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This paper aims to detect anomalous data in income reports of Argentina, including personal income – from a sample of households – and statements of public officials.

A widely known technique in forensic accounting – such as Benford’s Law – is used. The Chi-square test and the absolute mean deviation are used for verification. The databases consulted include the income declared by households in the Permanent Household Survey – for the 2003-2017 period – and the capital declarations of high-ranking public officials – for the period 1999-2017.

The results suggest that income reported in the Encuesta Permanente de Hogares do not follow a Benford´s distribution, and the degree of conformity with this decreases significantly between 2007 and 2015 – coincident with the intervention period of the Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Censos. Patrimonial statements of public officials present an acceptable level of compliance with Benford’s law, especially among those of the legislative branch (in more than 90% of cases) although to a lesser extent among officials of the executive branch.

The results suggest that income reports from the Permanent Household Survey, for the period 2007-2015, should be used with reservations because of their possible manipulation.

During the intervention of the official statistics institute in Argentina (2007-2015), the idea of lack of credibility of its reports has been disseminated. To date, however, there is no empirical evidence to support it related to income.

A new method to solve zero‐sum two‐person games with imprecise values in their matrices of pay‐offs is suggested. The natural lack of precision generated by the use of fuzzy numbers in a fuzzy game requires the use of subjective criteria by the players in the resolution model. We apply a ranking function, the Average Value, which allows the decision makers to take into account their subjectivity. The use of this function raises again the solution of the fuzzy game when two criteria, one for each player, are used.

Recent decades have witnessed increasing interest worldwide in educational quality. Many international organisations and national education systems have conducted studies on the meaning of quality, the various ways in which it can be measured and the factors that promote it as a basis for designing education reforms and rendering good practices visible. In this chapter, the authors explore conceptual perspectives on educational quality that are informed by various pedagogical approaches and examine the initiatives implemented in Spain to improve educational quality in non-university contexts, analysing education legislation over the past 30 years. The authors also propose basic elements or strategies that the authors believe would further promote educational quality in non-university settings in Spain and elsewhere. These proposals revolve around the educational project, teacher training and professional development, diversity and inclusion in education and community leadership.

The paper aims to present a new mechanical scheme for a leg to be included in legged vehicles that simplifies the control actuations along the stride.

The scheme includes three four‐bar links grouped in two mechanisms. The first one decouples the vertical and horizontal foot movements. The second one produces a constant horizontal foot velocity when the corresponding motor is given a constant speed. A hybrid robot with wheels at the end of the hind legs has been simulated and constructed to validate the leg performance.

The gait control requires only five commands for the electronic cards to control the leg. Decoupling vertical and horizontal movements allows a more adequate selection of actuators, a reduction of energy consumption, and higher load capacity and robot velocity. Additional mechanical benefits, such as improved robustness and lower inertia, are obtained. The hind legs can also be articulated, allowing the robot to overcome an obstacle and to climb up and down stairs.

A hybrid robot offers greater stability with respect to a legged robot. This way the lateral movement is not a concern, and therefore it has not been tested yet during the walking cycle.

This new scheme obtains a quasi‐Cartesian behaviour for the foot movement that drastically simplifies the control of the walking cycle. Although the decoupling between movements has already been obtained in previous configurations, these follow a pantograph structure and suffer from blocking problems when they are subject to lateral forces. These schemes were suitable for crab‐like gaits. The proposed leg moves according to a mammal‐like gait.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel actuator with adaptable compliance for robotic applications.

In order to achieve limb actuation similar to that of human muscles, a novel actuator with adaptable compliance is proposed. Three principal design paradigms currently exist in the development of artificial muscles that have been adopted at several research centres, universities and commercial organizations around the world. The first approach consists of using compliant actuator systems such as pneumatic actuators. The second approach undertakes the development of electroactive polymers that deform when a voltage is applied. The third approach involves electromechanical devices typically comprising an electrical actuator and an elastic element in combination. The proposed actuator extends on the third approach. It comprises an electrical DC motor in serial configuration and a novel elastic device exhibiting variable stiffness.

The novel elastic device complements the mechanical structure of the device, enabling adaptation to the dynamic effects of external forces.

Several applications for the actuator with adaptable compliance have been identified in the field of human‐like robotics.

Prototypic experimentation has successfully demonstrated the variable stiffness of the device.

This paper aims to present a new stair‐climbing wheelchair that tries to solve adaptability problems of previous prototypes.

A new prototype has been built using a new strategy. The climbing process is splint into two subproblems: climbing a single step and positioning the wheels on the staircase.

An optimized solution has been found for each subproblem, due to this the presented prototype is able to climb any staircase built according to standards, has a high capacity load and its stable equilibrium is always guaranteed.

The presented prototype is able to climb a parallel staircase; future works will try to solve the non parallel staircase climbing problem.

The practical application is to build an industrial new model of wheelchair that allows handicapped people to increase their mobility.

The principal value of the paper consists in using two independent mechanical solutions to solve the subproblems that appear when the stair‐climbing problem is split.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the economic crisis in organic consumption in order to better understand how to meet the emerging challenges that the crisis is creating for future consumption and production of organic products in Costa Rica, and to review the material available in the commercial and scientific literature.

A sample survey of 63 consumers was carried out based on an average population of 75 visitors every Saturday, the only day of the week that the market takes place. The analytical procedure was divided in two parts: the descriptive statistic's section base on histograms showing the distribution of the variable's responses; and the inferential statistic's analysis which used standardized forward elimination regression modeling to arrive at the final models to explain the importance of the selected variables in each equation, along with a thorough search of the available and the most recent material.

The profile of the organic consumer in 2009 was very similar to that of 2000, 2004 and 2007. The willingness to pay premiums went down from 25 per cent in 2007, to 15 per cent in 2009 and was associated primarily with irregular availability, limited supply, limited variety and the location of the market. Price was an integral part of all three derived models, something that was not the case in past surveys. Even though consumer's income is very high, the crisis was affecting the purchase of organic products. The hypotheses that the crisis had not affected consumption and willingness to pay were both rejected based on the results obtained.

The crisis is still with us, most of the material available for comparison at this time comes from “commercial surveys”, sources with basically no “hard” research with which to compare the results that were secured in this survey.

The findings can help developing countries in Latin America with similar conditions meet the challenges of the future, as the developing countries overcome the crisis in terms of better policies and strategies.

To the author's knowledge, this is the first paper of its kind in a developing country. It provides evidence of the impact of the economic crisis on organic consumption in a developing country and the author knows of no other in Latin America.