Macroeconomic Policy, Growth and Income Distribution in the Brazilian Economy in the 2000s

The Brazilian economy grew by 4.2 percent annually from 2004-2010, more than double its annual growth from 1999-2003 or indeed its growth rate over the prior quarter century. This growth was accompanied by a significant reduction in poverty and extreme poverty, especially after 2005, as well as reduced inequality. This paper looks at the combination of external changes and changes in macroeconomic policy that contributed to these results

Communication and Interference Coordination

We study the problem of controlling the interference created to an external observer by a communication processes. We model the interference in terms of its type (empirical distribution), and we analyze the consequences of placing constraints on the admissible type. Considering a single interfering link, we characterize the communication-interference capacity region. Then, we look at a scenario where the interference is jointly created by two users allowed to coordinate their actions prior to transmission. In this case, the trade-off involves communication and interference as well as coordination. We establish an achievable communication-interference region and show that efficiency is significantly improved by coordination

Wage Growth Implications of Fixed-Term Employment: An Analysis by Contract Duration and Job Mobility

Focusing on Spain, where fixed-term workers account for a third of the wage and salary workforce, we examine the wage growth implications of fixed-term employment of varying duration while distinguishing between wage growth occurring on-the-job versus via job mobility. Wage growth among employees with indefinite work contracts largely occurs via job mobility, whereas fixed-term workers gain via job mobility as well as on-the-job. Consequently, job stayers with fixed-term contracts a year ago narrow their wage gap with respect to similar counterparts with indefinite-term contracts. Yet, this effect is solely driven by the 10.5 percentage points higher wage growth experienced by fixed-term workers with 6-months contracts able to keep their jobs beyond their initial contract period. Given the limited number of short-term temporary workers in those circumstances, the overall wage gap between past fixed-term and indefinite-term workers is unlikely to vanish in the near future.

A novel voltage sag approach during unintentional islanding scenarios: A survey from real recorded events

In this paper, a new voltage sag approach is analytically modelled and validated using both simulation and field measurements. The main aspect of this approach is to propose a new voltage sag feature which appears during unintentional islanding operations (IOs). The unintentional IO occurs when an induction motor is removed from the main utility following a circuit breaker (CB) clearing, transiently, the induction motors (IMs) are acting as generators maintaining the affected distribution feeder with voltage until it is reconnected. The voltage sag modelled in the current article follows an exponential form, as a matter of fact, here it will be demonstrated that the proposed model reaches satisfactorily the field measurements and evidences the dependability of the model adopted. Furthermore, it is worthwhile to note that this novel power quality (PQ) event has not been investigated yet and enhances voltage sag studies. Lastly, it is crucial to point out that all recorded events and a large amount of data needed so as to validate this transient, has been measured in a distribution network (DN) located in Spain.Postprint (published version

A novel voltage sag approach during unintentional islanding scenarios: A survey from real recorded events

In this paper, a new voltage sag approach is analytically modelled and validated using both simulation and field measurements. The main aspect of this approach is to propose a new voltage sag feature which appears during unintentional islanding operations (IOs). The unintentional IO occurs when an induction motor is removed from the main utility following a circuit breaker (CB) clearing, transiently, the induction motors (IMs) are acting as generators maintaining the affected distribution feeder with voltage until it is reconnected. The voltage sag modelled in the current article follows an exponential form, as a matter of fact, here it will be demonstrated that the proposed model reaches satisfactorily the field measurements and evidences the dependability of the model adopted. Furthermore, it is worthwhile to note that this novel power quality (PQ) event has not been investigated yet and enhances voltage sag studies. Lastly, it is crucial to point out that all recorded events and a large amount of data needed so as to validate this transient, has been measured in a distribution network (DN) located in Spain.Postprint (published version

Finding Cures for Tropical Diseases: Is Open Source an Answer?

We construct polar codes for binary relay channels with orthogonal receiver components. We show that polar codes achieve the cut-set bound when the channels are symmetric and the relay-destination link supports compress-and-forward relaying based on Slepian-Wolf coding. More generally, we show that a particular version of the compress-and-forward rate is achievable using polar codes for Wyner-Ziv coding. In both cases the block error probability can be bounded as O(2-Nβ) for 0 &lt; β &lt; 1/2 and sufficiently large block length N.Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. QC 20111207</p

Power quality disturbances assessment during unintentional islanding scenarios. A contribution to voltage sag studies

This paper presents a novel voltage sag topology that occurs during an unintentional islanding operation (IO) within a distribution network (DN) due to large induction motors (IMs). When a fault occurs, following the circuit breaker (CB) fault clearing, transiently, the IMs act as generators due to their remanent kinetic energy until the CB reclosing takes place. This paper primarily contributes to voltage sag characterization. Therefore, this novel topology is presented, analytically modelled and further validated. It is worth mentioning that this voltage sag has been identified in a real DN in which events have been recorded for two years. The model validation of the proposed voltage sag is done via digital simulations with a model of the real DN implemented in Matlab considering a wide range of scenarios. Both simulations and field measurements confirm the voltage sag analytical expression presented in this paper as well as exhibiting the high accuracy achieved in the three-phase model adopted.Postprint (published version

De las mocedades de Castro al Cid de Corneille

Este trabajo recorre los parámetros que permiten comparar Le Cid de Pierre Corneille (1637) con su fuente, Las mocedades del Cid, comedia primera de Guillén de Castro (1618). Se observa que la reescritura de la pieza francesa procede a una compresión radical del hilo del texto recibido, donde son eliminados numerosos elementos (personajes, secuencias…). Sin embargo, el número de palabras resultante es muy próximo al de la fuente. Hay pues una incorporación significativa de nuevo material. ¿Dónde se integra este? Sobre todo en las réplicas femeninas, las de Urraca y, más decididamente todavía, en las de Jimena, personaje que pasa a ocupar el primer rango por el número de versos. El trágico desgarro de Jimena alimentará en Francia la controversia del Cid, que polariza la vida teatral del siglo.This work reviews the parameters that allow to compare Le Cid by Pierre Corneille (1637) with its source, Las mocedades del Cid, comedia primera by Guillén de Castro (1618). It is observed that the rewriting of the French piece proceeds to a radical compression of the thread of the received text, where numerous elements (characters, sequences...) are eliminated. However, the resulting number of words is very close to that of the source. There is thus a significant incorporation of new material. Where is this integrated? Especially in the female dialogues, those of Urraca and, more decidedly still, those of Jimena, a character that comes to occupy the first rank by the number of verses. The tragic tear of Jimena will feed the controversy of El Cid in France, which polarizes the theatrical life of the century

Presidential Office: Foreword

We study the fundamental relationship between two relevant quantities in compressive sensing: the measurement rate, which characterizes the asymptotic behavior of the dimensions of the measurement matrix in terms of the ratio m/ log n (m being the number of measurements and n the dimension of the sparse signal), and the mean square estimation error. First, we use an information-theoretic approach to derive sufficient conditions on the measurement rate to reliably recover a part of the support set that represents a certain fraction of the total signal power when the sparsity level is fixed. Second, we characterize the mean square error of an estimator that uses partial support set information. Using these two parts, we derive a tradeoff between the measurement rate and the mean square error. This tradeoff is achievable using a two-step approach: first support set recovery, then estimation of the active components. Finally, for both deterministic and random signals, we perform a numerical evaluation to verify the advantages of the methods based on partial support set recovery.QC 20140617</p