Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and problems

Josep Vicenç Foix (1893–1987)

Josep Vicenç Foix is a complex figure, difficult to classify, often labeled as avant-garde, post-symbolist, or Noucentista. His subjects are distributed across his books, written in a variety of shapes, styles, and techniques that blend avant-garde and classical literary traditions.

Work: Sun and Mourning (1947)

Topic: The protagonist experiences disorientation in nature, perceiving it as an innate land. Though the author feels lost and alone, he immediately recognizes the landscape of a thousand years ago; nothing seems strange, and he rediscovers the countryside where he walks. The space where the poem is set is where he feels lost and lonely due to the elements of nature.

Structure: A sonnet consisting of two... Continue reading "J.V. Foix: Analysis of Sun and Mourning and Key Poems" »

The Middle Ages: From Rome to the 15th Century

The Middle Ages began in 476 with the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire and ended in the 15th century with the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Christian culture was emphasized by the Byzantine and Carolingian Empires, while Muslim culture spread west to North Africa and much of the Iberian Peninsula following the teachings of Muhammad.

The Byzantine Empire

Justinian the Great concentrated his efforts on the recovery of lost territories: Italy from the Goths, North Africa from the Vandals, and the south and southeast of the Iberian Peninsula from the Visigoths.

Byzantine Organization

• Centralized Power: Political and military authority were unified.
• Religious Control:

Professional and Military Terminology

• Personnel Officer: A worker responsible for recruiting employees and dealing with matters relating to them.
• Aboard: On or onto a ship, aircraft, bus, or train.
• USS Ranger: The third of four Forrestal-class supercarriers built for the United States Navy in the 1950s.
• Discharge: Official permission to leave the armed forces, a prison, or a hospital.
• Reassignment: The act of giving someone a different job or position.
• Paperwork: The written records connected with a particular job, deal, or journey.
• To discharge somebody for something: To be officially allowed or forced to leave an institution such as a hospital, a prison, or the army.

Social and Personal Definitions

• Elder: An older person, especially one with a respected

Al-Andalus: The Muslim Conquest

In the 8th century, the Arabs began their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. The weakness of the Visigoths allowed them to easily seize the territory, creating the lasting legacy of Al-Andalus.

The Expansion of Islam

In 711, the Arab invasion began. It was very fast, taking advantage of internal conflicts within the Visigothic monarchy, and faced little armed resistance.

• Phase 1: When Muslims realized the weakness of the Visigothic state, they formed a new army under the command of Musa and Tariq. They toured the peninsula with minimal fighting. By 716, most of the territory had been conquered, and Visigothic nobles accepted covenants that ensured their land ownership.
• Phase 2: The hardest phase occurred between 716

Supervised Classification

Logistic Regression (LR)

• Type: Classification (binary only)
• Scaling: YES (StandardScaler)
• Outliers: NOT robust
• Categorical Variables: NO (encode first)
• Idea: Sigmoid function → probability 0–1 → if ≥ 0.5 → class 1
• Advantages: Fast, simple, interpretable, outputs probabilities
• Disadvantages: Binary only, needs linear boundary, fails non-linear data
• Metrics: Accuracy, Precision, Recall, F1, Confusion Matrix

Decision Trees (DT)

• Type: Classification + Regression
• Scaling: NO (never needs it)
• Outliers: Robust
• Categorical Variables: YES
• Idea: IF-ELSE splits by feature → leaf = final prediction
• Advantages: Interpretable, no scaling, handles any data type, fast
• Disadvantages: Overfits easily, sensitive to small changes
• Metrics: Gini,

Selecting and Managing Entry Modes

Foreign market entry options are categorized into three primary methods, each with distinct subtypes:

• Trade: Export, import, and countertrade.
• Contract: Licensing, franchising, management contracts, and turnkey projects.
• Investment: Wholly owned subsidiaries, joint ventures, and strategic alliances.

Exporting and Importing

These represent the most common methods of buying and selling internationally.

Developing an Export Strategy

• Identify potential markets.
• Match needs to organizational abilities.
• Initiate meetings.
• Commit necessary resources.

Direct vs. Indirect Exporting

• Direct Exporting (Selling to buyers): Utilizing sales representatives or distributors.
• Indirect Exporting (Selling to intermediaries): Utilizing agents,

Key Features of Contemporary Spanish Fiction

Three Essential Modern Novelists

Among the novelists of this period, three authors stand out for the consistency of their careers and critical recognition:

• EDUARDO MENDOZA (Barcelona, 1943) published The Truth About the Savolta Case in 1975, a title that, to a large extent, can be considered the starting point of the current narrative. Without renouncing the use of experimental techniques, the author offers an argument in this detective novel that captures the reader's attention. In later works, Mendoza has shown an exceptional ability for parody: No News from Gurb (1992), The Labyrinth of Olives (1998), and The Mystery of the Haunted Crypt (1995) update and subvert the clichés of three enshrined genres

Fundamental Concepts of Force and Motion

Force: Every action can change the state of rest or motion of a body, or result in any deformation. Newton: The force that, when applied to a body of mass 1 kg, communicates an acceleration of 1 m/s².

Resultant Force: The vector sum of all forces in the system.

Conditions of Equilibrium

• Translational Equilibrium: For translational motion not to exist, the resultant of the system of forces that acts on the body should be null.
• Rotational Equilibrium: For rotational movement not to exist, the resultant moment of the system of forces that acts on the body must be zero.

Universal Gravitation and Electric Fields

Universal Law of Gravitation: Two material particles attract each other with a force proportional to... Continue reading "Fundamental Principles of Classical Physics and Dynamics" »

Centrioles: Anatomy and Cellular Role

The centriole is a small organelle situated in the middle of an ill-defined area known as the centrosphere, existing in all cells capable of dividing. They are identical to the basal corpuscles of cilia and flagella.

Structure

Most cells contain two centrioles located near the nucleus or within a notch of the Golgi apparatus. This perpendicular pair is called a Diplosoma. Each centriole has a cylindrical shape, distinguished by a proximal end (near the center of the cell) and a distal end, which features a cartwheel complex.

• Wall Composition: Formed by nine triplets of microtubules.
• Microtubule Arrangement: The three tubules (A, B, and C) are closely associated, with the virtual axis passing through the center

Population History and Historical Demography

Historical demography is essentially a quantitative history of population censuses. First sorted by modern states, these records have allowed us to know, with a good approximation, the number of inhabitants of different regions and periods of demographic growth or recession. Subsequently, the use of parish records for many areas has revealed the evolution of key variables such as natality, mortality, and nuptiality, allowing for the evaluation of life expectancy and the creation of population pyramids.

From here, historical demography has proposed a series of new items which have become classics, such as:

• Fertility rates
• Birth-control systems
• Age groups
• The relationship between ordinary and catastrophic