Large-scale analysis of Zipf's law in English texts

Despite being a paradigm of quantitative linguistics, Zipf's law for words suffers from three main problems: its formulation is ambiguous, its validity has not been tested rigorously from a statistical point of view, and it has not been confronted to a representatively large number of texts. So, we can summarize the current support of Zipf's law in texts as anecdotic. We try to solve these issues by studying three different versions of Zipf's law and fitting them to all available English texts in the Project Gutenberg database (consisting of more than 30000 texts). To do so we use state-of-the art tools in fitting and goodness-of-fit tests, carefully tailored to the peculiarities of text statistics. Remarkably, one of the three versions of Zipf's law, consisting of a pure power-law form in the complementary cumulative distribution function of word frequencies, is able to fit more than 40% of the texts in the database (at the 0.05 significance level), for the whole domain of frequencies (from 1 to the maximum value) and with only one free parameter (the exponent)

Single-parent families, educational gradient, and child deprivation: The cases of Italy and Spain

Producción CientíficaThis work examines whether the increase of single parenthood in Italy and Spain, specifically amongst women in an unfavourable socioeconomic position, has repercussions for child well-being, understood here as material deprivation. In particular, our main objective is to analyse the possible differential impact of single parenthood on children’s material deprivation in relation to mothers’ level of education. Using the 2014 EU-SILC Module on material deprivation, we identify five areas of child deprivation based on the EU-MODA approach: nutrition, clothing, education, leisure, and social life. In the case of Italy, our main results indicate that, compared to children from two-parent households, children of single mothers with a low level of education have a higher risk of nutrition and clothing deprivation. In Spain, living in a single-parent household is associated with a higher risk of deprivation in terms of social life for those children whose mothers do not have a high level of education. Therefore, the findings suggest that in both countries the growth of single parenthood amongst women with a lower educational level may have an impact on child well-being inequality. This article contributes empirical data to the growing literature on the rise of child poverty in Southern European countries.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (RTI2018-099666-B-I00)Publicación en abierto financiada por el Consorcio de Bibliotecas Universitarias de Castilla y León (BUCLE), con cargo al Programa Operativo 2014ES16RFOP009 FEDER 2014-2020 DE CASTILLA Y LEÓN, Actuación:20007-CL - Apoyo Consorcio BUCL

Job insecurity and child well-being in single-parent families in Europe: A matter of family and gender policy

Objective: The aim of this article is to extend our knowledge about child deprivation in single-parent families from a comparative European perspective. We first analyse the relationship between the employment status of single parents and child deprivation. Furthermore, we examine whether gender equality in the labour market and family cash benefits reduce deprivation and alleviate the consequences of unemployment and employment precariousness. Background: Children from single-parent families suffer deprivation mainly due to their parents' job insecurity and the fact that, in general, there is only one breadwinner in their households, usually a woman. However, the situation of these children may differ between European countries according to gender equality and family policies. Method: We use cross-sectional data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions 2014 and multilevel logistic regressions. The analysis is based on a sample of single-parent households (N = 5910) from 28 European countries. Results: The results indicate that temporary employment and unemployment are associated with a greater risk of child deprivation in single-parent families. The results also show that gender equality in the labour market reduces child deprivation, especially in families where the parent has a temporary employment. Redistributive family policies have a more limited impact. Conclusion: The main findings indicate that advances in gender equality in the labour market are essential to combat child deprivation in single-parent families in Europe

Application of bus emulation techniques to the design of a PCI/MC68000 bridge

Bridges easy the interconnection and communication of devices that operate using different buses. In fact, we can see a computer as a hierarchy of buses to which devices are connected. In this paper we design a PCI/MC68000 bridge in order to improve communications between a Personal Computer and a MC68000 based system. The previous interface between both devices was based on the old 16-bit ISA bus, which represented a bottleneck in their communication. However, the methodology described here is generic and can be applied to the design of PCI bridges to other buses. We finish this work with an analysis of the bridge performance improvement which can also be easily adapted to other situations. As an example our interface is used in an interesting situation, i.e., updating the obsolete control unit of a highly valuable system (an industrial robot)

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

A game-based approach to the teaching of object-oriented programming languages

Students often have difficulties when trying to understand the concepts of object-oriented programming (OOP). This paper presents a contribution to the teaching of OOP languages through a game-oriented approach based on the interaction with tangible user interfaces (TUIs). The use of a specific type of commercial distributed TUI (Sifteo cubes), in which several small physical devices have sensing, wireless communication and user-directed output capabilities, is applied to the teaching of the C# programming language, since the operation of these devices can be controlled by user programs written in C#. For our experiment, we selected a sample of students with a sufficient knowledge about procedural programming, which was divided into two groups: The first one had a standard introductory C# course, whereas the second one had an experimental C# course that included, in addition to the contents of the previous one, two demonstration programs that illustrated some OOP basic concepts using the TUI features. Finally, both groups completed two tests: a multiple-choice exam for evaluating the acquisition of basic OOP concepts and a C# programming exercise. The analysis of the results from the tests indicates that the group of students that attended the course including the TUI demos showed a higher interest level (i.e. they felt more motivated) during the course exposition than the one that attended the standard introductory C# course. Furthermore, the students from the experimental group achieved an overall better mark. Therefore, we can conclude that the technological contribution of Sifteo cubes – used as a distributed TUI by which OOP basic concepts are represented in a tangible and a visible way – to the teaching of the C# language has a positive influence on the learning of this language and such basic concepts

Efectividad en la conformación del consejo social de la colonia Aldrete y su vinculación con entidades gubernamentales. Experiencia en el gobierno municipal de Guadalajara 2015-2018

A través de este informe de experiencia profesional, se presenta un análisis de los resultados obtenidos sobre la efectividad en la conformación del consejo social de la colonia Aldrete y su relación con entidades gubernamentales durante el periodo de la administración municipal de Guadalajara, que abarcó desde 2015 hasta 2018. A raíz de un conflicto entre vecinos, se llevó a cabo una convocatoria para formalizar un consejo social que trabajarían en los mecanismos de democracia participativa ofrecidos por la dirección de Participación Ciudadana, con el objetivo de influir en la política pública municipal. Esta experiencia se desarrolló en un contexto social con diversos actores (ciudadanía y Gobierno) que expresaron opiniones, propuestas y se enfrentaron en un esfuerzo por resolver las inquietudes de los vecinos en el marco de la gestión y provisión de servicios. Los ciudadanos organizados tuvieron que asumir el costo de garantizar la seguridad pública de su propio bolsillo, lo que sugiere que la ciudadanía organizada no fue una prioridad para el Gobierno Municipal durante ese periodo.ITESO, A.C

Violencia filio parental en España: aplicación del sistema de justicia penal juvenil e intervención policial

El presente trabajo trata de conceptualizar y profundizar sobre el fenómeno de la violencia filio parental, identificando el perfil de los/as autores/as y de las víctimas, las causas, las consecuencias y los contextos en los que se manifiestan esas conductas de violencia doméstica. Así como identificaremos los recursos existentes a nivel policial para afrontar la violencia ejercida de hijos/as a padres y madres, así como el recorrido judicial de los/as autores/as y de las víctimas de estos delitos.With the present work we will try to conceptualize and deepen the phenomenon of child-to-parent violence, identifying the profile of the authors and the victims, the causes, the consequences and the contexts in which these behaviors of domestic violence are manifested. Just as we will identify the existing resources at the police level to deal with the violence exerted by children fathers and mothers, as well as the judicial course of perpetrators and victims of these crimes

Extreme points of Lorenz and ROC curves with applications to inequality analysis

We find the extreme points of the set of convex functions ℓ : [0,1] → [0,1] with a fixed area and ℓ(0) = 0, ℓ(1) = 1. This collection is formed by Lorenz curves with a given value of their Gini index. The analogous set of concave functions can be viewed as Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves. These functions are extensively used in economics (inequality and risk analysis) and machine learning (evaluation of the performance of binary classifiers). We also compute the maximal L1-distance between two Lorenz (or ROC) curves with specified Gini coefficients. This result allows us to introduce a bidimensional index to compare two of such curves, in a more informative and insightful manner than with the usual unidimensional measures considered in the literature (Gini index or area under the ROC curve). The analysis of real income microdata illustrates the practical use of this proposed index in statistical inferenceA. Baíllo and J. Cárcamo are supported by the Spanish MCyT grant PID2019-109387GB-I00. C. MoraCorral is supported by the Spanish MCyT grant MTM2017-85934-C3-2-