Financial Contagion between Economies - an Exploratory Spatial Analysis

At the present time, controversy still surrounds the importance of the financial integration of markets and its possible consequences. The fact that the economy is more global means that countries are more interdependent on each other. This brings new advantages, but also entails new dangers for countries. In this paper we study one of these dangers: financial contagion in times of crisis. In general terms, this is understood as the transmission or propagation of disturbances between the financial markets of different countries. However, this debate on the benefits and risks of economic interdependence also draws attention to problems that are both very old and very new. The problems are new because of the impact of globalization, but old because they are based on economic and political visions and ideologies that always remain the same. In this paper we present new ideas on the current debate on financial contagion. Specifically, we identify the economic variables that represent the crises in the Thai, Russian and Brazilian cases. We ask whether the cause of contagion between countries is the fact that their main macro economic magnitudes or economic fundamentals are at critical levels (commonly considered as the fundamentals of countries), or if, on the other hand, contagion between countries takes place due to trade and financial links and political or regional effects. Various methodological approaches have been used to explore the existence of contagion and the relative importance of the possible channels of transmission of crises (or channels of contagion). In recent years authors have sought to identify the econometric techniques that are best suited to conducting this kind of analysis. Indeed, one of the innovations of this paper is its implementation of Spatial Econometrics as a mechanism for assessing contagion. Unlike the other methodologies used, Spatial Econometrics allows an expression of international relations under explicit dynamic-spatial assumptions. Surprisingly, this technique has not been used previously for the analysis of contagion, and indeed few authors have used it in the study of financial relations in general. Firstly, in this paper we perform an exploratory spatial analysis which contrasts the existence of contagion or spatial autocorrelation. Secondly, we try to assess different channels of contagion through a model based on spatial econometric which would let us realize a confirmatory analysis. The study of an explicit dependency between the countries using this econometric technique may open up a new field of research in financial interdependence relations.

A Systematic Literature Review of Quantum Computing for Routing Problems

Quantum Computing is drawing a significant attention from the current scientific community. The potential advantages offered by this revolutionary paradigm has led to an upsurge of scientific production in different fields such as economics, industry, or logistics. The main purpose of this paper is to collect, organize and systematically examine the literature published so far on the application of Quantum Computing to routing problems. To do this, we embrace the well-established procedure named as Systematic Literature Review. Specifically, we provide a unified, self-contained, and end-to-end review of 18 years of research (from 2004 to 2021) in the intersection of Quantum Computing and routing problems through the analysis of 53 different papers. Several interesting conclusions have been drawn from this analysis, which has been formulated to give a comprehensive summary of the current state of the art by providing answers related to the most recurrent type of study (practical or theoretical), preferred solving approaches (dedicated or hybrid), detected open challenges or most used Quantum Computing device, among others

Hybrid classical-quantum computing: are we forgetting the classical part in the binomial?

The expectations arising from the latest achievements in the quantum computing field are causing that researchers coming from classical artificial intelligence to be fascinated by this new paradigm. In turn, quantum computing, on the road towards usability, needs classical procedures. Hybridization is, in these circumstances, an indispensable step but can also be seen as a promising new avenue to get the most from both computational worlds. Nonetheless, hybrid approaches have now and will have in the future many challenges to face, which, if ignored, will threaten the viability or attractiveness of quantum computing for real-world applications. To identify them and pose pertinent questions, a proper characterization of the hybrid quantum computing field, and especially hybrid solvers, is compulsory. With this motivation in mind, the main purpose of this work is to propose a preliminary taxonomy for classifying hybrid schemes, and bring to the fore some questions to stir up researchers minds about the real challenges regarding the application of quantum computing.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figure, paper accepted for being presented in the upcoming IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering - IEEE QCE 202

Advanced Machine Learning Techniques and Meta-Heuristic Optimization for the Detection of Masquerading Attacks in Social Networks

According to the report published by the online protection firm Iovation in 2012, cyber fraud ranged from 1 percent of the Internet transactions in North America Africa to a 7 percent in Africa, most of them involving credit card fraud, identity theft, and account takeover or h¼acking attempts. This kind of crime is still growing due to the advantages offered by a non face-to-face channel where a increasing number of unsuspecting victims divulges sensitive information. Interpol classifies these illegal activities into 3 types: • Attacks against computer hardware and software. • Financial crimes and corruption. • Abuse, in the form of grooming or “sexploitation”. Most research efforts have been focused on the target of the crime developing different strategies depending on the casuistic. Thus, for the well-known phising, stored blacklist or crime signals through the text are employed eventually designing adhoc detectors hardly conveyed to other scenarios even if the background is widely shared. Identity theft or masquerading can be described as a criminal activity oriented towards the misuse of those stolen credentials to obtain goods or services by deception. On March 4, 2005, a million of personal and sensitive information such as credit card and social security numbers was collected by White Hat hackers at Seattle University who just surfed the Web for less than 60 minutes by means of the Google search engine. As a consequence they proved the vulnerability and lack of protection with a mere group of sophisticated search terms typed in the engine whose large data warehouse still allowed showing company or government websites data temporarily cached. As aforementioned, platforms to connect distant people in which the interaction is undirected pose a forcible entry for unauthorized thirds who impersonate the licit user in a attempt to go unnoticed with some malicious, not necessarily economic, interests. In fact, the last point in the list above regarding abuses has become a major and a terrible risk along with the bullying being both by means of threats, harassment or even self-incrimination likely to drive someone to suicide, depression or helplessness. California Penal Code Section 528.5 states: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, any person who knowingly and without consent credibly impersonates another actual person through or on an Internet Web site or by other electronic means for purposes of harming, intimidating, threatening, or defrauding another person is guilty of a public offense punishable pursuant to subdivision [...]”. IV Therefore, impersonation consists of any criminal activity in which someone assumes a false identity and acts as his or her assumed character with intent to get a pecuniary benefit or cause some harm. User profiling, in turn, is the process of harvesting user information in order to construct a rich template with all the advantageous attributes in the field at hand and with specific purposes. User profiling is often employed as a mechanism for recommendation of items or useful information which has not yet considered by the client. Nevertheless, deriving user tendency or preferences can be also exploited to define the inherent behavior and address the problem of impersonation by detecting outliers or strange deviations prone to entail a potential attack. This dissertation is meant to elaborate on impersonation attacks from a profiling perspective, eventually developing a 2-stage environment which consequently embraces 2 levels of privacy intrusion, thus providing the following contributions: • The inference of behavioral patterns from the connection time traces aiming at avoiding the usurpation of more confidential information. When compared to previous approaches, this procedure abstains from impinging on the user privacy by taking over the messages content, since it only relies on time statistics of the user sessions rather than on their content. • The application and subsequent discussion of two selected algorithms for the previous point resolution: – A commonly employed supervised algorithm executed as a binary classifier which thereafter has forced us to figure out a method to deal with the absence of labeled instances representing an identity theft. – And a meta-heuristic algorithm in the search for the most convenient parameters to array the instances within a high dimensional space into properly delimited clusters so as to finally apply an unsupervised clustering algorithm. • The analysis of message content encroaching on more private information but easing the user identification by mining discriminative features by Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. As a consequence, the development of a new feature extraction algorithm based on linguistic theories motivated by the massive quantity of features often gathered when it comes to texts. In summary, this dissertation means to go beyond typical, ad-hoc approaches adopted by previous identity theft and authorship attribution research. Specifically it proposes tailored solutions to this particular and extensively studied paradigm with the aim at introducing a generic approach from a profiling view, not tightly bound to a unique application field. In addition technical contributions have been made in the course of the solution formulation intending to optimize familiar methods for a better versatility towards the problem at hand. In summary: this Thesis establishes an encouraging research basis towards unveiling subtle impersonation attacks in Social Networks by means of intelligent learning techniques

Triquinelosis en España: Brotes, detección y perspectivas futuras.

La triquinosis es una enfermedad parasitaria de declaración obligatoria y de distribución mundial que afecta a distintas especies de mamíferos entre ellos los humanos que se infectan como consecuencia del consumo de carne cruda o poco cocinada, de animales domésticos o de caza infectados por Trichinella spp. La presencia del parásito tiene repercusiones económicas, sanitarias y sociales, y por lo tanto justifica la existencia de un marco normativo que tiene como fin vigilar, controlar y erradicar la presencia del parásito en animales y humanos. En España existe un Plan Nacional de Contingencia frente a Triquina que recoge las medidas a aplicar en caso de detectar Trichinella spp. en animales o en canales. La mayoría de brotes ocurridos en nuestro país están relacionados con el consumo de cerdos de matanzas domiciliarias y de jabalíes que no han tenido control veterinario ni análisis de Trichinella spp. El sector porcino en España ha ido evolucionando a lo largo de los años y en la actualidad ocupa el primer lugar en importancia económica, alcanzando cerca del 39% de la Producción Final Ganadera Nacional y posicionándose en cuarto lugar de productores en el ranking mundial. Por este motivo, el control y erradicación de la enfermedad son fundamentales para el desarrollo del tejido económico de nuestro país.Trichinosis is a notifiable parasitic disease of worldwide distribution that affects several mammal species including humans who become infected as a result of consumption of raw or undercooked meat from domestic or game animals infected with Trichinella spp. The presence of the parasite has economic, health and social repercussions, and therefore justifies a regulatory framework aimed at monitoring, controlling and eradicating the parasite in animals and humans. In Spain there is a National Contingency Plan for Trichinella spp. which sets out the measures to be applied when Trichinella spp. is detected in animals or carcasses. Most of the outbreaks in our country are related to the consumption of pigs from home slaughters and wild boars that have not had veterinary control or Trichinella analysis. The Spanish pig sector has developed over the years and now it is in first place in economic importance, reaching about 39% of the National Final Livestock Production and it is located in fourth place of producers in the global ranking. For this reason, the control and eradication of trichinosis are essential to our country’s economy

Nivel de información que tienen los pacientes que van a ser sometidos a radioterapia sobre las complicaciones orales por la radiación a la cabeza y el cuello en la Unidad de Radioterapia del INEN

El documento digital no refiere asesorLos carcinomas de la cabeza y el cuello se clasifican de acuerdo con la localización anatómica más que con el tipo celular, estas regiones incluyen: cavidad oral, orofaringe, nasofaringe, senos paranasales, hiponasofaringe, laringe, glándulas salivales y glándula tiroides En lo referente a Material y Métodos, se define el uso del método descriptivo de corte transversal orientado a indagar el área cognoscitiva del paciente que va a ser sometido a radioterapia a la cabeza y el cuello en la unidad de Radioterapia del INEN, el que cuenta con recursos umanos de profesionales y no profesionales para la atención de dichos pacientes durante las 24 horas, distribuídos la mayor parte en el turno diurno. La población considerada para el estudio estuvo dada por una muestra de 28 pacientes que reunieron ciertos requisitos especiales, como no haber recibido anteriormente radioterapia, saber leer y escribir, no haber recibido quimioterapia y que acepte participar en el estudio. A esta muestra se le aplicó el cuestionario, los datos obtenidos se vaciaron en cuadros previamente elaborados, luego se realizó el análisis y la interpretación de los mismos obteniéndose que : En cuanto al nivel de información que tienen los pacientes que van a ser sometidos a radioterapia sobre las complicaciones orales por la radiación a la cabeza y el cuello ,el 86% tiene un bajo nivel de información debido a la falta de personal de enfermería especializado y dedicado exclusivamente a brindar información al paciente antes de ser sometido a la radioterapia. El 14% tiene un nivel de información medio debido a la experiencia que tuvo a través de un familiar que anteriormente fue sometido a radioterapia y relacionó algunas probables complicaciones; y por la educación recibida en el postoperatorio mediato. Los resultados indicaron que existe un bajo nivel de información en los pacientes que van a ser sometidos a radioterapia sobre las complicaciones orales por la radiación a la cabeza y el cuello, siendo necesario mejorar la información que se brinda al paciente antes de iniciar las sesiones de radioterapia y continuar brindándola durante las mismas, de esta manera se prepara al paciente ante dichos sucesos que pueden ocurrir por efecto del tratamiento.Trabajo académic

Solving Logistic-Oriented Bin Packing Problems Through a Hybrid Quantum-Classical Approach

The Bin Packing Problem is a classic problem with wide industrial applicability. In fact, the efficient packing of items into bins is one of the toughest challenges in many logistic corporations and is a critical issue for reducing storage costs or improving vehicle space allocation. In this work, we resort to our previously published quantum-classical framework known as Q4RealBPP, and elaborate on the solving of real-world oriented instances of the Bin Packing Problem. With this purpose, this paper gravitates on the following characteristics: i) the existence of heterogeneous bins, ii) the extension of the framework to solve not only three-dimensional, but also one- and two-dimensional instances of the problem, iii) requirements for item-bin associations, and iv) delivery priorities. All these features have been tested in this paper, as well as the ability of Q4RealBPP to solve real-world oriented instances.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, paper accepted for being presented in the upcoming 26th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems - ITSC 202

La didáctica de la expresión oral en el área de comunicación para los estudiantes del nivel primaria de E.B.R

La escritura es la forma mayormente usada por los seres humanos como medio de interrelacionarse, pero la expresión oral logra una comunicación cálida, face to face (cara a cara) y directa por lo tanto en la enseñanza-aprendizaje cumple un rol muy importante, desde el origen del ser humano. En las aulas solamente se emplea la comunicación oral como una forma de diálogo entre el docente – alumno, como una mera memorización o recitación de un texto. Partiendo del conocimiento que la didáctica es la ciencia que busca cómo aprende el discere y cómo el docere trasmite sus estrategias, incentivando u orientandolos eficazmente guiados por los principios didácticos. Entonces, podemos decir que la didáctica busca como se trasmite el aprendizaje. El docente debe conocer los instrumentos educativos y aplicar los diversos recursos pedagógicos con el propósito de que el estudiante alcance desarrollar sus habilidades. Las estrategias didacticas debe ser conocidas a cabalidad por el docente, por ello en el presente trabajo se resaltará y destacara el significado de la manifestación verbal en el nivel primario: ello es clave para lograr el objetivo didáctico