Del ciberespai al paper

El món editorial més tradicional tendeix cada vegada més a apostar per medis electrònics com a base per a la difusió del seu contingut o com a complement de l’edició en paper. És pràcticament un pas natural que han fet o estant fent la majoriade publicacions en paper.El creixement d’Internet, tant en nombre d’usuaris com en inversió publicitària, juntament amb la poca necessitat d’inversió per a la creació de revistes online, ha propiciat el sorgiment de revistes exclusivament virtuals que han esdevingut les mésimportants d’Internet, per sobre de publicacions virtuals de revistes amb edició en paper.Però tot i que Internet es el futur, el medi en paper és i serà un mercat molt important a mitjà termini. El mercat publicitari es paga força millor que en les pàgines web, on els models s’esgoten molt ràpidament i s’ha d’innovar constantment per tal de mantenir el click-rate dels usuaris. L’atenció que l’usuari presta a la publicitat en paper és molt més alta que en les pàgines web i menys molesta per l’usuari.El nostre treball es centrarà en fer el pas contrari a l’habitual, és a dir, en convertir una revista exclusivament virtual en una revista que publiqui també en paper. Analitzarem els possibles beneficis d’aquest pas així com els costos que suposaria adaptar un medi virtual al paper.El repte estarà en investigar quin és el model de revista idoni per completar el pas del medi virtual al paper, aconseguint maximitzar els beneficis.

Nevera, mp3, mòbil... quin és el seu paper actual?

Des dels seus inicis, l’ésser humà ha tingut una sèrie de necessitats. Ha requerit d’aliment per sobreviure, d’un sostre on refugiar-se, de roba per vestirse, etc. Conforme han passat els anys, ha anat generant tècniques per a millorar la seva estància al planeta, des del descobriment del foc per escalfarse fins al desenvolupament de màquines complexes. És per això, que ha anat introduint invents a la seva vida que han cobert les necessitats sorgides al llarg del temps.El treball que desenvolupem a continuació es centra en un seguit d’aparells que han sorgit al llarg del segle XX i que han revolucionat la nostra vida. Concretament, els set aparells escollits com a objecte del nostre estudi són: la nevera, la rentadora, l’automòbil, la televisió, el reproductor d’àudio portàtil, el telèfon mòbil i l’ordinador.L’aparició d’electrodomèstics, com la nevera o la rentadora, no només ens ha permès dedicar menys esforç a les tasques domèstiques, sinó també estalviarnos temps a l’hora de realitzar-les. Aquest fet, que ara potser ni tan sols considerem, va ser del tot determinant a l’època que van sorgir, ja que va permetre alliberar mà d’obra domèstica promovent la inserció al mercat laboral d’un sector de la població com el del sexe femení.Per la seva banda, la introducció de l’automòbil també ha estat un gran avenç. Aquest, ha revolucionat la manera de desplaçar-nos, proporcionant-nos una autonomia fins aleshores impensable.Aquest mateix patró segueixen la resta d’altres aparells escollits; tots van provocar un canvi profund a la societat amb la seva aparició i, encara avui, segueixen mantenint un paper destacat al nostre dia a dia. La importància que tenen a les nostres vides ha estat la motivació que ens ha conduït a dur a terme un treball que els tingués com a protagonistes.El nostre treball consta de dues parts:A la primera, de caràcter teòric, ens hem proposat estudiar la història d’aquests aparells, és a dir, hem volgut donar resposta a una sèrie de preguntes com: quan van aparèixer, quins van ser els seus creadors i quines transformacions han anat experimentant al llarg del temps, entre d’altres.A la segona part, més pràctica, hem realitzat un treball de camp (les característiques del qual expliquem detalladament a l’apartat següent) amb l’objectiu d’analitzar la rellevància que tenen aquests aparells a la societat actual. És a dir, hem volgut saber quins aparells, dels escollits, són els més valorats per la població avui dia i quins són els que menys. Pensem que l’ús que els enquestats fan d’aquests béns serà un criteri clau a l’hora de puntuarlos, encara que no l’únic. Hem realitzat aquest anàlisi diferenciant els individus per franges d’edat i sexes. A més, també hem treballat altres qüestions comserien, entre d’altres, si el seu ús s’entén com una necessitat o va encaminat cap a l’oci; quant temps triguen els usuaris a renovar-los, quin és el motiu, etc. En relació amb aquesta segona part, hem formulat un seguit d’hipòtesis amb l’objectiu de contrastar-les posteriorment amb els resultats de les enquestes.Les hipòtesis són:- Avui dia, els individus donen més importància a aquells aparells que són més moderns, (entenent com a tals, aquells que han sorgit més recentment i estan lligats a les noves tecnologies i la innovació contínua), com poden ser l’ordinador i el telèfon mòbil, que els electrodomèstics més tradicionals com serien la nevera o la rentadora. Tot això, a més, considerant que pel que fa als primers, entenem que part del seu ús està destinat a l’oci; mentre que pels segons el seu ús està motivat per una necessitat, com seria l’alimentació en el cas de la nevera.- Pel que fa a les franges d’edat, les valoracions mostraran diferències importants en els diversos aparells. Entre la franja més jove (de 16 a 25 anys) i la de més edat (més de 60 anys), les valoracions seran més extremes, gairebé oposades.- Pel que fa als dos sexes, les valoracions que donin als aparells seran molt semblants.Hem considerat que per a dur a terme un bon anàlisi, el més adequat és presentar la informació de cada aparell per separat. És per això que cada bé constitueix un apartat independent que consta d’una primera part referent a la seva història, i una segona referent als resultats obtinguts de les enquestes.A continuació, hem procedit a ajuntar els resultats extrets dels diferents aparells i a presentant-los de forma conjunta per a comparar-los. Així, hem pogut contrastar les nostres hipòtesis inicials i hem raonat possibles causes que justificarien dels resultats obtinguts.

Organisational Values as "Attractors of Chaos": An Emerging Cultural Change to Manage Organisational Complexity

Business organisations are excellent representations of what in physics and mathematics are designated "chaotic" systems. Because a culture of innovation will be vital for organisational survival in the 21st century, the present paper proposes that viewing organisations in terms of "complexity theory" may assist leaders in fine-tuning managerial philosophies that provide orderly management emphasizing stability within a culture of organised chaos, for it is on the "boundary of chaos" that the greatest creativity occurs. It is argued that 21st century companies, as chaotic social systems, will no longer be effectively managed by rigid objectives (MBO) nor by instructions (MBI). Their capacity for self-organisation will be derived essentially from how their members accept a shared set of values or principles for action (MBV). Complexity theory deals with systems that show complex structures in time or space, often hiding simple deterministic rules. This theory holds that once these rules are found, it is possible to make effective predictions and even to control the apparent complexity. The state of chaos that self-organises, thanks to the appearance of the "strange attractor", is the ideal basis for creativity and innovation in the company. In this self-organised state of chaos, members are not confined to narrow roles, and gradually develop their capacity for differentiation and relationships, growing continuously toward their maximum potential contribution to the efficiency of the organisation. In this way, values act as organisers or "attractors" of disorder, which in the theory of chaos are equations represented by unusually regular geometric configurations that predict the long-term behaviour of complex systems. In business organisations (as in all kinds of social systems) the starting principles end up as the final principles in the long term. An attractor is a model representation of the behavioral results of a system. The attractor is not a force of attraction or a goal-oriented presence in the system; it simply depicts where the system is headed based on its rules of motion. Thus, in a culture that cultivates or shares values of autonomy, responsibility, independence, innovation, creativity, and proaction, the risk of short-term chaos is mitigated by an overall long-term sense of direction. A more suitable approach to manage the internal and external complexities that organisations are currently confronting is to alter their dominant culture under the principles of MBV.

Turnout, political preferences and information: Experimental evidence from Perú

Electoral institutions that encourage citizens to vote are widely used around the world. Yet littleis known about the effects of such institutions on voter participation and the composition of the electorate.In this paper, I combine a field experiment with a change in Peruvian voting laws to identify theeffect of monetary (dis-)incentives on voting. Using the random variation in the fine for abstention andan objective measure of turnout at the individual level, I estimate the elasticity of voting with respectto cost to be -0.21. Consistent with the theoretical model presented, the reduction in turnout inducedby the reduction in the fine is driven by voters who (i) are in the center of the political spectrum, (ii)are less interested in politics, and (iii) hold less political information. However, voters who respondto changes in the cost of abstention do not have different preferences for policies than those who voteregardless of the cost. Further, involvement in politics, as measured by the decision to acquire politicalinformation, seems to be independent of the level of the fine. Additional results indicate that thereduction in the fine does not affect the incidence of vote buying, but increases the price paid for avote.

Organisational values as "attractors of chaos": An emerging cultural change to manage organisational complexity

Business organisations are excellent representations of what in physics and mathematics are designated "chaotic" systems. Because a culture of innovation will be vital for organisational survival in the 21st century, the present paper proposes that viewing organisations in terms of "complexity theory" may assist leaders in fine-tuning managerial philosophies that provide orderly management emphasizing stability within a culture of organised chaos, for it is on the "boundary of chaos" that the greatest creativity occurs. It is argued that 21st century companies, as chaotic social systems, will no longer be effectively managed by rigid objectives (MBO) nor by instructions (MBI). Their capacity for self-organisation will be derived essentially from how their members accept a shared set of values or principles for action (MBV). Complexity theory deals with systems that show complex structures in time or space, often hiding simple deterministic rules. This theory holds that once these rules are found, it is possible to make effective predictions and even to control the apparent complexity. The state of chaos that self-organises, thanks to the appearance of the "strange attractor", is the ideal basis for creativity and innovation in the company. In this self-organised state of chaos, members are not confined to narrow roles, and gradually develop their capacity for differentiation and relationships, growing continuously toward their maximum potential contribution to the efficiency of the organisation. In this way, values act as organisers or "attractors" of disorder, which in the theory of chaos are equations represented by unusually regular geometric configurations that predict the long-term behaviour of complex systems. In business organisations (as in all kinds of social systems) the starting principles end up as the final principles in the long term. An attractor is a model representation of the behavioral results of a system. The attractor is not a force of attraction or a goal-oriented presence in the system; it simply depicts where the system is headed based on its rules of motion. Thus, in a culture that cultivates or shares values of autonomy, responsibility, independence, innovation, creativity, and proaction, the risk of short-term chaos is mitigated by an overall long-term sense of direction. A more suitable approach to manage the internal and external complexities that organisations are currently confronting is to alter their dominant culture under the principles of MBV.

A finite-population revenue management model and a risk-ratio procedure for the joint estimation of population size and parameters

Many dynamic revenue management models divide the sale period into a finite number of periods T and assume, invoking a fine-enough grid of time, that each period sees at most one booking request. These Poisson-type assumptions restrict the variability of the demand in the model, but researchers and practitioners were willing to overlook this for the benefit of tractability of the models. In this paper, we criticize this model from another angle. Estimating the discrete finite-period model poses problems of indeterminacy and non-robustness: Arbitrarily fixing T leads to arbitrary control values and on the other hand estimating T from data adds an additional layer of indeterminacy. To counter this, we first propose an alternate finite-population model that avoids this problem of fixing T and allows a wider range of demand distributions, while retaining the useful marginal-value properties of the finite-period model. The finite-population model still requires jointly estimating market size and the parameters of the customer purchase model without observing no-purchases. Estimation of market-size when no-purchases are unobservable has rarely been attempted in the marketing or revenue management literature. Indeed, we point out that it is akin to the classical statistical problem of estimating the parameters of a binomial distribution with unknown population size and success probability, and hence likely to be challenging. However, when the purchase probabilities are given by a functional form such as a multinomial-logit model, we propose an estimation heuristic that exploits the specification of the functional form, the variety of the offer sets in a typical RM setting, and qualitative knowledge of arrival rates. Finally we perform simulations to show that the estimator is very promising in obtaining unbiased estimates of population size and the model parameters.

Optimal law enforcement under asymmetric information

In this paper, we focus on the problem created by asymmetric informationabout the enforcer's (agent's) costs associated to enforcement expenditure. This adverse selection problem affects optimal law enforcement because a low cost enforcer may conceal its information by imitating a high cost enforcer, and must then be given a compensation to be induced to reveal its true costs. The government faces a trade-off between minimizing the enforcer's compensation and maximizing the net surplus of harmful acts. As a consequence, the probability of apprehension and punishment is usually reduced leading to more offenses being committed. We show that asymmetry of information does not affect law enforcement as long as raising public funds is costless. The consideration of costly raising of public funds permits to establish the positive correlation between asymmetry of information between government and enforcers andthe crime rate.

Envelliment actiu: el paper del psicogerontòleg. Contribucions de l' educació emocional

Aquest treball es basa en les pràctiques realitzades dins del marc del Màster en Envelliment Actiu de la Universitat de Vic. L’objectiu d’aquestes pràctiques era doble: per una banda, aprofundir en el coneixement del rol del psicogerontòleg en un centre sociosanitari d’atenció a la gent gran i, per l’altra, elaborar, aplicar i avaluar una intervenció per fomentar l’envelliment actiu. És a dir, es pretenia donar cobertura a les dues grans àrees d’intervenció a les quals ha de fer front el psicogerontòleg en l’actualitat, com veurem més endavant, i que són: l’atenció a la dependència i la promoció de l’envelliment actiu, tenint en compte que aquesta darrera suposa la prevenció de la malaltia i la discapacitat i la maximització del benestar i la qualitat de vida en la vellesa.

Conversions per rumba: L'extensió del pentecostalisme entre els gitanos catalans i el paper de les pràctiques musicals

Malgrat que el pentecostalisme gitano censura les pràctiques musicals no dedicades a l'adoració divina, una aproximació històrica i etnogràfica al cas dels gitanos catalans posa de manifest diverses transferències entre el fenomen sociomusical de la rumba catalana i aquest moviment evangèlic. Per resseguir aquestes continuïtats i influències mútues l'article parteix d'una concepció de les conversions religioses com a processos col·lectius i negociats que cal situar en els seus contextos històrics, per la qual cosa es perfila el paisatge social gitanocatalà previ i contemporani a l'extensió del pentecostalisme entre aquests grups de població, des dels anys 80 fins a l'actualitat, exposant alguns dels factors que han possibilitat aquest fenomen. Seguidament s'examina el paper que la rumba catalana -les seves pràctiques, els seus artistes i protagonistes, la seva trajectòria històrica, les seves funcions socials, els seus significats- juga en la incorporació de l'evangelisme pentecostal als contextos socials gitanocatalans.

Les set vides del paper: formats de presentació i models de distribució en línia dels treballs publicats en revistes científiques digitals

Study of the publication models and the means of accessing scientific literature in the current environment of digital communication and the web. The text introduces the concept of journal article as a well-defined and stable unit within the publishing world, and as a nucleus on which professional and scholarly communication has been based since its beginnings in the 17th century. The transformation of scientific communication that the digital world has enabled is analysed. Descriptions are provided of some of the practices undertaken by authors, research organisations, publishers and library-related institutions as a response to the new possibilities being unveiled for articles, both as products as well as for their creation and distribution processes. These transformations affect the very nature of articles as a minimal unit -both unique and stable- of scientific communication. The article concludes by noting that under varying documentary forms of publisher aggregation and bibliographic control -sometimes simultaneously and, even, apparently contradictory- there flourishes a more pluralistic type of scientific communication. This pluralism offers: more possibilities for communication among authors; fewer levels of intermediaries such as agents that intervene and provide added value to the products; greater availability for users both economically speaking and from the point of view of access; and greater interaction and wealth of contents, thanks to the new hypertext and multimedia possibilities.

Fine-Tuning Translation Kinetics Selection as the Driving Force of Codon Usage Bias in the Hepatitis A Virus Capsid

Hepatitis A virus (HAV), the prototype of genus Hepatovirus, has several unique biological characteristics that distinguish it from other members of the Picornaviridae family. Among these, the need for an intact eIF4G factor for the initiation of translation results in an inability to shut down host protein synthesis by a mechanism similar to that of other picornaviruses. Consequently, HAV must inefficiently compete for the cellular translational machinery and this may explain its poor growth in cell culture. In this context of virus/cell competition, HAV has strategically adopted a naturally highly deoptimized codon usage with respect to that of its cellular host. With the aim to optimize its codon usage the virus was adapted to propagate in cells with impaired protein synthesis, in order to make tRNA pools more available for the virus. A significant loss of fitness was the immediate response to the adaptation process that was, however, later on recovered and more associated to a re-deoptimization rather than to an optimization of the codon usage specifically in the capsid coding region. These results exclude translation selection and instead suggest fine-tuning translation kinetics selection as the underlying mechanism of the codon usage bias in this specific genome region. Additionally, the results provide clear evidence of the Red Queen dynamics of evolution since the virus has very much evolved to re-adapt its codon usage to the environmental cellular changing conditions in order to recover the original fitness.

Fine speckle contrast in InGaAs/InP systems: Influence of layer thickness, missmatch, and growing temperature

This work is focused on the study of the fine speckle contrast present in planar view observations of matched and mismatched InGaAs layers grown by molecular beam epitaxy on InP substrates. Our results provide experimental evidence of the evolution of this fine structure with the mismatch, layer thickness, and growth temperature. The correlation of the influence of all these parameters on the appearance of the contrast modulation points to the development of the fine structure during the growth. Moreover, as growth proceeds, this structure shows a dynamic behavior which depends on the intrinsic layer substrate stress.

Erasing the glassy state in magnetic fine particles

BaFe10.4Co0.8Ti0.8O19 magnetic fine particles exhibit most of the features attributed to glassy behavior, e.g., irreversibility in the hysteresis loops and in the zero-field-cooling and field-cooling curves extends up to very high fields, and aging and magnetic training phenomena occur. However, the multivalley energy structure of the glassy state can be strongly modified by a field-cooling process at a moderate field. Slow relaxation experiments demonstrate that the intrinsic energy barriers of the individual particles dominate the behavior of the system at high cooling fields, while the energy states corresponding to collective glassy behavior play the dominant role at low cooling fields.