A Typology of agents and subjects of regional cooperation: the experience of the Mediterranean Arch

El document és el resultat d'una investigació més àmplia sobre la construcció de l'Arc Mediterrani. El seu objectiu és posar en relleu el notable grau de desenvolupament de la cooperació regional en la matèria, a través d'una anàlisi detallada de les diferents figures institucionalitzades de cooperació territorial existents (o haver existit) a la zona. L'anàlisi s'ha dut a terme des d'un punt de vista temàtic, basat en els objectius prioritaris d'aquestes institucions. En concret, les xifres estudiades es limiten a les institucions formals o les associacions de col · laboració de caràcter específic, com ara euroregions o les agrupacions europees d'interès econòmic, entès com les figures de major institucionalització dels espais transnacionals a nivell europeu. En canvi, hem deixat de banda altres figures, com Interreg (finançat pel FEDER), ja que no són entitats correctament. Encara que de vegades els acords de cooperació establerts per als projectes d'Interreg han donat lloc a algunes de les entitats estudiades aquí.

A general theory of rank testing

This paper develops an approach to rank testing that nests all existing rank tests andsimplifies their asymptotics. The approach is based on the fact that implicit in every ranktest there are estimators of the null spaces of the matrix in question. The approach yieldsmany new insights about the behavior of rank testing statistics under the null as well as localand global alternatives in both the standard and the cointegration setting. The approach alsosuggests many new rank tests based on alternative estimates of the null spaces as well as thenew fixed-b theory. A brief Monte Carlo study illustrates the results.

What makes one person paranoid and another person anxious? The differential prediction of social anxiety and persecutory ideation in an experimental situation

The study shows that social anxiety and persecutory ideation share many of the same predictive factors. Non-clinical paranoia may be a type of anxious fear. However, perceptual anomalies are a distinct predictor of paranoia. In the context of an individual feeling anxious, the occurrence of odd internal feelings in social situations may lead to delusional ideas through a sense of" things not seeming right". The study illustrates the approach of focusing on experiences such as paranoid thinking rather than diagnoses such as schizophrenia.

On finite unions and finite products with the D-property

We show that the product of a subparacompact C-scattered space and a Lindelöf D-space is D. In addition, we show that every regular locally D-space which is the union of a finite collection of subparacompact spaces and metacompact spaces has the D-property. Also, we extend this result from the class of locally D-spaces to the wider class of D-scattered spaces. All the results are shown in a direct way.

Disseny d'una Intranet d'un centre docent

En aquest treball s'intentarà mostrar tot el procés de desenvolupament d'un entorn d'una Intranet d'un centre docent. Per tant l'objectiu principal serà el disseny de la interfície d'usuari de l'espai web, el qual si és possible serà una millora de la majoria d'espais que existeixen actualment.

Del discurso a la lexicografía: propuesta de aplicación para los conectores reformulativos

This paper aims at defending the necessity of creating applicationsfrom studies on discourse, so that applied linguistics becomes auseful tool for the society. This work explains briefly what reformulation connectors are and it shows the electronic prototype (than can be consulted by internet) of a tool designed to make the work of lexicographerseasy concerning the entrance of connectors in the dictionaries (ALCOR), by making emphasis on the theoretical base on which it is sustained and on the decisions of application that have been taken into account.

Speed of convergence of recursive least squares learning with ARMA perceptions

This paper fills a gap in the existing literature on least squareslearning in linear rational expectations models by studying a setup inwhich agents learn by fitting ARMA models to a subset of the statevariables. This is a natural specification in models with privateinformation because in the presence of hidden state variables, agentshave an incentive to condition forecasts on the infinite past recordsof observables. We study a particular setting in which it sufficesfor agents to fit a first order ARMA process, which preserves thetractability of a finite dimensional parameterization, while permittingconditioning on the infinite past record. We describe how previousresults (Marcet and Sargent [1989a, 1989b] can be adapted to handlethe convergence of estimators of an ARMA process in our self--referentialenvironment. We also study ``rates'' of convergence analytically and viacomputer simulation.

Generalized canonical correlation analysis of matrices with different row and column orders

A Method is offered that makes it possible to apply generalized canonicalcorrelations analysis (CANCOR) to two or more matrices of different row and column order. The new method optimizes the generalized canonical correlationanalysis objective by considering only the observed values. This is achieved byemploying selection matrices. We present and discuss fit measures to assessthe quality of the solutions. In a simulation study we assess the performance of our new method and compare it to an existing procedure called GENCOM,proposed by Green and Carroll. We find that our new method outperforms the GENCOM algorithm both with respect to model fit and recovery of the truestructure. Moreover, as our new method does not require any type of iteration itis easier to implement and requires less computation. We illustrate the methodby means of an example concerning the relative positions of the political parties inthe Netherlands based on provincial data.

PENELOPE-2008: A Code System for Monte Carlo Simulation of Electron and Photon Transport

The computer code system PENELOPE (version 2008) performs Monte Carlo simulation of coupledelectron-photon transport in arbitrary materials for a wide energy range, from a few hundred eV toabout 1 GeV. Photon transport is simulated by means of the standard, detailed simulation scheme.Electron and positron histories are generated on the basis of a mixed procedure, which combinesdetailed simulation of hard events with condensed simulation of soft interactions. A geometry packagecalled PENGEOM permits the generation of random electron-photon showers in material systemsconsisting of homogeneous bodies limited by quadric surfaces, i.e., planes, spheres, cylinders, etc. Thisreport is intended not only to serve as a manual of the PENELOPE code system, but also to provide theuser with the necessary information to understand the details of the Monte Carlo algorithm.

Front dynamics in the presence of spatio-temporal structured noises

Front dynamics modeled by a reaction-diffusion equation are studied under the influence of spatiotemporal structured noises. An effective deterministic model is analytical derived where the noise parameters, intensity, correlation time, and correlation length appear explicitly. The different effects of these parameters are discussed for the Ginzburg-Landau and Schlögl models. We obtain an analytical expression for the front velocity as a function of the noise parameters. Numerical simulation results are in a good agreement with the theoretical predictions.

Lattice-gas model of orientable molecules: Application to liquid crystals

We have analyzed a two-dimensional lattice-gas model of cylindrical molecules which can exhibit four possible orientations. The Hamiltonian of the model contains positional and orientational energy interaction terms. The ground state of the model has been investigated on the basis of Karl¿s theorem. Monte Carlo simulation results have confirmed the predicted ground state. The model is able to reproduce, with appropriate values of the Hamiltonian parameters, both, a smectic-nematic-like transition and a nematic-isotropic-like transition. We have also analyzed the phase diagram of the system by mean-field techniques and Monte Carlo simulations. Mean-field calculations agree well qualitatively with Monte Carlo results but overestimate transition temperatures.

Disseny d'espais ideals a una llar d'infants

És el moment de donar a conèixer tot el que s’ha après durant el Grau en Mestre d’Educació Infantil. Es tracta d’una part molt important del nostre camí com a aprenents ja que demostra els interessos que tenim i els objectius que volem aconseguir. A continuació es podrà observar un treball pensat en dissenyar espais ideals que haurien de tenir les llars d’infants. Sempre es pot millorar, però aquest projecte en fa una idea general i detallada de com seria, des del meu punt de vista, una llar d’infants ideal.

Prediction of Childhood Asthma Using Conditional Probability and Discrete Event Simulation

Abstract: Asthma prevalence in children and adolescents in Spain is 10-17%. It is the most common chronic illness during childhood. Prevalence has been increasing over the last 40 years and there is considerable evidence that, among other factors, continued exposure to cigarette smoke results in asthma in children. No statistical or simulation model exist to forecast the evolution of childhood asthma in Europe. Such a model needs to incorporate the main risk factors that can be managed by medical authorities, such as tobacco (OR = 1.44), to establish how they affect the present generation of children. A simulation model using conditional probability and discrete event simulation for childhood asthma was developed and validated by simulating realistic scenario. The parameters used for the model (input data) were those found in the bibliography, especially those related to the incidence of smoking in Spain. We also used data from a panel of experts from the Hospital del Mar (Barcelona) related to actual evolution and asthma phenotypes. The results obtained from the simulation established a threshold of a 15-20% smoking population for a reduction in the prevalence of asthma. This is still far from the current level in Spain, where 24% of people smoke. We conclude that more effort must be made to combat smoking and other childhood asthma risk factors, in order to significantly reduce the number of cases. Once completed, this simulation methodology can realistically be used to forecast the evolution of childhood asthma as a function of variation in different risk factors.

System identification using a linear combination of cumulant slices

In this paper we develop a new linear approach to identify the parameters of a moving average (MA) model from the statistics of the output. First, we show that, under some constraints, the impulse response of the system can be expressed as a linear combination of cumulant slices. Then, thisresult is used to obtain a new well-conditioned linear methodto estimate the MA parameters of a non-Gaussian process. Theproposed method presents several important differences withexisting linear approaches. The linear combination of slices usedto compute the MA parameters can be constructed from dif-ferent sets of cumulants of different orders, providing a generalframework where all the statistics can be combined. Further-more, it is not necessary to use second-order statistics (the autocorrelation slice), and therefore the proposed algorithm stillprovides consistent estimates in the presence of colored Gaussian noise. Another advantage of the method is that while mostlinear methods developed so far give totally erroneous estimates if the order is overestimated, the proposed approach doesnot require a previous estimation of the filter order. The simulation results confirm the good numerical conditioning of thealgorithm and the improvement in performance with respect to existing methods.

Los espacios residenciales de tipo privativo y la construcción de la nueva ciudad: visiones de privatopía

La proliferación de los desarrollos residenciales con acceso restringido y de tipo privativo (condominios, supermanzanas, countries, barrios cerrados, etc.) se presentan en el texto como reflejo, a la vez que resultado, de los nuevos procesos de urbanización. Las características de estos desarrollos reflejan los cambios más generales que se van produciendo en el espacio urbano: la privatización, la fragmentación y la tematización, entendida ésta como la construcción de espacios de simulación. A través del análisis bibliográfico, y de la reflexión sobre unos casos de estudio en la región metropolitana de Nueva York, el trabajo incide sobre las causas (el neoliberalismo, los patrones de consumo global) y las consecuencias de la proliferación de los espacios residenciales de tipo privativo: la fragmentación urbana, la privatización y la introducción de nuevos patrones de segregación.