Modelo de negocio para mejorar la competitividad de la cadena productiva del cuy en Lambayeque-Perú

El principal problema que atraviesan los pequeños productores en la región Lambayeque y en su mayoría a nivel nacional es el bajo nivel de competitividad en sus respectivas cadenas productivas, esto se debe a que no cuentan con una adecuada gestión asociativa y empresarial, desconocen técnicas en manejos productivo y presentan deficiente articulación comercial teniendo como efecto directo bajos niveles de calidad de vida. La presente investigación tiene como objetivo principal plantear un modelo de negocio para mejorar la competitividad de la cadena productiva del cuy en una organización cooperativa de productores de cuyes del distrito de Mórrope, identificando los factores que determinan la competitividad, además plasmando los diversos elementos, componentes, estrategias y actividades que se unen para concretar el objetivo principal. Se presentará un diagnóstico inicial de la Cooperativa en estudio, los datos obtenidos son resultado de visitas y talleres con los asociados quienes respondieron a una encuesta y entrevistas, así mismo para el diagnóstico regional de la cadena del cuy se realizó la búsqueda de información primaria y secundaria, reforzado con entrevistas a especialistas del tema a nivel regional. Finalmente se utilizó la herramienta del marco lógico y del lienzo de modelo de negocio “Canvas” para plasmar la propuesta de mejora de la competitividad en beneficio de la cooperativa en estudio y que servirá como base para replicarse en otras organizaciones siendo acompañada de propuestas reales, validadas por especialistas.

An Exploration of the challenges associated with software logging in large systems

Thesis (Master, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2016-05-29 18:11:34.114

Computational Methods for Identifying Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy using 12-lead ECG

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a cardiovascular disease where the heart muscle is partially thickened and blood flow is - potentially fatally - obstructed. It is one of the leading causes of sudden cardiac death in young people. Electrocardiography (ECG) and Echocardiography (Echo) are the standard tests for identifying HCM and other cardiac abnormalities. The American Heart Association has recommended using a pre-participation questionnaire for young athletes instead of ECG or Echo tests due to considerations of cost and time involved in interpreting the results of these tests by an expert cardiologist. Initially we set out to develop a classifier for automated prediction of young athletes’ heart conditions based on the answers to the questionnaire. Classification results and further in-depth analysis using computational and statistical methods indicated significant shortcomings of the questionnaire in predicting cardiac abnormalities. Automated methods for analyzing ECG signals can help reduce cost and save time in the pre-participation screening process by detecting HCM and other cardiac abnormalities. Therefore, the main goal of this dissertation work is to identify HCM through computational analysis of 12-lead ECG. ECG signals recorded on one or two leads have been analyzed in the past for classifying individual heartbeats into different types of arrhythmia as annotated primarily in the MIT-BIH database. In contrast, we classify complete sequences of 12-lead ECGs to assign patients into two groups: HCM vs. non-HCM. The challenges and issues we address include missing ECG waves in one or more leads and the dimensionality of a large feature-set. We address these by proposing imputation and feature-selection methods. We develop heartbeat-classifiers by employing Random Forests and Support Vector Machines, and propose a method to classify full 12-lead ECGs based on the proportion of heartbeats classified as HCM. The results from our experiments show that the classifiers developed using our methods perform well in identifying HCM. Thus the two contributions of this thesis are the utilization of computational and statistical methods for discovering shortcomings in a current screening procedure and the development of methods to identify HCM through computational analysis of 12-lead ECG signals.

JAABA: interactive machine learning for automatic annotation of animal behavior

We present a machine learning-based system for automatically computing interpretable, quantitative measures of animal behavior. Through our interactive system, users encode their intuition about behavior by annotating a small set of video frames. These manual labels are converted into classifiers that can automatically annotate behaviors in screen-scale data sets. Our general-purpose system can create a variety of accurate individual and social behavior classifiers for different organisms, including mice and adult and larval Drosophila.

Philosophy and psychology pamphlets

A collection of miscellaneous pamphlets.

El impacto del enfoque léxico sobre la adquisición de la competencia léxica en aprendices de español como lengua extranjera

Este estudio presenta los resultados de una investigación que examina la efectividad del enfoque léxico como forma de instrucción explícita sobre la adquisición de la competencia léxica en aprendices de español como lengua extranjera. El estudio esta guiado por dos preguntas de investigación. La primera pregunta de investigación (PI 1) examina el impacto del enfoque léxico sobre la adquisición de la competencia léxica. La segunda pregunta de investigación (PI 2) examina si la efectividad del enfoque léxico en el grupo de alumnos examinados viene condicionada por las creencias de los participantes acerca de las estrategias empleadas en dicho método. La aplicación del enfoque léxico se basó en una propuesta pedagógica consistente en una unidad didáctica de creación propia. Se analizaron los datos obtenidos tanto de forma cuantitativa como cualitativa. Los resultados confirmaron empíricamente la validez del enfoque léxico como principio metodológico para adquirir la competencia léxica. Del mismo modo, se encontró una relación entre las creencias de los participantes y las estrategias de aprendizaje empleadas.

Toward Never-Ending Object Learning for Robots

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Two empirical hydrocyclone models revisited

There has been an abundance of literature on the modelling of hydrocyclones over the past 30 years. However, in the comminution area at least, the more popular commercially available packages (e.g. JKSimMet, Limn, MODSIM) use the models developed by Nageswararao and Plitt in the 1970s, either as published at that time, or with minor modification. With the benefit of 30 years of hindsight, this paper discusses the assumptions and approximations used in developing these models. Differences in model structure and the choice of dependent and independent variables are also considered. Redundancies are highlighted and an assessment made of the general applicability of each of the models, their limitations and the sources of error in their model predictions. This paper provides the latest version of the Nageswararao model based on the above analysis, in a form that can readily be implemented in any suitable programming language, or within a spreadsheet. The Plitt model is also presented in similar form. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Beating the urge: Implications of research into substance-related desires

Despite the advent of improved pharmacological treatments to alleviate substance-related desires, psychological approaches will continue to be required. However, the current psychological treatment that most specifically focuses on desires and their management-cue exposure (CE)-has not lived up to its original promise. This paper argues that current psychological approaches to desire do not adequately incorporate our knowledge about the factors that trigger, maintain, and terminate episodes of desire. It asserts that the instigation and maintenance of desires involve both associative and elaborative processes. Understanding the processes triggering the initiation of intrusive thoughts may assist in preventing some episodes, but occasional intrusions will be inevitable. A demonstration of the ineffectiveness of thought suppression may discourage its use as a coping strategy for desire-related intrusions, and mindfulness meditation plus cognitive therapy may help in accepting their occurrence and letting them go. Competing tasks may be used to reduce elaboration of desires, and competing sensory images may have particular utility. The application of these procedures during episodes that are elicited in the clinic may allow the acquisition of more effective strategies to address desires in the natural environment. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Do dogs (canis familiaris) understand invisible displacement?

Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) perform above chance on invisible displacement tasks despite showing few other signs of possessing the necessary representational abilities. Four experiments investigated how dogs find an object that has been hidden in 1 of 3 opaque boxes. Dogs passed the task under a variety of control conditions, but only if the device used to displace the object ended up adjacent to the target box after the displacement. These results suggest that the search behavior of dogs was guided by simple associative rules rather than mental representation of the object's past trajectory. In contrast, Experiment 5 found that on the same task, 18- and 24-month-old children showed no disparity between trials in which the displacement device was adjacent or nonadjacent to the target box.

Classification of perinatal deaths: Development of the Australian and New Zealand classifications

Classifications of perinatal deaths have been undertaken for surveillance of causes of death, but also for auditing individual deaths to identify suboptimal care at any level, so that preventive strategies may be implemented. This paper describes the history and development of the paired obstetric and neonatal Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand (PSANZ) classifications in the context of other classifications. The PSANZ Perinatal Death Classification is based on obstetric antecedent factors that initiated the sequence of events leading to the death, and was developed largely from the Aberdeen and Whitfield classifications. The PSANZ Neonatal Death Classification is based on fetal and neonatal factors associated with the death. The classifications, accessible on the PSANZ website (http://www.psanz.org), have definitions and guidelines for use, a high level of agreement between classifiers, and are now being used in nearly all Australian states and New Zealand.

Cognitive fit between conceptual schemas and internal problem representations: The case of geospatio-temporal conceptual schema comprehension

Geospatio-temporal conceptual models provide a mechanism to explicitly represent geospatial and temporal aspects of applications. Such models, which focus on both what and when/where, need to be more expressive than conventional conceptual models (e.g., the ER model), which primarily focus on what is important for a given application. In this study, we view conceptual schema comprehension of geospatio-temporal data semantics in terms of matching the external problem representation (that is, the conceptual schema) to the problem-solving task (that is, syntactic and semantic comprehension tasks), an argument based on the theory of cognitive fit. Our theory suggests that an external problem representation that matches the problem solver's internal task representation will enhance performance, for example, in comprehending such schemas. To assess performance on geospatio-temporal schema comprehension tasks, we conducted a laboratory experiment using two semantically identical conceptual schemas, one of which mapped closely to the internal task representation while the other did not. As expected, we found that the geospatio-temporal conceptual schema that corresponded to the internal representation of the task enhanced the accuracy of schema comprehension; comprehension time was equivalent for both. Cognitive fit between the internal representation of the task and conceptual schemas with geospatio-temporal annotations was, therefore, manifested in accuracy of schema comprehension and not in time for problem solution. Our findings suggest that the annotated schemas facilitate understanding of data semantics represented on the schema.

Do chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) understand single invisible displacement?

Previous research suggests that chimpanzees understand single invisible displacement. However, this Piagetian task may be solvable through the use of simple search strategies rather than through mentally representing the past trajectory of an object. Four control conditions were thus administered to two chimpanzees in order to separate associative search strategies from performance based on mental representation. Strategies involving experimenter cue-use, search at the last or first box visited by the displacement device, and search at boxes adjacent to the displacement device were systematically controlled for. Chimpanzees showed no indications of utilizing these simple strategies, suggesting that their capacity to mentally represent single invisible displacements is comparable to that of 18-24-month-old children.

Does customer satisfaction lead to improved brand equity? An empirical examination of two categories of retail brands

Purpose – The objective of the present research is to examine the relationship between consumers' satisfaction with a retailer and the equity they associate with the retail brand. Design/methodology/approach – Retail brand equity is conceptualized as a four-dimensional construct comprising: retailer awareness, retailer associations, retailer perceived quality, and retailer loyalty. Then the associative network memory model is applied from cognitive psychology to the specific context of the relationships between customer satisfaction and consumer-based retailer equity. A survey was undertaken using a convenience sample of shopping mall consumers in an Australian state capital city. The questionnaire used to collect data included an experimental design such that two categories of retailers were included in the study: department stores and specialty stores, with three retailers representing each category. The relationship between consumer-based retailer equity and customer satisfaction was examined using multivariate analysis of variance. Findings – Results indicate that retail brand equity varies with customer satisfaction. For department stores, each consumer-based retailer equity dimension varied according to customer satisfaction with the retailer. However, for specialty stores, only three of the consumer-based retailer equity dimensions, namely retailer awareness, retailer associations and retailer perceived quality, varied according to customer satisfaction level with the retailer. Originality/value – The principal contribution of the present research is that it demonstrates empirically a positive relationship between customer satisfaction and an intangible asset such as retailer equity.

Slurry flow in mills with TCPL - An efficient pulp lifter for ag/sag mills

The difficulties associated with slurry transportation in autogenous (ag) and semi-autogenous (sag) grinding mills have become more apparent in recent years with the increasing trend to build larger diameter mills for grinding high tonnages. This is particularly noticeable when ag/sag mills are run in closed circuit with classifiers such as fine screens/cyclones. Extensive test work carried out on slurry removal mechanism in grate discharge mills (ag/sag) has shown that the conventional pulp lifters (radial and curved) have inherent drawbacks. They allow short-circuiting of the slurry from pulp lifters into the grinding chamber leading to slurry pool formation. Slurry pool absorbs part of the impact thus inhibiting the grinding process. Twin Chamber Pulp Lifter (TCPL) - an efficient design of pulp lifter developed by the authors overcomes the inherent drawbacks of the conventional pulp lifters. Extensive testing in both laboratory and pilot scale mills has shown that the TCPL completely blocks the flow-back process, thus allowing the mill to operate close to their design flow capacity. The TCPL performance is also found to be independent of variations in charge volume and grate design, whereas they significantly affect the performance of conventional pulp lifters (radial and curved). (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.