Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this dissertation investigates borderscaping processes faced by irregular migrants and their living conditions in Madrid. It aims to study how borders/social boundaries are constructed in the city as irregular migrants move around living their lives -and how they deal to work, to live, to access to healthcare, etc. in a context of borderscapes that are present in the everyday life. This paper also attempts to determine how irregular migrants navigate the city and find ways to contest those borders. Through the case study of irregular migrants, this research examines their social interactions, their experiences with borderscapes surrounding them in different scenarios, and the tactics they implement to make use of the public space. In doing so, it sheds light on the dynamics which link their motivations and ways of getting around in a context of invisible borders. This paper highlights the practices that irregular migrants use to overcome borderscapes in an urban context of precariousness while performing different tactics trying to find a room for maneuver for negotiating their place in the city. This study aims to contribute to broadening the literature on the relation between irregular migration and its impact on multi-ethnic cities. Therefore, the research provides insights to the scholarships of borderscapes, a theoretical approach to the concept of borders as analytical entities that follow the migrant, particularly the one in an administrative irregular situation.

The field of Communication for Development and Social Change (CDSC henceforth) has enriching practices in peacebuilding contexts, especially in post-conflict and fragile states, with the use of approaches like behaviour change, edutainment and participatory media that aim to contribute to peace goals of reconciliation and reconstruction of social fabrics. Despite this, what happens ‘on the field’ has not been translated into theoretical developments of CDSC and peacebuilding studies, with few exceptions like Citizens’ Media (Rodríguez, 2000), Communication for Peace (Hoffmann, 2013) and ICT for Peacebuilding (Hattotuwa, 2004). Based on the above-mentioned frameworks and retaking the seminal CDSC works of Andreas Fuglesang (1982), this dissertation explores the potentialities and uses of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs henceforth) in one of the most sensitive aspects for reconciliation in post-conflict countries, collective memory. Particularly, the research seeks to explore methods used by the organisations and its dialogue with local expressions of memory in the creation of content and narratives that might contribute to the local peacebuilding processes. This is done through two case studies of memory-related initiatives in Colombia that use digital literacy and content production as part of their process. The first case study is the Alfabetizaciones Digitales (AD, Digital Literacies in Spanish), a project of the National Centre for Historical Memory, that worked with victims’ memory initiatives in the creation of websites and multimedia content. The second is Revelando Barrios (RB, Revealing Barrios in Spanish) an initiative of the NGO Ciudad Comuna based on social photography with youngsters of the Comuna 8 of Medellín, Antioquia. Using a methodology that combines Key Informant Interviews, content and data analysis, the main findings pointed to three aspects. First, that there is a general pattern of non-deterministic ICT use in both projects, with potential to foster ‘empowering’ collective actions and inter-generational dialogue. Second, the content analysis allowed the identification of a potential influence of what Fuglesang calls ‘conventions’ of digital language -i.e. the rules for writing on the web- in the content produced for the AD case study. Thirdly, that the main limitations of ICT use are those linked to the digital divide and the sustainability of the process; though, it is noted that participants and implementers developed solidarity mechanisms to alter the limitation of access to Internet and devices such as photo cameras. Dissertation awarded with Distinction, Award for Best Dissertation 2017 of the Graduate Institute of International Development, Agriculture and Economics, University of Reading.

This study presents a state-space modelling framework for the purposes of stock assessment. The stochastic population dynamics build on the notion of correlated survival and capture events among individuals. The correlation is thought to arise as a combination of schooling behaviour, a spatially patchy environment, and common but unobserved environmental factors affecting all the individuals. The population dynamics model isolates the key biological processes, so that they are not condensed into one parameter but are kept separate. This approach is chosen to aid the inclusion of biological knowledge from sources other than the assessment data at hand. The model can be tailored to each case by choosing appropriate models for the biological processes. Uncertainty about the model parameters and about the appropriate model structures is then described using prior distributions. Different combinations of, for example, age, size, phenotype, life stage, species, and spatial location can be used to structure the population. To update the prior knowledge, the model can be fitted to data by defining appropriate observation models. Much like the biological parameters, the observation models must also be tailored to fit each individual case.

En este trabajo de tesis se realiza un ejercicio exploratorio de la realidad actual de la participación laboral femenina en Colombia bajo un análisis sectorial, determinando la composición por género existente en las principales ramas económicas de la economía colombiana y los efectos de esta distribución en la desigualdad por ingresos salariales. La revisión del marco teórico refleja los principales postulados teóricos de la mujer en el desarrollo económico, el concepto de empoderamiento, sus antecedentes mundiales de participación laboral y un panorama de la segregación por género de la que ha sido protagonista. De la misma manera, el estudio identifica el mercado laboral en Colombia y sus principales componentes desde una perspectiva de género. El estudio utilizó datos secundarios de las cuentas nacionales de Colombia, de la Gran Encuesta Integrada de Hogares 2015 y herramientas de análisis como tabla de correlación, gráfico de correlación y un modelo econométrico. Con este análisis se determinó que, aunque Colombia ha estado más en una senda de feminización en su estructura laboral que de desfeminización en los últimos 15 años, la participación laboral de las mujeres colombianas se concentra en los sectores de menor valor agregado. Asimismo, el informe concluye que en Colombia, en media, los hombres perciben mayores ingresos salariales que las mujeres en todos los sectores, pero esta brecha es mayor en los sectores catalogados de mayor nivel agregado, seguido por las ramas de menor productividad (y que reportan mayor participación femenina) y finalmente las ramas de valor agregado medio (donde existe mayor participación masculina. Finalmente, el trabajo de tesis ofrece algunas recomendaciones hacia políticas públicas contra la segregación ocupacional por género.

This paper documents a case study where the transport operations of a word leading provider of paper-based packaging solutions operating in Bogota, Colombia, were measured and improved using lean concepts, methods and tools. The methodology consisted of: (1) direct observations of the transport operations; (2) collection and analysis of data; (3) creation of a Transportation Value Stream Map (TVSM); (4) measurement of the Transportation Overall Vehicle Effectiveness (TOVE); and (5) proposal of improvement recommendations. The TVSM identified six wastes: waiting, resource utilisation, excess movement, over-production, over-processing and behavioural. The TOVE measure resulted in an efficiency of 54%. The study proposed improvement recommendations based on the results of the TVSM and TOVE.

A functional classification methodology, based on the Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space (RKHS) theory, is proposed for discrimination of gene expression profiles. The parameter function involved in the definition of the functional logistic regression is univocally and consistently estimated, from the minimization of the penalized negative log-likelihood over a RKHS generated by a suitable wavelet basis. An iterative descendent method, the gradient method, is applied for solving the corresponding minimization problem, i.e., for computing the functional estimate. Temporal gene expression data involved in the yeast cell cycle are classified with the wavelet-RKHS-based discrimination methodology considered. A simulation study is developed for testing the performance of this statistical classification methodology incomparison with other statistical discrimination procedures.

Abstract: The manufacturing industry remains a critical force in the quest for global sustainability. An increasing number of companies are modifying their operations in favor of more sustainable practices. It is hugely important that all manufacturers, irrespective of the subsector and organizational size, implement practices that reduce or eliminate the negative environmental, social and economic impacts generated by their operations. Consequently, scholars have called for additional studies concerning sustainable manufacturing practices, not only to address the paucity of related literature, but also to contribute to practitioners’ understanding of how to incorporate sustainability into their operations. However, apart from expanding the knowledge of sustainable manufacturing practices, it is first key to understand the ground set of values, or principles, behind sustainable manufacturing operations. For that reason, the purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the existing body of knowledge regarding sustainable manufacturing principles and practices. The results presented in this thesis are based on three studies: a systematic literature review exploring sustainability principles applicable to manufacturing settings, and two empirical studies addressing sustainable manufacturing practices. In general, it is concluded from the literature that there is a little knowledge about sustainability principles from a manufacturing perspective. In relation to the most common sustainable manufacturing practices, it is concluded that these practices mainly refer to energy and material management, and waste management. The study of the adherence of sustainable manufacturing practices to sustainability principles concluded that the principles concerning energy and materials conservation, and waste management create the highest number of practices. Resumen: La industria manufacturera sigue siendo una fuerza crítica en la búsqueda de la sostenibilidad global. Cada vez más empresas están modificando sus operaciones y adoptando prácticas más sostenibles. En consecuencia, los expertos han pedido estudios adicionales sobre las prácticas de manufactura sostenibles, no solo para abordar la poca literatura en este tema, sino también para contribuir a la comprensión de las empresas de cómo incorporar sostenibilidad en sus operaciones. Sin embargo, además de ampliar el conocimiento de prácticas de manufactura sostenibles, primeramente es clave entender el conjunto básico de valores o principios detrás de la manufactura sostenible. Por esa razón, el propósito de esta tesis es contribuir al área de conocimiento con respecto a los principios y prácticas de manufactura sostenible. Los resultados presentados en esta tesis se basan en tres estudios: una revisión sistemática de la literatura que explora los principios de la sostenibilidad aplicables al contexto de la manufactura, y dos estudios de carácter explorativo que abordan las prácticas de manufactura sostenible. Esta tesis concluyó que entre las prácticas de manufactura sostenible más comunes se encuentran las relacionadas con la gestión de energía y materiales y la gestión de residuos. Del mismo modo, el estudio de la adherencia de las prácticas de manufactura sostenibles a los principios de manufactura sostenible se concluye que los principios relacionados a la conservación de la energía y los materiales y la gestión de los residuos generan el mayor número de prácticas.

Anchovy population dynamics in the Gulf of Cádiz are governed by environmental processes. Sea surface temperature, intense easterly winds, and discharges from the Guadalquivir River have been identified as key factors determining early life stage mortality in this anchovy stock. We have constructed an environment-based recruitment model that simulates the abundance of juveniles under alternative parameters representing plausible biological hypotheses. We are able to evaluate how modelling environment-based recruitment can affect stock assessment and how responding to environmental information can benefit fishery management to allow greater average catch levels through the application of harvest control rules (HCRs) based on environmental conditions. While the environment-based rules generally increase allowable catch levels the variance in catch levels also increases, detracting from the improved value based only on average yield. In addition to changes in revenue, the probability of stock collapse is also reduced by using environmental factors in HCRs. To assess the value of these management systems we simulate a notional insurance scheme, which applies a value to both average yields and uncertainty. The value of the information-driven rules can be determined by comparing the relevant premiums payable for equal levels of insurance cover on revenue within each specific management regime. We demonstrate the net value of incorporating environmental factors in the management of anchovies in the Gulf of Cádiz despite the increased variability in revenue. This could be an effective method to describe outcomes for both commercial fisheries and ecosystem management policies, and as a guide to management of other species whose dynamics are predictable based on in-season observations.

Face recognition is a specific case of object recognition. It has received special attention in the recent years due to a great variety of applications such as robot-human interaction, control by gesture, surveillance, security, and people tracking. The idea of face recognition is to give a computer system the ability of finding and recognizing human faces fast and precisely in images or videos. Face recognition aspires to work similar to human perception. Humans identify a big number of known faces, even after years of separation, or under extreme occlusion conditions, e.g. just by looking at a small part of a face. It is a complex task since faces can have different colors, poses, expressions, and sizes or they can be affected by illumination variations or occlusion conditions. Today, there are different methods of face recognition: feature-based approaches (low-level analysis, feature analysis, active shape models) that make explicit use of facial-features such as skin color, facial landmarks or face geometry, and image-based approaches (linear subspace models, neural networks, statistical approaches). The recent increase in the volume of data and computational resources has led to the need for fast and scalable recognition techniques. These techniques should be robust to non-rigid deformations, clutter, occlusion and illumination variations, but, at the same time, they must be sensitive to variations among faces from different persons. For these reasons, neural networks have become a surge of interest Initially, shallow regular neural networks could be used for small image sizes, but they would not scale to deeper networks since a huge amount of parameters would be necessary to be learnt, which can easily cause overfitting. As a result, Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) were proposed. In a CNN, neurons in a layer are connected to small regions of previous layers, which is different to regular neural networks, where all neurons are connected in a full manner. Besides, CNNs make correct assumptions about the nature of the images, for example locality of pixel dependencies \cite{ImageNet}. In general, CNNs have fewer connections and parameters, they are easier to train, and they present similar or better performance than the regular neural networks \cite{ImageNet}. As an extension of the CNNs, deep CNNs were introduced by Imagenet authors because a big number of high-resolution images and powerful GPUs are now available. The authors increased the number of convolutional layers, and they use large receptive fields in the first convolutional layer. As a result, overfitting, which is inherent to the large size of the model, is avoided and effective results are achieved. In addition, the authors of the VGGnet continued adding convolutional layers, but they keep the size of the receptive fields very small (3x3 convolutions) with a stride of 1, throughout the whole network, which decreases the amount of parameters.

Generally studies about identity and consumption have assumed that individuals are immersed in a context of abundance, in which their possibilities to fulfil their needs and desires to purposefully construct a consumption lifestyle are granted. Within this context, studies from the Consumer Culture Theory perspective have described how individuals navigate consumer culture by developing enduring relationships with possessions that help them to build identities and a sense of self. However, this is not always possible during every individual’s life. Certain situational factors not only provoke the individual’s loss of what they have already built, but also lead them to a restricted consumption context. The present study focuses on forced and uncertain changing events, those whose severity and/or rapid change disrupts an individual’s entire life. Through a phenomenological approach of the homeless experience, this study attempts to understand individuals’ transition into a restricted consumption context. The empirical data obtained from a twenty two month ethnographic study evidences that experiencing homelessness, individuals’ loss of possessions and the perceived uncertainty that characterizes life on the streets, trigger not only a self-transformation process, but also alter their relationship with the material world. The findings are contrasted with the current literature extending previous work about transition and consumption by: a) Proposing a new transformational routine to describe the forced self-transformations and how consumption (or the lack of it) becomes an element that influences the deconstruction and construction of a new self. b) Identifying how in a restricted consumption context, individuals develop a different relationship with the material world, and how this changes their modes of consumption.