Reinvention and the Principal-Agent Model

Existe una interesante polémica en el sector público, derivada de las tensiones existentes entre desempeño y flexibilidad administrativa por un lado, y rendición de cuentas y control, por el otro. El propósito de este artículo es discutir la utilidad del modelo agente principal para un mejor entendimiento de las tensiones entre desempeño y rendición de cuentas, así como analizar las similitudes y contradicciones de esta perspectiva teórica en comparación con el movimiento de "reinvención del gobierno" de la década de los noventa en Estados Unidos.Existe una interesante polémica en el sector público, derivada de las tensiones existentes entre desempeño y flexibilidad administrativa por un lado, y rendición de cuentas y control, por el otro. El propósito de este artículo es discutir la utilidad del modelo agente principal para un mejor entendimiento de las tensiones entre desempeño y rendición de cuentas, así como analizar las similitudes y contradicciones de esta perspectiva teórica en comparación con el movimiento de "reinvención del gobierno" de la década de los noventa en Estados Unidos

Toward a Public Administration: Minnowbrook III. A Reflection and Proposal

Se exploran algunas de las ideas más importantes que, respecto a la definición del campo de estudio de la administración pública, fueron desarrolladas en las reuniones de Minnowbrook y se proponen algunos temas que debieran ser considerados para un siguiente congreso.There has long been a polemical discussion within the field of Public Administration regarding that field’s theoretical basis. This discussion especially emphasizes the field’s seeming absence of subject. Academics have long sought to explain and define that the field of Public Administration is and what it should be. Two of the biggest efforts to do so are represented by the first two Minnowbrook meetings. This brief paper explores some of the important ideas about the field of Public Administration that were developed in the course of these meetings, and proposes some topics to be covered in the Minnowbrook III conference

TactileGCN: A Graph Convolutional Network for Predicting Grasp Stability with Tactile Sensors

Tactile sensors provide useful contact data during the interaction with an object which can be used to accurately learn to determine the stability of a grasp. Most of the works in the literature represented tactile readings as plain feature vectors or matrix-like tactile images, using them to train machine learning models. In this work, we explore an alternative way of exploiting tactile information to predict grasp stability by leveraging graph-like representations of tactile data, which preserve the actual spatial arrangement of the sensor's taxels and their locality. In experimentation, we trained a Graph Neural Network to binary classify grasps as stable or slippery ones. To train such network and prove its predictive capabilities for the problem at hand, we captured a novel dataset of approximately 5000 three-fingered grasps across 41 objects for training and 1000 grasps with 10 unknown objects for testing. Our experiments prove that this novel approach can be effectively used to predict grasp stability

Assessment of the Effect of Satureja montana and Origanum virens Essential Oils on Aspergillus flavus Growth and Aflatoxin Production at Different Water Activities

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Aflatoxin contamination of foodstuffs poses a serious risk to food security, and it is essential to search for new control methods to prevent these toxins entering the food chain. Several essential oils are able to reduce the growth and mycotoxin biosynthesis of toxigenic species, although their efficiency is strongly influenced by the environmental conditions. In this work, the effectiveness of Satureja montana and Origanum virens essential oils to control Aspergillus flavus growth was evaluated under three water activity levels (0.94, 0.96 and 0.98 aw) using a Bioscreen C, a rapid in vitro spectrophotometric technique. The aflatoxin concentrations at all conditions tested were determined by HPLC-FLD. Aspergillus flavus growth was delayed by both essential oil treatments. However, only S. montana essential oil was able to significantly affect aflatoxin production, although the inhibition percentages widely differed among water activities. The most significant reduction was observed at 0.96 aw, which is coincident with the conditions in which A. flavus reached the highest levels of aflatoxin production. On the contrary, the treatment with S. montana essential oil was not effective in significantly reducing aflatoxin production at 0.94 aw. Therefore, it is important to study the interaction of the new control compounds with environmental factors before their application in food matrices, and in vitro ecophysiological studies are a good option since they provide accurate and rapid results.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Simulation of smart homes controlled with intelligent plugs

This is a research project in the field of Smart Homes with the aim to develop a Smart Home Environment using Multi-Agent system negotiation and Rule-Based protocols. Thesimulation will be developed using the program Netbeans (Java) and Prolog. It will permit to control the status of the devices via Intelligent Plugs and display alerts. An Intelligent Plug is an appliance that goes between the plug and the socket, and the user can switch on and off using Wi-Fi connection. The objective is to reduce the power consumption of household appliances using intelligent-adaptive algorithms, to develop a user-friendly interface and also to gain a better command over them. The developed application will permit the interaction of the user with it, enhancing the user’s comfort at its finest. Once the expert system has been implemented, a Multi-Agent environment will be developed involving five different houses. It will have two different negotiation protocols: one to control the heat of the five houses and the other to control the total energy consumption of the neighbourhood

MARKET SEGMENTATION AND WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR ORGANIC PRODUCTS IN SPAIN

In recent years, consumer concerns on environmental and health issues related to food products have increased and, as a result, the demand for organically grown production has grown. Higher costs of production and retailer margins generate a gap between real prices and those that consumers are willing to pay for organic food. In this article, consumer willingness to pay for organic food in two Spanish regions is analyzed. Markets in both regions are segmented considering consumers lifestyles. Results indicate that consumers concerned about healthy diet and environmental degradation are the most likely to buy organic food, and are willing to pay a high premium. Organic attributes are easily identified in perishable products as the premium consumers would pay for organic meat, fruits, and vegetables is higher.Demand and Price Analysis,