Satellite image classification and segmentation using non-additive entropy

Here we compare the Boltzmann-Gibbs-Shannon (standard) with the Tsallis entropy on the pattern recognition and segmentation of coloured images obtained by satellites, via "Google Earth". By segmentation we mean split an image to locate regions of interest. Here, we discriminate and define an image partition classes according to a training basis. This training basis consists of three pattern classes: aquatic, urban and vegetation regions. Our numerical experiments demonstrate that the Tsallis entropy, used as a feature vector composed of distinct entropic indexes $q$ outperforms the standard entropy. There are several applications of our proposed methodology, once satellite images can be used to monitor migration form rural to urban regions, agricultural activities, oil spreading on the ocean etc.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, ICMSquare 201

Fiscal policy coordination and government debt deleveraging in the EMU

In Chapter 1 I explain my motivation for the topic and review some literature on Fiscal Policy Coordination in Currency Unions, in particular in the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The EMU is a perfect case study for this key issue, which has been covered more and more by the recent literature. Fiscal Policy Coordination was initially discussed by the seminal article of Mundell (1961), where one of the successful criteria of an Optimum Currency Area (OCA) was shown to be a risk-sharing system like fiscal transfers that redistribute money to areas adversely affected by shocks. This motivates the creation of a Fiscal Union inside a Currency Union like the EMU, and can be seen as an extreme case of Fiscal Policy Coordination. I also suggest some questions and avenues of research, which guide my work. In Chapter 2 we build a Two-Country Open-Economy New-Keynesian DSGE model of a Currency Union to study the effects of fiscal policy coordination, by evaluating the stabilization properties of different degrees of fiscal policy coordination, in a setting where the union-wide monetary policy affects fiscal policies and viceversa, because of price rigidities and distortionary taxation. We calibrate the model to represent two groups of countries in the European Economic and Monetary Union and run numerical simulations of the model under a range of alternative shocks and under alternative scenarios for fiscal policy. We also compare welfare under the different scenarios, bringing to policy conclusions for the proper macroeconomic management of a Currency Union. We find that: a) coordinating fiscal policy, by targeting net exports rather than output, produces more stable dynamics, b) consolidating government budget constraints across countries and moving tax rates jointly provides greater stabilization, c) taxes on labour income are exponentially more distortionary than taxes on firm sales. Our policy prescriptions for the Eurozone are then to use fiscal policy to reduce international demand imbalances, either by stabilizing trade ows across countries or by creating some form of fiscal union or both, while avoiding the excessive use of labour taxes, in favour of sales taxes. In Chapter 3 we build a Two-Country Open-Economy New-Keynesian DSGE model of a Currency Union with a debt-elastic government bond spread in an incomplete market setting, to study the effects of government debt deleveraging, by evaluating the stabilization properties of different deleveraging rules, in a setting where the union-wide monetary policy affects fiscal policies and viceversa, because of price rigidities and distortionary taxation. We calibrate the model to represent two groups of countries in the European Monetary Union and run numerical simulations under a range of alternative shocks and under alternative scenarios for government debt deleveraging. We also compare welfare under the different scenarios, bringing to policy conclusions for the proper government debt management in a Currency Union. We find that: a) backloading deleveraging or reducing its speed provides more stabilization to the economy, b) taxes are the instrument for deleveraging which stabilizes the economy the most, c) coordinating fiscal policy by targeting the net exports gap, instead of the output gap, increases volatility with incomplete markets, d) the joint movements of the fiscal instruments increases volatility with incomplete markets, although consolidating budget constraints might otherwise smooth distortions. Our policy prescriptions for the Eurozone are then to reduce the speed of deleveraging and to use taxes to achieve it, while reducing domestic demand imbalances and avoiding to form a fiscal union like the one we describe. Once financial markets are completely integrated though, these results are overturned

Fiscal policy coordination and government debt deleveraging in the EMU

In Chapter 1 I explain my motivation for the topic and review some literature on Fiscal Policy Coordination in Currency Unions, in particular in the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The EMU is a perfect case study for this key issue, which has been covered more and more by the recent literature. Fiscal Policy Coordination was initially discussed by the seminal article of Mundell (1961), where one of the successful criteria of an Optimum Currency Area (OCA) was shown to be a risk-sharing system like fiscal transfers that redistribute money to areas adversely affected by shocks. This motivates the creation of a Fiscal Union inside a Currency Union like the EMU, and can be seen as an extreme case of Fiscal Policy Coordination. I also suggest some questions and avenues of research, which guide my work. In Chapter 2 we build a Two-Country Open-Economy New-Keynesian DSGE model of a Currency Union to study the effects of fiscal policy coordination, by evaluating the stabilization properties of different degrees of fiscal policy coordination, in a setting where the union-wide monetary policy affects fiscal policies and viceversa, because of price rigidities and distortionary taxation. We calibrate the model to represent two groups of countries in the European Economic and Monetary Union and run numerical simulations of the model under a range of alternative shocks and under alternative scenarios for fiscal policy. We also compare welfare under the different scenarios, bringing to policy conclusions for the proper macroeconomic management of a Currency Union. We find that: a) coordinating fiscal policy, by targeting net exports rather than output, produces more stable dynamics, b) consolidating government budget constraints across countries and moving tax rates jointly provides greater stabilization, c) taxes on labour income are exponentially more distortionary than taxes on firm sales. Our policy prescriptions for the Eurozone are then to use fiscal policy to reduce international demand imbalances, either by stabilizing trade ows across countries or by creating some form of fiscal union or both, while avoiding the excessive use of labour taxes, in favour of sales taxes. In Chapter 3 we build a Two-Country Open-Economy New-Keynesian DSGE model of a Currency Union with a debt-elastic government bond spread in an incomplete market setting, to study the effects of government debt deleveraging, by evaluating the stabilization properties of different deleveraging rules, in a setting where the union-wide monetary policy affects fiscal policies and viceversa, because of price rigidities and distortionary taxation. We calibrate the model to represent two groups of countries in the European Monetary Union and run numerical simulations under a range of alternative shocks and under alternative scenarios for government debt deleveraging. We also compare welfare under the different scenarios, bringing to policy conclusions for the proper government debt management in a Currency Union. We find that: a) backloading deleveraging or reducing its speed provides more stabilization to the economy, b) taxes are the instrument for deleveraging which stabilizes the economy the most, c) coordinating fiscal policy by targeting the net exports gap, instead of the output gap, increases volatility with incomplete markets, d) the joint movements of the fiscal instruments increases volatility with incomplete markets, although consolidating budget constraints might otherwise smooth distortions. Our policy prescriptions for the Eurozone are then to reduce the speed of deleveraging and to use taxes to achieve it, while reducing domestic demand imbalances and avoiding to form a fiscal union like the one we describe. Once financial markets are completely integrated though, these results are overturned

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SECOND LIST OF UNION PROJECTS OF COMMON INTEREST: EVALUATION OF CANDIDATE PROJECTS OF COMMON INTEREST IN THE FIELD OF SMART GRIDS

The document presents the outcome of the evaluation process of candidate Projects of Common Interest in the area of Smart Grids, under the trans-European energy infrastructure regulation. The evaluation follows the guidelines of the assessment framework for Smart Grid projects, developed by the JRC within the EC Smart Grid Task Force.JRC.F.3-Energy Security, Systems and Marke

Fast charging diversity impact on total harmonic distortion due to phase cancellation effect: Fast Charger's testing experimental results

Full charging cycles were performed in the studied chargers and THDV and THDI were observed. From the measurements it can be observed that the phase angles vary within a preferential range, i.e. remain within a range which is actually <90˚of amplitude. Two of the Chargers, working individually, failed to comply with the standards. Charger A barely makes it in terms of TDD and Charger C is out of the limit. In terms of individual harmonics also Charger A and Charger C are out of the limit of 4.5% for the 11th and 13th harmonics. The next step of the research will be to obtain the statistical distribution of each of the phase angles for all Chargers and perform simulations with different scenarios. Results so far suggest that stand alone Chargers with low short circuit values are recommended to have filters <13% THD.JRC.C.3-Energy Security, Distribution and Market

A social barometer

International audienceThe new deal in local development and employment public policies lead more and more to a territorial organization. USGERES wishes to endow the employers of the social economy with a new method for a labormanagement dialog, answering the objectives of satisfaction of the beneficiaries of the activity, but also the individual development of the employees. A process, called social barometer, was experimented. It is based on qualitative and quantitative inquiries, analyzed by a steering committee. It allows building new actions for the quality of the employment and the development of activity, and also introduces a new dynamics of professional and local animation

Counterexample Guided Inductive Optimization Applied to Mobile Robots Path Planning (Extended Version)

We describe and evaluate a novel optimization-based off-line path planning algorithm for mobile robots based on the Counterexample-Guided Inductive Optimization (CEGIO) technique. CEGIO iteratively employs counterexamples generated from Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) and Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) solvers, in order to guide the optimization process and to ensure global optimization. This paper marks the first application of CEGIO for planning mobile robot path. In particular, CEGIO has been successfully applied to obtain optimal two-dimensional paths for autonomous mobile robots using off-the-shelf SAT and SMT solvers.Comment: 7 pages, 14rd Latin American Robotics Symposium (LARS'2017

A 2 epoch proper motion catalogue from the UKIDSS Large Area Survey

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedThe UKIDSS Large Area Survey (LAS) began in 2005, with the start of the UKIDSS program as a 7 year effort to survey roughly 4000 square degrees at high galactic latitudes in Y, J, H and K bands. The survey also included a significant quantity of 2-epoch J band observations, with epoch baselines ranging from 2 to 7 years. We present a proper motion catalogue for the 1500 square degrees of the 2 epoch LAS data, which includes some 800,000 sources with motions detected above the 5 sigma level. We developed a bespoke proper motion pipeline which applies a source-unique second order polynomial transformation to UKIDSS array coordinates of each source to counter potential local non-uniformity in the focal plane. Our catalogue agrees well with the proper motion data supplied in the current WFCAM Science Archive (WSA) DR9 catalogue where there is overlap, and in various optical catalogues, but it benefits from some improvements. One improvement is that we provide absolute proper motions, using LAS galaxies for the relative to absolute correction. Also, by using unique, local, 2nd order polynomial tranformations, as opposed to the linear transformations in the WSA, we correct better for any local distortions in the focal plane, not including the radial distortion that is removed by their pipeline

A checklist of social wasps (Vespidae: Polistinae) from Tocantins state, Brazil

Tocantins state has high biodiversity and a high degree of endemism, nevertheless, there are no studies on the diversity of social wasps. This study introduces a survey of social wasps actively collected using entomological nets and Malaise trap in addition to different light traps in sixteen sites in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes in Tocantins state, Brazil. We sampled a total of 1,013 social wasps distributed in 57 species of 13 genera. Fifty of these species and nine genera represent new distribution records for the state. Some species are not commonly found in collections and lists of species, and Protopolybia picteti (de Saussure, 1854) is newly recorded for Brazil. Such an increase of 714% may indicate that Polistinae richness is probably higher in the studied regions and that the state of Tocantins may well contain several additional (yet unrecorded) social wasp species. More comprehensive studies should be conducted to enhance the knowledge of wasp species in this state, contributing to our understanding of the biodiversity in Northern Brazil