Human rights: the dark side of the fight against organised crime

An in-depth analysis of judicial decisions on money laundering and confiscation of proceeds of crime issued by European national courts and by the European Court of Human Rights in the last decade has been carried out from a human rights, legal guarantees and criminal law basic principles’ perspective. The undertaken study has revealed the violation of the right to property, of the proportionality principle and the infringement of basic principles of substantive and procedural criminal law systems. The most relevant ones have to do with the punishment of money laundering committed through negligence, non-conviction based confiscation and a too-far reaching interpretation of the notion of ‘proceeds of crime’.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

“Comiso de ganancias de origen delictivo vs. derechos humanos y libertades fundamentales”

Casi todo en la vida tiene un lado brillante y un lado oscuro. El decomiso de las ganancias, efectos e instrumentos del delito no es una excepción… Este trabajo propone dirigir la mirada hacia el lado oscuro en lo tocante a los derechos humanos a través del caso Paulet v. UThe United KinddomUniversidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Rent-seeking measurement in coal mining by means of labour unrest: an application of the distance function

We propose a method based on the distance function to empirically estimate the social cost arising from rent seeking behaviour in declining industries. Due to import competition, the factors of a particular industry undergo losses in real income, and have incentives to seek protection. In the case of declining industries, workers play a central role and the losses in output due to strikes are used to quantify the social cost of rent seeking. In our model, strikes are considered as a “bad” input into the production process. We apply our approach to the case of Spanish coal mining. We have estimated a system of equations formed by the input distance function and cost share equations using annual data over the period 1974-1997. This procedure has allowed us to calculate the cost that strikes have imposed on the sectorProduction theory; rent seeking; input distance function; shadow prices; coal sector

Novel whitening approaches in functional settings

Whitening is a critical normalization method to enhance statistical reduction via reparametrization to unit covariance. This article introduces the notion of whitening for random functions assumed to reside in a real separable Hilbert space. We compare the properties of different whitening transformations stemming from the factorization of a bounded precision operator under a particular geometrical structure. The practical performance of the estimators is shown in a simulation study, providing helpful insights into their optimization. Computational algorithms for the estimation of the proposed whitening transformations in terms of basis expansions of a functional data set are also provided.Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain (MICINN) Instituto de Salud Carlos III Spanish Government PID2020-113961GB-I00Methusalem, Vlaamse regerin

Comparative study of different B-spline approaches for functional data

The sample observations of a functional variable are functions that come from the observation of a statistical variable in a continuous argument that in most cases is the time. But in practice, the sample functions are observed in a finite set of points. Then, the first step in functional data analysis is to reconstruct the functional form of sample curves from discrete observations. The sample curves are usually represented in terms of basis functions and the basis coefficients are fitted by interpolation, when data are observed without error, or by least squares approximation, in the other case. The main purpose of this paper is to compare three different approaches for estimating smooth sample curves observed with error in terms of B-spline basis: regression splines (non-penalized least squares approximation), smoothing splines (continuous roughness penalty) and P-splines (discrete roughness penalty). The performance of these spline smoothing approaches is studied via a simulation study and several applications with real data. Cross-validation and generalized cross-validation are adapted to select a common smoothing parameter for all sample curves with the roughness penalty approaches. From the results, it is concluded that both penalized approaches drastically reduced the mean squared errors with respect to the original smooth sample curves with P-splines giving the best approximations with less computational cost.Project MTM2010-20502 from Dirección General de Investigación, Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia SpainProject P11-FQM-8068 from Consejería de Innovación, Ciencia y Empresa. Junta de Andalucía, Spai

Analysis of the Relationship between Emotional Intelligence, Resilience, and Family Functioning in Adolescents’ Sustainable Use of Alcohol and Tobacco

The use of alcohol and tobacco is related to several variables, which act as risk or protective factors depending on the circumstances. The objectives of this study were to analyze the relationship between emotional intelligence, resilience, and family functioning in adolescent use of alcohol and tobacco, and to find emotional profiles for their use with regard to self-concept. The sample was made up of 317 high school students aged 13 to 18, who filled out the Brief Emotional Intelligence Inventory, the Resilience Scale for Adolescents, the APGAR Scale, the Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire–Adolescents, and the Five-Factor Self-Concept Questionnaire. The results revealed that emotional intelligence and resilience, specifically stress management and family cohesion, were significant in the group of non-users. Family functioning acts as a predictor for the onset of use of tobacco and alcohol. Positive expectancies about drinking alcohol were found to be a risk factor, and the intrapersonal factor was found to be protective. Both stress management and family cohesion were protective factors against smoking. Furthermore, cluster analysis revealed the emotional profiles for users of both substances based on self-concept. Finally, the importance of the direction of the relationship between the variables studied for intervention in this problem should be mentioned. Responsible use by improving adolescent decision-making is one of the results expected from this type of intervention

Modulación de la elongación axonal y la excitabilidad neuronal por receptores purinérgicos P2Y1, P2Y13 y P2X7

Tesis doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Biología Molecular. Fecha de lectura: 06-09-201

The development of the truffle beetle Leiodes cinnamomeus at low temperature, a determining factor for the susceptibility of adults and larvae to entomopathogenic nematodes

Altres ajuts: acords transformatius de la UABThe European truffle beetle Leiodes cinnamomeus (Panzer) (Coleoptera: Leiodidae) is the most important pest in black truffle (Tuber melanosporum) plantations. Adults and larvae feed on truffles during the cold months of autumn and winter, while during spring and summer larvae are in diapause. This study aims to test the susceptibility of L. cinnamomeus adults and larvae to different entomopathogenic nematode (EPN) species at various temperatures under laboratory conditions. Different populations of Steinernema carpocapsae and Steinernema feltiae were applied against adults and mycophagous larvae at 20 °C, 10 °C and 10-15 °C (10 °C during 18 h and 15 °C during 6 h a day), while Heterorhabditis bacteriophora was only applied against diapause larvae at 25 °C. S. carpocapsae caused 100% mortality of adults three days after application at 20 °C. At 10 °C, adults were not susceptible to any EPN species seven days after treatment, while at 10-15 °C S. carpocapsae was the most virulent species (76.6-96.6% mortality). In the case of larvae, all EPN species were infective at 20 °C (43.3-83.3% mortality), despite differences among some populations. At 10 °C, only two populations of S. feltiae caused higher mortality of larvae (50-53.3%) than control seven days after treatment. H. bacteriophora caused 100% mortality against diapause larvae five days after application at 25 °C. Soil temperature was measured in a truffle plantation for each hour every day from September 2021 to April 2022 at 20 cm depth. From September to mid-October it was registered a temperature above 15 °C for more than 20 h a day. Temperatures were generally below 10 °C from November to March. An appropriate timing of field applications should be considered due to the short periods of time when temperature is optimal for each EPN species tested

Basis expansion approaches for functional analysis of variance with repeated measures

The methodological contribution in this paper is motivated by biomechanical studies where data characterizing human movement are waveform curves representing joint measures such as flexion angles, velocity, acceleration, and so on. In many cases the aim consists of detecting differences in gait patterns when several independent samples of subjects walk or run under different conditions (repeated measures). Classic kinematic studies often analyse discrete summaries of the sample curves discarding important information and providing biased results. As the sample data are obviously curves, a Functional Data Analysis approach is proposed to solve the problem of testing the equality of the mean curves of a functional variable observed on several independent groups under different treatments or time periods. A novel approach for Functional Analysis of Variance (FANOVA) for repeated measures that takes into account the complete curves is introduced. By assuming a basis expansion for each sample curve, two-way FANOVA problem is reduced to Multivariate ANOVA for the multivariate response of basis coefficients. Then, two different approaches for MANOVA with repeated measures are considered. Besides, an extensive simulation study is developed to check their performance. Finally, two applications with gait data are developed

Knee flexion of saxophone players anticipates tonal context of music

Music performance requires high levels of motor control. Professional musicians use body movements not only to accomplish and help technical efficiency, but to shape expressive interpretation. Here, we recorded motion and audio data of twenty participants performing four musical fragments varying in the degree of technical difficulty to analyze how knee flexion is employed by expert saxophone players. Using a computational model of the auditory periphery, we extracted emergent acoustical properties of sound to inference critical cognitive patterns of music processing and relate them to motion data. Results showed that knee flexion is causally linked to tone expectations and correlated to rhythmical density, suggesting that this gesture is associated with expressive and facilitative purposes. Furthermore, when instructed to play immobile, participants tended to microflex (>1 Hz) more frequently compared to when playing expressively, possibly indicating a natural urge to move to the music. These results underline the robustness of body movement in musical performance, providing valuable insights for the understanding of communicative processes, and development of motor learning cues.Grant 2020.05257.BD of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and TechnologyFSE programme through Programa Operacional Regional NorteFlemish Government, the project FQM-307 of the Government of Andalusia (SpainProject PID2020-113961GB-I00 of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (also supported by the FEDER programme).Consejería de Conocimiento, Investigación y Universidad, Junta de Andalucía (Spain)FEDER programme for the project A-FQM-66-UGR20IMAG-María de Maeztu grant CEX2020-001105-M/AEI/ 10.13039/50110001103