The university social responsibility (RSU): an inter-university research project

La responsabilidad de las universidades en la educación para la ciudadanía y su desarrollo, así como la responsabilidad civil, son los objetivos a perseguir y monitorear con mucho cuidado. El proyecto interuniversitario, patrocinado por el CEPES (Centro de Estudios para el Perfeccionamiento de la Educación Superior) de la Universidad de La Habana (Cuba), ha permitido y promovido la primera fase de investigación, una fase exploratoria utilizando una pequeña muestra de profesores y estudiantes de Sapienza (Universidad de Roma, estudios de italiano). La investigación analiza las opiniones de profesores y estudiantes, su experiencia, expectativas y perspectivas. Los diferentes resultados que surgieron de los cuestionarios ofrecen la oportunidad de analizar los diferentes puntos de vista y su triangulación. Las universidades están planeando cada vez más en la dirección de una tercera misión, pero solo una fuerte intencionalidad política y una visión global e interuniversitaria pueden mejorar las intervenciones y calificarlas para un desarrollo atento a los valores de lo cívico y la sostenibilidad.The responsibility of universities in education for citizenship and its development, as well as civil responsibility, are the objectives to be pursued and monitored very carefully.The interuniversity project, sponsored by CEPES (Center for Studies for the Improvement of Higher Education) of the University of Havana (Cuba), has allowed and promoted the first phase of research, an exploratory phase using a small sample of professors and Sapienza students (University of Rome, Italian studies). The research investigates the opinions of teachers and students, their experience, expectations, self-assessments, and perspectives. The different results that emerged from the questionnaires offer the opportunity to analyze the different points of view and their triangulation. The world's universities are increasingly planning in the direction of a third mission, but only a strong political intent and a global and interuniversity vision can improve interventions and qualify them for a development attentive to the values of civics and sustainability

Inter university cooperation and social education. multicultural frame and joint curricula

1. No doubt about being upper levels in education a prioritarian way for the universalization of knowledge, as the authors more than once argued (see their Presentation at the previous Conference on Education 2012) 2. Considering the building up of a multicultural frame in education, in today’s world, an unavoidable way and a shared aim across different countries, they synthetically delineate the possible contribution by the university. 3. Discussing the actual state of an inter-university cooperation Sapienza University of Rome/Moscow State University for Psychology and Education (MGPPU), they will comment upon the need for major economical involvement by Ministries of education and instruction, toward the organizing of joint Magister Curricula 4. In fact, is a more extended joint engagement by representatives of different cultures and ethnical communities required for this generalized new form of upper education, bringing about using major economic resources 5. Reference is made to a seminal way for rendering the historical cultural perspective in social science the main mediation, in building up a new “historical cultural” and “social” education, exposed by Rubzov, Margolis and Guruzhapov

Statistics on Development Planning: The Future Requirements

This paper is presented at the Third National Convention on Statistics at the Philippine International Convention Center on December 13-14, 1982. It argues that while statistical system continues to evolve into more detailed and complex activities to satisfy the demand of data users, gaps still prevail. It provides a brief overview of the Philippine statistical system and suggests direction for future development planning.decentralization, data and statistics

Statistics on Development Planning: The Future Requirements

This paper is presented at the Third National Convention on Statistics at the Philippine International Convention Center on December 13-14, 1982. It argues that while statistical system continues to evolve into more detailed and complex activities to satisfy the demand of data users, gaps still prevail. It provides a brief overview of the Philippine statistical system and suggests direction for future development planning.decentralization, data and statistics

Binarity as the solution to the stellar evolution enigma posed by NGC 6791

Binary evolution is investigated as the source for the extreme horizontal branch (EHB) stars in the old and metal rich open cluster NGC~6791. Employing an updated version of our binary stellar evolution code we demonstrate that EHB stars naturally emerge from the common envelope phase. In sum, the binary model reproduces the observed ($T_{\rm{eff}}$, $\log{g}$) and temporal properties of the EHB over-density tied to NGC 6971, without needing an ad-hoc and anomalous mass-loss prescription.Comment: 9 pages, 5 eps figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letter

Evolution of DA white dwarfs in the context of a new theory of convection

In this study we compute the structure and evolution of carbon-oxygen DA white dwarfs by means of a detailed and updated evolutionary code. We treat the energy transport by convection within the formalism of the full spectrum turbulence theory, as given by the Canuto, Goldman and Mazzitelli (CGM) model. We explore the effect of various hydrogen layer masses on both the surface gravity and the hydrogen burning. Convective mixing at low luminosities is also considered. One of our main interests in this work has been to study the evolution of ZZ Ceti models, with the aim of comparing the CGM and mixing length theory (MLT) predictions. In this connection, we find that the temperature profile given by the CGM model is markedly different from that of the ML1 and ML2 versions of MLT. We have also computed approximate effective temperatures for the theoretical blue edge of the DA instability strip by using thermal timescale arguments for our evolving models. In this context, we found that the CGM theory leads to blue edges that are cooler than the observed ones. However, because the determination of the atmospheric parameters of ZZ Ceti stars is dependent on the assumed convection description in model atmosphere calculation, observed blue edges computed considering the CGM theory are required in order to perform a sef consistent comparison of our results with observations. Finally, detailed pulsation calculations of ZZ Ceti models considering the CGM convection would be necessary to place the results found in this paper on a firmer basis.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures. Uses mn.st

Oligarchic planetesimal accretion and giant planet formation II

The equation of state calculated by Saumon and collaborators has been adopted in most core-accretion simulations of giant-planet formation performed to date. Since some minor errors have been found in their original paper, we present revised simulations of giant-planet formation that considers a corrected equation of state. We employ the same code as Fortier and collaborators in repeating our previous simulations of the formation of Jupiter. Although the general conclusions of Fortier and collaborators remain valid, we obtain significantly lower core masses and shorter formation times in all cases considered. The minor errors in the previously published equation of state have been shown to affect directly the adiabatic gradient and the specific heat, causing an overestimation of both the core masses and formation times.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Lessons from Sao Paulo's Metropolitan Busway Concessions Program

In an earlier paper (Policy Research Working Paper 1546), the authors described a pioneer initiative of Sao Paulo's municipal and state governments, to give the private sector a concession on building and operating a number of"trunk"busways. At the time, the Sao Paulo Municipal Government had already awarded a number of busway corridors to private consortia, although the consortia had yet to get the financing needed to implement the investment plan. On the other hand, the state had not yet awarded its first corridor and was still adjusting the bidding documents based on comments received from interested parties. In this paper, the authors describe what happened since then and draw lessons for the future. After a long, successful bidding process, this imaginative and pioneering program launched by the municipality failed to materialize because of problems in getting financing. Possibly the market felt that the risks involved in building and operating system outweighed the benefits and that the Sao Paulo and Brazilian market was not yet prepared to accept such a challenge without better partial risk guarantees. The state learned from the mistakes of the municipality and was successful in the concession of the Sao Mateus-Jabaquara corridor. Among the lessons learned from this project: 1) Private bus operators in Brazil are generally traditional entrepreneurs. They must be taught how to prepare financing plans or at least to get the best advice about putting together a project's financial engineering design. In this case, all consortia turned to BNDES (Brazilian National Social Development Bank) for financing, probably because their loan interests rates were lower than those of commercial banks but also because the concession was with the government. They did not consider other options such as the International Finance Corporation or other private-sector-related development institutions. 2) The Sao Paulo municipality should also have undertaken detailed economic evaluation of the projects, from the standpoint of the region as a whole, including the impact on other modes of transportation and on systems integration. Such analysis is required by all bilateral and multilateral development institutions, including BNDES. 3) When private operators are paid for vehicle-kilometer supplied and when the state collects all revenues and then pays the operators, concession contracts or operating revenues cannot be easily used as guarantees. Before defining tariff mechanism, governments should think through the impacts they might have on financing, since the revenues collected are often the best guarantee that can be offered.Banks&Banking Reform,Roads&Highways,Urban Transport,Public Sector Economics&Finance,National Governance

A Dynamic Clustering and Resource Allocation Algorithm for Downlink CoMP Systems with Multiple Antenna UEs

Coordinated multi-point (CoMP) schemes have been widely studied in the recent years to tackle the inter-cell interference. In practice, latency and throughput constraints on the backhaul allow the organization of only small clusters of base stations (BSs) where joint processing (JP) can be implemented. In this work we focus on downlink CoMP-JP with multiple antenna user equipments (UEs) and propose a novel dynamic clustering algorithm. The additional degrees of freedom at the UE can be used to suppress the residual interference by using an interference rejection combiner (IRC) and allow a multistream transmission. In our proposal we first define a set of candidate clusters depending on long-term channel conditions. Then, in each time block, we develop a resource allocation scheme by jointly optimizing transmitter and receiver where: a) within each candidate cluster a weighted sum rate is estimated and then b) a set of clusters is scheduled in order to maximize the system weighted sum rate. Numerical results show that much higher rates are achieved when UEs are equipped with multiple antennas. Moreover, as this performance improvement is mainly due to the IRC, the gain achieved by the proposed approach with respect to the non-cooperative scheme decreases by increasing the number of UE antennas.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figure