The first satellite dish arrived in the South American country of Colombia in 1970. Two decades later, hundreds of them covered the roofs of apartment buildings, community centers, and town halls all around the country. This dissertation follows the trajectory of big satellite dishes by looking at a network that connects amateurs in the United States and traders in Miami and Medellín to populations living in urban and rural Colombia. In a timescale of forty years, big satellite dishes changed not only technologically, but also in how government agents, businesses, and users conceived of them. Grounded in infrastructure studies of media and Latin American communication and science and technology studies, this dissertation looks at three particular aspects: the role of informal infrastructures in the development of technological modernity, the labor and knowledge of local technicians needed in transitions in media technologies, and the participation of media infrastructures in the production of culture. Despite considered stable and finished, infrastructure design and maintenance reveal an important set of values connecting culture and technology. In the case of television, the dissertation explores a network of actors, objects and practices that affected urban and rural spaces and shaped understanding of intellectual property in a Latin American Country. Resumen: La primera antena parabólica llegó a Colombia en 1970. Dos décadas después, cientos de estas cubrieron los techos de edificios de apartamentos, centros comunitarios y alcaldías de todo el país. Esta disertación sigue la trayectoria de las grandes antenas parabólicas al observar una red que conecta a los aficionados en los Estados Unidos y los comerciantes en Miami y Medellín con las poblaciones que viven en las zonas urbanas y rurales de Colombia. En una escala de tiempo de cuarenta años, las grandes antenas parabólicas cambiaron no solo tecnológicamente, sino también en cómo los concebían los agentes gubernamentales, las empresas y los usuarios. Basada en estudios de infraestructura de medios y estudios latinoamericanos de comunicación y ciencia y tecnología, esta disertación analiza tres aspectos particulares: el papel de las infraestructuras informales en el desarrollo de la modernidad tecnológica, el trabajo y el conocimiento de los técnicos locales necesarios en las transiciones en las tecnologías de los medios, y la participación de las infraestructuras de medios en la producción de cultura. A pesar de considerarse estable y terminado, el diseño y el mantenimiento de la infraestructura revelan un conjunto importante de valores que conectan cultura y tecnología. En el caso de la televisión, la disertación explora una red de actores, objetos y prácticas que afectaron los espacios urbanos y rurales y moldearon la comprensión de la propiedad intelectual en un país latinoamericano.

During the work of this research project we were interested in mathematical techniques that give us an insight to the following questions: How do we understand the trading decisions made by a manager of a hedge fund and what influences these decisions? In what way does an illiquid market affect these decisions and the performance of the fund? And how does the payment scheme affect the investor’s decisions? Based on existing work on hedge fund management, we start with a fund that can be modelled with one risky investment and one riskless investment. Next, subject to the hedge fund special reward scheme we maximise the expected utility of wealth of the manager, by controlling the percentage invested in the risky investment, namely the portfolio. We use stochastic control techniques to derive a partial differential equation (PDE) and numerically obtain its corresponding viscosity solution, which provides a weak notion of solutions to these PDEs. This is then taken to a liquidity constrained scenario, to compare the behaviour of the two scenarios. Using the same approach as before we notice that due to the liquidity restriction we cannot use a simple model to combine the risky and riskless investments as a total amount, and hence the PDE is one order higher than before. We then model an investor who is investing in the hedge fund subject to the manager’s optimal portfolio decisions, with similar mathematical tools as before. Comparisons between the investor’s expected utility of wealth and the utility of having the money invested in the risk-free investment suggests that, in some cases, the investor is paying more to the manager than the return he is receiving for having invested in the hedge fund, compared to a risk-free investment. For that reason we propose a strategic game where the manager’s action is to allocate the money between the two assets and the investor’s action is to add money to the fund when he expects profit. The result is that the investor profits from the option to reinvest in the fund, although in some extreme cases the actions of the manager make the investor receive a negative value for having the option. En el desarrollo de este proyecto de investigación estamos interesados en las técnicas matemáticas que puedan brindar información sobre las siguientes preguntas: Cómo entendemos las decisiones de compra-venta de acciones de administrador de fondos de cobertura y qué influencia esas decisiones? Y cómo afecta el esquema de pagos estas decisiones? Basados en trabajos existentes en administración de fondos de cobertura, empezamos con un fondo que puede ser modelado con un activo riesgoso y un activo libre de riesgo. A continuación y sujeto al esquema de pagos particular de los fondos de cobertura, maximizamos la esperanza de la utilidad de la riqueza para el administrador, controlando el porcentaje invertido en el activo riesgoso, llamado el portafolio. Usamos las técnicas de control estocástico para derivar una ecuación diferencial parcial (EDP) y de forma numérica obtuvimos su correspondiente solución de viscosidad, la cual es una noción débil para las soluciones de estas EDPs. Luego, llevamos este modelo a un escenario con una restricción de liquidez, para comparar el comportamiento de ambos escenarios. Bajo la misma aproximación de antes, notamos que debido a la restricción en liquidez no podemos usar un modelo que simplemente combine los activos riesgosos y libre de riesgo en un monto total, en consecuencia la EDP es de un orden mayor que la anterior. A continuación modelamos un inversionista el cual invierte en el fondo de cobertura y está sujeto a las decisiones del administrador del fondo, para esto usamos herramientas matemáticas similares a las usadas anteriormente. Las comparaciones hechas entre la utilidad de riqueza esperada por el inversionista y la utilidad de invertir en un activo libre de riesgo nos sugieren que, en algunos casos, el inversionista está pagando más al administrador que el exceso de retorno que recibe por invertir en un fondo de cobertura, esto cuando se compara con una inversión sin riesgo. Por esta razón proponemos un juego estratégico donde las acciones del administrador son distribuir el dinero entre los dos activos y las acciones del inversionista son adicionar más dinero al fondo cuando espera ganancia. El resultado es que el inversionista obtiene ganancias por la opción de reinvertir en el fondo, aunque en algunos casos extremos las acciones del administrador hacen que el inversionista reciba un valor negativo por tener la opción.

Drawing on a wide range of academic literature and one company case study (Kozhya), the purpose of this research is to bring the attention of the German cosmetic luxury companies into the Colombian market. This study builds on an extensive review of academic literature, primary empirical research, and secondary research through the consultation of official and updated sources. The outcomes present the market entry strategies to penetrate the Colombian cosmetic luxury market in the current context, answering to the contemporary problematics of the economic and cultural market entry barriers. Based on potential customers and experts’ interviews, these strategies are formulated from the customer’s point of view. This study extends luxury cosmetic studies to define an under-investigated potential market in Colombia, in the frame of the luxury cosmetic/anti-aging company, and the components that makeup Kozhya’s business model. By adopting a critical perspective of the existing secondary data and the empirical collected information, this investigation offers an original contribution to the field of international business, market entry barriers and market entry strategies, and introduces avenues for generalization and future research.

Placemaking and community engagement are ongoing concerns for the development of healthier and more inclusive cities. People move to cities looking for financial, social and political stability and by the year 2050, it is expected that two-thirds of the human population will be living in a city, spaces which represent beyond their physical infrastructures a multilayered complexity of human relations and interactions. This work aims to test the disruption possibilities of design, written language, and storytelling as tools to make evident the active role of individuals in the construction and development of their physical space. The objective of this project is to test design as a medium of positive activism to spark community creation. Through different experiments, I connect design thinking methods with the fields of storytelling and activism, in order to develop community-making processes. The concept of -The City- is approached from a scale perspective, from house, to neighbour, to district, to city, and points out the lack of interaction and communication among neighbours as one of the elements responsible of the insular lifestyle mode of today’s western societies. An issue which is playing a harmful effect in human health and politics. For the practical phase of the research, I chose a student accommodation building in the district of Deutz in the city of Cologne. A building initially characterized by the lack of care among its inhabitants but at the same time with the potential to become a hub for multicultural exchange. Concepts from psychology, architecture, storytelling, and language are intertwined through the research with the aim of making unknown individuals feel part of a group and envision a physical environment together. The same way as a narration the work is divided into three main phases: Reading cities, Writing cities and Re-reading cities. Through them, concepts of belonging and co-creation, are linked with the possibilities of design as a way of activism to become a tool to gradually change the perceptions of physical space and to build upon the idea of what is needed to design and who designs.

In season sensing of crop architectonics is important for identifying and preventing potential stresses as well as optimizing crop management logistics. Measurements of chlorophyll content, size, density, and/or temperature of the canopy have been used as primary in situ diagnostic tools. The goal of this study was to develop a prototype sensor system that would integrate laser proximity measurements as the basis for a low-cost instrumented system for green vegetable production. The system involves circular scanning of crop canopies to identify fresh biomass under different soil and management conditions. The first experiment was conducted in a greenhouse with lettuce and kale. Biomass was estimated from the sensor system's measurements resulting in R2 values between 0.74 and 0.93, percentage error between 25% and 55%, and root mean squared error (RMSE) between 0.295 ln(g) and 0.441 ln(g). These values include both dry and fresh biomass for lettuce and kale. The second experiment in a spinach field on a commercial farm produced similar results. Two approaches for processing the laser-based height profiles are discussed: regression of profile-representative features and inference of a canopy density function. Depending on the processing method, the R2 was either 0.78 or 0.94, and the RMSE was 4.18 t/ha and 2.16 t/ha for each case. The mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) was around 30% for both methods. The second experiment featured improved hardware in terms of ease of operation. Proper use of this technology will allow farm managers to improve harvest plans and shipment schedules under variable plant growth dynamics. Resumen: La detección de la arquitectura de cultivos en temporada es importante para identificar y prevenir posibles estreses, así como para optimizar la logística de administración de cultivos. Mediciones del contenido de clorofila, del tamaño, de la densidad y/o de la temperatura del dosel de las plantas han sido usadas in situ como herramientas diagnósticas primarias. El objetivo de este estudio fue desarrollar el prototipo de un sistema de sensores que integrara mediciones de proximidad a partir de láser como base para un sistema de instrumentación de bajo costo para la producción de vegetales verdes. El sistema involucra un escaneo circular del dosel de los cultivos para identificar la biomasa fresca bajo diferentes condiciones de manejo y de suelo. Un primer experimento se llevó a cabo en un invernadero con lechuga y col rizada. La biomasa fue estimada a partir de las mediciones del sistema de sensores resultando en valores de R2 entre 0.74 y 0.93, porcentajes de error entre 25% y 55%, y un error cuadrático medio (RMSE) entre 0.295 ln(g) y 0.441 ln(g). Estos valores incluyen biomasa tanto fresca como seca para lechuga y col rizada. El segundo experimento en un campo de espinaca de una granja comercial produjo resultados semejantes. Se discuten dos métodos para procesar los perfiles de altura basados en láser: regresión de características representativas del perfil e inferencia de la función de densidad del dosel. Dependiendo del método de procesamiento, R2 fue 0.78 o 0.94 y RMSE fue 4.18 t/ha o 2.16 t/ha respectivamente. El error porcentual absoluto medio (MAPE) fue alrededor de 30% para ambos casos. El segundo experimento destacó mejoras en el equipo en términos de facilidad de operación. Un uso apropiado de esta tecnología permitirá a los gerentes de granja mejorar sus planes de cosecha y programación de transporte de sus mercancías bajo dinámicas variables de crecimiento de plantas.

No. 5. Lento (05 min. 32 sec.) / Sitt -- No. 6. Allegro, molto vivace (01 min. 39 sec.) / Sitt -- No. 1. Moderato (02 min. 48 sec.) / Sitt -- No. 4. Allegro (01 min. 20 sec.) / Sitt -- No. 3. Allegro (01 min. 47 sec.) / Sitt -- No. 2. Andante sostenuto (04 min. 10 sec.) / Sitt -- Élégie, Op. 44 (05 min. 31 sec.) / Glazunov -- No. 1. Le Soir (04 min. 04 sec.) / Vierne -- No. 2. Legende (01 min. 59 sec.) / Vierne -- Élégie, Op. 30 (06 min. 55 sec.) / Vieuxtemps -- Reverie (06 min. 16 sec.) / Wieniawski -- Romance oubliee, S132/R467a (04 min. 33 sec.) / Liszt -- Romance, Op. 4 (arr. T. Zimmermann for viola and piano) (04 min. 10 sec.) / Kreisler -- Aucassin and Nicolette, "Canzonetta medievale" (arr. T. Zimmermann for viola and piano) (03 min. 28 sec.) / Kreisler -- Adagio (version for viola and piano) (08 min. 36 sec.) / Kodály

No. 5. Lento (05 min. 32 sec.) / Sitt -- No. 6. Allegro, molto vivace (01 min. 39 sec.) / Sitt -- No. 1. Moderato (02 min. 48 sec.) / Sitt -- No. 4. Allegro (01 min. 20 sec.) / Sitt -- No. 3. Allegro (01 min. 47 sec.) / Sitt -- No. 2. Andante sostenuto (04 min. 10 sec.) / Sitt -- Élégie, Op. 44 (05 min. 31 sec.) / Glazunov -- No. 1. Le Soir (04 min. 04 sec.) / Vierne -- No. 2. Legende (01 min. 59 sec.) / Vierne -- Élégie, Op. 30 (06 min. 55 sec.) / Vieuxtemps -- Reverie (06 min. 16 sec.) / Wieniawski -- Romance oubliee, S132/R467a (04 min. 33 sec.) / Liszt -- Romance, Op. 4 (arr. T. Zimmermann for viola and piano) (04 min. 10 sec.) / Kreisler -- Aucassin and Nicolette, "Canzonetta medievale" (arr. T. Zimmermann for viola and piano) (03 min. 28 sec.) / Kreisler -- Adagio (version for viola and piano) (08 min. 36 sec.) / Kodály

This research is focused on the Colombian Government’s flagship post-conflict and statebuilding policy from 2009 to 2015, known as the “Consolidation Policy”. The Government’s policy aimed to transform the governance in post-conflict regions from a social order functional to the armed conflict to such a social order that would promote good governance and inclusive governmental institutions. The analysis sheds light on the limitations and achievements of the policy on the control of corruption and examines the extent to which it shaped the governance order of post-conflict regions in the short term using a mixed methods approach including a differences-in-differences estimation and semi-structured interviews. The analysis is based in the Equilibrium Theory of Control of Corruption, which identifies policy-actionable variables that promote good governance and the control of corruption. This theory was operationalized in the context of post-conflict Colombia. This research determined the changes produced by the Government policy on the control of corruption by comparing control and intervention municipalities. The analysis revealed a mixed effect on the control of corruption where the intervention occurred. The results showed that the Consolidation Policy was associated with more civil society collective actions, at least in a group of municipalities, and an increase in local government accountability to citizens. On the contrary, there seems to be no association of the policy with increments in local government procurement transparency, or disciplinary sanctions to local civil servants by the Office of the Inspector General, one of the state control agencies. The research identifies the main issues that limited the Consolidation Policy’s mixed effect on the control of corruption. First, instead of a quick-impact approach, this research recommends a gradualist, long-term approach that combines insecurity reduction and empowering citizen group’s to keep corruption in check. Second, given the limitations of the Colombian State to regulate governance in conflict affected areas, civil society should be a central partner in the initiatives of good governance promotion.

An accurate understanding of the environment is key for a robot in order to execute tasks safe and efficiently. In the field of perception, after the introduction of deep learning, computer vision tasks have made big leaps, surpassing even the human inference capability. As a trade-off, big amounts of annotated data were required to train such algorithms. On its own, the collection of annotated dataset is a highly time consuming activity prone to human errors, setting a limit to the maximum achievable performance. In this sense, annotations (quality) and samples (quantity) bound the optimization of perception algorithms. One extra challenge encountered when training object detectors for robotics applications is that the sensor setup can be multi-modal, and vary significantly between robots. This work explores how to generate and use synthetic RGB-D training data from a near photo-realistic game engine to train modality-specific person detectors, and perform ablation studies on a challenging, real-world dataset recorded using a reference RGB-D sensor in different intralogistics environments. A virtual RGB-D camera was implemented, leveraging the underlying deferred rendering architecture. Multiple environments were tailored, exploring various data augmentation techniques and enabling the comparison between different types of synthetic data. Detection layers of a pre-trained object detector network have been trained from scratch for the RGB and depth modality, with the latter being transformed by applying a Jet-colormap. Compared to a pre-trained network, a domain gap of 5 mPA points was still present for RGB images. Meanwhile with synthetic (15k) and real (1.5k) depth images, it was already possible to train robust human detectors. Comparing simulation features against data preparation, filtering annotations had a major impact on performance than adopting an explicit time-of-flight sensor model.

No. 5. Lento (05 min. 32 sec.) / Sitt -- No. 6. Allegro, molto vivace (01 min. 39 sec.) / Sitt -- No. 1. Moderato (02 min. 48 sec.) / Sitt -- No. 4. Allegro (01 min. 20 sec.) / Sitt -- No. 3. Allegro (01 min. 47 sec.) / Sitt -- No. 2. Andante sostenuto (04 min. 10 sec.) / Sitt -- Élégie, Op. 44 (05 min. 31 sec.) / Glazunov -- No. 1. Le Soir (04 min. 04 sec.) / Vierne -- No. 2. Legende (01 min. 59 sec.) / Vierne -- Élégie, Op. 30 (06 min. 55 sec.) / Vieuxtemps -- Reverie (06 min. 16 sec.) / Wieniawski -- Romance oubliee, S132/R467a (04 min. 33 sec.) / Liszt -- Romance, Op. 4 (arr. T. Zimmermann for viola and piano) (04 min. 10 sec.) / Kreisler -- Aucassin and Nicolette, "Canzonetta medievale" (arr. T. Zimmermann for viola and piano) (03 min. 28 sec.) / Kreisler -- Adagio (version for viola and piano) (08 min. 36 sec.) / Kodály