Hasil untuk "Latin America. Spanish America"

Roland Stucki, S. Homer

Manuel Munoz Pla

This paper presents a longitudinal open dataset of Spanish public procurement extracted from the Official State Gazette (BOE) covering the period 2014-2024. The dataset integrates structured information on contracts, contracting authorities, suppliers, amounts, and procedures, enabling large-scale quantitative analysis of public procurement dynamics in Spain. We describe the data extraction and normalization pipeline, provide descriptive statistical analyses of temporal and sectoral trends, and discuss potential applications in transparency research, public policy evaluation, and computational social science. The dataset is released to facilitate reproducible research on public procurement and government contracting.

Marcos Lacasa-Cazcarra

We study the employment effects of the 22% increase in the Spanish minimum wage in 2019, focusing on young workers. Using census-grade administrative tax data covering the universe of formal wage bills and employment (Models 190/390 linked to personal income tax records), we construct several measures of treatment intensity, including two structurally grounded bite indicators based on the incidence of young minimum-wage workers and the implied increase in the wage bill obtained via Exponential Tilting. Difference-in-differences estimates with two-way fixed effects, dynamic event-study specifications, and robust confidence intervals from the HonestDiD framework all point to the same conclusion: the reform did not generate net disemployment effects for young workers. Point estimates of the elasticity are small and often positive, and confidence internals comfortably include zero even with sizable deviations from parallel trends. A triple-difference design exploiting pre-existing tourism dependence further shows that the sharp employment collapse of 2020 is primarily explained by the COVID-19 shock operating through tourism-intensive sectors, rather than by the minimum-wage hike itself. Our results suggest that, in the macroeconomic and institutional environment prevailing in Spain in 2019, with the minimum wage rising to around 60% of the average wage in a recovering economy, the labour market absorbed a large discrete increase in the wage floor without destroying aggregate youth employment. More broadly, the paper highlights how the choice of treatment definition, the use of census-grade data, robust DiD inference, and explicit modelling of concurrent shocks can shape conclusions about the effects of minimum-wage policies.

Moein Shahiki Tash, Luis Ramos, Zahra Ahani et al.

The advent of social media has transformed communication, enabling individuals to share their experiences, seek support, and participate in diverse discussions. While extensive research has focused on identifying harmful content like hate speech, the recognition and promotion of positive and supportive interactions remain largely unexplored. This study proposes an innovative approach to detecting online social support in Spanish-language social media texts. We introduce the first annotated dataset specifically created for this task, comprising 3,189 YouTube comments classified as supportive or non-supportive. To address data imbalance, we employed GPT-4o to generate paraphrased comments and create a balanced dataset. We then evaluated social support classification using traditional machine learning models, deep learning architectures, and transformer-based models, including GPT-4o, but only on the unbalanced dataset. Subsequently, we utilized a transformer model to compare the performance between the balanced and unbalanced datasets. Our findings indicate that the balanced dataset yielded improved results for Task 2 (Individual and Group) and Task 3 (Nation, Other, LGBTQ, Black Community, Women, Religion), whereas GPT-4o performed best for Task 1 (Social Support and Non-Support). This study highlights the significance of fostering a supportive online environment and lays the groundwork for future research in automated social support detection.

Takashi Morita, Timothy J. O'Donnell

Cross-linguistically, native words and loanwords follow different phonological rules. In English, for example, words of Germanic and Latinate origin exhibit different stress patterns, and a certain syntactic structure, double-object datives, is predominantly associated with Germanic verbs rather than Latinate verbs. From the perspective of language acquisition, however, such etymology-based generalizations raise learnability concerns, since the historical origins of words are presumably inaccessible information for general language learners. In this study, we present computational evidence indicating that the Germanic-Latinate distinction in the English lexicon is learnable from the phonotactic information of individual words. Specifically, we performed an unsupervised clustering on corpus-extracted words, and the resulting word clusters largely aligned with the etymological distinction. The model-discovered clusters also recovered various linguistic generalizations documented in the previous literature regarding the corresponding etymological classes. Moreover, our model also uncovered previously unrecognized features of the quasi-etymological clusters. Taken together with prior results from Japanese, our findings indicate that the proposed method provides a general, cross-linguistic approach to discovering etymological structure from phonotactic cues in the lexicon.

Maira Cristina Córdova

Este artículo aborda los daños ocasionados por la plaga de langostas y el clima adverso en el estado de Oaxaca entre 1880 y 1888. A partir del análisis exhaustivo de todos los comunicados mensuales de los jefes políticos del distrito disponibles en el Archivo General del Estado de Oaxaca, documentos sobre la comisión contra la langosta, un informe de un gobernador y un comisionado, así como periódicos de la época, se analizan las condiciones que favorecieron el surgimiento, desarrollo y permanencia de la langosta por un periodo de ocho años. El trabajo analiza las estrategias que emprendieron las autoridades y la población para erradicar a estos insectos y se explora cómo los efectos del clima y la plaga afectaron el abasto de alimentos en diversos puntos de la entidad, al mismo tiempo que los habitantes experimentaron continuas olas de enfermedades.

Clara Inés Carreño-Tarazona, Giovanni Fernando Amado-Oliveros

Este artículo analiza el tratamiento de la epidemia de la viruela desde el establecimiento de normativas sobre la salubridad pública en el Estado de Boyacá (Colombia) durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. Primero se examinan las medidas administrativas para organizar los hospitales e implementar el aislamiento, luego se describen los organismos administrativos establecidos en los distritos del Estado y representados en las Juntas de Sanidad, finalmente se estudian las oficinas y el servicio sanitario de vacunación como mecanismo para controlar el avance de la enfermedad. A partir de la revisión de fuentes documentales oficiales se encontró que el Estado estableció todo un sistema administrativo y regulatorio para afrontar la epidemia.

Leonardo Santos, Caio C. G. Ribeiro, Douglas G. Macharet

The exchange of information is key in applications that involve multiple agents, such as search and rescue, military operations, and disaster response. In this work, we propose a simple and effective trajectory planning framework that tackles the design, deployment, and reconfiguration of a communication backbone by reframing the problem of networked multi-agent motion planning as a manipulator motion planning problem. Our approach works for backbones of variable configurations both in terms of the number of robots utilized and the distance limit between each robot. While research has been conducted on connection-restricted navigation for multi-robot systems in the last years, the field of manipulators is arguably more developed both in theory and practice. Hence, our methodology facilitates practical applications built on top of widely available motion planning algorithms and frameworks for manipulators.

Rosana Lopez-Carreño, Angel-Maria Delgado Vazquez, Francisco-Javier Martinez-Mendez

This paper analyses the set of scientific publications in open access, other than journals (monographs, conferences proceedings, teaching materials and grey literature), published by Spanish public universities, studying their volume, documentary typology, level of description and open access policies with the aim of measuring their degree of incorporation and compliance with the principles of Open Science. An exhaustive review of the disposed material in open access by these publishers has been carried out, which has allowed to make a diagnosis of their level of open access publishing. Grey literature is the most common documentary type followed by the monograph, in the open publication of these publishers that does not reach even 5% of the average editorial production. The results allow us to conclude that the academic publishing, and more specifically the academic books in open access, still has a very reduced presence within the editorial production of these institutions.

María Belén Salceek

Reseña del libro de Leandro Losada, La alta sociedad en la Buenos Aires de la belle époque. Sociabilidad, estilos de vida e identidades. Bernal, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 2021, 390 pp.

Håvard Kjellmo Arnestad, Gábor Geréb, Tor Inge Birkenes Lønmo et al.

Over the past decade, interval arithmetic (IA) has been utilized to determine tolerance bounds of phased array beampatterns. IA only requires that the errors of the array elements are bounded, and can provide reliable beampattern bounds even when a statistical model is missing. However, previous research has not explored the use of IA to find the error realizations responsible for achieving specific bounds. In this study, the capabilities of IA are extended by introducing the concept of ``backtracking'', which provides a direct way of addressing how specific bounds can be attained. Backtracking allows for the recovery of both the specific error realization and the corresponding beampattern, enabling the study and verification of which errors result in the worst-case array performance in terms of the peak sidelobe level. Moreover, IA is made applicable to a wider range of arrays by adding support for arbitrary array geometries with directive elements and mutual coupling, in addition to element amplitude, phase, and positioning errors. Lastly, a simple formula for approximate bounds of uniformly bounded errors is derived and numerically verified. This formula gives insights into how array size and apodization cannot reduce the worst-case peak sidelobe level beyond a certain limit.

Rodrigo de Azevedo Weimer

Existe uma sólida tradição historiográfica, desde os anos 1980, sobre pobreza e territorialidade urbanas em Porto Alegre (`PESAVENTO, 1989, 1994, 1999, 2001, 2006; MONTEIRO, 1995; KERSTING, 1998; GERMANO, 1999; MATTOS, 2000; MAUCH, 2004; VIEIRA, 2017; XAVIER; BOHRER, 2018; ROSA, 2019). Ora dando ênfase a recortes de classe, ora aos raciais, esses importantes estudos convergem no sentido de esmiuçar os recursos simbólicos acionados para estigmatizar os subalternos, justificando a sua expulsão para regiões progressivamente distantes. Ainda que não sejam ignoradas pelos autores mencionados, existem dinâmicas econômicas que convém investigar melhor, particularmente os efeitos dos processos inflacionários e de desvalorização cambial que acompanharam os anos finais do Império e iniciais da República, culminando no período conhecido como Encilhamento. Os processos judiciais de despejo revelam-se fontes privilegiadas para abordar tais questões. Sem querer cair em dicotomias que contrapõem o cultural e o econômico, acredita-se haver aspectos ausentes nas explicações até o momento discutidas pela bibliografia.

Laura Caicedo

Ana-Mauríne Lara’s Erzulíe’s Skirt, a contemporary novel set in the Dominican Republic which follows the lives of multiple generations of women, constantly moves between and outside of borders, whether they be geopolitical, temporal, or in narrative form. Just as well, Rita Indiana’s Tentacle, a speculative novel also set in the Dominican Republic, challenges borders through the story of its main protagonist and his struggles with spirits, queerness, and the politics of a dying world. Both novels utilize the environment as a grounding force that provides insight into the respective trials the characters face, both within the scope of the orishas’ continued presence as both spirits and representatives of the land and water which informs much of the narratives, and the spatiotemporal politics of the Dominican Republic. Through the machinations of the spirits who guide the characters in both novels, and the consistent engagement with questions of family, queer lifeworlds, and time, Lara and Indiana demonstrate the interconnectedness of borders, environments, and time to varying ends. By providing narratives which begin to map out worlds beyond death, be they ends or beginnings, the authors contend with the violences of the past in ways that point to the potentialities of the future. What these futures look like, as Tentacle and Erzulie’s Skirt tell us, ultimately rely on the limitations or unboundedness of our imaginations.

Luca Mariot

Orthogonal Cellular Automata (OCA) have been recently investigated in the literature as a new approach to construct orthogonal Latin squares for cryptographic applications such as secret sharing schemes. In this paper, we consider OCA for a different cryptographic task, namely the generation of pseudorandom sequences. The idea is to iterate a dynamical system where the output of an OCA pair is fed back as a new set of coordinates on the superposed squares. The main advantage is that OCA ensure a certain amount of diffusion in the generated sequences, a property which is usually missing from traditional CA-based pseudorandom number generators. We study the problem of finding OCA pairs with maximal period by first performing an exhaustive search up to local rules of diameter $d=5$, and then focusing on the subclass of linear bipermutive rules. In this case, we characterize the periods of the sequences in terms of the order of the subgroup generated by an invertible Sylvester matrix. We finally devise an algorithm based on Lagrange's theorem to efficiently enumerate all linear OCA pairs of maximal period up to diameter $d=11$.

K. Verhoest, S. Thiel, G. Bouckaert et al.

Riccardo Badini

Mario Rufer

Rubén Aylwin, Gerardo Silva-Oelker, Carlos Jerez-Hanckes et al.

This work presents the implementation, numerical examples and experimental convergence study of first- and second-order optimization methods applied to one-dimensional periodic gratings. Through boundary integral equations and shape derivatives, the profile of a grating is optimized such that it maximizes the diffraction efficiency for given diffraction modes for transverse electric polarization. We provide a thorough comparison of three different optimization methods: a first-order method (gradient descent); a second-order approach based on a Newton iteration, where the usual Newton step is replaced by taking the absolute value of the eigenvalues given by the spectral decomposition of the Hessian matrix to deal with non-convexity; and the Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (BFGS) algorithm, a quasi-Newton method. Numerical examples are provided to validate our claims. Moreover, two grating profiles are designed for high efficiency in the Littrow configuration and then compared to a high efficiency commercial grating. Conclusions and recommendations, derived from the numerical experiments, are provided as well as future research avenues.

Federico Bayle, Damian E. Silvani

Data collection through censuses is conducted every 10 years on average in Latin America, making it difficult to monitor the growth and support needed by communities living in these settlements. Conducting a field survey requires logistical resources to be able to do it exhaustively. The increasing availability of open data, high-resolution satellite images, and free software to process them allow us to be able to do so in a scalable way based on the analysis of these sources of information. This case study shows the collaboration between Dymaxion Labs and the NGO Techo to employ machine learning techniques to create the first informal settlements census of Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

María Isabel Cortez, Andrea Vera-Gajardo

In this article we propose to give an account of the history of the Chilean collective of women mathematicians. We will begin by describing the context of the mathematical community in Chile and the process of forming the Collective, together with the first objectives we set ourselves. Then we will continue with an analysis of some reasons that support the need to create a group formed by mathematical women and also the fact of choosing horizontality and autonomy as structural pillars of our organization. On the other hand, we will refer to the main activities that we have carried out and we will provide an overview of the mathematical women's organizations that exist in Latin America. Finally, we will conclude by talking about the research project to which some of the members of the collective are dedicated nowadays (in particular the authors of this article).