Estimating a Risky Term Structure of Uruguayan Sovereign Bonds.

Based on a joint three – factor a¢ ne model, we estimate the term structure of interest rates and default spreads for Uruguay using the reduced - form approach developed by Du¢ e and Singleton. We …nd that Uruguayan average term structure was negatively sloped between 1997 and 2003, as indicated by previous empirical evidence for low –quality debtors. Surprisingly, Uruguayan average yield curve was also negatively sloped between 1997 and 2001, when the country’s foreign –currency denominated debt was considered investment grade by the leading rating agencies. We also …nd that the estimated Uruguayan default spread is able to capture the behavior and dynamics of a more traditional country risk benchmark such as the “Uruguayan Bond Index” (UBI), with observations on a single Uruguayan bond. Finally, we …nd that regional, international and local …nancial crises cause parallel shifts in the Uruguayan yield curve, with higher increases in short –term rates, and that the banking and debt crises experienced by the country in 2002 had the biggest e¤ects on the average Uruguayan term structure.default risk; term structure; reduced-form model; default spread

Bankruptcy Prediction: A Comparison of Some Statistical and Machine Learning Techniques

We are interested in forecasting bankruptcies in a probabilistic way. Specifically, we compare the classification performance of several statistical and machine-learning techniques, namely discriminant analysis (Altman's Z-score), logistic regression, least-squares support vector machines and different instances of Gaussian processes (GP's) -that is GP's classifiers, Bayesian Fisher discriminant and Warped GP's. Our contribution to the field of computational finance is to introduce GP's as a potentially competitive probabilistic framework for bankruptcy prediction. Data from the repository of information of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is used to test the predictions.Bankruptcy prediction, Artificial intelligence, Supervised learning, Gaussian processes, Z-score.

Música y canción en la tradición islámica.

Sin resume

Uses of a Myth: al-Andalus

In the last two decades, the Spanish press treatment of the Muslim world reflects a change of tone from unsympathetic to enthusiastic, although the information is still marred by confusion and ignorance. This change of attitude has occurred in other Western countries as well, and it is due in part to immigration trends, control over oil resources, and the relativism of official discourses towards the Third World. In the case of Spain, however, there is an additional internal element at play: the mass-media reinvention of a mythical al-Andalus as a tolerant and pluralistic society. This idealized interpretation of seven centuries of Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula is fraught with ignorance and distortion of the historical record but is not new. The mystification of al-Andalus has its precedent in romantic accounts that saw in “Muslim Spain” a differential fact that reinforced the exotic image of the country. It can be attributed also to the strategy to “hispanicize” al-Andalus employed by Arabists and historians to make the subject matter appealing to unsympathetic Spanish audiences conditioned by the myth of the Reconquest. Intended or not, the manipulation of the myth of al-Andalus as a historical fact has ideological and political implications that demand an objective and balanced consideration

Medicamentos procedentes de la nanotecnología

El origen de la nanotecnología resulta indiscutiblemente ligado al científico norteamericano Richard Feynman (Nueva York,1918), laureado con el premio Nobel de Física en 1965. En 1974, el científico japonés, Norio Taniguchi, fue el primero en usar el término nanotecnología para describir los procesos semiconductores que ocurren en el orden de un nanómetro. No fue hasta la década de los años 80 del siglo XX, la era dorada de la nanotecnología, cuando se realizaron una serie de importantes descubrimientos e invenciones que generaron un gran impacto en el desarrollo de la nanotecnología. Desde sus inicios, la nanotecnología se ha aplicado a numerosos campos, entre ellos las ciencias de la salud, donde ha dado lugar a nuevas disciplinas denominadas nanomedicina y nanofarmacia. Cada vez existe más variedad de productos farmacéuticos basados en la nanotecnología en el mercado, debido al progresivo aumento de las enfermedades crónicas para las que no existen tratamientos definitivos y las formulaciones nanoterapeúticas presentan grandes ventajas frente a las convencionales. El objetivo de esta revisión bibliográfica es conocer y clasificar los principales medicamentos procedentes de la nanotecnología, así como, observar sus ventajas frente a los medicamentos convencionales y analizar las nuevas perspectivas de futuro en el uso de estas formulaciones. Actualmente, una gran variedad de productos farmacéuticos basados en nanotecnología se ha introducido con éxito en el mercado siendo prescritos a diario a un elevado número de pacientes. Los nanofármacos más conocidos se clasifican en función del tipo de nanoformulación. Estos grupos son: nanocristales, liposomas y nanopartículas basadas en lípidos, nanopartículas poliméricas, nanopartículas basadas en proteínas y nanopartículas metálicas.Universidad de Sevilla. Grado en Farmaci