Do Quasi-Hyperbolic Preferences Explain Academic Procrastination? An Empirical Evaluation

Traditional neoclassical thought fails to explain questions such as problems of self-control. Behavioural economics have explained these matters on the basis of the intertemporal preferences of individuals and, specifically, the so-called (β, δ) model which emphasises present bias. This opens the way to the analysis of new situations in which people can adopt incorrect indecisions that make it necessary for the government to intervene. The literature which has developed the (β, δ) model and its implications has generated a categorisation of people that is widely used but which lacks a systematic empirical evaluation. It is important to value the need for this public action. In this article, we develop a method which makes it possible to verify the main implications that this model has to explain the procrastination of university students. Using an experimental time discount task with real monetary incentives, we estimate the students’ β and δ parameters and we analyse their correlation with their answers to a series of questions concerning how they plan to study for an exam. The results are ambiguous given that they back some of the model’s conclusions but reject others, including a number of the most basic ones, such as the relation between present biases and some of the categories of people, these being essential to predict their behaviour

¿Las primeras revoluciones modernas: una perspectiva comparada entre las Comunidades de Castilla y la Revolución Inglesa?

En el presente trabajo se analizan a través de un método comparativo dos de los principales movimientos sociales del Antiguo Régimen: las Comunidades de Castilla y la revolución inglesa. Con ello se quiere demostrar que ambos conflictos se pueden insertar dentro de dinámicas europeas más amplias y que a pesar de sus diferencias contextuales y temporales guardan muchos paralelismos. Se pretende defender aquellas interpretaciones que insertan tanto a las Comunidades de Castilla como a la revolución inglesa en la modernidad por presentar toda una serie de elementos pioneros, como soberanía nacional o monarquía mixta, que las diferencian del molde intelectual medieval. Se recogen las interpretaciones más recientes sobre las Comunidades de Castilla y la revolución inglesa, respectivamente, demostrando que se ha avanzando en esta línea de investigación y que se han cuestionado ciertos apriorismos que se creían incuestionables.In this paper the two most important social movements of the Old Regime, i.e., the Communities of Castile and the English Revolution are analyzed following a comparative method. The aim is to show that both conflicts can be inserted into a wider European dynamics and that despite their contextual and temporal differences, many parallels can be found . The focus is placed on the interpretations that insert both the Communities of Castile and the English Revolution into modernity by presenting a range of pioneering features such as national sovereignty or mixed monarchy, that make indeed them different from the medieval intellectual model. The most recent interpretations on the Communities of Castile and the English Revolution have been gathered, showing that advancement has been made in this line of research and that certain preconceptions, which were believed to be unquestionable, have been challenged

Intelligent data analysis approaches to churn as a business problem: a survey

Globalization processes and market deregulation policies are rapidly changing the competitive environments of many economic sectors. The appearance of new competitors and technologies leads to an increase in competition and, with it, a growing preoccupation among service-providing companies with creating stronger customer bonds. In this context, anticipating the customer’s intention to abandon the provider, a phenomenon known as churn, becomes a competitive advantage. Such anticipation can be the result of the correct application of information-based knowledge extraction in the form of business analytics. In particular, the use of intelligent data analysis, or data mining, for the analysis of market surveyed information can be of great assistance to churn management. In this paper, we provide a detailed survey of recent applications of business analytics to churn, with a focus on computational intelligence methods. This is preceded by an in-depth discussion of churn within the context of customer continuity management. The survey is structured according to the stages identified as basic for the building of the predictive models of churn, as well as according to the different types of predictive methods employed and the business areas of their application.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Third-Harmonic and intermodulation distortion in bulk acoustic-wave resonators

This article discusses on the measured third-order intermodulation (IMD3) products and third harmonics (H3) appearing in a set of six different solidly mounted resonators (SMR) and bulk acoustic-wave (BAW) resonators with different shapes and stack configurations. The discussion is supported by a comprehensive nonlinear distributed circuit model that considers the nonlinear effects potentially occurring in any layer of the resonator stack. The aluminum-nitride (AlN) and silicon-dioxide (SiO2) layers are identified as the most significant contributors to the IMD3 and H3. The frequency profile of the third-order spurious signals also reveals that, in temperature-compensated resonators, where the SiO2 layers are usually thicker, the remixing effects from the second-order nonlinear terms are the major contributors to the IMD3 and H3. These second-order terms are those that explain the second-harmonic (H2) generation, whose measurements are also reported in this article. Unique values of the nonlinear material constants can explain all the measurements despite the resonators have different shapes, resonance frequencies, and stack configurations.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Computer simulations of arrhythmia and ECG

2014/201

Defining a Benchmark Suite for Evaluating the Import of OWL Lite Ontologies

SemanticWeb tools should be able to correctly interchange ontologies and, therefore, to interoperate. This interchange is not always a straightforward task if tools have different underlying knowledge representation paradigms. This paper describes the process followed to define a benchmark suite for evaluating the OWL import capabilities of ontology development tools in a benchmarking activity in progress in the Knowledge Web European Network of Excellence

Estudio, diseño e implementación de material de ayuda para el laboratorio de televisión digital de la Universidad Militar Nueva Granada

En la actualidad la televisión digital, a nivel nacional, está en pleno proceso de implementación y desarrollo, es por ello que se debe tener en cuenta la capacitación de nuevos ingenieros, por parte de las diferentes entidades de educación, incluyendo los entes reguladores de este medio. Por esta y otras razones se ha decidido por parte de estudiantes de la Universidad Militar Nueva Granada, como proyecto de grado, crear una serie de prácticas que ayuden al análisis de las señales de Televisión Digital bajo el estándar DVB-S y DVB-T. Para el desarrollo de estas experiencias de laboratorio se crearon guías que evalúan los diferentes conceptos de esta tecnología, como el procesamiento digital de imágenes, se identifican los conceptos básicos de las comunicaciones digitales, la recepción de los diferentes estándares de DVB, análisis de la trama de transporte de las señales y el método de compresión de video MPEG-2, finalizando con una práctica en donde se lleva a cabo un proceso de transmodulación partiendo de la recepción de TV digital satelital hasta la retransmisión de esta señal en el estándar DVB-T. Todo esto es apoyado con el software Matlab y los equipos TV Explorer HD y el Modulador MO-163. Finalmente se presenta una propuesta técnica, en la cual se hace un estudio de diferentes equipos de TV Digital, en donde se pretende recrear todo el sistema del estándar DVB-T, partiendo de las señales de video y audio, para su posterior codificación y multiplexación, donde después deben ser moduladas amplificadas y transmitidas para finalmente ser analizadas en un receptor de televisión digital. Todas estas etapas son representadas con diferentes equipos, dando opción a tres sistemas que llevan a cabo este proceso, con el fin de hacer un complemento a los equipos e instrumentación del laboratorio de Televisión DigitalPregrad