"Cruising is Risky Business"

As the fastest growing sector within the international tourism industry, having grown at roughly double the rate of international tourism as a whole, the cruise liner business has shown impressive growth in the North American and European markets. For port management purposes, as well as for transport policy, it is essential to be able to forecast accurately cruise passenger arrivals and their variability. In the presence of time-varying variances (or volatility), it is crucial to model such volatility in order to provide sensible forecast intervals in addition to the forecast themselves. Time-varying volatility in port management is important because governments and businesses need to be aware of the uncertainty associated with the number of cruise passenger arrivals and their associated growth. In calculating income elasticities, port taxes and tourist taxes, it is essential to obtain accurate estimates of cruise passenger arrivals and their volatility. Moreover, in an international context in which natural disasters, terrorism, crime and ethnic conflicts, among others, have significant impacts on tourism, it is crucial to assess the persistence of shocks on cruise passenger arrivals for effective crisis management plans, including different forms of co-operation among ports facing similar shocks. Appropriate models are required to enable optimal private and public decision making in designing ports for cruise ships. Daily cruise passenger arrivals data for the three major ports in the Balearic Islands, Spain, namely Palma, Ibiza and Mahon, for the period 1997-2006, as well as for the high cruise season for each island,are analyzed using alternative conditional mean and conditional volatility models in order to provide empirical support for purposes of optimal decision making. Four different types of asymmetries are analyzed according to the positive and negative shocks to daily cruise passenger arrivals, as well as from distinctions between the high and low cruise seasons. The estimates of cruise passenger arrivals and their volatility are generally found to be sensible and to have valid statistical properties. Likelihood ratio tests of the constancy of coefficients in the high and low cruise seasons indicate that the weekly delayed response of cruise passenger arrivals differ significantly spatially across islands and temporally across seasons.

"Risk Management for International Tourist Arrivals: An Application to the Balearic Islands, Spain"

Spain is a leader in terms of total international tourist arrivals and receipts. The Balearic Islands are one of the most popular destinations in Spain. For tourism management and marketing, it is essential to forecast tourist arrivals accurately. As it is important to provide sensible tourist forecast intervals, it is also necessary to model their variances accurately. Time-varying variances also provide useful information regarding the risk associated with tourist arrivals. This paper examines spatial aggregation across micro entities to more aggregated macro entities, in addition to temporal aggregation, for purposes of analyzing risk in tourism marketing and management. The paper examines four different types of asymmetric behaviour related to the effects of positive and negative shocks of equal magnitude on volatility. The paper analyzes daily air passenger arrivals from the Spanish National Airport Authority from 2001-06 to the Balearics, using time series models for the conditional mean and conditional volatility.

Creación de videotutoriales como refuerzo del aprendizaje presencial en el Área de Ingeniería de Sistemas y Automática

Autorizado por el editor del Libro de actas (Universidad de Granada)Este trabajo presenta una experiencia de innovación educativa llevada a cabo en asignaturas impartidas por el Dpto. de Ingeniería de Sistemas y Automática de la Universidad de Málaga en las que se imparten conceptos básicos de control automático. Dicha experiencia ha consistido en el diseño, creación y uso de una serie de videotutoriales en los que se explican estos conceptos con un formato que pretende ser atractivo, ameno y organizado. Para facilitar, propiciar y analizar el uso de los mismos, se han aprovechado las ventajas que supone su publicación en una plataforma tal como YouTube. El objetivo para el que se han concebido estos videotutoriales es reforzar el aprendizaje presencial del alumnado y fomentar su autoaprendizaje.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Consideraciones sobre la interpretación y la utilidad de la información climática con referencia al fenómeno Enso

Casi todos habremos escuchado en tiempo reciente que las condiciones climatológicas extremas que se presentan en el país, principalmente de lluvia, son consecuencia del Niño o de la Niña, pero poco o nada explican los medios sobre estas condiciones; así, este escrito tiene como finalidad aportar a su comprensión. El fenómeno se denomina técnicamente ENSO (abreviaturas de El Niño – Southern Oscillation), tiene dos fases: cálida – cuando hay Niño – y fría – cuando hay Niñ

A Taxonomy-Based Usability Study of an Intelligent Speed Adaptation Device

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction on 04 Apr 2014, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2014.907463[Abstract] Usability studies are often based on ad hoc definitions of usability. These studies can be difficult to generalize, they might have a steep learning curve, and there is always the danger of being inconsistent with the concept of usability as defined in standards and the literature. This alternative approach involves comprehensive, general-purpose, and hierarchically structured taxonomies that follow closely the main usability literature. These taxonomies are then instantiated for a specific product. To illustrate this approach, a usability study for a prototype of an Intelligent Speed Adaptation device is described. The usability study consists of usability requirements analysis, heuristic evaluation, and subjective analysis, which helped identify problems of clarity, operability, robustness, safety, and aesthetics. As a context-specific usability taxonomy for this particular field of application happened to exist, the way that real-world usability results can be mapped to that taxonomy compared to the taxonomy in this article is examined, with the argument that this study’s taxonomy is more complete and generalizable.Xunta de Galicia; CN2011/007Xunta de Galicia; CN2012/211European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency; Nº. 22835

Quantum Computing for Dealing with Inaccurate Knowledge Related to the Certainty Factors Model

This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Quantum Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning[Abstract] In this paper, we illustrate that inaccurate knowledge can be efficiently implemented in a quantum environment. For this purpose, we analyse the correlation between certainty factors and quantum probability. We first explore the certainty factors approach for inexact reasoning from a classical point of view. Next, we introduce some basic aspects of quantum computing, and we pay special attention to quantum rule-based systems. In this context, a specific use case was built: an inferential network for testing the behaviour of the certainty factors approach in a quantum environment. After the design and execution of the experiments, the corresponding analysis of the obtained results was performed in three different scenarios: (1) inaccuracy in declarative knowledge, or imprecision, (2) inaccuracy in procedural knowledge, or uncertainty, and (3) inaccuracy in both declarative and procedural knowledge. This paper, as stated in the conclusions, is intended to pave the way for future quantum implementations of well-established methods for handling inaccurate knowledge.This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under project NEASQC (grant agreement No. 951821) and by the Xunta de Galicia (grant ED431C 2018/34) with the European Union ERDF funds. We wish to acknowledge the support received from the Centro de Investigación de Galicia “CITIC”, funded by Xunta de Galicia and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund- Galicia 2014–2020 Program, grant ED431G 2019/01)Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2018/34Xunta de Galicia; ED431G 2019/0

Gibbs-Donnan and specific ion interaction theory descriptions of the effect of ionic strength on proton dissociation of alginic acid

The apparent proton dissociation constants of a commercial alginic acid have been obtained in KNO3 and NaCl at concentrations ranging between 0.01 and 2 mol·L-1. An analysis of the dependence on the ionic strength at a constant value of the dissociation degree was done by means of empirical functions derived from the Gibbs-Donnan formalism for polyelectrolytes and a specific ion interaction theory (SIT). Both functions were able to fit the experimental data, although SIT yielded rather high errors in the fitted parameters due to a problem of multicollinearity, in contrast to the function derived from the Gibbs-Donnan approach.This work was funded by the projects BQU2002-02133 (from the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología of Spain) and PGDIT02TAM10302PR (from the Xunta de Galicia). C.R.C. benefited from a FPU grant of the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte of Spain

Trabajo de investigación previo a la obtención del título de Magister en Innovación y Liderazgo Educativo.

La investigación se enmarca en mejorar el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la matemática, dentro de los espacios áulicos ya que se ha confirmado la desmotivación y bajo desempeño académico de los estudiantes al momento de adquirir y desarrollar destrezas en dicha área. El diagnóstico del problema permitió determinar hasta qué punto la desmotivación de los estudiantes por aprender matemática debilita el proceso enseñanza aprendizaje y el desarrollo de destrezas. El objetivo de la investigación es desarrollar estrategias lúdicas para la motivación por la matemática en niños de sexto año de Educación General Básica de la Unidad Educativa Francisco Flor”. La metodología utilizada en el estudio incluyó métodos teóricos y empíricos que se aplicaron principalmente en las diferentes fases de la investigación bajo un enfoque cualitativo y cuantitativo; el resultado de la revisión bibliográfica y de campo revela la importancia de la motivación por la matemática mediante estrategias lúdicas para mejorar los aprendizajes y destrezas en el proceso formativo. Finalmente se plantea una guía denominada “Pepito descubridor” con actividades lúdicas para motivar el aprendizaje en la asi gnatura de matemática

Trabajo de investigación previo a la obtención del título de Magister en Innovación y Liderazgo Educativo.

La investigación se enmarca en mejorar el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la matemática, dentro de los espacios áulicos ya que se ha confirmado la desmotivación y bajo desempeño académico de los estudiantes al momento de adquirir y desarrollar destrezas en dicha área. El diagnóstico del problema permitió determinar hasta qué punto la desmotivación de los estudiantes por aprender matemática debilita el proceso enseñanza aprendizaje y el desarrollo de destrezas. El objetivo de la investigación es desarrollar estrategias lúdicas para la motivación por la matemática en niños de sexto año de Educación General Básica de la Unidad Educativa Francisco Flor”. La metodología utilizada en el estudio incluyó métodos teóricos y empíricos que se aplicaron principalmente en las diferentes fases de la investigación bajo un enfoque cualitativo y cuantitativo; el resultado de la revisión bibliográfica y de campo revela la importancia de la motivación por la matemática mediante estrategias lúdicas para mejorar los aprendizajes y destrezas en el proceso formativo. Finalmente se plantea una guía denominada “Pepito descubridor” con actividades lúdicas para motivar el aprendizaje en la asignatura de matemátic