Using a Parameterization of a Radiative Transfer Model to Build High-Resolution Maps of Typical Clear-Sky UV Index in Catalonia, Spain

To perform a climatic analysis of the annual UV index (UVI) variations in Catalonia, Spain (northeast of the Iberian Peninsula), a new simple parameterization scheme is presented based on a multilayer radiative transfer model. The parameterization performs fast UVI calculations for a wide range of cloudless and snow-free situations and can be applied anywhere. The following parameters are considered: solar zenith angle, total ozone column, altitude, aerosol optical depth, and single-scattering albedo. A sensitivity analysis is presented to justify this choice with special attention to aerosol information. Comparisons with the base model show good agreement, most of all for the most common cases, giving an absolute error within 0.2 in the UVI for a wide range of cases considered. Two tests are done to show the performance of the parameterization against UVI measurements. One uses data from a high-quality spectroradiometer from Lauder, New Zealand [45.04°S, 169.684°E, 370 m above mean sea level (MSL)], where there is a low presence of aerosols. The other uses data from a Robertson–Berger-type meter from Girona, Spain (41.97°N, 2.82°E, 100 m MSL), where there is more aerosol load and where it has been possible to study the effect of aerosol information on the model versus measurement comparison. The parameterization is applied to a climatic analysis of the annual UVI variation in Catalonia, showing the contributions of solar zenith angle, ozone, and aerosols. High-resolution seasonal maps of typical UV index values in Catalonia are presented

Gestió mapes i GPS

El projecte denominat "Gestor de mapes i GPS" és una aplicació per a dispositius mòbils Android que utilitza l'API v.1 de Google Maps.

Sweep15 : Desenvolupament d'aplicació lúdica per a Android

En aquest projecte es pretén desenvolupar, utilitzant un framework gràfic (AndEngine), una aplicació lúdica sobre la plataforma Android enfocada principalment per a un smartphone senzill.

Accés als fòrums de la UOC des de dispositius mòbils Android

La memòria descriu el desenvolupament d'una aplicació per a Android que empra l'API UOC per accedir als recursos de missatgeria de la UOC (fòrums, taulers i correu).

Aplicación de pedidos de ventas para tablets en Android

El presente proyecto tiene como objeto el desarrollo de una aplicación para tablets en Android para la red de ventas de una empresa que distribuye productos de moda (ropa, calzado y complementos). Con esta aplicación se quiere dotar de mayor agilidad a los agentes a la hora de realizar sus tareas básicas: consultar las fichas de clientes, consultar el catálogo de artículos y crear nuevos pedidos.

Unstable equilibrium: young adult women in family and career formation in Southern Europe

The paper examines the relationship between family formation (i.e., living with a partner and having children) and women’s occupational career in southern Europe (i.e., Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain). The relationship is explored by analysing the impact that different family structures and male [nvolvement in caring activities have on women’s early occupational trajectories (i.e., remaining in the same occupational status, experiencing downward or upward mobility, or withdrawing from paid work). This research shows that male involvement in caring activities does not really push women ahead in their career, but the absolute lack of male support seems to negatively affect women’s permanence in paid work. These results apply to all southern European countries except Portugal, where the absolute absence of the partners’ support in caring activities does not seem to alter women’s determination to remain in paid work. The methodology applied consists of the estimation of multinomial logit regression models and the analysis is based on eight waves (1994-2001) of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP).

Pessoas com úlceras vasculogênicas em atendimento ambulatorial de enfermagem: estudo das variáveis clínicas e sociodemográficas

Objetivou-se analisar características sociodemográficas e clínicas de pessoas com úlceras vasculogênicas e investigar a associação entre estas variáveis. Realizou-se um estudo clínico observacional transversal, em salas de curativo de serviços municipais de saúde, de fevereiro a agosto de 2009. Realizou-se entrevista, exame clínico, aplicação da escala Pressure Ulcer Scale Healing (PUSH) e registro fotográfico das lesões. Participaram 42 indivíduos, com média de 60 anos (± 12), 73,8% do sexo masculino, com lesões únicas (66,7%), decorrentes de alteração da circulação venosa (90,5%), duração de até um ano (55,5%). Houve associação entre o escore da PUSH (p=0,019) e profundidade da lesão (p=0,027) com exercício de atividade ocupacional na atualidade, assim como entre o histórico de tabagismo e o gênero (p=0,049). As características sociodemográficas evidenciadas são semelhantes às de outros, com exceção do gênero masculino, o que indica a necessidade de maiores investigações na população goianiense.

Agenda de fisioterapeutas (PlanningFisio) : Gestión de pacientes y citas para dispositivos móviles Android

Desarrollo de una aplicación de gestión de pacientes y citas para fisioterapeutas.

Apprima't

Proyecto final de carrera sobre el desarrollo de una aplicación móvil para plataformas Android, conteniendo fragmentos, actividades y manejos de bases de datos.Se utiliza también el API de Google Maps para mostrar la posición del usuario y puntos precargados desde la base de datos.

Potenciació de la línia de negoci de www.guiacomerciolocal.es mitjançant una aplicació Android

El projecte que ens ocupa és la creació d'una aplicació mòbil que ens ajude a potenciar i explotar les noves funcionalitats que apropen les empreses als clients finals i ajuden a afiançar les relacions interpersonals creades.

Openstackdroid : Consola de administración de Openstack para tabletas con sistema operativo Android

Este proyecto es una aplicación cliente de OpenStack para tabletas Android.

Android-OpenDomo

Memoria sobre el desarrollo de una aplicación para la plataforma Android. Dicha aplicación interactuará con el sistema OpenDomo.

Financial Markets and Real Ecinomy: Four Essays in International Trade

Financial markets play an important role in an economy performing various functions like mobilizing and pooling savings, producing information about investment opportunities, screening and monitoring investments, implementation of corporate governance, diversification and management of risk. These functions influence saving rates, investment decisions, technological innovation and, therefore, have important implications for welfare. In my PhD dissertation I examine the interplay of financial and product markets by looking at different channels through which financial markets may influence an economy.My dissertation consists of four chapters. The first chapter is a co-authored work with Martin Strieborny, a PhD student from the University of Lausanne. The second chapter is a co-authored work with Melise Jaud, a PhD student from the Paris School of Economics. The third chapter is co-authored with both Melise Jaud and Martin Strieborny. The last chapter of my PhD dissertation is a single author paper.Chapter 1 of my PhD thesis analyzes the effect of financial development on growth of contract intensive industries. These industries intensively use intermediate inputs that neither can be sold on organized exchange, nor are reference-priced (Levchenko, 2007; Nunn, 2007). A typical example of a contract intensive industry would be an industry where an upstream supplier has to make investments in order to customize a product for needs of a downstream buyer. After the investment is made and the product is adjusted, the buyer may refuse to meet a commitment and trigger ex post renegotiation. Since the product is customized to the buyer's needs, the supplier cannot sell the product to a different buyer at the original price. This is referred in the literature as the holdup problem. As a consequence, the individually rational suppliers will underinvest into relationship-specific assets, hurting the downstream firms with negative consequences for aggregate growth. The standard way to mitigate the hold up problem is to write a binding contract and to rely on the legal enforcement by the state. However, even the most effective contract enforcement might fail to protect the supplier in tough times when the buyer lacks a reliable source of external financing. This suggests the potential role of financial intermediaries, banks in particular, in mitigating the incomplete contract problem. First, financial products like letters of credit and letters of guarantee can substantially decrease a risk and transaction costs of parties. Second, a bank loan can serve as a signal about a buyer's true financial situation, an upstream firm will be more willing undertake relationship-specific investment knowing that the business partner is creditworthy and will abstain from myopic behavior (Fama, 1985; von Thadden, 1995). Therefore, a well-developed financial (especially banking) system should disproportionately benefit contract intensive industries.The empirical test confirms this hypothesis. Indeed, contract intensive industries seem to grow faster in countries with a well developed financial system. Furthermore, this effect comes from a more developed banking sector rather than from a deeper stock market. These results are reaffirmed examining the effect of US bank deregulation on the growth of contract intensive industries in different states. Beyond an overall pro-growth effect, the bank deregulation seems to disproportionately benefit the industries requiring relationship-specific investments from their suppliers.Chapter 2 of my PhD focuses on the role of the financial sector in promoting exports of developing countries. In particular, it investigates how credit constraints affect the ability of firms operating in agri-food sectors of developing countries to keep exporting to foreign markets.Trade in high-value agri-food products from developing countries has expanded enormously over the last two decades offering opportunities for development. However, trade in agri-food is governed by a growing array of standards. Sanitary and Phytosanitary standards (SPS) and technical regulations impose additional sunk, fixed and operating costs along the firms' export life. Such costs may be detrimental to firms' survival, "pricing out" producers that cannot comply. The existence of these costs suggests a potential role of credit constraints in shaping the duration of trade relationships on foreign markets. A well-developed financial system provides the funds to exporters necessary to adjust production processes in order to meet quality and quantity requirements in foreign markets and to maintain long-standing trade relationships. The products with higher needs for financing should benefit the most from a well functioning financial system. This differential effect calls for a difference-in-difference approach initially proposed by Rajan and Zingales (1998). As a proxy for demand for financing of agri-food products, the sanitary risk index developed by Jaud et al. (2009) is used. The empirical literature on standards and norms show high costs of compliance, both variable and fixed, for high-value food products (Garcia-Martinez and Poole, 2004; Maskus et al., 2005). The sanitary risk index reflects the propensity of products to fail health and safety controls on the European Union (EU) market. Given the high costs of compliance, the sanitary risk index captures the demand for external financing to comply with such regulations.The prediction is empirically tested examining the export survival of different agri-food products from firms operating in Ghana, Mali, Malawi, Senegal and Tanzania. The results suggest that agri-food products that require more financing to keep up with food safety regulation of the destination market, indeed sustain longer in foreign market, when they are exported from countries with better developed financial markets.Chapter 3 analyzes the link between financial markets and efficiency of resource allocation in an economy. Producing and exporting products inconsistent with a country's factor endowments constitutes a serious misallocation of funds, which undermines competitiveness of the economy and inhibits its long term growth. In this chapter, inefficient exporting patterns are analyzed through the lens of the agency theories from the corporate finance literature. Managers may pursue projects with negative net present values because their perquisites or even their job might depend on them. Exporting activities are particularly prone to this problem. Business related to foreign markets involves both high levels of additional spending and strong incentives for managers to overinvest. Rational managers might have incentives to push for exports that use country's scarce factors which is suboptimal from a social point of view. Export subsidies might further skew the incentives towards inefficient exporting. Management can divert the export subsidies into investments promoting inefficient exporting.Corporate finance literature stresses the disciplining role of outside debt in counteracting the internal pressures to divert such "free cash flow" into unprofitable investments. Managers can lose both their reputation and the control of "their" firm if the unpaid external debt triggers a bankruptcy procedure. The threat of possible failure to satisfy debt service payments pushes the managers toward an efficient use of available resources (Jensen, 1986; Stulz, 1990; Hart and Moore, 1995). The main sources of debt financing in the most countries are banks. The disciplining role of banks might be especially important in the countries suffering from insufficient judicial quality. Banks, in pursuing their rights, rely on comparatively simple legal interventions that can be implemented even by mediocre courts. In addition to their disciplining role, banks can promote efficient exporting patterns in a more direct way by relaxing credit constraints of producers, through screening, identifying and investing in the most profitable investment projects. Therefore, a well-developed domestic financial system, and particular banking system, would help to push a country's exports towards products congruent with its comparative advantage.This prediction is tested looking at the survival of different product categories exported to US market. Products are identified according to the Euclidian distance between their revealed factor intensity and the country's factor endowments. The results suggest that products suffering from a comparative disadvantage (labour-intensive products from capital-abundant countries) survive less on the competitive US market. This pattern is stronger if the exporting country has a well-developed banking system. Thus, a strong banking sector promotes exports consistent with a country comparative advantage.Chapter 4 of my PhD thesis further examines the role of financial markets in fostering efficient resource allocation in an economy. In particular, the allocative efficiency hypothesis is investigated in the context of equity market liberalization.Many empirical studies document a positive and significant effect of financial liberalization on growth (Levchenko et al. 2009; Quinn and Toyoda 2009; Bekaert et al., 2005). However, the decrease in the cost of capital and the associated growth in investment appears rather modest in comparison to the large GDP growth effect (Bekaert and Harvey, 2005; Henry, 2000, 2003). Therefore, financial liberalization may have a positive impact on growth through its effect on the allocation of funds across firms and sectors.Free access to international capital markets allows the largest and most profitable domestic firms to borrow funds in foreign markets (Rajan and Zingales, 2003). As domestic banks loose some of their best clients, they reoptimize their lending practices seeking new clients among small and younger industrial firms. These firms are likely to be more risky than large and established companies. Screening of customers becomes prevalent as the return to screening rises. Banks, ceteris paribus, tend to focus on firms operating in comparative-advantage sectors because they are better risks. Firms in comparative-disadvantage sectors finding it harder to finance their entry into or survival in export markets either exit or refrain from entering export markets. On aggregate, one should therefore expect to see less entry, more exit, and shorter survival on export markets in those sectors after financial liberalization.The paper investigates the effect of financial liberalization on a country's export pattern by comparing the dynamics of entry and exit of different products in a country export portfolio before and after financial liberalization.The results suggest that products that lie far from the country's comparative advantage set tend to disappear relatively faster from the country's export portfolio following the liberalization of financial markets. In other words, financial liberalization tends to rebalance the composition of a country's export portfolio towards the products that intensively use the economy's abundant factors.

Does lipid oxidation differ in gynoid and android obese women?

This study was performed to investigate whether body fat distribution influences resting metabolic rate and lipid oxidation in obese individuals. Eighty-nine obese women were divided in two groups (android obese, n = 36, BMI = 31.1 +/- 4.5 kg/m2 (mean +/- s.d.); gynoid obese, n = 53, BMI = 29.9 +/- 4.5 kg/m2 on the basis of their waist/hip ratio (0.86 +/- 0.05 vs 0.75 +/- 0.04 respectively). Body weight, per cent body fat and fat-free mass were similar in the two groups. Moreover, resting metabolic rate and respiratory quotient were also identical in android and gynoid obese women, indicating that there was no intergroup difference in the absolute level of lipid oxidation. If, like most other android obese women, they had higher rates of lipolysis and plasma FFA concentrations, the failure of android obese individuals to exhibit a higher lipid oxidation than gynoid obese women may partly explain their increased risk to develop metabolic complications.

Patient safety management from the perspective of nurses

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the actions of patient safety management developed in hospitals, from the perspective of nurses. METHOD This is a cross-sectional, descriptive study of the survey type. Participants were seven hospitals, in which seven nurse managers and 49 sector coordinator nurses (n = 56) answered the instrument prepared by the author. RESULTS The results showed that 100% of hospitals have an adverse event reporting system, 71.4% have a Risk Management Committee and 80% have discussions about the events. There is agreement that these discussions lead to favorable changes for patient safety in the surveyed institutions. The employees' fear of punishment for their faults, and the underreporting of events were the aspects of greatest weakness found. CONCLUSION The institutions should develop organizational policies focused on stimulating event notification and on the implementation of measures directed to a non-punitive organizational culture.