Análisis de concentración del mercado de seguros en Costa Rica del año 2010 al 2014

Proyecto de graduación (Licenciatura en Administración de Empresas. Enfasis en Finanzas) Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica, Escuela de Administración de Empresas, 2015Aborda el tema de análisis de concentración del mercado de seguros en Costa Rica del año 2010 al 2014, tratando de medir la concentración de participación del mercado de empresas aseguradoras por parte de la Superintendencia General de Seguros en Costa Rica, para así conocer el estado real del mercado. Para dicho análisis se realiza el estudio de cada una de las aseguradoras presentes en el mercado costarricense y de la teoría sobre seguros y su mercado. El tipo de investigación desarrollado es exploratorio ya que se desea examinar el grado de concentración del mercado de seguros costarricense, él cual está teniendo un cambio debido a que los consumidores además de asegurar casas y autos, están asegurando la salud y ponen más atención a la responsabilidad civil, demostrando una mayor madurez en el mercado local

Geotechnics for rockfall assessment in the volcanic island of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain)

The island of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain) is characterized by a large variability of volcanic rocks reflecting its volcanic evolution. The geological map provided by Geological Survey of Spain at 1:25.000 scale shows more than 109 different lithologies and it is too complex for environmental and engineering purposes. This work presents a simplified geotechnical map with a small number of classes grouping up units with similar geotechnical behaviours. The lithologies were grouped using about 350 rock samples, collected in the seven major islands of the Archipelago. The geotechnical map was used to model rockfall hazard in the entire island of Gran Canaria, where rockfalls are an important threat. The rockfall map was validated with 128 rockfall events along the GC-200 road, located in the NW sector of Gran Canaria. About 96% of the events occurred along sections of the road where the number of expected trajectories is high or moderate.This work was carried out in the framework of two projects funded by the European Commission, Directorate-General Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO): SAFETY (Sentinel-1 for geohazard prevention and forecasting. Ref. ECHO/SUB/2015/718679/Prev02) and U-GEOHAZ (Geohazard Impact Assessment for Urban Areas. Grant Agreement No. 783169). This work has been partly funded by the University of Alicante in the framework of Quality Improvement Grant of PhD Program in Materials, Structures and Soil Engineering: Sustainable Construction, Salvador de Madariaga Mobility Program from the Spanish Ministry of Science (PRX18/00020) and the Industrial PhD Project GEODRON (IND2017/AMB-7789). We also appreciate the contribution of the MACASTAB project (Ref.: MAC/3.5b/027). The laboratory tests were carried out in the Laboratories of Building and Public Works from the Canarian Government. The methodology is also developed in the framework of the RISKCOAST project (Ref: SOE3/P4/E0868) funded by the European Regional Development Fund - Interreg programme (3rd call for proposals)

Learned spectral decoloring enables photoacoustic oximetry.

Funder: Projekt DEALThe ability of photoacoustic imaging to measure functional tissue properties, such as blood oxygenation sO[Formula: see text], enables a wide variety of possible applications. sO[Formula: see text] can be computed from the ratio of oxyhemoglobin HbO[Formula: see text] and deoxyhemoglobin Hb, which can be distuinguished by multispectral photoacoustic imaging due to their distinct wavelength-dependent absorption. However, current methods for estimating sO[Formula: see text] yield inaccurate results in realistic settings, due to the unknown and wavelength-dependent influence of the light fluence on the signal. In this work, we propose learned spectral decoloring to enable blood oxygenation measurements to be inferred from multispectral photoacoustic imaging. The method computes sO[Formula: see text] pixel-wise, directly from initial pressure spectra [Formula: see text], which represent initial pressure values at a fixed spatial location [Formula: see text] over all recorded wavelengths [Formula: see text]. The method is compared to linear unmixing approaches, as well as pO[Formula: see text] and blood gas analysis reference measurements. Experimental results suggest that the proposed method is able to obtain sO[Formula: see text] estimates from multispectral photoacoustic measurements in silico, in vitro, and in vivo

Evaluación de la capacidad de inhibición de hemólisis oxidativa y actividad antimicrobiana de fracciones peptídicas obtenidas de la hidrólisis de proteínas de huevo, leche y soya usando proteasas extraídas de Bromelia pinguin y Bromelia karatas

Protein hydrolysates are a source of bioactive peptides (BP). They can exert an important role in human health due to their different biological activities. The use of plant proteases is a potential alternative to produce BP. The aim of this work was to evaluate the oxidative hemolytic inhibition capacity (OHI) and antimicrobial activity of hydrolysates and peptide fractions from egg, milk and soy protein hydrolysis with proteases extracted from Bromelia pinguin and Bromelia karatas fruits. In general, all hydrolysates and peptide fractions presented a high OHI, being the peptide fraction of ≤1 kDa from ovalbumin protein hydrolysis with B. karatas proteases that had the greater OHI (98.19%). In contrast, hydrolysates did not register antimicrobial activity, while peptide fractions (≤5, ≤10 y ≤30 kDa), from milk hydrolysis with B. pinguin proteases showed the highest antimicrobial activity against Listeria innocua (22.26-23.79% of inhibition). The results highlight the potential of B. pinguin and B. karatas proteases to hidrolize proteins from different foods, as well as to produce hydrolysates and BP, with high oxidative hemolytic inhibition capacity.Los hidrolizados proteínicos son una fuente de péptidos bioactivos (PB) y estos compuestos pueden ejercer un papel importante en la salud humana debido a sus diferentes acividades biológicas. El uso de proteasas de origen vegetal es una alternativa potencial para producir PB. El objetivo de este trabajo fue evaluar la capacidad de inhibición de la hemólisis oxidativa (IHO) y actividad antimicrobiana de hidrolizados y fracciones peptídicas obtenidas de la hidrólisis de proteínas de huevo (ovoalbúmina), leche y soya, con proteasas extraídas de frutos de Bromelia pinguin y Bromelia karatas. En general, todos los hidrolizados y fracciones peptídicas presentaron una alta IHO, siendo la fracción peptídica de ≤1 kDa, obtenida de la hidrólisis de ovoalbúmina con proteasas de B. karatas, la que presentó mayor actividad (98.19%). En contraste, ninguno de los hidrolizados registró actividad antimicrobiana, mientras que las fracciones peptídicas (≤5, ≤10 y ≤30 kDa), obtenidas de la hidrólisis de leche con proteasas de B. pinguin, mostraron la mayor actividad antimicrobina (22.26-23.79% de inhibición), contra Listeria innocua. Los resultados resaltan el potencial de las proteasas de B. pinguin y B. karatas para hidrolizar proteínas de diferentes alimentos y generar hidrolizados y PB con alta actividad antioxidante

Controlador Predictivo para la Infusión Subcutánea de Insulina en un Páncreas Artificial

In this paper the synthesis and tuning of a predictive controller of insulin administration in an artificial pancreas, by simulation, are presented. This work required the study of the behavior of insulin’s concentration in the human pancreas, the obtaining experimental data in diabetic patients, the modeling and identification of this behavior in the different metabolic faces and the simulation and tuning of advanced controller for the insulin administration in exact doses for diabetic patients

Mobile Phones and Psychosocial Therapies with Vulnerable People: a First State of the Art

Mobile phones are becoming a communication tool commonly used by people all over the world; and they are started to be adopted in psychosocial therapies involving vulnerable people. We are herein presenting the results of an academic literature review. We identified scientific papers published between 2006 and 2015 resorting to academic databases available on the Internet, applying a systematic selection method based on quality criteria. Secondly, we analysed contents, highlighting the scarcity of research involving vulnerable people. The available literature specialized in psychosocial therapies offers investigation results which involve mobile phones and patients in general, focusing particularly on the clinical psychology field and, to a lesser extent, on the social work field. Particularly significant are the investigation works developed in the United States. In the present paper we introduce a first "state of the art", identifying opportunities and also the limitations surrounding the use of mobile phones in psychosocial therapies targeting the vulnerable. Issues concerning privacy and data confidentiality, and the access of vulnerable people to mobile phones and how they use them, pose significant challenges; but they offer the opportunity to reach isolated or impoverished populations, or even to facilitate access to social and healthcare services. We close this paper formulating possible orientations, hypotheses and goals to design new investigation works involving vulnerable populations

Plant Species Richness and Ecosystem Multifunctionality in Global Drylands

Acknowledgments: The long-term data on the demography and foraging ecology of wandering albatrosses at Possession Island, Crozet Islands, were supported by the French Polar Institute IPEV (program no. 109 to H.W.), with additional funding from the Prince Albert II de Monaco Foundation. The study is a contribution to the Program ANR Biodiversité 2005-11 REMIGE. We acknowledge the modeling groups, the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI), and the World Climate Research Programme’s (WCRP’s) Working Group on Coupled Modeling (WGCM) for their roles in making available the WCRP CMIP-3 multimodel data set. Support for data and model selection was provided by S. Jenouvrier. We thank the many field workers involved in the Crozet long-term monitoring since 1966 and in tracking programs since 1989, and D. Besson for help with the management of the demographic database. M.L. was funded by a postdoctoral contract of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (Ref. EX2007-1148) and Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (PIEF-GA-2008-220063). We are grateful to L. Riotte-Lambert for help with data analysis and C. Barbraud, C. A. Bost, Y. Cherel, and S. Jenouvrier for comments on the manuscript.Experiments suggest that biodiversity enhances the ability of ecosystems to maintain multiple functions, such as carbon storage, productivity, and the buildup of nutrient pools (multifunctionality). However, the relationship between biodiversity and multifunctionality has never been assessed globally in natural ecosystems. We report here on a global empirical study relating plant species richness and abiotic factors to multifunctionality in drylands, which collectively cover 41% of Earth’s land surface and support over 38% of the human population. Multifunctionality was positively and significantly related to species richness. The best-fitting models accounted for over 55% of the variation in multifunctionality and always included species richness as a predictor variable. Our results suggest that the preservation of plant biodiversity is crucial to buffer negative effects of climate change and desertification in drylands.Depto. de Biodiversidad, Ecología y EvoluciónFac. de Ciencias BiológicasTRUEpu