Open source business strategies in the domain of embedded systems

El tema de este estudio es el aumento de la comprensión teórica y empírica de la estrategia de negocio de código abierto en el dominio de sistemas embebidos por investigar modelos de negocios de código abierto, retos, recursos y capacidades operativas y dinámicas.

Do you work or do you study? Children's work in a comparative historical perspective

In this paper we compare two historical scenarios very different one to each other bothin institutional and geographical terms. What they have in common is the situation ofrelative poverty of most of the population. On the one side we are dealing withhistorical industrializing Catalonia in the North East of Spain, a country exhibiting pooreconomic yields in the context of European and non European industrializing nations inthe 19th century. We compare children s work patterns in 19th century Catalonia withthose of current developing countries in Latin America, Africa and South and East Asia.This kind of exercise in which the nexus of the comparison are the levels of wealth ofcountries that are unsuccessful to achieve high standards of economic growth allows usto combine the micro historical analysis (in the Catalan case) with the macrocomparative approach in current developing countries. By means of both, the microhistorical analysis and the macro regression analysis we obtain the result that adultwomen s skills and real wages are a key factor when we want to explain the patterns ofchildren work. While female real wages increased a sharp rate in 19th century Cataloniawe obtain very different results in the case of developing countries. This differentgender bias helps to explain why in some cases children continue to work and also whysome parts of the world continue to be poor according to our regression analysis.

First impressions matter: Signalling as a source of policy dynamics

We first establish that policymakers on the Bank of England's Monetary PolicyCommittee choose lower interest rates with experience. We then reject increasingconfidence in private information or learning about the structure of the macroeconomy as explanations for this shift. Instead, a model in which voters signal theirhawkishness to observers better fits the data. The motivation for signalling is consistent with wanting to control inflation expectations, but not career concerns orpleasing colleagues. There is also no evidence of capture by industry. The papersuggests that policy-motivated reputation building may be important for explainingdynamics in experts' policy choices.

The implicit theory of historical change in the work of Alan S. Milward

Alan S. Milward was an economic historian who developed an implicit theory ofhistorical change. His interpretation which was neither liberal nor Marxist positedthat social, political, and economic change, for it to be sustainable, had to be agradual process rather than one resulting from a sudden, cataclysmicrevolutionary event occurring in one sector of the economy or society. Benignchange depended much less on natural resource endowment or technologicaldevelopments than on the ability of state institutions to respond to changingpolitical demands from within each society. State bureaucracies were fundamentalto formulating those political demands and advising politicians of ways to meetthem. Since each society was different there was no single model of developmentto be adopted or which could be imposed successfully by one nation-state onothers, either through force or through foreign aid programs. Nor coulddevelopment be promoted simply by copying the model of a more successfuleconomy. Each nation-state had to find its own response to the political demandsarising from within its society. Integration occurred when a number of nation states shared similar political objectives which they could not meet individuallybut could meet collectively. It was not simply the result of their increasinginterdependence. It was how and whether nation-states responded to thesedomestic demands which determined the nature of historical change.

Does direct democracy reduce the size of government? New evidence from historical data, 1890-2000

Using historical data for all Swiss cantons from 1890 to 2000, we estimate the causal effect of direct democracy on government spending. The main innovation in this paper is that we use fixed effects to control for unobserved heterogeneity and instrumental variables to address the potential endogeneity of institutions. We find that the budget referendum and lower costs to launch a voter initiative are effective tools in reducing canton level spending. However, we find no evidence that the budget referendum results in more decentralized government or a larger local government. Our instrumental variable estimates suggest that a mandatory budget referendum reduces the size of canton spending between 13 and 19 percent. A 1 percent lower signature requirement for the initiative reduces canton spending by up to 2 percent.

Debt sustainability in historical perspective: The role of fiscal repression

This article examines the debt history of two contenders for European hegemony: 16th-centurySpain and 18th-century Britain. We analyze their fiscal behavior using measures of overborrowingand fiscal policy functions. Our results suggest that stringency was not key for Britain ssuccess in avoiding default. Instead, fiscal repression allowed the United Kingdom to borrowat below-market rates, thereby outspending its continental rivals.

Did colonization matter for growth? An empirical exploration into the historical causes of Africa's underdevelopment

We investigate the impact of 20th--century European colonizationon growth in Africa. We find that in the 1960--88 period growth has beenfaster for dependencies than for colonies; for British and Frenchcolonies than for Portuguese, Belgian and Italian ones; and for countrieswith less economic penetration during the colonial period. On average,African growth accelerates after decolonization. Proxies for colonialheritage add explanatory power to growth regressions and make indicatorsfor human capital, political and ethnic instability lose significance.Colonial variables capture the same effects of a sub--Saharan dummy andreduce its significance when jointly included in a cross sectionalregression with 98 countries.

Stationarity analysis of historical flood series in France and Spain (14th-20th centuries)

Interdisciplinary frameworks for studying natural hazards and their temporal trends have an important potential in data generation for risk assessment, land use planning, and therefore the sustainable management of resources. This paper focuses on the adjustments required because of the wide variety of scientific fields involved in the reconstruction and characterisation of flood events for the past 1000 years. The aim of this paper is to describe various methodological aspects of the study of flood events in their historical dimension, including the critical evaluation of old documentary and instrumental sources, flood-event classification and hydraulic modelling, and homogeneity and quality control tests. Standardized criteria for flood classification have been defined and applied to the Isère and Drac floods in France, from 1600 to 1950, and to the Ter, the Llobregat and the Segre floods, in Spain, from 1300 to 1980. The analysis on the Drac and Isère data series from 1600 to the present day showed that extraordinary and catastrophic floods were not distributed uniformly in time. However, the largest floods (general catastrophic floods) were homogeneously distributed in time within the period 1600¿1900. No major flood occurred during the 20th century in these rivers. From 1300 to the present day, no homogeneous behaviour was observed for extraordinary floods in the Spanish rivers. The largest floods were uniformly distributed in time within the period 1300-1900, for the Segre and Ter rivers.

INTEGRAL and XMM-Newton observations towards the unidentified MeV source GRO J1411-64.

The COMPTEL unidentified source GRO J1411-64 was observed by INTEGRAL, and its central part, also by XMM-Newton. The data analysis shows no hint for new detections at hard X-rays. The upper limits in flux herein presented constrain the energy spectrum of whatever was producing GRO J1411-64, imposing, in the framework of earlier COMPTEL observations, the existence of a peak in power output located somewhere between 300-700 keV for the so-called low state. The Circinus Galaxy is the only source detected within the 4$\sigma$ location error of GRO J1411-64, but can be safely excluded as the possible counterpart: the extrapolation of the energy spectrum is well below the one for GRO J1411-64 at MeV energies. 22 significant sources (likelihood $> 10$) were extracted and analyzed from XMM-Newton data. Only one of these sources, XMMU J141255.6-635932, is spectrally compatible with GRO J1411-64 although the fact the soft X-ray observations do not cover the full extent of the COMPTEL source position uncertainty make an association hard to quantify and thus risky. The unique peak of the power output at high energies (hard X-rays and gamma-rays) resembles that found in the SED seen in blazars or microquasars. However, an analysis using a microquasar model consisting on a magnetized conical jet filled with relativistic electrons which radiate through synchrotron and inverse Compton scattering with star, disk, corona and synchrotron photons shows that it is hard to comply with all observational constrains. This and the non-detection at hard X-rays introduce an a-posteriori question mark upon the physical reality of this source, which is discussed in some detail.

A virtual exhibition of open source software for libraries

Frequently the choice of a library management program is conditioned by social, economic and/or political factors that result in the selection of a system that is not altogether suitable for the library’s needs, characteristics and functions. Open source software is quickly becoming a preferred solution, owing to the freedom to copy, modify and distribute it and the freedom from contracts, as well as for greater opportunities for interoperability with other applications. These new trends regarding open source software in libraries are also reflected in LIS studies, as evidenced by the different courses addressing automated programs, repositorymanagement, including the Linux/GNU operating system, among others. The combination of the needs of the centres and the new trends for open source software is the focus of a virtual laboratory for the use of open source software for library applications. It was the result of a project, whose aim was to make a useful contribution to the library community, that was carried out by a group of professors of the School of Library and Information Science of the University of Barcelona, together with a group of students, members of a Working Group on Open Source Software for Information Professionals, of the Professional Library Association of Catalonia.

Polarization strategies to improve the emission of a Si-based light source emitting at 1.55 um

We present a electroluminescence (EL) study of the Si-rich silicon oxide (SRSO) LEDs with and without Er3+ ions under different polarization schemes: direct current (DC) and pulsed voltage (PV). The power efficiency of the devices and their main optical limitations are presented. We show that under PV polarization scheme, the devices achieve one order of magnitude superior performance in comparison with DC. Time-resolved measurements have shown that this enhancement is met only for active layers in which annealing temperature is high enough (>1000 ◦C) for silicon nanocrystal (Si-nc) formation. Modeling of the system with rate equations has been done and excitation cross-sections for both Si-nc and Er3+ ions have been extracted.

Generating vortex rings in Bose-Einstein condensates in the line-source approximation

We present a numerical method for generating vortex rings in Bose-Einstein condensates confined in axially symmetric traps. The vortex ring is generated using the line-source approximation for the vorticity, i.e., the curl of the superfluid velocity field is different from zero only on a circumference of a given radius located on a plane perpendicular to the symmetry axis and coaxial with it. The particle density is obtained by solving a modified Gross-Pitaevskii equation that incorporates the effect of the velocity field. We discuss the appearance of density profiles, the vortex core structure, and the vortex nucleation energy, i.e., the energy difference between vortical and ground-state configurations. This is used to present a qualitative description of the vortex dynamics.

Heat pulse line-source method to determine thermal conductivity of consolidated rocks

An instrument designed to measure thermal conductivity of consolidated rocks, dry or saturated, using a transient method is presented. The instrument measures relative values of the thermal conductivity, and it needs calibration to obtain absolute values. The device can be used as heat pulse line source and as continuous heat line source. Two parameters to determine thermal conductivity are proposed: TMAX, in heat pulse line source, and SLOPE, in continuous heat line source. Its performance is better, and the operation simpler, in heat pulse line-source mode with a measuring time of 170 s and a reproducibility better than 2.5%. The sample preparation is very simple on both modes. The performance has been tested with a set of ten rocks with thermal conductivity values between 1.4 and 5.2 W m¿1 K¿1 which covers the usual range for consolidated rocks.