The Political Economy of the Budget Process in the Andean Region: The Case of Venezuela

This study presents the case of Venezuela. The report describes the main actors (formal and informal) involved in the budget-making process, and presents evidence regarding the main political and economic determinants of fiscal performance. It also discusses whether different political and institutional arrangements governing the budget process affect incentives for the composition of the budget.

Analyzing coastal environments by means of functional data analysis

Here we used Functional Data Analysis (FDA) to examine particle-size distributions (PSDs) in a beach/shallow marine sedimentary environment in Gijón Bay (NW Spain). The work involved both Functional Principal Components Analysis (FPCA) and Functional Cluster Analysis (FCA). The grainsize of the sand samples was characterized by means of laser dispersion spectroscopy. Within this framework, FPCA was used as a dimension reduction technique to explore and uncover patterns in grain-size frequency curves. This procedure proved useful to describe variability in the structure of the data set. Moreover, an alternative approach, FCA, was applied to identify clusters and to interpret their spatial distribution. Results obtained with this latter technique were compared with those obtained by means of two vector approaches that combine PCA with CA (Cluster Analysis). The first method, the point density function (PDF), was employed after adapting a log-normal distribution to each PSD and resuming each of the density functions by its mean, sorting, skewness and kurtosis. The second applied a centered-log-ratio (clr) to the original data. PCA was then applied to the transformed data, and finally CA to the retained principal component scores. The study revealed functional data analysis, specifically FPCA and FCA, as a suitable alternative with considerable advantages over traditional vector analysis techniques in sedimentary geology studies

Design and Implementation of Acoustic Source Localization on a Low-Cost IoT Edge Platform

The implementation of algorithms for acoustic source localization on edge platforms for the Internet of Things (IoT) is gaining momentum. Applications based on acoustic monitoring can greatly benefit from efficient implementations of such algorithms, enabling novel services for smart homes and buildings or ambient-assisted living. In this context, this brief proposes extreme low-cost sound source localization system composed of two microphones and the low power microcontroller module ESP32. A Direction-Of-Arrival (DOA) algorithm has been implemented taking into account the specific features of this board, showing excellent performance despite the memory constraints imposed by the platform. We have also adapted off-the-shelf lowcost microphone boards to the input requirements of the ESP32 Analog-to-Digital Converter. The processing has been optimized by leveraging in parallel both cores of the microcontroller to capture and process the audio in real time. Our experiments expose that we can perform real-time localization, with a processing time below 3.3 ms.This work was supported in part by the Spanish Government under Grant TIN2017-82972-R, Grant ESP2015-68245-C4-1-P, and Grant RTI2018-097045-B-C21, and in part by the Valencian Regional Government under Grant PROMETEO/2019/109

PDEs for pricing interest rate derivatives under the new generalized Forward Market Model (FMM)

[Abstract]: In this article we derive partial differential equations (PDEs) for pricing interest rate derivatives under the generalized Forward Market Model (FMM) recently presented by A. Lyashenko and F. Mercurio in [1] to model the dynamics of the Risk Free Rates (RFRs) that are replacing the traditional IBOR rates in the financial industry. Moreover, for the numerical solution of the proposed PDEs formulation, we develop some adaptations of the finite differences methods developed in [2] that are very suitable to treat the presence of spatial mixed derivatives. This work is the first article in the literature where PDE methods are used to value RFR derivatives. Additionally, Monte Carlo-based methods will be designed and the results are compared with those obtained by the numerical solution of PDEs.S. Pérez-Rodríguez has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through project PID2022-141385NB-I00 . J.G. López-Salas and C. Vázquez acknowledge the funding by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the projects PID2019-10858RB-I00 and PID2022-141058OB-I00 , as well as from the Galician Government through grant ED431C 2022/47 , including FEDER financial support. Also J.G. López-Salas and C. Vázquez acknowledge the support received from the Centro de Investigación en Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones de Galicia, CITIC, as a center accredited for excellence within the Galician University System and a member of the CIGUS Network, receives subsidies from the Department of Education, Science, Universities, and Vocational Training of the Xunta de Galicia. Additionally, it is co-financed by the EU through the FEDER Galicia 2021-27 operational program ED431G 2023/01 .Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2022/47Xunta de Galicia; ED431G 2023/0

AMFR-W Numerical Methods for Solving High-Dimensional SABR/LIBOR PDE Models

©2021 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1137/20M1348595[Abstract]: In this work, we mainly develop a new numerical methodology to solve a PDE model recently proposed in the literature for pricing interest rate derivatives. More precisely, we use high-order-in-time AMFR-W-methods, which belong to a class of W-methods based on approximate matrix factorization (AMF) and are especially suitable in the presence of mixed spatial derivatives. High-order convergence in time allows larger time steps, which, combined with the splitting of the involved operators, highly reduces the computational time for a given accuracy. Moreover, the consideration of a large number of underlying forward rates makes the PDE problem high dimensional in space, so the use of AMFR-W-methods with a sparse grid combination technique represents another innovative aspect, making AMFR-W more efficient than with full grids and opening the possibility of parallelization. Also, the consideration of new homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions provides another original feature to avoid the difficulties associated to the presence of boundary layers when using Dirichlet ones, especially in advection-dominated regimes. These Neumann boundary conditions motivate the introduction of a modified combination technique to overcome a decrease in the accuracy of the standard combination technique.This work was funded by the Spanish Grants MTM2016-76497-R, PID2019-108584- RB-I00 and MTM2016-77735-C3-3-P, as well as Xunta de Galicia grant ED431C2018/033, all includ- ing FEDER funding. First and third authors acknowledge the support received from the Centro de Investigacin de Galicia "CITIC", funded by Xunta de Galicia and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund- Galicia 2014-2020 Program), by grant ED431G 2019/01.Xunta de Galicia; ED431C2018/033Xunta de Galicia; ED431G 2019/0

De Augusta Emerita a Olisipo: proposta de traçado para o primeiro troço da via XII do Itinerário de Antonino

Apresentam-se as propostas de traçado para a entrada no território português das três vias romanas mencionadas no Itinerário de Antonino, roteiro viário do século III d.C. Conjugando diversas fontes e metodologias de análise, apontam-se os troços viários ainda conservados

Boundary Treatment for High-Order IMEX Runge–Kutta Local Discontinuous Galerkin Schemes for Multidimensional Nonlinear Parabolic PDEs

It includes supplementary materials[Abstract]: In this article, we propose novel boundary treatment algorithms to avoid order reduction when implicit-explicit Runge–Kutta time discretization is used for solving convection-diffusion-reaction problems with time-dependent Dirichlet boundary conditions. We consider Cartesian meshes and PDEs with stiff terms coming from the diffusive parts of the PDE. The algorithms treat boundary values at the implicit-explicit internal stages in the same way as the interior points. The boundary treatment strategy is designed to work with multidimensional problems with possible nonlinear advection and source terms. The proposed methods recover the designed order of convergence by numerical verification. For the spatial discretization, in this work, we consider local discontinuous Galerkin methods, although the developed boundary treatment algorithms can operate with other discretization schemes in space, such as finite differences, finite elements, or finite volumes.The third author's research has been funded by FEDER and the Spanish Governmentthrough the coordinated research project RTI2018-096064-B-C1, and has been partially funded byMCIN/AEI and "European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR" through grant PDC2022-133663-C21 and by MCIN/AEI and "ERDF: A Way of Making Europe"" by the European Union through grant PID2022-137637NB-C21. The other authors' research has been funded by grant ED431G 2023/01 of CITIC, funded by Consellería de Educación, Universidade e Formación Profesional of Xunta deGalicia and FEDER, and by Spanish MINECO under research project number PID2019-10858RB-I00Xunta de Galicia; ED431G 2023/0

Implementation of a bilingual curriculum Engineering degree in the Spanish Air Forces

[SPA] El Ministerio de Defensa y el Ejército del Aire establecen como requisito que los Tenientes graduados como ingenieros en organización industrial utilicen Inglés como lengua vehicular en su ambiente de trabajo. Esto incluye mando, trabajo en operaciones internacionales y tareas dependientes de las misiones asignadas. Hemos abordado este reto en el curso de 6 créditos ECTS de tercer año Tecnologías de Seguridad y Defensa. El curso contiene conocimientos básicos de defensa contra armas no convencionales (Nuclear, Biológica, Química y Radiológica), guerra electrónica y contramedidas electrónicas en sistemas aéreos y aeronaves de combate. Las clases se imparten castellano e inglés excepto la terminología NATO. El material de aprendizaje se encuentra aproximadamente un 60% en Castellano y un 40% en inglés. Los estudiantes presentan un seminario corto en inglés en un tema elegido por ellos, que supone el 20% de la calificación final. A pesar de las dudas y reticencias, las presentaciones son excelente y muestran unas notas significativamente superiores que el examen escrito desarrollado en Castellano. En la presente ponencia discutimos nuestros resultados y la táctica docente desarrollada. [ENG] As a requirement of the Spanish Ministry of Defence and Spanish Air Forces, Lieutenants graduating as Engineers in Industrial Organization and finishing the military training should be able to use English in all situations of their working environment. These include commanding, working in international operations and implementing new tasks according to different job assignments. We have tackled the challenge in third year in the 6 ECTS course Security and Defence Technologies. It comprises basic training in defence against non-conventional weapons (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical and Radiological), electronic warfare and counterelectronic warfare in combat aircrafts. Lectures are delivered mainly in English, while presentations are written in Spanish and English except for terminology that is NATO. Learning material is roughly 60% Spanish 40% English. Students present a short seminar in English on a chosen subject, comprising 20% of the final grading. In spite of the initial reluctance the oral presentations are excellent and show significantly higher grading than the multiple choice theory test performed in Spanish. We discuss our findings and the general overview of our teaching strateg