Dr. Julio Rojas Mora

Like much of Latin America, Chile’s urban and rural areas present marked contrasts in population, production, and environment. The contribution of this article is to define rural typologies based on the census districts of Chile and to use 35 spatial variables for cluster analysis by Affinity Propagation (AP). AP is a clustering technique that works through the transmission of ‘messages’ between data points, seeking to represent the similarity between these points and find clusters adaptively, thus contributing to the generation of information on common patterns and characteristics in rural territories, which facilitates decision making for territorial planning and development. The results made it possible to identify 95 clusters, which were subsequently reclassified into 34 macroclusters and six macrozones. This analysis contributes to identify the particularities of rural territories with a spatial connotation, providing information for the elaboration of future detailed diagnoses that will serve as a basis for the design of new rural policies.

In this study, we evaluate a CUDA-based simulated annealing algorithm for solving the centralized studentto- school assignment problem. Addressing this issue is critical for enhancing educational equity and efficiency. Optimizing this assignment process not only improves logistical outcomes but also potentially reduces socioeconomic disparities within educational districts. Our objective function aims to minimize a linear combination of the mean student-school distance, which impacts travel time; district segregation, measured by the Dissimilarity Index, which reflects the equity of school placements; and the costs associated with under or overfilled schools, which affect resource allocation. Initially, the system assigns each school to a GPU block, exploring a set number of students per block defined by thread count. Each thread reassigns a student to the school designated for its block. Following this, a parallel reduction process captures the best solution at each iteration, first by threads then by blocks (many-to-many neighbor selection method). Increasing exploration through more blocks and threads accelerates the algorithm's cooling, degrading solution quality. Conversely, reducing the number of exploring schools improves outcomes, scaling positively with thread count. We thus optimize by comparing results using the same school across multiple blocks with diverse student explorations through assigned threads (one-to-many neighbor selection method). Performance, in terms of minimizing the objective function, enhances with the total number of blocks multiplied by threads. A key finding is that while a parallelized simulated annealing algorithm offers a robust tool for this problem, ambitious exploration strategies must be managed carefully to avoid falling into local minima, a paradoxical result of the algorithm's rapid cooling dynamics.

Cloud computing, typically provided by large infrastructure providers, allows companies to utilize services efficiently under the premise of cost reduction. Known as the “public cloud,” this model contrasts with the “private cloud,” often perceived as costly and complex to implement. However, when high availability is required, the complexities of both models align, and the costs associated with public cloud services can become prohibitive. This paper explores the technical feasibility and economic viability of deploying private cloud infrastructure using refurbished hardware. It presents a detailed architecture incorporating Canonical MaaS for Metal-as-a-Service (MaaS), OpenNebula for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), and Incus for Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), with Moodle as the application layer case study. The study finds that private clouds, especially those utilizing refurbished hardware, not only offer a costeffective alternative to public clouds but also enhance security with complete control over data and systems, provide customizable self-management to meet specific organizational needs, utilize existing resources more efficiently for greater sustainability, and ensure technological sovereignty by reducing dependency on public cloud providers. These benefits collectively underscore the strategic advantages of adopting private cloud infrastructures in certain contexts.

In this article, we present the R package mutualinf for computing and decomposing the mutual information index of segregation by means of recursion and parallelization techniques. The mutual information index is the only multigroup index of segregation that satisfies strong decomposability properties, both for organizational units and groups. The mutualinf package contributes by (1) implementing the decomposition of the mutual information index into a "between" and a "within" term; (2) computing, in a single call, a chain of decompositions that involve one "between" term and several "within" terms; (3) providing the contributions of the variables that define the groups or the organizational units to the overall segregation; and (4) providing the demographic weights and local indexes employed in the computation of the "within" term. We illustrate the use of mutualinf using Chilean school enrollment data. With these data, we study socioeconomic and ethnic segregation in schools.

Finding the minimum winning coalition (MWC) is a particular case of clustering problems constrained on the clusters’ size. As such, this problem is NP-Hard, posing an exciting challenge in optimization. In this work, we present a new adhoc algorithm to solve the MWC problem, which identifies the same MWC found by a genetic algorithm implemented under the same platform. The algorithm works deterministically and achieves a solution in tenths of a second for a real problem with high complexity, the political spectrum of the House of the 75° Congress of the USA as calculated with DW-Nominate. Hence, the solution time is two orders of magnitude better than the average time it takes for the genetic algorithm to find it.

Interaction spaces influence emotional regulation, due to the link between bodies, emotions and places. On the one hand, a series of emotions are projected on a certain space, on the other hand, spaces have the capacity to generate different emotional responses in people. The objective of this research was to identify the direct and indirect effects of the organization of school spaces on emotional regulation and learning. Eleven key informants participated, divided into professionals who work or have demonstrated their experience in the school educational context. The design was non-probabilistic and an analysis of the level of incidence in first and second order was carried out, in order to find the forgotten effects in the explanation of the object of study. The results show that the main indirect effects are that of the school infrastructure both on the development of respect for others and on the ability to control negative emotions, both mediated by the learning environment. On the other hand, the use of the Mapuzungun language in the school educational context has indirect effects on the behavior and regulation of the emotions of the students, having as main mediator the interpersonal relationships that occur in the school educational context.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the emergence of indirect trade flows prompted by the export interaction of the world’s economies. Using data on exports from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) for the period 2016–2021, we construct an international trade network which is analyzed through the “forgotten effects theory” that identifies tuples of countries with an origin, intermediary countries, and a destination. This approach intends to spotlight something beyond the analysis of the direct trade network by the identification of second and third-order paths. The analysis using both network analyses, as well as the forgotten effect approaches, which show that the international trade network presents a hub-and-spoke behavior in contrast to most extant research finding a core-periphery structure. The structure is then comprised of three almost separated trade networks and a hub country that bridges commerce between those networks. The contribution of this article is to move the analysis forward from other works that utilize trade networks, including those of econometric nature—such as the ones based on gravity models—by incorporating indirect relationships between countries, which could provide distinctive and novel insights into the study of economic networks.

ResumenEl principal objetivo de este estudio es determinar el impacto de la participación femenina en la producción científica.Se utilizan datos publicados por el Consejo Nacional de Educación (CNED, 2020) y se examina la producción científica de 63 universidades chilenas en el período 2009-2019.Se analiza la distribución por género y se utiliza el modelo econométrico de efectos fijos con datos de panel.Los resultados muestran que a nivel de universidades persiste la desigualdad según sexo en la matrícula estudiantil y en la planta académica, la cual incide negativamente en la productividad científica.Se concluye que en la medida en la que las universidades desarrollen políticas de equidad en la participación de la mujer a nivel de matrícula estudiantil o en su planta académica se debería apreciar un aumento en la productividad científica.

ASTM D6433 is used to assess the need for maintenance of pavement sections. Although the Pavement Condition Index (PCI) factor calculation method provides reliable values, this method analyzes sections and defects individually and indicates current maintenance needs, but it cannot be used to predict the occurrence of new defects. Therefore, it is necessary to complement this method by considering variables that influence the occurrence of faults, among which are the geospatial distribution and the specific characteristics of the slabs. This research focuses on the identification of multiple types of disturbances that exist in Portland Cement Pavements (PCC), located in a high traffic area in the city of Valdivia (Chile). A spatial geostatistical relationship is established through visual inspection using geographical maps, as well as distribution, using the kriging method. This technique makes use of variograms that allow quantifying the parameters used in this study, thus expressing the spatial autocorrelation of the faults analyzed. From the results obtained by spatial geostatistics and kriging, it is possible to generate a data correlation for the distribution and characteristics of the streets considered. In addition, a co-kriging method is established instead of an ordinary kriging method. The relationship between observed and predicted values improved from 0.3327 to 0.5770. The width of the slabs, as well as some streets, is shown in our analysis to be unimportant. For better model accuracy, the number of covariates associated with the type of vehicle traffic, the age and shape of the slabs, and the construction techniques used for the pavement needs to increase.

Al declarar que el Objetivo de Desarrollo Sostenible 9 activa otros de los diecisiete objetivos propuestos en 2015 por Naciones Unidas en esta materia, la Organización Mundial de la Propiedad Intelectual induce a que los gobiernos incentiven la relación entre la universidad y la industria, como principales productoras de resultados de investigación patentables. A partir de datos recogidos entre 2017 y 2018 en las siete universidades que más patentan en Chile, encontramos que, primero, existen relaciones entre los entrevistados y la industria; segundo, la mayoría de los entrevistados ha patentado; tercero, estas patentes no surgen de proyectos industria-universidad; y cuarto, la patente no se percibe como un incentivo fundamental para el desarrollo. Por tanto, el modelo chileno de producción de investigación y desarrollo (I+D) parece más lineal que de triple hélice.

We propose two ordinal classifiers (logistic regression and LightGBM) to estimate the school learning level (obtained by an ordinal transformation of the school’s average score in the math section of the SIMCE test) for students in the 4 th grade of primary schooling. We trained these classifiers with socioeconomic variables that characterize Chilean schools. This dataset included Alonso-Villar and Del Río’s local segregation index to measure socioeconomic and gender segregation at the school level compared to the district level. For the socioeconomic segregation, we used a vulnerability criterion based on the status of a student as a recipient of the subsidy established by Law 20.248 (SEP). We used a greedy algorithm based on Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) and the Prediction Power Score (PPS) to automatically select the most orthogonal features in this dataset. This algorithm selected six variables, being the most important the self-esteem and motivation index, and both the socioeconomic and gender segregation of the school. Due to the inherent imbalance in the data, we used Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique for Nominal and Continuous (SMOTE-NC) on the training data and random under-sampling on the test data. The classifiers were hyperparametrized with Bayesian optimization to avoid exploring the whole hyperparameter space. Ordinal logistic regression had slightly better A U C and slightly worst accuracy than LightGBM. Nevertheless, a boosting algorithm applied to the ordinal logistic regression classifier slightly improved its performance over LightGBM, both in AUC and accuracy.

In this work, we implemented a CUDA parallelized simulated annealing algorithm to solve the student-school assignment problem in a highly segregated environment. The objective function optimized considered the average distance from the students to their assigned school, the socio-economic segregation via the dissimilarity index, and the cost of schools partially filled. Using data from the MINEDUC, the INE, and the Municipality of Temuco (Chile), we simulated the distribution of Temuco's student population, solving its students' assignment to the city's schools (29853 students to 85 schools). The results obtained were better with a high number of block (simultaneous students exploring), and a low number of threads (simultaneous schools explored by these students) instantiated in the GPU. Algorithm execution time worsens with the number of blocks and the number of threads, although it remained below 1000 seconds in the worst and below 400 seconds in the best case. However, the algorithm achieves excellent results in reducing socio-economic segregation, taking it from a high level to almost making it disappear. We achieved this result, even with a reduction of the average distance from students to their assigned school.

The pandemic context forced most of the Higher Education Institutions, and therefore their faculties, to face a semester of teaching in an online mode. The universities defined general guidelines and strategies to try to guarantee a minimum quality of the process. However, the literature reports that, depending on its particularities, preparing a semester-long online course requires a design of several months. Therefore, each lecturer worked according to her experience, guidelines, and support she received: "What could be done, was done." This article reports the teaching experience of the 1st semester 2020 of the Computer Science undergraduate program at the Universidad Católica de Temuco. Some lecturers of this undergraduate program had previous experience in online training; hence they designed strategies that differed in teaching, evaluation, and interaction methodologies while using several technologies available to them. A sample of 115 of our students answered a questionnaire to assess the preferences and problems during this semester. The results show a heterogeneous set of clusters. However, they point to a constructivist asynchronous vision in a group of our students that prefer short videos uploaded by their professors, and the resources that, by their means, they find on the Internet, point towards a constructivist asynchronous vision in a group of our students. The results also allowed us to rescue good practices that help in proposing an emergency online teaching model that will guide the design of the second-semester courses.

la experiencia de la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Administrativas de la Universidad Austral de Chile en implementar un programa que fomenta el emprendimiento y el desarrollo de habilidades para emprender entre sus estudiantes de pregrado.Como metodología, el programa ha utilizado métodos de reciente uso en el contexto universitario a través de la creación de una asignatura que facilita el desarrollo de proyectos de emprendimiento con un enfoque social, colaborativo e interdisciplinario.De los resultados de la experiencia, se menciona la generación de 39 proyectos estudiantiles en el período de análisis entre otras iniciativas realizadas por el programa.Se concluye que la experiencia puede aportar a la discusión y diseño de este tipo de experiencias en las universidades chilenas.

La tradición “bancaria” de la enseñanza de derecho y las formas tradicionales de evaluación basadas en la exposición fiel de contenidos, han sido ampliamente criticadas en la literatura. Como estrategia disruptiva de esta tradición, en este trabajo se expone la aplicación de la Evaluación Basada en la Certeza (CBM) en un curso obligatorio de primer año de la carrera de derecho de una universidad del sur de Chile, durante el año académico 2018-2019. Mediante la CBM se busca pasar del mero “recuerdo” de conocimientos a la “evaluación” de los mismos. Para lograr este objetivo, las/los estudiantes, mediante un modelo de aprendizaje autorregulado, deben autoevaluarse tanto con retroalimentación interna como externa. Los resultados principales alcanzados muestran que los alumnos aplican procesos de autorregulación y autoevaluación al seleccionar el nivel de certeza que maximiza su puntaje esperado. Mediante un modelo mixto con efectos aleatorios, controlando por efectos fijos de prueba, podemos confirmar que la probabilidad de responder correctamente una pregunta tiene como predictores significativos la retroalimentación, la longitud de la prueba y el nivel de certeza de la respuesta. Por contra, el género del/de la estudiante no es un predictor significativo, ni aisladamente, ni como término de interacción con otras covariables.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Chinese indirect trade relations in the global trade network to observe if the objectives identified by Cai (2017) in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) are being fulfilled, especially with Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries. Design/methodology/approach Using data from the UNCTAD (2016) for the period 2011–2015, a normalized exports network is built. It is analyzed with the Forgotten Effects Theory and the PageRank algorithm. A Monte Carlo experiment with 10,000 replicates is performed to account for its volatility. Findings The paper identifies one instance in which China's peripheral countries are importing raw materials and commodities -–oil products – to produce low technological value-added products, which, in turn, are exported to China. LAC countries do not have significant indirect trade relations with China when the former is the origin country, while the latter is the destination in a trade relationship. The trade network has a clear core-periphery structure, with China belonging to its core, although being only the fourth most central node in the network. Originality/value This paper contributes with both a new methodology for the analysis of indirect trade relations and the results found for China under the BRI and its trade relationship with LAC economies.

The aim of this study is to examine the incidence of economic activity on soft innovation in the mining sector. Through a global analysis of indirect incidents and using the theory of forgotten effects. Thus, the case of the mining industry in Chile was analyzed, given that it is one of the industries that contributes the most to GDP in Chile. The empirical study was carried out through the application of a structured survey towards three experts from the mining sector. In addition, the study concludes with evidence that oil price has a direct incidence on investments in mining and economic expectations, and indirectly in average income middle managers, market share of the company in the mining sector, and growth of imports and exports in the mining sector.

S3E2 is a web-based geographic information system (GIS) designed for the visualization and analysis of the socioeconomic segregation of Chile’s elementary education system of Chile. It consists of a frontend developed in JavaScript using ReactJS, React-Redux, Leaflet and D3.js, an API developed in Go and ECHO, and a documentary database man- aged with MongoDB. Data comes from Chile’s Ministry of Education, while the provisions of Law 20.248 serve as indicators of vulnerability. S3E2 graphically shows different segregation indices found in the literature, calculated at the commune level. It also allows visualizing, at this same level, the educational institutions that compose it, their basic information, and time series associated with them. S3E2 is a flexible and fast web-based GIS, with a low cost of implementation, due to the usage of free software -or at least free licensing- tools, thus serving as a template for new web-based GIS in different contexts.

The reduction of student segregation should be one of the priorities of any state in terms of educational legislation and regulation since there is empirical evidence that students belonging to families in vulnerable situations, who attend less segregated schools, tend to have better academic results. In this work, we implement the reaction-diffusion model to simulate decentralized student enrollment. Reaction-diffusion equations are used in conjunction with the finite volumes method to generate a discrete domain of space over which students search for a suitable school and the explicit Euler method for the approximation of time. The computational implementation, through CUDA, allows solving for the problem of wide territories, such as cities, taking advantage of the performance benefits offered by parallel computing by GPU at a low cost. In our tests, simulations have a low runtime, converging to the total assignment of students to schools.

Peer learning (PL) is a strategy where students learn from each other without direct teacher intervention. Five pillars support this strategy: interaction, negotiation, organization, feedback, and evaluation. According to the problems students face, self-learning is one of the tools they need to face and is a generic competence they should apply. This article presents a PL experience in the undergraduate degree in Computer Science Engineering (CSE) of the Catholic University of Temuco (UCT), emphasizing how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can support each pillar. The curriculum includes a course called Integration Workshop (IW), a capstone course to instantiate the competences acquired by the students up to that point. In this experience, we joined teams from IW II, as developers, and IW IV, as SCRUM Masters. Students rated the experience positively while highlighting the development of other generic competences such as collaborative work, knowledge management, and valuation and respect for diversity.

This paper proposes a synthetic indicator that measures the degree of development of Chilean universities, by quantitatively assessing each institution's missions (research and teaching). A model of structural equations solved through partial least squares is used, analyzing data from 54 universities in Chile, from the year, 2017. The results show that there are important differences among universities regarding the degree of development they present, according to the measure of the intensity with which they perform research and teaching activities. The article proposes public policy measures linked to improving the university education system that would help reduce the gap between the lowest performing universities and those that lead the system.

Global changes and current trends have led to major revisions in the field of education. In the context of higher education, it has proliferated successfully to move the curricula to a competency-based education. Also, the incorporation of ICT in the training process is a growing trend that has been strongly positioned in all levels of education. However, beyond the models and paradigms, what is relevant is the implementation of an innovative proposal. This is where the problems of a complex implementation are experienced. At UC Temuco, the computer science program renewed its curriculum to a competency model. For the evaluation of achievement of competences, a course called integration workshop is included in the curriculum at the end of each year. These courses include a series of individual and group strategies, which have been designed, refined and improved over the years. ICT is a strong component in the support of strategies, including tools for collaboration, authorship, software project management, among others. The workshops are evaluated externally through an event called "project fair", where actors from the business, government and academic world are invited. Results have been very satisfactory and have allowed a continuous improvement of the strategies and the selection of ICT support tools.

En este trabajo nos proponemos dos objetivos: primero, exponer cómo la novedad, como requisito para la obtención de una patente, obstaculiza la realización de una ciencia abierta en términos de comunicación y uso; segundo, determinar los incentivos que llevan a la industria a optar por una ciencia abierta en los términos propuestos, dejando de lado el patentamiento. Para lograrlos, primero presentaremos los argumentos jurídicoeconómicos que llevan a considerar la patente como incentivo del desarrollo tecnocientífico, pero cómo el “efecto red” es coartado por la misma. Segundo, analizaremos el período de gracia como excepción que impide que la divulgación de la invención, previa a la solicitud de una patente, no destruya la novedad. Finalmente, estudiaremos cómo la industria acoge y alienta al software libre, caso paradigmático de la ciencia abierta, al identificar que el “efecto red” genera una utilidad superior a la de otras estrategias de producción científica.

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar el comportamiento de la ocupacion en el mercado del trabajo en Chile a nivel regional, determinando las diferencias y similitudes entre regiones, y de las regiones con el agregado de empleo a nivel nacional. Para la realizacion de dicho trabajo se han utilizado las tasas mensuales de ocupacion regionales y a nivel pais para el periodo 1986-2010, y utilizado metodos de Clusterizacion de series temporales para identificar conjuntos de regiones con comportamientos similares. Los resultados muestran la existencia de diferentes regimenes en los mercados laborales de las regiones y el relevante rol de algunas regiones en el comportamiento del agregado nacional. The objective of this work is to analyze the employment behavior in the labor market in Chile at the regional level, determining the differences and similarities between regions, and of the regions with the aggregate employment at the national level. For this work, we studied the monthly regional employment rates during the 1986-2010 period for Chile by applying time series clustering methods to identify regions with similar dynamics. Afterward, we use that information to build a model that explains the contributions from the regional markets to the national aggregate. Results show the existence of regimes on the local labor markets and the relevance of the Metropolitan Region on the country-level behavior.

RESUMEN: El objetivo de este trabajo ha sido analizar el grado de sincronismo entre el ciclo económico de la Región de Magallanes respecto del ciclo económico nacional para el período 1985-2010. Para determinar el ciclo económico se ha usado el procedimiento de Harding y Pagan (2002) y medido el sincronismo con el índice de contingencia de Pearson. Nuestros resultados muestran evidencia de diferentes grados de sincronismo entre los ciclos económicos regionales respecto del ciclo económico nacional, destacando la región de Magallanes por su menor y mayor volatilidad de su crecimiento económico y por presentar un bajo grado de sincronismo entre su ciclo económico y el ciclo económico nacional, como también con los ciclos de las demás regiones.

Resumen en este trabajo se informan los resultados de una investigación cuyo objetivo fue comprobar la eficacia del programa estatal It's my Turn, implementado por el ministerio de educación de Chile, para el autoaprendizaje del inglés en contextos rurales de todo el país.se midió el aprendizaje de 120 estudiantes de 10 escuelas rurales de la Región metropolitana (Rm) con pruebas de entrada y salida.Asimismo, se realizaron observaciones para examinar la utilización del recurso, y un cuestionario a los docentes para conocer su percepción del programa.una prueba t arrojó una diferencia significativa entre las pruebas de entrada y salida (p < 0,0001), lo que respalda la efectividad del programa.Las observaciones pusieron en evidencia métodos heterogéneos de aplicación y los cuestionarios mostraron que los profesores tienen diferentes perspectivas acerca de la eficacia de It's my Turn.La combinación de resultados cuantitativos y cualitativos apunta a la efectividad del programa, pero también a la necesidad de realizar cambios en su implementación.

The neutral nature of Internet has allowed its consolidation as a crucial tool in the dissemination of knowledge and access to culture. Due the creation of new business models of Internet access, a debate about the need of keeping a neutral Internet has emerged, leading to a sudden regulatory process that seems to emerge from a process of public consensus. However, participation in this debate requires knowledge in telecommunications, economics, and law, leaving participation to expert actors. In public consultations on Net Neutrality and in the resulting legal documents, three fundamental problems related to net neutrality are studied. Firstly, what constitutes a neutral, open and free Internet? Secondly, what is the effect of traffic management and what are the consequences of providing differentiated services? Finally, can transparency be an efficient tool to curb potential violations of net neutrality? This article presents the historical background that led to this debate and how its main points have been treated primarily in USA and Europe.

The growing application of simulation tools to increasingly complex problems makes the use of validation techniques essential to improve confidence in the veracity of those simulation results. The feature selective validation (FSV) method is widely used today, because of its versatility and simplicity. However, despite its many advantages, some problems have been identified in the standardized FSV method. Those drawbacks can produce misleading results for the validation process and constitutes enhancement opportunities for further research on FSV improvement. This paper presents a review that summarizes the major problems of the FSV and their possible solutions as a justification to reform the FSV method and also looking towards the forthcoming update of the standards IEEE 1957.1/2.

International audience

The research objective of this paper is to find out the relation between the influence of a demand point on a center (a facility) location and the distance from this point to this center, according to a given metric, that is to say in our case a Lp-norm. Firstly exposed in a theoretical isotropic space, the relation is discussed and applied to a simple virtual transport network, using intermediate values of p, such as p=1.5 or p=3. Since the individual influence can be mapped, this approach provides to planners an interesting insight into on the impact of the metric on the relation between the center and the demand point influence spatial distribution.

In this paper, we present a tool to help reduce the uncertainty presented in the resource selection problem when information is subjective in nature. The candidates and the ?ideal? resource required by evaluators are modeled by fuzzy subsets whose elements are trapezoidal fuzzy numbers (TrFN). By modeling with TrFN the subjective variables used to determine the best among a set of resources, one should take into account in the decision-making process, not only their expected value, but also the uncertainty that they reflect. Respecting this condition, for each candidate an asymmetric index evaluates the distance between the TrFNs for each of the variables and the corresponding TrFNs of the ?ideal? candidate, consolidating them through a weighted average that lets the decision-maker make the final comparison between the candidates, and the selection of the one best suited. We apply this contribution to the case of the selection of the product that is best suited for a ?pilot test? to be carried out in some market segment.

In this paper we revisit the Textual Energy model. We deal with the two major disadvantages of the Textual Energy: the asymmetry of the distribution and the unbounded ness of the maximum value. Although this model has been successfully used in several NLP tasks like summarization, clustering and sentence compression, no correction of these problems has been proposed until now. Concerning the maximum value, we analyze the computation of Textual Energy matrix and we conclude that energy values are dominated by the lexical richness in quadratic growth of the vocabulary size. Using the Box-Cox transformation, we show empirical evidence that a log transformation could correct both problems.

In this paper, the authors present a methodology to solve the weighted barycenter problem when the data is inherently fuzzy. This method, from data clustered by expert visual inspection of maps, calculates bi-dimensional fuzzy numbers from the spatial clusters, which in turn are used to obtain the weighted fuzzy barycenter of a particular area. The authors apply the methodology, to a particularly apt data set of forest fire breakouts in the PACA region of southeastern France, gathered from 1986 to 2008, and sliced into five periods over which the fuzzy weighted barycenter for each one is obtained. Two weighting schemes based on fire intensity and fire density in a cluster were used. The center provided with this fuzzy method provides leeway to planners, which can see how the membership function of the fuzzy solution can be used as a measurement of “appropriateness” of the final location.

The increasing application of simulation tools to increasingly complex problems makes the use of validation tools essential to improve confidence in the veracity of those simulation results. IEEE Standard 1597.1 is the first true standard for the validation of computational electromagnetics method. This standard uses the feature selective validation (FSV) method as the key quantification tool. However, despite its many advantages, there have been some interesting issues surrounding the validation of transients. This paper presents a new approach to the validation of a set of generally representative transient types using the FSV method and shows how the previously experienced limitations can be overcome. In order to analyze the main parameters associated with transient comparison, a survey which included 20 experts was conducted. This information was used to identify the significant regions that need to be taken into account in the transient comparison. Finally, using the statistics obtained by the experts, a new solution was defined and its improvement over the existing approach was demonstrated.

In this paper, we present a methodology to solve location problems when the data used is inherently fuzzy. This method, from dataclusterized with the fuzzy c��means algorithm, calculates bi-dimensional fuzzy numbers from the clusters which are used to calculatea fuzzy solution. We apply the methodology, with different objective functions, to a particularly apt data set of forest fire breakouts inthe Bouches du Rhone region of southern France, gathered from 1981 to 2009. The robustness of the method is then evaluated witha Monte Carlo simulation in which the number of clusters change. The solution provided with this fuzzy method provides leeway toplanners, which can see how the membership function of the fuzzy solution can be used as a measurement of appropriateness of thefinal location.

International audience

Our goal is to achieve deeper understanding of the limitation of queueing models, on one hand, and of common simulation practice, on the other hand, as tools for predicting performance of bandwidth sharing between competing TCP flows. In particular, we (i) present an overview of simulation pro

The initial aim with the MeAdian was to obtain a local spatial filtering method which enables to process a robust centre based on a combination of the mean and the median. The MeAdian is an auto-adaptive filter that tends to the mean when this one is more robust, to the Median otherwise. The MeAdian, including or not the covariance of the Mean and the Median, remains one of the most robust estimators faced to different distributions, due to its auto-adaptive capabilities. In this paper, we improve the MeAdian filtering for contour detection in image analysis. The results show the double effect of the MeAdian: a combination of smoothing and planing according to the local distributions encountered. The MeAdian tends to define areas with high homogeneity, like the median does, but whose borders are smoothed or antialiased, like the mean does.

Internet growth has allowed unprecedented widespread access to cultural creation including music and films, to knowledge, and to a wide range of consumer information. At the same time, it has become a huge source of business opportunities. Along with great benefits that this access to the Internet provides, the open and free access to the Internet has encountered large opposition based on political, economical and ethical reasons. An ongoing battle over the control on Internet access has been escalating on all these fronts. In this paper we describe first some of the ideological roots of free access to the Internet along with its main opponents. We then focus on the problem of “Internet piracy” and analyze the efficiency of efforts to reduce the availability of copyrighted creations that are available for non-authorized free download.

National audience

espanolDurante el periodo de vida democratica espanola, hemos ido observando, reiteradamente, innumerables �puzzles� surgidos del resultado de unas elecciones generales, autonomicas o municipales que, como solucion, dan paso a gobiernos compuestos por alianzas, momentaneas o duraderas, de varios partidos politicos. En muchas democracias, es condicion sine qua non, despues de unas elecciones, que los partidos politicos que quieran gobernar sumen un numero de representantes que supere el 50% del total de representantes. Ello provoca un periodo de mayor o menor incertidumbre originado por conocer, en principio, cuales podran ser los pactos y con que partidos se alcanzara un gobierno considerado �estable�. Cuando ninguno de los partidos supera este anhelado porcentaje, existe el riesgo de llegar a la peligrosa situacion en donde, desafortunada e injustamente, podria anteponerse el ansia de poder por encima de lo que realmente podria desear en ciudadano al hacer uso de su derecho al voto. ?Que debemos, pues, hacer para conformar un grupo mas cohesionado y coherente, capaz de trabajar con suficiente grado de logica politica? Nuestra aportacion, basada en la toma de decisiones mediante las tecnicas derivadas de las logicas multivalentes (Zadeh,1965), permite hallar la solucion que maximiza el nivel de confianza de la alianza. Esta solucion no solamente toma en cuenta cada grupo politico y su disciplina interna, sino tambien la personalidad, la mentalidad, la tendencia, los valores y los ideales de cada uno de los parlamentarios, asi como su predisposicion a que uno u otro partido controle el gobierno. Como caso practico, hemos realizado un analisis detallado de un ayuntamiento en el que se toman en cuenta los principales temas de interes, divergiendo la valoracion que sobre estos tiene cada concejal segun su ideologia politica. EnglishDuring the life span of Spanish democracy, we have repeatedly observed many puzzles arising from the results of a general, state or municipal election, which, in turn, give way to governments based in partnerships of several political parties. In many democracies, it is a sine qua non condition that, after an election, the political parties that want to form government must have more than 50% of all representatives. This leads to a period of greater or lesser uncertainty caused, in principle, by unknown pacts with parties that can form a government considered stable. When none of the parties exceeds the majority level, there is the risk of the dangerous situation where, unfortunately and unfairly, the thirst for power could take precedence over what the citizens wished when they exercised their right to vote. Therefore, what we must do to form a more cohesive and consistent group, able to work with a sufficient degree of political logic? Our contribution, based on decision-making techniques derived from multivalued logics (Zadeh, 1965), is able to find the solution that maximizes the confidence level of the alliance. This solution not only takes into account each group and its internal discipline, but also the personality, attitudes, trends, values and ideals of individual parliamentarians, as well as their willingness join to one or another party which wants to control the government. As a case study, we performed a detailed analysis of a municipality, taking into account the main themes and diverting valuation we get for each councilman according to their political ideology.

In spite (or perhaps due) to its simplicity, the question of simulating the M/M/1 queue has attracted much interest. It has served as a benchmark as various properties related to the simulation, or to the simulated performance measures, are known for this queue. In this paper we report on some exper