Social Profiles and Social Behaviour and Attitudes towards Gaming and On-Line Gaming in Spain

For the last two decades our world has experienced increasing globalization linked to the revolution in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) leading to new business spheres escaping from the traditional Nation-State control. The gaming business is one of these areas and has recorded a notable increase in profits in the last decade: gambling, betting and network games constitute some of the main issues developed by ICT companies located beyond State control. The action of the States is focusing on the formulation of new public policies that allow them to control these activities. But first a deep social description of gaming is needed to know which actors are involved in this field of activities, which is the profile of the gamer and what kind of social attitudes are carried out by users and companies taking part of the business. This article focuses on the social profiles and the social behaviour and attitudes towards gaming in Spain, and specially in the transition from traditional gaming to on line gaming.gaming, internet, social profiles, social behaviour, social attitudes.

Financial Markets and Politics: The Confidence Game in Latin American Emerging Economies

This article focuses on the interactions between politics and financial markets in emerging economies. More precisely, it examines how Wall Street reacts to major Latin American political events. The case study focuses on the 2002 Brazilian presidential elections. The first section of the article provides a critical review of the available literature. The second section presents an empirical study of Wall Street analysts’ perceptions of the 2002 presidential elections in Brazil, based on reports produced by leading Wall Street investment firms. The final section uses polling and financial data from previous Brazilian elections to place the events of 2002 in comparative historical perspective.Emerging economies;Financial markets;International political economy;Latin America

Temperature modelling and model predictive control of a pilot-scale batch reaction system

The temperature control equipment on a pilot scale batch reaction system located at EAFIT University in Medelln, Colombia, is modeled and a new controller is designed aiming at using it in the reactor current PLC-based control system. Some mathematical models are developed from experimental data to describe the system behavior and using them several model based predictive controllers are designed. The simplest, yet reliable, model obtained is an ARX polynomial model of order (1,1,1) that yields a four states ane model for which an explicit MPC was calculated. This controller has a reduced mathematical complexity and can probably be used directly on the existing control system.Preprin

Multiscale computational homogenization: review and proposal of a new enhanced-first-order method

This is a copy of the author 's final draft version of an article published in the Archives of computational methods in engineering. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11831-016-9205-0The continuous increase of computational capacity has encouraged the extensive use of multiscale techniques to simulate the material behaviour on several fields of knowledge. In solid mechanics, the multiscale approaches which consider the macro-scale deformation gradient to obtain the homogenized material behaviour from the micro-scale are called first-order computational homogenization. Following this idea, the second-order FE2 methods incorporate high-order gradients to improve the simulation accuracy. However, to capture the full advantages of these high-order framework the classical boundary value problem (BVP) at the macro-scale must be upgraded to high-order level, which complicates their numerical solution. With the purpose of obtaining the best of both methods i.e. first-order and second-order, in this work an enhanced-first-order computational homogenization is presented. The proposed approach preserves a classical BVP at the macro-scale level but taking into account the high-order gradient of the macro-scale in the micro-scale solution. The developed numerical examples show how the proposed method obtains the expected stress distribution at the micro-scale for states of structural bending loads. Nevertheless, the macro-scale results achieved are the same than the ones obtained with a first-order framework because both approaches share the same macro-scale BVP.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

On the Utility of the Inverse Gamma Distribution in Modeling Composite Fading Channels

We introduce a general approach to characterize composite fading models based on inverse gamma (IG) shadowing. We first determine to what extent the IG distribution is an adequate choice for modeling shadow fading, by means of a comprehensive test with field measurements and other distributions conventionally used for this purpose. Then, we prove that the probability density function and cumulative density function of any IG-based composite fading model are directly expressed in terms of a Laplace-domain statistic of the underlying fast fading model, and in some relevant cases, as a mixture of well-known state-of-the-art distributions. We exemplify our approach by presenting a composite IG/two-wave with diffuse power fading model, for which its statistical characterization is directly attained in a simple form.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Profits, Markups and Entry: Fiscal Policy in an Open Economy

In this paper we develop a general model of an imperfectly competitive small open economy. There is a traded and non-traded sector, whose outputs are combined in order to produce a single final good that can be either consumed or invested. We make general assumptions about preferences and technology, and analyze the impact of fiscal policy on the economy. We find that the fiscal multiplier is between zero and one, and provide sufficient conditions for it to be increasing in the degree of imperfect competition. We also are able to compare the multiplier under free-entry and with a fixed number of firms and welfare. A simple graphical representation of the model is developed.Imperfect competition, open economy, fiscal policy

Representación de la vacuna del VPH en los mensajes de Twitter

En la actualidad, cada vez son más las personas que utilizan Internet, y concretamente las redes sociales, para buscar información sobre cuestiones de salud. Sin embargo, se sabe poco sobre cómo se difunde la información sobre la vacuna del VPH en las redes sociales. Este artículo presenta un análisis y una comparación del contenido de los tuitspublicados en inglés y en español, relacionados con la vacunación contra el VPH y el cáncer cervical. En total se examinaron 1.707 tuits en inglés y 418 en español. La mayoría de los mensajes en inglés eran comentariospersonales publicados por los usuarios con un enfoque negativo respecto a la vacunación contra el VPH. En cambio, la mayoría de los tuits publicados en español eran anuncios comerciales de la vacuna, mensajes de organizaciones de salud y comentarios personales de los usuarios, y tenían una postura positiva hacia la vacunación contra el VPH. En ambos idiomas, gran parte de los mensajes contenían algún link para dirigir a los usuarios hacia páginas web informativas de salud. Los resultados sugieren que los investigadores de la vacuna del VPH han de tener en cuenta este medio de comunicación debido a su amplio alcance y su inmediata capacidad de difusió