Javier Otamendi

Measuring and assessing researcher mobility from CV analysis: the case of the Ramón y Cajal programme in Spain

Relying on the international literature on CV-based indicators, we select a sample of CVs from researchers applying to the Spanish Ramon y Cajal programme to assess mobility patterns and look for evidence of links between mobility and research performance. Evidence is found that mobility patterns vary across disciplines and that most internationally mobile researchers seem to have better access to international funding sources and networks, which does not, however, imply that they are the most quantitatively productive as far as publications and patents are concerned. The results thus support the idea that the qualitative dimension of mobility impact is an important one to consider. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Distributed decision support system for airport ground handling management using WSN and MAS

The economic situation in the air transportation industry claims for new business models supported by accurate management processes, which need constant feedback of the real status of the environment. The objective of this work is to achieve an updated/real decision support systems (DSS) to allocate resources in an airport even when disturbances occur by combining artificial intelligent techniques with visibility technologies. This work proposes the combined use of Multi-agent systems (MAS) along with Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) to provide the required information on the status of the resources and the environment. The MAS is based on a double layer of decision-taking levels and on a Markov reward function whereas the WSN is based on a Zigbee network of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) readers with active tags as end nodes, which are carried by the physical resources. The proposed distributed DSS has been tested at Ciudad Real Central Airport in Spain.

An assessment of selection processes among candidates for public research grants: the case of the Ramón y Cajal Programme in Spain

This paper stems from an interest in assessing and encouraging the efficiency of the grant peer-review system in Spain. We use the curricula vitae submitted to the Ministry of Education and Science by a sample of applicants to the Ramon y Cajal Programme to build statistical discriminatory models that successfully replicate the outcomes and rankings produced by the peer-review process. The results of this exercise seem to show that the selection process mainly relies on the research productivity of applicants and not on other variables not directly related with scientific excellence such as gender, age or residence. Furthermore it suggests that electronic discriminatory tools could be further developed and used in the future to support and speed up the process of evaluation and selection of applicants. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

The truth about mutual funds across Europe

Traditional measures of mutual funds persistence are based on measures like Jensens alpha, factor models and so on. As expected, their results on a broad data-set of European mutual funds show a small, but relevant, amount of persistent funds, depending on the method of estimation used. We go further in our analysis and, by using a multiple hypothesis testing methodology, find that those measures overstate the performance on the sample across countries, signalling persistence in situations where the positive results are due to luck.

Simulation-Optimization In Geographic Maintenance Scheduling

An application of a combination of scheduling theory, simulation modelling and combinatorial optimization is presented. The system under study deals with human resource and assets management to perform maintenance in large support networks. The paper includes the development of the framework of the software tool that will be embedded into the commercial maintenance package called INGRID. Following the modelling approach, a fully detailed explanation of the data requirements, the decision variables and the output variables is given. A detailed discussion on the genetic algorithm that is going to be used is also provided. The routines have been developed in spreadsheets so that there is an easy link with the rest of the software application.

Wireless Sensor Networks and RFID for Improving Information Visibility in Airport Ground Handling Management

Abstract The new economic situation in all industries, and especially in the air transportation industry, claims for new business models supported by accurate management processes, which need constant feedback of the real status of the environment. A combined use of identification technologies and wireless sensor networks (WSN) can provide the required visibility to that information on status. This work proposes a WSN based on a Zigbee network of RFID readers with active tags as end nodes. The WSN can get the identification (ID) information stored in the end nodes, which are carried by the physical resources. Besides the ID, the tag can include other useful data coming from sensors such as acceleration, temperature, humidity, fuel level, etc. The final objective is to achieve an updated/real picture of the resources in the airport environment that will help in the decision-making.

Selecting Mutual Fund Persistence: The German Case Discovering Persistent Managers In Germany

In mutual fund industry, managers’ ability to generate continuous value in excess compared with the benchmark index is a crucial aspect. Focusing on the German market in this research we apply several methods which let us to avoid statistical problems related to multiple hypothesis testing in traditional financial techniques. By doing so we obtain a threshold value λ that delimits what is considered the true null hypothesis. Our main result is that managers’ action is of little significance with only a small part of them adding excess value to mutual funds they run.

Integrating Simulation into Decision Support Systems

There is a growing necessity to embed a simulator within a decision support system. For a complex system, there is usually the need both to utilize a commercial package to perform the simulations and to read data from an in-house database. The DSS is programmed in different software packages which interact via the user-friendly, readily available MSExcel. A situation in which a company is faced with a sequencing problem is presented