Numerical study of current wing-tip devices for commercial aircraft

It will be carried out numerical simulations of new designs of wing tip devices for commercial aircrafts. The performance of this devices will be estimated and it will be compared with the performance of some classical solutions

Space station software reliability analysis based on failures observed during testing at the multisystem integration facility

Quality of software not only is vital to the successful operation of the space station, it is also an important factor in establishing testing requirements, time needed for software verification and integration as well as launching schedules for the space station. Defense of management decisions can be greatly strengthened by combining engineering judgments with statistical analysis. Unlike hardware, software has the characteristics of no wearout and costly redundancies, thus making traditional statistical analysis not suitable in evaluating reliability of software. A statistical model was developed to provide a representation of the number as well as types of failures occur during software testing and verification. From this model, quantitative measure of software reliability based on failure history during testing are derived. Criteria to terminate testing based on reliability objectives and methods to estimate the expected number of fixings required are also presented

The effect of high-tech services offshoring on skilled employment: intra-firm evidence

The offshoring of high-tech services has greatly increased in recent years, with consequences for firms demand for skilled employment in firms. This paper specifically analyzes the relationship between R&D offshoring and the demand for R&D employment using firm-level data for Spanish manufacturing and services companies during the period 2004-2009. Estimating different specifications with panel data techniques, we find that this association is statistically positive. In particular, for services firms a 1 percentage point increase in R&D offshoring raises the demand for researchers by about 11%. This suggests the existence of complementarity among them as productive inputs

Pass-through of International Food Prices to Domestic Inflation During and After the Great Recession: Evidence from a Set of Latin American Economies

We looked at how international food price shocks have impacted local inflation processes in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru in the past decade. Using impulse-response analysis coming from cointegrated vars, we find that international food inflation shocks take from one to six quarters to pass through to domestic headline inflation, depending on the country. In addition, by calculating the elasticity of local prices to an international food price shock, we found that this pass-through is not complete. We also take a closer look at how this type of shock affects local food and core prices separately, and asses the possibility second round effects over core inflation stemming from the shock. We find that a transmission to headline prices does occur, and that part of the transmission is associated with rising core prices both directly and through possible second round effects, which implies a role for monetary policy when such a shock takes place. This is especially relevant given that international food prices have recently followed an upward trend after falling considerably during the Great Recession.Food inflation, fao food price index, Latin American inflation,second round effects.