Comparing Governmental Agendas: Evolution of the Prioritization of Issues in the USA and Spain

This paper is the first step in a long term project investigating policy stability and change in Spain from an agenda setting perspective and comparing the Spanish policy agenda to that of other advanced democracies. Here we begin to compare the allocation of issue attention in Spain and the USA by comparing the substance of annual President and Prime Minister speeches from 1982 to 2005. Existing research argues that the public agenda has become more crowded, competitive and volatile in recent years. We find that in both countries there has been a transformation of the political agenda towards an increasing diversity of issues. However, most of the volatility in executive attention seems to be explained by salient events rather than by issue crowding. We conclude by discussing some limitations of executive speeches as a measure of governmental issue attention and directions for future research.

Model structures on the category of small double categories

In this paper we obtain several model structures on DblCat, the category of small double categories. Our model structures have three sources. We first transfer across a categorification-nerve adjunction. Secondly, we view double categories as internal categories in Cat and take as our weak equivalences various internal equivalences defined via Grothendieck topologies. Thirdly, DblCat inherits a model structure as a category of algebras over a 2-monad. Some of these model structures coincide and the different points of view give us further results about cofibrant replacements and cofi brant objects. As part of this program we give explicit descriptions and discuss properties of free double categories, quotient double categories, colimits of double categories, and several nerves and categorifications.

Reconocimiento de objetos multi-clase basado en descriptores de forma

Este trabajo presenta un sistema para detectar y clasificar objetos binarios según la forma de éstos. En el primer paso del procedimiento, se aplica un filtrado para extraer el contorno del objeto. Con la información de los puntos de forma se obtiene un descriptor BSM con características altamente descriptivas, universales e invariantes. En la segunda fase del sistema se aprende y se clasifica la información del descriptor mediante Adaboost y Códigos Correctores de Errores. Se han usado bases de datos públicas, tanto en escala de grises como en color, para validar la implementación del sistema diseñado. Además, el sistema emplea una interfaz interactiva en la que diferentes métodos de procesamiento de imágenes pueden ser aplicados.

Agglomeration and inequality across space: what can we learn from the European experience?

The purpose of this contribution is to draw a picture of the (uneven) distribution of economic activities across the states of the European Union (EU) and the consequences entailed by it. We will briefly summarize the most salient and recent contributions. Then, in the light of the economic geography theory, we will discuss the economic and social advantages and disadvantages associated with a core- periphery structure. In this sense, particular attention will be addressed to the EU financial system of Structural Funds and the effects they produced. Finally, we will formulate some suggestions, relying on the EU experience, that could be of interest to the current Brazilian regional policy.