Open University of Catalonia

About: Open University of Catalonia is a education organization based out in Barcelona, Spain. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Context (language use) & Higher education. The organization has 1943 authors who have published 4646 publications receiving 64200 citations. The organization is also known as: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya & UOC.

City of Rents: The limits to the Barcelona model of urban competitiveness

Abstract: The turn towards the knowledge-based economy and creative strategies to enhanceurban competitiveness within it has been well documented. Yet too little has been said todate about the transformation of land use for new productive activities, and thecontradictions inherent to this process. Our case study is Barcelona, an erstwhile‘model’ for urban regeneration which has sought to transform itself into a globalknowledge city since 2000. Through the lens of Marxian value theory, and Harvey’swriting on urban monopoly rents especially, we show how the 22@Barcelona project —conceived with received wisdom about the determinants of urban knowledge-basedcompetitiveness in mind — amounted to an exercise in the capture of monopoly rents,driven by the compulsion of public sector institutions, financiers and developers topursue rental profit-maximizing opportunities through the mobilization of land as afinancial asset.

Fair Coexistence of Scheduled and Random Access Wireless Networks: Unlicensed LTE/WiFi

Abstract: We study the fair coexistence of scheduled and random access transmitters sharing the same frequency channel. Interest in coexistence is topical due to the need for emerging unlicensed LTE technologies to coexist fairly with WiFi. However, this interest is not confined to LTE/WiFi as coexistence is likely to become increasingly commonplace in IoT networks and beyond 5G. In this paper, we show that mixing scheduled and random access incurs an inherent throughput/delay cost and the cost of heterogeneity. We derive the joint proportional fair rate allocation, which casts useful light on current LTE/WiFi discussions. We present experimental results on inter-technology detection and consider the impact of imperfect carrier sensing.

A short comment on statistical versus mathematical modelling

Abstract: While the crisis of statistics has made it to the headlines, that of mathematical modelling hasn’t. Something can be learned comparing the two, and looking at other instances of production of numbers.Sociology of quantification and post-normal science can help.