History of finite analysis

Finite Element Analysis (FEA) was first developed in 1943 by R. Courant, who utilized the Ritz method of numerical analysis and minimization of variational calculus to obtain approximate solutions to vibration systems.

By the early 70's, FEA was limited to expensive mainframe computers generally owned by the aeronautics, automotive, defense, and nuclear industries. Since the rapid decline in the cost of computers and the phenomenal increase in computing power, FEA has been developed to an incredible precision. Present day supercomputers are now able to produce accurate results for all kinds of parameters.

The finite element method obtained its real impetus in the 1960s and 1970s by the developments of J. H. Argyris with co-workers at the University of Stuttgart, R. W. Clough with co-workers at UC Berkeley, O. C. Zienkiewicz with co-workers at the University of Swansea, Philippe G. Ciarlet at the University of Paris 6 and Richard Gallagher with co-workers at Cornell University. Further impetus was provided in these years by available open source finite element software programs. NASA sponsored the original version of NASTRAN, and UC Berkeley made the finite element program SAP IV widely available. A rigorous mathematical basis to the finite element method was provided in 1973 with the publication by Strang and Fix. The method has since been generalized for the numerical modeling of physical systems in a wide variety of engineering disciplines, e.g., electromagnetism, heat transfer, and fluid dynamics. Newton also worked in the finite analysis

Quadratic forms

Given a vector space V, we will say a function φ: V->r is a quadractic form if:

φ (x) = μ belonging to R

 φ (ax)= a^2 x

φ (x+y) + φ (x-y) = 2φ(x) + 2φ(y)

The matrix form is formed by φ (x)= a11 (x1)^2 + a22 (x2)^2 + a33 (x3)^2 + 2a12 x1x2 + a13 x1x3 + 2a23 x2x3. The vector x is placed in a row, then the matrix is formed by placed a11, a22 y a33 in the diagonal and the rest of them is dividing a12, a13 and a23 by two and put the in their symmetric place; finally, the vector x is placed again as a column matrix.

The classification os a quadratic form is:

• Positive: When φ(x) > 0
• Semidefined positive: When φ(x) ≥ 0
• Semidefined negative: When φ(x) ≤ 0
• Defined negative: When φ(x) < 0
• Undefined: When φ(x) = ?

Basically, when you calculate the diagonal matrix of a quadratic form, you see the values of the eigenvalues. If all of them are positive, it's positive. When they are positive and at least one of them is zero, semidefined positive. The same thing with the negative and semidefined but with negative values. If none of these condictions aren't showed, then it's undefined. The quadratic forms are the best way to calculate the positive property of a scalar product, where you need to have a defined positive.

Bilineal forms

Given a vector space V, we will say a function of  f: VxV-> R is bilineal if

f(x,y) = μ  belonging to R and being x,y two vectors.

In order to be a bilineal form, it has to be linear in both positions.

Lineal to the left : f(ax+by,z) = af(x,z) + bf(y,z)
Lineal to the right : f(x, ay+bz)=af(x,y) + b(x,z)

There are two types of bilineal forms:

• Symmetrical: f(x,y) = f(y,x)
• Antisymmetrical: f(x,y) = -f(y,x)

Bilinear forms are used to calculate a real number using the image of two vectors. A particular case of this operation is when the image equals the two vectors multiplied by one (eigenvalue = 1), meaning that we have an euclidean space and therefor, a scalar product. The matrix form works similar to the scalar product. You multiply the x vector as a row, the matrix is the image of the combination of the base (e1,e1; e2,e1; e3,e1; e2,e2; e2,e3; e3,e3) and finally the vector is placed as a column. This matrix form of the bilineal function is called "Gramm Matrix".
In this link you can find more information about bilineal forms.

Video: Eigenvalues and eigenvectors

Morphism

A morphism in Algebra is bascailly changing the coordinates of a vector using the same space or going from one space to another. Here is a list of some morphism:

• Monomorphism: f: X -> Y is a monomorphism if f ∘ g1 = f ∘ g2 .It implies that g1=g2 and X ->Z
• Epimorphism: f:X -> Y is a epimorphism if f ∘ g1 = g ∘ g2 implying that g1 = g2 and Y -> Z

       A monomorphism and an epimorphism together form a bimorphism.

• Isomorphism: f: X -> Y is an isomorphism if a morphism g : Y → X such that f ∘ g = id_Y and g ∘f = id_X. If a morphism has both left-inverse and right-inverse, then the two inverses are equal, so f is an isomorphism, and g is called simply the inverse of f.
• Endomorphism:  f : X → X is an endomorphism of X. A split endomorphism is an idempotent endomorphism f if f admits a decomposition f = h ∘ g with g ∘ h = id. 

       An isomorphism and an endomorphism from a automorphism.

Interview

Here we have an interview with Alonso Martinéz Cuenca, ex-worker in General Electric.

So what did you study at university and where?

I studied Electronical Engineering at Universidad Complutense, Spain.

In how many companies have your worked?

I've been working in two companies. Both of them related with the same activity: Electronic devices.

Can you tell me some of your tasks in both companies?

The first one was "Compagnie General du Electronique"(CGE). It was a french company that manifactured electronical devices for diagnostic imagin, computes, etc, from year 1974 to 1982. Along these eight years, I was working in the technical service in charge of the maintenance  devices of this company as well as ultrasound  systems.

The other company was "General Electric" (GE). In 1984 CGE joined to GEH and I was in charge of technical support for Computed Microchips (CM). After six years I started to do electronical applications, helping to the Engineering department to develop tools for circuits in CM. Eight years later, I started to work in the Marketing and Sales department, finishing my laboral activity as a MR sales specialist.

So, your career's knowledge was very useful in here...

Of course. As I started in a technical department, all my career was very useful and I had to apply all my knowledge when I was working in the field, reparing the different devices as well as developing electrical and electronical instalations.

Did you have to travel in the development of you laboral duties and how often?

Yes, I had to travel along Iberia mainly, but I had to travel to some european countries and Africa to do clinical applications and to the USA to perform some training twice per year.

Did the market keep seeling electronical devices despite the crisis in our country?

The crisis has affected to this kind of companies specially because the social security that is the biggest buyer for this kind of devices has reduced dramatrically the adquisition of this imaging diagnostic devices.

Do you think the market will rise again in a few years?

Fortunately, in the middle of 2015 the market will start to increase their activity and the operating planning has been risen a 4 % over the expectation. 

Introduction

This is the final part of this blog, taking the Algebra subject. I'll make six posts about the subject, similar to the first part of the blog (calculus).

My opinion about "Communication Skills"

So here is the last post involving the "Communication Skill" subject. So I'm going to give my opinion about this.

Basically, a very lost potential. It started okay with a lot of activities to do with huge variety and learning something that people from a science career never learn too well. I was excited about how this subject was going to be, but before the first month passed, my intereset was completely lost.

In the first classes, we had debates and parcipitaded in several videos we see in class and I really liked it, but that was left to do the same thing over and over, so overall, it went really boring. The formula of the subject was: The secretary reviews his blog/activities/wikia, approve last's minute and then go to his chair. Over and over again.

Also, that's my least favourite thing about this: The secretary. I just don't get it. Why a classmate must stand infront of everyone telling stuff that the teacher is not only more capable to handle? The teacher must be the one bringing the blog, wikia and activity and review it, otherwise nobody will every pay attention. This ends with a complete mess with the classmates not knowing everything we have to do and then most of the activities are wrong. Every single student need feedback on their individual activities, not some general tips that you may already have right, because that's what professors are for, correcting all your work on their subjects.

The blog and the wikia are actually a unique way of developing extra work without tending to be linear with the activities. Maybe the one I liked more was the blog instead of the wikia, just that's because I already had to do posts in the Calculus subject.

As for the activities, they are all acceptable and you learn a lot from them. But again, the same problem as before, if you have no personal feedback, you won't be learning anything. Okay, yes, there are a lot of students and a lot of activities and the teacher is not only teaching this specific subject. Not only students have to study other subjects and also so other activities and projects but also, the whole activities have, in general, some procedures of making them, so it's easy to find little mistakes, and those little mistakes are, for example, the lenght of the introduction or the conclusion, how to redact a document as if you were the teacher, etc.

What I'm trying to say is that this is not the way to handle such a subject. In my opinion, it needs more participation but not with the secretary mechanic, like more debates or conferences, because with that, the subject can be way more entertained.

Nintendo, creator of the best non-verbal communication

Nintendo is a videogame distributor company, famous around the world by creating a huge cast of iconic characters, such as Mario, Link, Samus, Megaman, Kirby, Pokemon, etc.

One of the most interesting things about Nintendo games is that there is barely voice acting in the franchises. The characters usually scream when they attack, jump or take damage, but never saying any kind of word. As simple as it seems, the main characters are very popular. But why?

The answer is very simple: By using gestures and faces, ending with a personality that doesn't need to be spoken. Nintendo took the non-verbal communication into a whole new level by not only speaking with no words, but also to give development and a personality. 

Also, they make their franchises by giving changes to the same concepts (different graphics and mechanics), meaning that the characters evolve as years pass by, facing new challenges and enemies, growing as people along with the players.

Another example of good personality developed in the characters is the cross-over fighting game from Nintendo, Super Smash Bros Brawl, where the story resembles perfectly with the cast of characters, as well as they interact with each other.

Here is the opening scene of the game.

Microcredit

Microcredit is the extension of very small loans to impoverished borrowers who typically lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history. It is designed not only to support entrepreneurship and alleviate poverty, but also in many cases to empower women and uplift entire communities by extension. Microcredit is part of microfinance, which provides a wider range of financial services, especially savings accounts. Critics argue, however, that microcredit has not had a positive impact on gender relationships, does not alleviate poverty, has led many borrowers into a debt trap and constitutes a "privatization of welfare". But despite this criticism, the microcredit has made a huge impact on several countries in Asia and Africa.

Ideas relating to microcredit can be found at various times in modern history. Jonathan Swift inspired the Irish Loan Funds of the 18th and 19th centuries. In the mid-19th century, Individualist anarchist Lysander Spooner wrote about the benefits of numerous small loans for entrepreneurial activities to the poor as a way to alleviate poverty. At about the same time, but independently to Spooner, Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen founded the first cooperative lending banks to support farmers in rural Germany. In the 1950s, Akhtar Hameed Khan began distributing group-oriented credit in East Pakistan. Khan used the Comilla Model, in which credit is distributed through community-based initiatives. The project failed due to the over-involvement of the Pakistani government, and the hierarchies created within communities as certain members began to exert more control over loans than others.

Microcredit is ideally based on a unique set of principles that are readily distinguished from trends in the wider credit market. Microcredit organizations were initially created as alternatives to the "loan-sharks" known to take advantage of clients. Indeed; many microlenders began as non-profit organizations and operated with government funds or private subsidies. By the 1980s, however the "financial systems approach," influenced by neoliberalism and propagated by the Harvard Institute for International Development, became the dominant ideology among microcredit organizations. The commercialization of microcredit officially began in 1984 with the formation of Unit Desa (BRI-UD) within the Bank Rakyat Indonesia. Unit Desa offered ‘kupedes’ microloans based on market interest rates.

Ironically, many microcredit organizations now function as independent banks. This has led to their charging higher interest rates on loans and placing more emphasis on savings programs. Notably, Unit Desa has charged in excess of 20 per cent on small business loans. The application of neoliberal economics to microcredit has generated much debate among scholars and development practitioners, with some claiming that microcredit bank directors, such as Muhammad Yunus, apply the practices of loan sharks for their personal enrichment. Indeed, the academic debate foreshadowed a Wall-street style scandal involving the Mexican microcredit organization Compartamos.

Interview

I'm going to do an interview to Julio Franco, an editor from www.telefoneate.com .

Can you give us a short introduction about your studies and how you started here?

I studied a Bachelor's Arts degree in Journalism back in 2009 at the Faculty of Media Studies at Complutense University of Madrid and in fact I'm currently attending its last year.

And I started working at Telefoneate.com one day I was searching for a job in the Internet. They hired me in September of the last year and I’m currently working there as a freelance editor.

How many posts do you write per week?

As a freelance editor I can write a post anytime I want. I may write three post one after another or I may write one a month. However, I started writing a post a day from Monday to Friday, which makes five posts a week and more or less twenty or twenty five a month, and that was from September to February. Right now I’m looking for a better job, so I have little time to write. Because of that I hardly post anything nowadays, though I’m still working on it.

Can you tell us your writting techniques and the style you use?

I hardly can speak about writing techniques aside from the standard journalist style. Being myself the only person who actually studied Journalism in the site, I’m the best writer they have and my posts are the only ones made in a professional way, and that’s with the standard issue: corroborating sources for a truthful information, using an inverted pyramidal structure that goes from the most important or specific things to talk about to the least or more general ones, a subject-predicate-complement structure to make simple sentences, condensing all the important information in the least number of characters, etc… Also, the good use of hyperlinks and SEO tools among others is crucial to make the post visible not only on the website but for the internet browsers too.

Finally, does this job help you as a job experience?

Being honest with you, yes, it is. Working for this site lets me to practice everything I know about how to make news and stuff so I don’t get rusty. However, I feel like this is not a place I should be because it’s neither a real job nor a webpage that pays me well for a professional service like mine. It’s indeed a good curriculum filler but what I need is to work in a real press agency or a bigger site, that’s why, like I told you before, I hardly post nowadays, because I’m looking for a better place to work. However, if someone wants to start with something related to the world of new technologies or with something easy related to making news I’d suggest to begin in a place like this at least to practice and acquiring some experience while searching for a better place to be working on.

Video: Assertive-Passive-Aggresive

Here in this link you have a video I made with some students for an activity and it's about three situations: Two aggresive people talking about football, an aggresive and passive people talking about a late report and the last one, two assertive people, one asking about dating with the ex-boyfriend of her friend.

Assertiveness

It's important to state your own opinion when a discussion is taking place, but also be really carefull when stating it. You must be assertive to avoid misuderstanding or problems.

1. First, make eye contact with the other speaker and use a calm tone of voice; be polite (ask him how he is) and relaxed because there is no need to be nervous.
2. Use a formal languaje and a coloquial style. This means there is a respect and close connection to the speaker resulting in a very calm and quiet situation.
3. Never think his opinion is wrong because that may lead into problems, such as misurderstandings, aggresive and awkward situations.
4. On the other hand, if he's wrong with a fact then you should say it and why, using as many arguments as possible. But using several arguments doesn't mean you have to speak a lot. Try to concrentrate as many as possible.
5. Finally, say goodbye to the speaker politely and reflecting a very good mood.

Being assertive is very important because it will barely give you any kind of problems.

Communication with foreigners

Talking with people from other countries can be somehow difficult in some cases because you have to adapt to the situation in order to make a succesful conversation. Here are some tips as a help.

1. Foreigners have different accents, so they will pronouce some words in a different way, as well as your own accent, so in this case, you need to pronounce as precisely as you can.
2. Some specific words in some countries are never known because they may have never heard it, so in that case, use not only a phrasal verb to give a better definition, but also every way of non-verbal communication, such as gestures, postures, etc.
3. Althought this is not a common point, some foreigners talk faster and that may cause to a understanding. In that case, don't feel shy to ask him if he can speak a little slower.
4. If it's not a teacher, boss, etc, you can use a coloquial language. A classmate may not understand cultivate words and a phrasal verb may cause the conversation to be more difficult.
5. Finally, make sure to be assertive (you can find more tips about this in another post)

This can make your english skills more efficient, so don't hestitate to talk to a foreigner and give it a try.

Prezi format

Prezi is a webpage where you can do presentations but in a different way. First, is not a program itself, but a webpage where you make an account and then have access to the Prezi.

The format works with a single slides which you can zoom and un-zoom several times, making it a fluid way of changing slides. It has a huge variety of backgrounds, sizes, models and colours. It gives a 3-D perspective, everyone can cooperate, it's easy and accessible.

Several companies has been using this web page for meeting with other companies and they improve it's use. As you can see in this link we already used this for a Communication's Skills Class.

Prezi is way much better than Microsoft Powerpoint because of the main point of the accesibility so everyone have a track of what are you doing. Also, not everyone has PowerPoint and when it comes for a teamwork, like my case, not everyone can agree with the whole presentation, so I would like to encourage people to use it in future projects.

Asperger's Syndrome

I have in my class a student that has Asperger Syndrome, so we spent a class talking about it. Not only the university thinks those subjects are important, but also for Communication Skills class, because this girl had severral problems and we never realized that.

The first time I saw this girl I didn't realize she was Asperguer nor nobody told me, but even that, I already have an Asperguer friend, so I know how to talk with them. Basically, you have to be distant but also salute them by looking at their eyes. They are not capable of talking a long conversation and they usually think the literal words of everything. Here is a vide ot understand better the situation for an adult Asperguer.

My schoolmate has no problems now that everyone knows about this Syndrome and I hope we can help her in everything we can.

PechaKucha

PechaKucha is a presentation format introduced in february of 2003 in Tokyo. It consists on a presentation (PowerPoint mostly) with 20 slides that changes every 20 seconds. The only neccesary thing the slides need is images and very little text.

The purposes of this new presentation format is to avoid people getting bored or read too much. That's why the PechaKucha only needs images, so the people can listen to the speaker and also, he has a supporting material to make the presentation more entertained. The 20 slides 20 seconds between each one means the total time of the presentation of 6 minutes 40 seconds, making it a decent time of listening.

This format has been so succesfull that several companies have taken it to apply in their presentations. Also, a web page has been created in order to track the most popular PechaKucha presentations made these days.

Personally, for the fist time you try to do the PechaKucha can be really difficult, but when you get used to it, it makes the work much easier. Give it a try.

Writting effective e-mails

Electronic mails are the best tool of communication nowadays. Fast, simple and has a worldwide connection. No matter if it's to a family member, friend or an employer, is neccesary to write them properly.

There are three types of destinataries: The normal one, Carbon copy (cc) and blind carbon copy (bcc). The first one displays all the destinataries that are going to receive your e-mail. The second one, Carbon Copy, sends a copy of the e-mail itself but you can't respond. Finally, the Blind Carbon Copy is made to send the-email that can't be respond and the receiver doesn't know the rest of the e-mails because they're hiding.

The subject has to be clear and compact, telling the main point of the whole e-mail. Also, the e-mail itself wil depend on which people are you sending: Long or short, formal or informal, etc. If you're writting to your boss, you have to be clear and specific and also, formal.

Also, check the ortography and paragraphs and make sure to put an end to the message, like "Greetings" or "See you". That final message also depends on who are you texting to.

Emoticons as a another route of non-verbal communication

I'm going to tackle now something appart from class but has to do with communication: Emoticons.

Back when the first cell phones were made and when Messenger appeared, something new was created: Emoticons. Those are faces that represent people's emotional status. There were two types: On the cell phones, people normally used some alphabetic symbols that readed, looked like a face. For example: :-) . The two dots represents the eyes, the dash a nose and the closed bracket the mouth. That means that person is smiling. On Messenger, on the other hand, were actually faces that were shown when you wrote the legend

The legend of the default emoticons on Messenger. Source

They had a huge impact on the new communication devices made in that time, so much that we're still using then those days. Several web pages were made in order to download more emoticons on Messenger and it was normal to find names with emoticons. People always tend to use them to express their feelings, emotions, to write shorter, to be sarcastic or ironic, etc. When you're not facing a person it's easy sometimes to know how are they, but now when using distant communication, so the emoticons are an excellent tool that hans't passed away yet.

Gestures, a vital piece of communication

In this class the secretary didn't prepare the class, so we moved quickly. This day the teacher talked about communication, that not always is the direct language the most important one when it comes talking about anything.

Just like last week, we watched another video, this time of a person giving a speech on a wedding twice. The first time he never made a gesture and was reading the paper's speech all the time. The second time, he was moving from right to left, making pauses, smiling, making a joke, pointing at the married couple... This was an example about how you should make a speech and how not to. In my opinion, is a big difference between the two of them and I realized that is very important to know how to talk in public.

Later, the teacher sent us an activity in pairs. First, we choose a quote from a pdf and tell it to our partner. Then I have to write about how he spoke, like gestures, eye-contact, etc; then we do the opposite thing. Later, we tell a childhood memory and do the same thing with the quotes.

This activity took me 20 minutes to do so.

I'll leave a video so you can see how important is the communication when it comes to give an emotional speech.

First class of Communication Skills

This is the first post for Communication Skills class. Somedays I'm going to write posts about what we do in class.

In every class, some student plays the rule of the secretary, which has several tasks. When the student arrives, he goes to the teacher's desk and pass list. Once it's finishes, the secretary explains what we did the last class in case someone missed the other day. Also, the secretary has to write in the virtual campus a schedule about everything done in the class.

In this class the teacher showed us a video about non-verbal communication  and after that, we reunited in a circle and discuss if we agreed or not. I didn't agree in some parts of the video, like the part that says :"You have to fake a smile and you'll be better". What's the point? That won't fix the problems you've got...
Anyway, after that, we made an activity where we choose the pictures: One of ourself, a nother one from a classmate(both pictures from the virtual campus) and another picture choosed by our own.

This activity took me 20 minutes to do it.

First post

Welcome to the second part of this blog. Now, instead on Calculus, this blog is going to be aimed for the Communication Skills class. I'll be posting several things we do in class, as well as another content. Enjoy.

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