The keys to success: the social, sporting, economic and communications impact of Barcelona'92

This book is a collection of articles which analyze the sporting, social, political, communicative, urban, technological and economic impacts of the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games.

Reporting a program evaluation: Needs, program plan, intervention, and decisions

The approach to intervention programs varies depending on the methodological perspective adopted. This means that health professionals lack clear guidelines regarding how best to proceed, and it hinders the accumulation of knowledge. The aim of this paper is to set out the essential and common aspects that should be included in any program evaluation report, thereby providing a useful guide for the professional regardless of the procedural approach used. Furthermore, the paper seeks to integrate the different methodologies and illustrate their complementarity, this being a key aspect in terms of real intervention contexts, which are constantly changing. The aspects to be included are presented in relation to the main stages of the evaluation process: needs, objectives and design (prior to the intervention), implementation (during the intervention), and outcomes (after the intervention). For each of these stages the paper describes the elements on which decisions should be based, highlighting the role of empirical evidence gathered through the application of instruments to defined samples and according to a given procedure.

The role of different factors related to social impact of heavy events: considerations about the intensity thresholds in densely populated areas

In the assessment of social impact caused by meteorological events, factors of different natures need to be considered. Not only does hazard itself determine the impact that a severe weather event has on society, but also other features related to vulnerability and exposure. The requests of data related to insurance claims received in meteorological services proved to be a good indicator of the social impact that a weather event causes, according to studies carried out by the Social Impact Research Group, created within the framework of the MEDEX project. Taking these requests as proxy data, diverse aspects connected to the impact of heavy rain events have been studied. The rainfall intensity, in conjunction with the population density, has established itself as one of the key factors in social impact studies. One of the conclusions we obtained is that various thresholds of rainfall should be applied for areas of varying populations. In this study, the role of rainfall intensity has been analysed for a highly populated urban area like Barcelona. A period without significant population changes has been selected for the study to minimise the effects linked to vulnerability and exposure modifications. First, correlations between rainfall recorded in different time intervals and requests were carried out. Afterwards, a method to include the intensity factor in the social impact index was suggested based on return periods given by intensity duration frequency (IDF) curves.

Environmental management problems, future generations and social decisions

The decisions of many individuals and social groups, taking according to well-defined objectives, are causing serious social and environmental problems, in spite of following the dictates of economic rationality. There are many examples of serious problems for which there are not yet appropriate solutions, such as management of scarce natural resources including aquifer water or the distribution of space among incompatible uses. In order to solve these problems, the paper first characterizes the resources and goods involved from an economic perspective. Then, for each case, the paper notes that there is a serious divergence between individual and collective interests and, where possible, it designs the procedure for solving the conflict of interests. With this procedure, the real opportunities for the application of economic theory are shown, and especially the theory on collective goods and externalities. The limitations of conventional economic analysis are shown and the opportunity to correct the shortfalls is examined. Many environmental problems, such as climate change, have an impact on different generations that do not participate in present decisions. The paper shows that for these cases, the solutions suggested by economic theory are not valid. Furthermore, conventional methods of economic valuation (which usually help decision-makers) are unable to account for the existence of different generations and tend to obviate long-term impacts. The paper analyzes how economic valuation methods could account for the costs and benefits enjoyed by present and future generations. The paper studies an appropriate consideration of preferences for future consumption and the incorporation of sustainability as a requirement in social decisions, which implies not only more efficiency but also a fairer distribution between generations than the one implied by conventional economic analysis.

Environmental factors and social entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship has been a subject of growing interest by academics and governments, however little still being known about environmental factors that affect this phenomenon. The main objective of this study is to analyze how these factors affect social entrepreneurial activity, in the light of the institutional economic theory as the conceptual framework. Using linear regression analysis for a sample of 49 countries, is studied the impact of informal institutions (social needs, societal attitudes and education) and formal institutions (public spending, access to finance and governance effectiveness) on social entrepreneurial activity. The findings suggest that while societal attitudes increase the rates of social entrepreneurship, public spending has a negative relationship with this phenomenon. Finally, the empirical evidence found could be useful for the definition of government policies on promoting social entrepreneurship.

Policy evaluation and uncertainty about the effects of oil prices on economic activity

This paper addresses the issue of policy evaluation in a context in which policymakers are uncertain about the effects of oil prices on economic performance. I consider models of the economy inspired by Solow (1980), Blanchard and Gali (2007), Kim and Loungani (1992) and Hamilton (1983, 2005), which incorporate different assumptions on the channels through which oil prices have an impact on economic activity. I first study the characteristics of the model space and I analyze the likelihood of the different specifications. I show that the existence of plausible alternative representations of the economy forces the policymaker to face the problem of model uncertainty. Then, I use the Bayesian approach proposed by Brock, Durlauf and West (2003, 2007) and the minimax approach developed by Hansen and Sargent (2008) to integrate this form of uncertainty into policy evaluation. I find that, in the environment under analysis, the standard Taylor rule is outperformed under a number of criteria by alternative simple rules in which policymakers introduce persistence in the policy instrument and respond to changes in the real price of oil.

Evaluating the probability and the impact of a failure in GMPLS based networks

In this paper, we define a new scheme to develop and evaluate protection strategies for building reliable GMPLS networks. This is based on what we have called the network protection degree (NPD). The NPD consists of an a priori evaluation, the failure sensibility degree (FSD), which provides the failure probability, and an a posteriori evaluation, the failure impact degree (FID), which determines the impact on the network in case of failure, in terms of packet loss and recovery time. Having mathematical formulated these components, experimental results demonstrate the benefits of the utilization of the NPD, when used to enhance some current QoS routing algorithms in order to offer a certain degree of protection

Clustering algorithms for anti-money laundering using graph theory and social network analysis

HEMOLIA (a project under European community’s 7th framework programme) is a new generation Anti-Money Laundering (AML) intelligent multi-agent alert and investigation system which in addition to the traditional financial data makes extensive use of modern society’s huge telecom data source, thereby opening up a new dimension of capabilities to all Money Laundering fighters (FIUs, LEAs) and Financial Institutes (Banks, Insurance Companies, etc.). This Master-Thesis project is done at AIA, one of the partners for the HEMOLIA project in Barcelona. The objective of this thesis is to find the clusters in a network drawn by using the financial data. An extensive literature survey has been carried out and several standard algorithms related to networks have been studied and implemented. The clustering problem is a NP-hard problem and several algorithms like K-Means and Hierarchical clustering are being implemented for studying several problems relating to sociology, evolution, anthropology etc. However, these algorithms have certain drawbacks which make them very difficult to implement. The thesis suggests (a) a possible improvement to the K-Means algorithm, (b) a novel approach to the clustering problem using the Genetic Algorithms and (c) a new algorithm for finding the cluster of a node using the Genetic Algorithm.

Occupational sex-composition and earnings : individual and social effects

This paper investigates the micro and macro-level factors affecting the empirical association between occupational sex-composition and individual earnings. This is done in two analytical steps using data from the second round of the European Social Survey. In a first step, country-fixed-effects regressions are used to test the extent to which job-specialization, gender attitudes and the relative supply of domestic work can account for the impact of occupational sex-composition on earnings. In accordance with previous research, it is found that all these micro-level variables have a significant effect on the analyzed association, yet only job-specialization can explain it away by itself. In a second analytical step, macro-level interactions are tested under the hypothesis that defamilialization policies reduce the pay-offs of sphere specialization by sex, generating incentives for all types of women to invest in the labor market. Empirical results suggest that gender attitudes and the relative supply of housework are much more loosely associated to earning in social-democratic and former communist societies than in conservative or liberal regimes. This finding is interpreted as consistent with the defamilialization hypothesis.

Poor, hungry and ignorant: Numeracy and the impact of high food prices in industrializing Britain, 1780-1850

This paper uses the ability to recall one s age correctly as an indicator of numeracy.We show that low levels of nutrition impaired numeracy in industrializing England, 1780-1850.Numeracy declined markedly among those born during the war years, especially where wheatwas dear. England s nascent welfare state mitigated the negative effect of high food prices oncognitive skills. Nutrition during early development mattered for labor market outcomes:individuals born in periods or countries with high age heaping were more likely to sort intooccupations with limited intellectual requirements.

Learning in Digital Media: the legacy of McLuhan and his Impact on Formal Education

This paper describes a bibliographic analysis of the vision of Marshal McLuhan and the vision adopted by diverse current authors regarding the use of new interactive learning technologies. The paper also analyzes the transformation that will have to take place in the formal surroundings of education in order to improve their social function. The main points of view and contributions made by diverse authors are discussed. It is important that all actors involved in the educational process take in consideration these contributions in order to be ready for future changes.

Preliminary results of the Social Impact Research Group of MEDEX: the request database (2000-2002) of two Meteorological Services

One of the aims of the MEDEX project is to improve the knowledge of high-impact weather events in the Mediterranean. According to the guidelines of this project, a pilot study was carried out in two regions of Spain (the Balearic Islands and Catalonia) by the Social Impact Research group of MEDEX. The main goal is to suggest some general and suitable criteria about how to analyse requests received in Meteorological Services arising out of the damage caused by weather events. Thus, all the requests received between 2000 and 2002 at the Servei Meteorològic de Catalunya as well as at the Division of AEMET in the Balearic Islands were analysed. Firstly, the proposed criteria in order to build the database are defined and discussed. Secondly, the temporal distribution of the requests for damage claims is analysed. On average, almost half of them were received during the first month after the event happened. During the first six months, the percentage increases by 90%. Thirdly, various factors are taken into account to determine the impact of specific events on society. It is remarkable that the greatest number of requests is for those episodes with simultaneous heavy rain and strong wind, and finally, those that are linked to high population density.

EEG windowed statistical wavelet scoring for evaluation and discrimination of muscular artifacts

EEG recordings are usually corrupted by spurious extra-cerebral artifacts, which should be rejected or cleaned up by the practitioner. Since manual screening of human EEGs is inherently error prone and might induce experimental bias, automatic artifact detection is an issue of importance. Automatic artifact detection is the best guarantee for objective and clean results. We present a new approach, based on the time–frequency shape of muscular artifacts, to achieve reliable and automatic scoring. The impact of muscular activity on the signal can be evaluated using this methodology by placing emphasis on the analysis of EEG activity. The method is used to discriminate evoked potentials from several types of recorded muscular artifacts—with a sensitivity of 98.8% and a specificity of 92.2%. Automatic cleaning ofEEGdata are then successfully realized using this method, combined with independent component analysis. The outcome of the automatic cleaning is then compared with the Slepian multitaper spectrum based technique introduced by Delorme et al (2007 Neuroimage 34 1443–9).

The Institutional, Economic and Social Determinants of Local Government Transparency

Interest in public accountability and government transparency is increasing worldwide. The literature on the determinants of transparency is evolving but is still in its early stages. So far, it has typically focused on national or regional governments while neglecting the local government level. This paper builds on the scarce knowledge available in order to examine the economic, social, and institutional determinants of local government transparency in Spain. We draw on a 2010 survey and the transparency indexes constructed by the NGO Transparency International (Spain) in order to move beyond the fiscal transparency addressed in previous work. In so doing, we broaden the analysis of transparency to the corporate, social, fiscal, contracting, and planning activities of governments. Our results on overall transparency indicate that large municipalities and left-wing local government leaders are associated with better transparency indexes; while the worst results are presented by provincial capitals, cities where tourist activity is particularly important and local governments that enjoy an absolute majority. The analysis of other transparency categories generally shows the consistent impact of these determinants and the need to consider a wider set of variables to capture their effect.

Learning in Digital Media: the legacy of McLuhan and his Impact on Formal Education

This paper describes a bibliographic analysis of the vision of Marshal McLuhan and the vision adopted by diverse current authors regarding the use of new interactive learning technologies. The paper also analyzes the transformation that will have to take place in the formal surroundings of education in order to improve their social function. The main points of view and contributions made by diverse authors are discussed. It is important that all actors involved in the educational process take in consideration these contributions in order to be ready for future changes.