A Coordinated EU Minimum Wage Policy?

[Excerpt] Minimum wages exist in all EU member states, even if, as we shall see in this report, they are set up and established in very different ways. Minimum wages, in fact, can be considered as a cornerstone of the “European Social Model”. Yet, the on-going process of European integration has so far had very little to do with them. Wages are explicitly excluded from the competences of European institutions in the existing treaties, contrary to other areas of work and employment such as working time or health and safety. But in the context of increasing European integration, it seems at least plausible that sooner or later there would be some attempt of coordinating this important aspect of social policy across countries. As we will see in this report, the idea has been discussed at the European level several times since the EU was born, and it seems to be gaining momentum the context of the current economic crisis. Of course, the discussion is by no means settled, as many important European and national actors consider that this area should remain within the remit of national governments and according to national traditions and practices. It is certainly possible that wages, and minimum wages, would remain squarely at the level of national competence in the foreseeable future. Still, it seems like a worthwhile exercise (useful to the debate) to explore what kind of implications would be associated with such a coordination of European minimum wage policy. This is what we will try to do in this report. Without taking ourselves a position, we will try to provide arguments and facts that we hope can be useful in this debate. The report is organized in two big sections. In the first one, we will discuss the theoretical and policy considerations around a coordinated EU minimum wage policy. We will review the social sciences literature on the effects of minimum wages, present a broad picture of the current debates around the coordination of EU minimum wage policy and discuss the institutional difficulties that such a coordination would in our view have to face. In other words, that section will try to provide a balanced summary of the theoretical and policy arguments around this debate. The second big section will try to complement the arguments with some facts, by carrying out a “simple accounting exercise” to evaluate how many and what types of workers would be most affected by a hypothetical coordination of minimum wage policy in the different countries, using a baseline scenario of a single national wage floor of 60% of the median national wages and drawing from the two most recent EU-wide data sources on wages and income. Eurofound was established in 1975 with the mandate of contributing with knowledge to the planning and design of better living and working conditions in Europe. We hope that this report can at least contribute to the debate

Topologically based curvature in thin elastic shell networks

We present a topologically-­based doubly curved building system, based on a single bending thin plate element. The system extends Buckminster Fuller’s plydome research, by proposing an elastic form­finding technique through the introduction of strategic singularities in a periodic grid of originally coplanar plates. The potential of this technique is explored and showcased through the design and manufacture of a large scale prototype

La nueva ley valenciana de comercio minorista, un avance para la libertad de empresa

El presente artículo pretende situar la nueva Ley 3/2011, de 23 de marzo, de comercio de la Comunidad Valenciana en un contexto más amplio determinado por la Directiva 2006/123/CE relativa a los servicios en el mercado interior y las modificaciones a nivel estatal de la normativa de Ordenación del Comercio Minorista y Horarios Comerciales

El matrimonio homosexual en Europa

El trabajo presenta una panorámica completa sobre la posición de los distintos Estados de la Unión Europea en relación con las relaciones familiares entre personas del mismo sexo, examinando, en particular, las legislaciones que admiten el matrimonio en este supuesto, prestando especial atención a la jurisprudencia del Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos.This work presents a panoramic view of the position of the different member States of the European Union in relation to same-sex family relationships, especially considering those jurisdictions in which marriage is allowed and paying special attention to the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights

Cartesian grid FEM (cgFEM): High performance h-adaptive FE analysis with efficient error control. Application to structural shape optimization

More and more challenging designs are required everyday in today¿s industries. The traditional trial and error procedure commonly used for mechanical parts design is not valid any more since it slows down the design process and yields suboptimal designs. For structural components, one alternative consists in using shape optimization processes which provide optimal solutions. However, these techniques require a high computational effort and require extremely efficient and robust Finite Element (FE) programs. FE software companies are aware that their current commercial products must improve in this sense and devote considerable resources to improve their codes. In this work we propose to use the Cartesian Grid Finite Element Method, cgFEM as a tool for efficient and robust numerical analysis. The cgFEM methodology developed in this thesis uses the synergy of a variety of techniques to achieve this purpose, but the two main ingredients are the use of Cartesian FE grids independent of the geometry of the component to be analyzed and an efficient hierarchical data structure. These two features provide to the cgFEM technology the necessary requirements to increase the efficiency of the cgFEM code with respect to commercial FE codes. As indicated in [1, 2], in order to guarantee the convergence of a structural shape optimization process we need to control the error of each geometry analyzed. In this sense the cgFEM code also incorporates the appropriate error estimators. These error estimators are specifically adapted to the cgFEM framework to further increase its efficiency. This work introduces a solution recovery technique, denoted as SPR-CD, that in combination with the Zienkiewicz and Zhu error estimator [3] provides very accurate error measures of the FE solution. Additionally, we have also developed error estimators and numerical bounds in Quantities of Interest based on the SPR-CD technique to allow for an efficient control of the quality of the numerical solution. Regarding error estimation, we also present three new upper error bounding techniques for the error in energy norm of the FE solution, based on recovery processes. Furthermore, this work also presents an error estimation procedure to control the quality of the recovered solution in stresses provided by the SPR-CD technique. Since the recovered stress field is commonly more accurate and has a higher convergence rate than the FE solution, we propose to substitute the raw FE solution by the recovered solution to decrease the computational cost of the numerical analysis. All these improvements are reflected by the numerical examples of structural shape optimization problems presented in this thesis. These numerical analysis clearly show the improved behavior of the cgFEM technology over the classical FE implementations commonly used in industry.Cada d'¿a dise¿nos m'as complejos son requeridos por las industrias actuales. Para el dise¿no de nuevos componentes, los procesos tradicionales de prueba y error usados com'unmente ya no son v'alidos ya que ralentizan el proceso y dan lugar a dise¿nos sub-'optimos. Para componentes estructurales, una alternativa consiste en usar procesos de optimizaci'on de forma estructural los cuales dan como resultado dise¿nos 'optimos. Sin embargo, estas t'ecnicas requieren un alto coste computacional y tambi'en programas de Elementos Finitos (EF) extremadamente eficientes y robustos. Las compa¿n'¿as de programas de EF son conocedoras de que sus programas comerciales necesitan ser mejorados en este sentido y destinan importantes cantidades de recursos para mejorar sus c'odigos. En este trabajo proponemos usar el M'etodo de Elementos Finitos basado en mallados Cartesianos (cgFEM) como una herramienta eficiente y robusta para el an'alisis num'erico. La metodolog'¿a cgFEM desarrollada en esta tesis usa la sinergia entre varias t'ecnicas para lograr este prop'osito, cuyos dos ingredientes principales son el uso de los mallados Cartesianos de EF independientes de la geometr'¿a del componente que va a ser analizado y una eficiente estructura jer'arquica de datos. Estas dos caracter'¿sticas confieren a la tecnolog'¿a cgFEM de los requisitos necesarios para aumentar la eficiencia del c'odigo cgFEM con respecto a c'odigos comerciales. Como se indica en [1, 2], para garantizar la convergencia del proceso de optimizaci'on de forma estructural se necesita controlar el error en cada geometr'¿a analizada. En este sentido el c'odigo cgFEM tambi'en incorpora los apropiados estimadores de error. Estos estimadores de error han sido espec'¿ficamente adaptados al entorno cgFEM para aumentar su eficiencia. En esta tesis se introduce un proceso de recuperaci'on de la soluci'on, llamado SPR-CD, que en combinaci'on con el estimador de error de Zienkiewicz y Zhu [3], da como resultado medidas muy precisas del error de la soluci'on de EF. Adicionalmente, tambi'en se han desarrollado estimadores de error y cotas num'ericas en Magnitudes de Inter'es basadas en la t'ecnica SPR-CD para permitir un eficiente control de la calidad de la soluci'on num'erica. Respecto a la estimaci'on de error, tambi'en se presenta un proceso de estimaci'on de error para controlar la calidad del campo de tensiones recuperado obtenido mediante la t'ecnica SPR-CD. Ya que el campo recuperado es por lo general m'as preciso y tiene un mayor orden de convergencia que la soluci'on de EF, se propone sustituir la soluci'on de EF por la soluci'on recuperada para disminuir as'¿ el coste computacional del an'alisis num'erico. Todas estas mejoras se han reflejado en esta tesis mediante ejemplos num'ericos de problemas de optimizaci'on de forma estructural. Los resultados num'ericos muestran claramente un mejor comportamiento de la tecnolog'¿a cgFEM con respecto a implementaciones cl'asicas de EF com'unmente usadas en la industria.Nadal Soriano, E. (2014). Cartesian grid FEM (cgFEM): High performance h-adaptive FE analysis with efficient error control. Application to structural shape optimization [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/35620TESI

Systematic description of COVID-19 pandemic using exact SIR solutions and Gumbel distributions

An epidemiological study is carried out in several countries analyzing the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic using the SIRmodel and Gumbel distribution. The equations of the SIR model are solved exactly using the proper time as a parameter. The physical time is obtained by integration of the inverse of the infected function over proper time. Some properties of the solutions of the SIR model are studied such as time scaling and the asymmetry, which allows to obtain the basic reproduction number from the data. Approximations to the solutions of the SIR model are studied using Gumbel distributions by least squares fit or by adjusting the maximum of the infected function. Finally, the parameters of the SIR model and the Gumbel function are extracted from the death data and compared for the different countries. It is found that ten of the selected countries are verywell described by the solutions of the SIR model, with a basic reproduction number between 3 and 8.Universidad de Granada/CBU

What is Amphipteryx agrioides Selys 1853 (Odonata: Amphipterygidae)?

The family Amphipterygidae comprises a group of moderately large, robust species of pan-tropical damselflies. It was first recognized by Selys (1853) as his "6me legion" based on the description of a unique female which he named "Amphipteryx agrioïdes." Its provenance ("Colombie. [Collect. Selys.]") has remained a mystery as no specimens of this genus had subsequently been collected from South America. Selys (1854a: 241, 243) expanded on the distribution of the specimen noting (page 241) that it had been collected “dans la province de Cumana (Amérique méridionale équatoriale)” and (page 243) “d’après un exemplaire recueilli par M. Funck, et qui se trouvait avec l’ Hetaerina majuscula et l’ Agrion (Hyponevra) Funcki….” De Marmels (1990) dismissed the record of A. agrioides from “Cumaná [Venezuela]” as unlikely and suggested deletion of the species from that country. The single holotype female was apparently never re-examined, except by the late B.E. Montgomery who never published his observations, until recently (von Ellenrieder & Garrison 2007). Calvert (1901) in his Biologia CentraliAmericana assigned this name to specimens from Mexico and Guatemala. He described the male for the first time and gave a description of the female comparing it with the original description and noting that "The hind prothoracic lobe also possesses two dorsal lamellate processes (not mentioned by Selys)…." González (1991) described A. longicaudatus (should be A. longicaudata; Novelo 1995) from Oaxaca, Mexico and distinguished this species from A. agrioides based only on Calvert's (1901) description and illustrations. Several years ago, Rosser W. Garrison was sent digital images of the holotype female of A. agrioides by Jérôme Constant of the IRSNB, and observed that the pronotal armature differed from specimens given this name by Calvert (1901) and González (1991) (Garrison pers. comm.). Since Amphipteryx is the type genus of the family Amphipterygidae, it is imperative that its type species, A. agrioides, be correctly assigned to specimens. The purpose of this paper is to determine the correct identity of A. agrioides, provide diagnostic illustrations of the same, and discuss the location of its type locality.Fil: González Soriano, Enrique. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Departamento de Botánica. Instituto de Biología; MéxicoFil: Von Ellenrieder, Natalia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Salta. Instituto de Bio y Geociencias del NOA. Universidad Nacional de Salta. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales. Museo de Ciencias Naturales. Instituto de Bio y Geociencias del NOA; Argentin

Electron scattering and neutrino physics

A thorough understanding of neutrino–nucleus scattering physics is crucial for the successful execution of the entire US neutrino physics program. Neutrino– nucleus interaction constitutes one of the biggest systematic uncertainties in neutrino experiments—both at intermediate energies affecting long-baseline deep underground neutrino experiment, as well as at low energies affecting coherent scattering neutrino program—and could well be the difference between achieving or missing discovery level precision. To this end, electron– nucleus scattering experiments provide vital information to test, assess and validate different nuclear models and event generators intended to test, assessThe authors acknowledge the support of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through the Cluster of Excellence 'Precision Physics, Fundamental Interactions,U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) PRISMA+ EXC 2118/1German Research Foundation (DFG)FWO PID2019-107564GB-I00Spanish Ministerio de Economa y Competitividad (SEIDI-MINECO)CERCA program of the Generalitat de Cataluny

NN Scattering and Nuclear Uncertainties

This work was supported by the Spanish MINECO and European FEDER funds (grant FIS2017-85053-C2-1-P) and Junta de Andalucía (grant FQM-225).We thank Ignacio Ruiz Simó, James Vary, Pieter Maris, Eduardo Garrido, Andreas Nogga, Rocco Schiavilla, Maria Piarulli, Pedro Fernández Soler, Jacobo Ruiz de Elvira, Varese Salvador Timoteo, and Sergio Szpigel for collaboration on different issues discussed in this paper.Ab initio calculations in Nuclear physics for atomic nuclei require a specific knowledge of the interactions among their constituents, protons and neutrons. In particular, NN interactions can be constrained down to scale resolutions of Δr ~ 0.6 fm from the study of phase shifts below the pion production threshold. However, this allows for ambiguities and uncertainties which have an impact on finite nuclei, nuclear- and neutron-matter properties. On the other hand the nuclear many body problem is intrinsically difficult and the computational cost increases with numerical precision and number of nucleons. However, it is unclear what the physical precision should be for these calculations. In this contribution we review much of the work done in Granada to encompass both the uncertainties stemming from the NN scattering database in light nuclei such as triton and alpha particle and the numerical precision required by the solution method.Spanish MINECO and European FEDER funds (grant FIS2017-85053-C2-1-P)Junta de Andalucía (grant FQM-225

El mercado de la franquicia española: necesidad de valores culturales

El origen de las franquicias data de principios de siglo y hoy constituyen uno de los principales protagonistas del mercado. Esta fórmula guarda semejanzas con una gran empresa y sus sucursales y para su buen funcionamiento requiere una cultura empresarial común que genere sinergias. A continuación se expone un panorama general de las franquicias realizado en base a la contrastación de datos de una muestra de 288 de las 670 enseñas españolas que se han contabilizado en base a datos propios (1). Finalmente se describirá cómo y por qué puede y debe una enseña compartir y controlar una cultura comú[email protected]