Models of allocative and informational efficiency in Economics and Finance rely on the assumptions of rationality and utility-maximisation in economic agents, yet the tenability of those assumptions in actual large-worlds decision-making remains contested. In this work, an artificial double-auction market populated with Zero-Intelligence Constrained (ZI-C) agents (Gode & Sunder, 1993) is used to elicit information cascades by inducing a rudimentary form of price anchoring in the agents. Our results suggest that this simple bias in otherwise random behaviour accounts for a remarkable degree of aggregate market convergence towards buyers' private maximum valuation price, and could also be implicated as a triggering mechanism of more noxious cascades and bubbles in large-scale markets, phenomena seen to be at odds with the ostensible informational efficiency of financial markets.

75 million of young people around the world are unsuccessfully looking for a job (ILO, 2013). A possible explanation for the growing trend of youth unemployment is skills mismatch defined as the inequity between young people’s skills and capabilities and the demands of the labour market. Countries have implemented active labour market policies to revert that trend and most of them have focused their efforts on disadvantaged people. In Colombia, the government created the “Youth in Action” programme to improve the likelihood of employability for young people under poverty conditions. In 2005, Attanasio, Kugler & Meghir used a randomized experiment in Colombia to explore the impacts of the “Youth in Action” programme showing that the programme had positive results for women in terms of earnings and employment. This paper combines these insights to analyse how important is the field of training that young people receive. Likewise, using a programme evaluation completed in 2013, this research will explore how the field of study may affect the likelihood of being in employment. The results for 2005 and 2013, suggest that in addition to gender, the field of study matters for the labour market and there is evidence of skills mismatch in Colombia.

An introduction of the concepts of fuzzy logic in the area of Human Computer Interaction. The use of current approaches to model the research, and analysis of data are reviewed and a less traditional method based on measurement of degree of participation with scales is introduced and applied to collect the data using surveys. This document assesses this design and examines the analysis and inferences that could be made by using this approach and by applying new fuzzy concepts.The exposed approaches show a deeper understanding of linguistic terms that could lead to richer inferences from data.

Nowadays, the development of global competition has been one of the main factors that have driven the efforts toward the optimisation development. Therefore, oil refineries have been encouraged to be restructured for competing successfully in this new scenario with low profit margin, tighter environmental regulations and more efficient plant operation. However, many years and a lot of human and computational efforts have been dedicated to improve the techniques applied for the overall refinery optimisation. Good developments have come successfully operating at the planning level; but developing and solving rigorous overall plant optimisation models at the production scheduling level still are at research stage and much more work must be done to continue improving in this field through the involvement of difficult tasks due to the mathematical complexity of the models which have the compulsory use of a large quantity of equations and variables that hugely increase the size of the problem. This Thesis presents a new generic mixed integer linear programming model for optimising the scheduling of crude oil unloading, inventories, blending and feed to oil refineries that usually unload several kinds of crude oils with different compositions. The objective function of the model consists on minimising the operational cost generated during the mentioned operation. Case studies are presented and compared each other illustrating the capabilities of the model to solve operation scheduling problems in this area and to support future expansion projects for the system as they happen in real situations. The solution involves optimal operation of crude oil unloading, optimal transfer rates among equipments in accordance with the pumping capacities and tank volume limitations, optimal oscillation of crude oil blended compositions and fulfilment of the oil charging demand per process unit. border’s fringe. 

Construction projects are characterized as complex and risky due to the involvement of many contracting parties and the higher costs of project development. The Construction industry is struggling with many problems and its productivity is clearly decreasing. Many efforts to tackle these problems have been made, but have seen to fall short. Recently a new approach, outside from the traditional model, seems to have the answers to those problems. Thus, this study aims to analyse said approach. This new methodology, based on the principles of the Toyota Production System develop by Ohno, is called Lean Construction. By performing a literature review, the conceptual basis of the lean principles in manufacturing will be analyzed. A review of the actual Construction Industry practices is presented, to later explain the failures of the model and the criticism of made by the scholar behind Lean Construction. With that, the conceptual bases of Lean Construction develop by Lauri Koskela are presented, which shows the applicability of manufacturing principles to construction and the new Transformation, Flow, Values views of construction. Lean Construction in detailed, as well as its application methodologies, taking a special focus on the Last Planner System, which provides a new form of planning and production control to the industry. Finally, through the study of two cases, the success of the model shown.

After the success of reality competition shows such as Project Runway and America’s Next Top Model in the United States, RuPaul’s Drag Race reached the small screen to be the first TV programme of its kind to feature drag queens. Through textual analysis and theories of queer and feminist studies, this thesis joins the fundamental debates about drag and its role in society. With these debates as a starting point, this thesis is dedicated to determining the position of Drag Race within the tension between gay politics and queer politics that lies in the programme’s construction of what drag is supposed to be. By focusing on the relation of masculinity and femininity in drag, and on the role of sleaziness in drag, this thesis argues that RuPaul’s Drag Race refuses to be located unequivocally as a project of either gay or queer politics. This reading does not only propose an innovative take on the programme but it also manages to further problematise the distinction between the two “kinds” of politics.

Conflicts within communities exist all over the world, but more often and violent in zones of poverty, hunger, unemployment and inequality, such as Brazil, specifically its favelas in Rio de Janeiro. Here drug gangs fight each other over territory, power, and drug and arms traffic; and against the official state police. The communities are the victims of these conflicts and they themselves are victims and perpetrators, because they lack opportunities for a better life. When a community is under constant conflict, it loses its people to death, but it loses as well its sense of self-worth and identity, its ability to play, laugh and talk.I will draw upon, for this dissertation, on the concepts of Applied Theatre in conflict zones; impact, change and transformation, and the ethics of working in this setting, by main thinkers such as James Thompson, Jenny Hughes, Michael Balfour, Philip Taylor, Helen Nicholson, François Matarasso, Oliver Bennett, Eleonora Belfiore, Mary Ann Hunter and Paul Heritage. I propose that performing arts can have a positive impact on these types of communities by giving the young men other options of belonging and involvement in society different from the drug gangs, and by giving everyone a better sense of community, entertainment and life.

El trabajo de fabricación de azul llevado a cabo permitió vislumbrar una serie de diferencias, principalmente de coloración (azules de aspecto verdoso y rojizo), las cuales podrían tener alguna relación con la estructura cristalina del pigmento. Teniendo en cuenta este aspecto se emprendió la realización de un estudio que permitiera aclarar algunos de los interrogantes planteados; para ello se recurrió a la técnica de microscopía electrónica de trasmisión (TEM). Con este equipo, a partir de la toma de imágenes tanto de la estructura interna de las partículas (difracción electrónica) como de la superficie de las mismas, se pretendía alcanzar un mejor conocimiento de las relaciones arriba anotadas. Uno de los procedimientos fundamentales para conseguir un buen azul consiste en partir de un caolín que previamente ha sido calcinado, es decir activado térmicamente; por medio de una adecuada activación mecánica del caolín podían conseguirse efectos similares a los que se obtienen por la vía de la calcinación, es decir, liberación del agua de composición interna y la destrucción, de manera parcial, de la estructura cristalina del producto. Partiendo de la premisa anterior se procedió a estudiar el proceso de activación mecánica del caolín como vía alternativa para la fabricación del azul ultramar sin recurrir a la calcinación del mismo. Los resultados preliminares llevados a cabo mostraron la factibilidad del proceso, lo cual se constituye en un aporte fundamental al conocimiento de la fabricación del pigmento conseguido durante la realización de la presente investigación.

En la presente investigación se aplicó un programa de intervención psicológica para la adecuación de la imagen corporal a 26 patinadores artísticos pertenecientes a la Federación Colombiana de Patinaje, con edades comprendidas entre los 18 a 29 años, con un promedio de edad deportiva de 15 años. Las observaciones a entrenamientos y competencias, encuestas realizadas a 10 jueces y 26 entrenadores de la Federación Colombiana de Patinaje, demostraron que estos deportistas, presentaban una excesiva preocupación por su apariencia física, que afectaba su actuación en competencia. Se emplearon para la etapa diagnóstica, las siguientes pruebas psicométricas: el (CIMEC), Cuestionario de influencia de los modelos estéticos corporales, el (CIMPASVIC), Cuestionario de influencia de las modalidades del Patinaje Artístico sobre la valoración de la imagen corporal, el Cuestionario de percepción de causas del éxito deportivo, y la Técnica de autorretrato. Estas pruebas se volvieron a emplear tras la aplicación del programa de intervención, que a su vez estuvo conformado por técnicas de autorregulación, respiración, relajación, autosugestión, automandatos, visualización, literatura de superación y conferencias informativas. Mediante el procesamiento estadístico, de los datos obtenidos tras la aplicación de los diferentes métodos, se pudo comprobar que el programa tuvo una incidencia positiva sobre la valoración de la imagen corporal de los patinadores estudiados, reflejándose esta sobre su actuación competitiva.

La Colombie, est un pays qui a mauvaise réputation dans le monde entier pour la violence liée aux problèmes comme le trafique de narcotiques, la séquestration d’otages et la corruption. Néanmoins, aujourd’hui le pays a commencé une transformation sociale et économique qui a permis d’augmenter l’investissement étranger, le nombre de touristes et de diminuer le taux de pauvreté, de chômage et d’inégalité. Cette renaissance économique a permis que le pays soit considéré comme un pôle de développement dans l’Amérique Latine et qu’il soit classé comme étant la troisième économie de la région après le Brésil et le Mexique. C’est pour cette raison que ces dernières années le gouvernement colombien a travaillé pour la création d’une nouvelle marque nationale comme stratégie de communication afin de présenter la situation actuelle du pays. Une marque nationale cherche à communiquer, sur divers secteurs, aux citoyens et aux personnes des autres pays : comme le secteur de la culture, de l’économie, du tourisme, de l’environnement, de l’investissement, etc. En utilisant des stratégies de communication et de publicité qui montrent l’identité et le potentiel d’une région. Le projet de mémoire que je voudrais travailler dans ce master consiste à connaître comment est reçue et approprié, par les colombiens utilisateurs du réseau social Twitter, la nouvelle Marque de la Colombie, nommée: « La réponse c’est la Colombie », lancée le 7 septembre 2012. « La réponse c’est la Colombie ». Est-ce que ce slogan qui fait parti de la nouvelle marque pays de la Colombie et qui est utilisé comme instrument d’une campagne de communication gouvernementale international, désignée et promue par le gouvernement colombien : est effective, bien reçue et appropriée par les colombiens qui utilisent le réseau social Twitter. En sachant que pendant le début en septembre 2012 le lancement de la nouvelle marque du pays a crée des innombrables réactions sur Twitter sous le hashtag #LaRespuestaesColombia, ce qui en fait une tendance sur le réseau virtuel le 7 septembre 2012, en permettant l’échange critique et positif entre les personnes sur la toile. Étant donné que la communication numérique est devenue de plus en plus importante dans la vie des sociétés d’aujourd’hui, il est important de connaître les opinions favorables ou défavorables qu’ont les colombiens utilisateurs du réseau social Twitter pour savoir si la conception communicative et la stratégie de communication publique mise en place est effective et bien conçue.