local associat a les varietats locals, la xarxa d'intercanvis present i si aquesta pot ser una eina útil en la conservació in situ de l'agrobiodiversitat i del coneixement associat a aquesta. A més, s'analitza la situació actual del banc de llavors de Gerri (el Planter de Gerri) el qual és una de les principals iniciatives de recuperació i conservació de l'agrobiodiversitat presents al Pallars. El treball de camp es va realitzar entre juliol i setembre de 2009. Es van estudiar 62 horts, regentats per 55 hortolans. Es va registrar l'ocurrència, l'abundància, els usos i la gestió de les varietats locals; també es va preguntar als hortolans amb qui intercanviaven llavors i se'ls va realitzar un qüestionari sobre coneixement de cultius locals. Es van identificar 20 varietats locals corresponents a 17 espècies que duen associat un gran coneixement ecològic local. Les persones que van ser citades més vegades com gent que intercanvia llavors, i les persones que fan de pont entre diferents grups dins la seva xarxa personal conserven més varietats locals i tenen més coneixement sobre aquestes. La conservació de les varietats locals depèn de l'intercanvi de llavors, que n'evita la degeneració i estableix una xarxa entre els hortolans. Per tant , per a garantir aquesta conservació s'ha d'incidir en les persones que ja contribueixen als intercanvis de llavors

Aprendizaje por indagación: propuesta para Educación Primaria sobre energías renovables.

El presente Trabajo de Fin de Grado pretende mostrar una propuesta didáctica basada en la indagación para la enseñanza de Ciencias Naturales en Educación Primaria. En la enseñanza de las Ciencias de la Naturaleza se pueden utilizar diversas metodologías, en este caso se va a utilizar la indagación, con un tema de la importancia en la actualidad de las energías renovables. Estas son imprescindibles para el futuro del medio donde nos encontramos, concienciar a los alumnos sobre su importancia es fundamental para contribuir al mantenimiento del medio ambiente. Lo haremos acercando a los alumnos al trabajo de un científico, a través de la indagación y del trabajo cooperativo. La propuesta se centra en indagar sobre cómo afectaría un cambio drástico en las condiciones meteorológicas a la producción de energías renovables en Aragón. A lo largo de cinco sesiones los alumnos deberán plantear hipótesis, recopilar información, plantear soluciones y argumentar y compartir los resultados obtenidos de la pregunta planteada.<br /