Natural resources, redistribution and Human capital formation

How do resource booms affect human capital accumulation? We exploit time and spatial variation generated by the commodity boom across local governments in Peru to measure the effect of natural resources on human capital formation. We explore the effect of both mining production and tax revenues on test scores, finding a substantial and statistically significant effect for the latter. Transfers to local governments from mining tax revenues are linked to an increase in math test scores of around 0.23 standard deviations. We find that the hiring of permanent teachers as well as the increases in parental employment and improvements in health outcomes of adults and children are plausible mechanisms for such large effect on learning. These findings suggest that redistributive policies could facilitate the accumulation of human capital in resource abundant developing countries as a way to avoid the natural resources curse.

La particularitat rossellonesa a través de Carles Grandó

The Clara Vilarrasa Ruiz’s doctoral thesis entitled La particularitat rossellonesa a través de Carles Grandó is directed by Francesc Feliu Torrent. This thesis seeks to discover the essence of Roussillon world through the production and character of Carles Grandó, writer, playwright, poet, folklorist, grammar and cultural activist unknown in academic circles. This approach to Roussillon revolves around three main areas: inventory and classification of the Fons Grandó of Perpignan University Library, the publication of a grammar dialect unpublished El sota-dialecte català de Perpinyà i de la plana de Rosselló and, finally, presenting a documentation that will help contextualize and understand the society of the early twentieth century in Roussillon.

Vida i obra de Fra Bernat Hug de Rocabertí

Fra Bernat Hug de Rocabertí (c.1420-1485) was a prominent member of the Order of the Hospital in the Crown of Aragon in which to attain the dignity of Castilian of Amposta, the most important dignity in the Crown. This work is a historical biography of him, since he entered into the Order by the hand of his brotherin- law, fra Joan de Vilagut, until he became a confidant of King Joan II and his side took part in Catalan Civil War in the fifteenth century. In parallel, Rocabertí also devoted himself to poetry and wrote at least two pieces, the Estrampa, so far unpublished, here this work is published critically, and La glòria d’amor, a long narrative poem, which is a study of possible chronology. Moreover, also studied other people linked to Bernat Hug, like his brothers, authors of some interesting battle letters, also published for the first time, or their brothers-inlaw, among them Joan de Vilagut, also a poet, and Guillem Tinter, who had a poetic Exchange with Vilagut. The whole work is accompanied by transcription of an interesting collection of documents.

La desconocida historia de la construcción de la iglesia de San Francisco en Quito (Estudios)

El presente estudio ofrece una nueva cronología e historia de la construcción de la iglesia de San Francisco de Quito a través de documentos históricos inéditos que demuestran, contrariamente a lo postulado en la historiografía tradicional, que la actual iglesia no fue construida en el siglo XVI. El estudio ilustra los participantes y el proceso de la construcción, empleando documentos, planos e imágenes. Se abarcan temas de autoría, particularmente las identidades de los diseñadores y constructores, y se ofrece una reconsideración del legado historiográfico del imponente templo franciscano a la vista de nueva documentación.

Lesser Scaup Population Dynamics: What Can Be Learned from Available Data?

Populations of Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis) have declined markedly in North America since the early 1980s. When considering alternatives for achieving population recovery, it would be useful to understand how the rate of population growth is functionally related to the underlying vital rates and which vital rates affect population growth rate the most if changed (which need not be those that influenced historical population declines). To establish a more quantitative basis for learning about life history and population dynamics of Lesser Scaup, we summarized published and unpublished estimates of vital rates recorded between 1934 and 2005, and developed matrix life-cycle models with these data for females breeding in the boreal forest, prairie-parklands, and both regions combined. We then used perturbation analysis to evaluate the effect of changes in a variety of vital-rate statistics on finite population growth rate and abundance. Similar to Greater Scaup (Aythya marila), our modeled population growth rate for Lesser Scaup was most sensitive to unit and proportional change in adult female survival during the breeding and non-breeding seasons, but much less so to changes in fecundity parameters. Interestingly, population growth rate was also highly sensitive to unit and proportional changes in the mean of nesting success, duckling survival, and juvenile survival. Given the small samples of data for key aspects of the Lesser Scaup life cycle, we recommend additional research on vital rates that demonstrate a strong effect on population growth and size (e.g., adult survival probabilities). Our life-cycle models should be tested and regularly updated in the future to simultaneously guide science and management of Lesser Scaup populations in an adaptive context.

Turing Test: Mindless Game?

The Turing Test, originally configured for a human to distinguish between an unseen man and unseen woman through a text-based conversational measure of gender, is the ultimate test for thinking. So conceived Alan Turing when he replaced the woman with a machine. His assertion, that once a machine deceived a human judge into believing that they were the human, then that machine should be attributed with intelligence. But is the Turing Test nothing more than a mindless game? We present results from recent Loebner Prizes, a platform for the Turing Test, and find that machines in the contest appear conversationally worse rather than better, from 2004 to 2006, showing a downward trend in highest scores awarded to them by human judges. Thus the machines are not thinking in the same way as a human intelligent entity would.

Memory-based Embodied Cognition: a computational architecture

At its most fundamental, cognition as displayed by biological agents (such as humans) may be said to consist of the manipulation and utilisation of memory. Recent discussions in the field of cognitive robotics have emphasised the role of embodiment and the necessity of a value or motivation for autonomous behaviour. This work proposes a computational architecture – the Memory-Based Cognitive (MBC) architecture – based upon these considerations for the autonomous development of control of a simple mobile robot. This novel architecture will permit the exploration of theoretical issues in cognitive robotics and animal cognition. Furthermore, the biological inspiration of the architecture is anticipated to result in a mobile robot controller which displays adaptive behaviour in unknown environments.

Semantic-level Visual Content Descriptor combining visual and textual cues as collaterals

In this paper, we introduce a novel high-level visual content descriptor which is devised for performing semantic-based image classification and retrieval. The work can be treated as an attempt to bridge the so called “semantic gap”. The proposed image feature vector model is fundamentally underpinned by the image labelling framework, called Collaterally Confirmed Labelling (CCL), which incorporates the collateral knowledge extracted from the collateral texts of the images with the state-of-the-art low-level image processing and visual feature extraction techniques for automatically assigning linguistic keywords to image regions. Two different high-level image feature vector models are developed based on the CCL labelling of results for the purposes of image data clustering and retrieval respectively. A subset of the Corel image collection has been used for evaluating our proposed method. The experimental results to-date already indicates that our proposed semantic-based visual content descriptors outperform both traditional visual and textual image feature models.

RF Energy Harvesting in WSNs

As a vital factor affecting system cost and lifetime, energy consumption in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has been paid much attention to. This article reviews existing energy harvesting technology applied in WSNs, and analyzes advantages of harvesting radio frequency (RF) energy in WSNs.

Fusion of motion segmentation algorithms

Many algorithms have been developed to achieve motion segmentation for video surveillance. The algorithms produce varying performances under the infinite amount of changing conditions. It has been recognised that individually these algorithms have useful properties. Fusing the statistical result of these algorithms is investigated, with robust motion segmentation in mind.

Real-Time software control of neural stimulation in a closed loop Animat system

A recent area for investigation into the development of adaptable robot control is the use of living neuronal networks to control a mobile robot. The so-called Animat paradigm comprises a neuronal network (the ‘brain’) connected to an external embodiment (in this case a mobile robot), facilitating potentially robust, adaptable robot control and increased understanding of neural processes. Sensory input from the robot is provided to the neuronal network via stimulation on a number of electrodes embedded in a specialist Petri dish (Multi Electrode Array (MEA)); accurate control of this stimulation is vital. We present software tools allowing precise, near real-time control of electrical stimulation on MEAs, with fast switching between electrodes and the application of custom stimulus waveforms. These Linux-based tools are compatible with the widely used MEABench data acquisition system. Benefits include rapid stimulus modulation in response to neuronal activity (closed loop) and batch processing of stimulation protocols.

A new paradigm for BCI research

A new control paradigm for Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) is proposed. BCIs provide a means of communication direct from the brain to a computer that allows individuals with motor disabilities an additional channel of communication and control of their external environment. Traditional BCI control paradigms use motor imagery, frequency rhythm modification or the Event Related Potential (ERP) as a means of extracting a control signal. A new control paradigm for BCIs based on speech imagery is initially proposed. Further to this a unique system for identifying correlations between components of the EEG and target events is proposed and introduced.

Review of computer vision in intelligent environment design

This paper discusses and compares the use of vision based and non-vision based technologies in developing intelligent environments. By reviewing the related projects that use vision based techniques in intelligent environment design, the achieved functions, technical issues and drawbacks of those projects are discussed and summarized, and the potential solutions for future improvement are proposed, which leads to the prospective direction of my PhD research.

Immersive Projection for biochemical pattern matching

In all biological processes, protein molecules and other small molecules interact to function and form transient macromolecular complexes. This interaction of two or more molecules can be described by a docking event. Docking is an important phase for structure-based drug design strategies, as it can be used as a method to simulate protein-ligand interactions. Various docking programs exist that allow automated docking, but most of them have limited visualization and user interaction. It would be advantageous if scientists could visualize the molecules participating in the docking process, manipulate their structures and manually dock them before submitting the new conformations to an automated docking process in an immersive environment, which can help stimulate the design/docking process. This also could greatly reduce docking time and resources. To achieve this, we propose a new virtual modelling/docking program, whereby the advantages of virtual modelling programs and the efficiency of the algorithms in existing docking programs will be merged.

Multi-agent collaboration for decision support in shared zones of intelligent buildings

In domain of intelligent buildings, saving energy in buildings and increasing preferences of occupants are two important factors. These factors are the important keys for evaluating the performance of work environment. In recent years, many researchers combine these areas to create the system that can change from original to the modern work environment called intelligent work environment. Due to advance of agent technology, it has received increasing attention in the area of intelligent pervasive environments. In this paper, we review several issues in intelligent buildings, with respect to the implementation of control system for intelligent buildings via multi-agent systems. Furthermore, we present the MASBO (Multi-Agent System for Building cOntrol) that has been implemented for controlling the building facilities to reach the balancing between energy efficiency and occupant’s comfort. In addition to enhance the MASBO system, the collaboration through negotiation among agents is presented.