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In competitiveness evaluation models, there is a consensus that it is necessary to define dimensions, variables and indicators depending on the level (country, region, industry or sector and enterprises), the context and the objectives pursued. The connection between the measurement of competitiveness at the enterprise level and the results achieved in a territory contributes to improving the effectiveness of local management. The objective of this article is to define the system of indicators that allows measuring competitiveness in enterprises according to the customer-market, social, technical, economic-financial and environmental dimensions, with their respective variables and indicators for their application in Holguín Province, Cuba. The comparison of the behavior of six enterprises of two sectors (Construction and Industry) of Holguín's territory allows corroborating the usefulness for decision makers at an enterprise and territorial level, using the calculation and comparison of the established indicators. An experiment is also designed and processed with the Analysis of Variance in order to know the incidence of the dimensions and sectors in the performance index of enterprise competitiveness. The system designed to measure competitiveness is flexible, dynamic and multidimensional. It allows the analysis of the behavior of enterprises with a comprehensive approach to development at the provincial level.

In recent times, autonomous robots have become more relevant, aiming not only to be an extension of mobility and human performance but also allowing them to independently solve specific problems such as finding free-collision paths within some defined environments. In order to achieve this, several techniques have been developed, like action-reaction algorithms, sampling-based algorithms, and deterministic algorithms such as the Homotopy Path Planning Method (HPPM). This work presents, for the first time, a complete deterministic collision-free path planning scheme implemented in FPGA, which is mounted on a Scribbler 2 robot from Parallax. Then, an automatic algorithm of the repulsion parameter for the HPPM method is presented, using as a reference the minimum distance between the center of each obstacle with respect to the homotopic ideal path; furthermore, an algorithm is proposed for discriminating dead-end routes and collision risk trajectories, which allows us to obtain a feasible free-collision path that takes into account the robot dimensions. Besides, comparative performance tests have been carried out against other path-finding methods from the low degrees of freedom (low DoF) and sampling-based planners. Our proposal exhibits path calculation times which are 5 to 10 times faster on FPGA implementation, compared to the other methods and 10 to 100 times faster on PC implementation also compared to the rest. Similar results are obtained with regards to memory consumption, namely 20 to 200 times lower on FPGA implementation and 10 to 100 times lower on PC implementation.

This work presents the application of homotopy perturbation method (HPM) and Optimized Direct Padé (ODP) to obtain a handy and easily computable approximate solution of the nonlinear differential equation to model the oxygen diffusion in a spherical cell with nonlinear oxygen uptake kinetics. On one hand, the obtained HPM solution is fully symbolic in terms of the coefficients of the equation, allowing us to use the same solution for different values of the maximum reaction rate, the Michaelis constant, and the permeability of the cell membrane. On the other hand, the numerical experiments show the high accuracy of the proposed ODP solution, resulting in 3.58×10-4 as the lowest absolute relative error (A.R.E.) for a set of coefficients. In addition, a novel technique is proposed to reduce the number of algebraic operations during the process of application of ODP method through the use of the Taylor series, which help to simplify the algebraic expressions used. The powerful process to obtain the solution shows that the Optimized Direct Padé and homotopy perturbation method are suitable methods to use.

A numerical simulation methodology for incorporating thermo-magnetic effects on the MOSFET gate tunneling current is introduced. The methodology is based on the solution of the Schrödinger-Poisson coupled system, which allows simulating the influence of a static magnetic field and temperature on the wave functions and gate tunneling current of MOSFET devices. In addition to the preliminary results on the simulation methodology, experimental results on the effect of the magnetic field on the subthreshold slope, the off-current, and transconductance, are also introduced. The proposed simulation methodology, in conjunction with experimental data, is useful for device degradation and reliability studies in nano-scaled MOSFET devices. This experimental characterization technique sets also the basis for the development of a magnetic force nanoscopy technique, where the conductive properties, thanks to the Lorentz force, can be two-dimensionally mapped over the nano-scaled MOSFET channel plane.