The limits to competition in urban bus services in developing countries

The authors make the case for the return of regulation in the organization of urban bus services in developing countries. During the past three decades urban public transport policy has gone through several phases. The 1980s and 1990s were characterized by liberalization of the sector from public ownership and monopoly provision. The experience of several countries, in particular Chile, indicates that a full liberalization of the sector may not be the welfare-maximizing option. The authors discuss the market failures that justify this claim and present the regulatory options available in this emerging new role of government. Throughout the paper they illustrate ideas with examples from Chile, Colombia, and a few other countries.Labor Policies,Roads&Highways,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Urban Transport,Inter-Urban Roads and Passenger Transport,Roads&Highways,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform

Utility privatization and the needs of the poor in Latin America - Have we learned enough to get it right?

Efforts to reform utilities can affect poor households in varied, often complex, ways, but it is by no means certain that such reform will hurt vulnerable households. Many myths have been perpetuated in discussions of utility reform - and in many cases poor households have benefited from reform. What is amazing is the extent to which governments, and their advisors - sometimes including multilateral organizations - fail to measure, anticipate, and monitor how the privatization of utilities actually affects the poor. Many questions must still be answered before good general guidelines can be drawn, but the authors offer many suggestions about how social, regulatory, and privatization policy, can increase the benefits of utility reform for poor households. The good news is that many measures can be taken to improve the chances that poor households will benefit from reform. Chief among these is promoting competition, where possible. Essentially what is needed is political commitment to doing the right thing. If policy is weak before privatization, it is going to be weak after privatization as well. Privatization is no substitute for responsible policy on redistribution.Environmental Economics&Policies,Trade Finance and Investment,Municipal Financial Management,Decentralization,Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Town Water Supply and Sanitation,Municipal Financial Management

Estimations of toxic vapour concentrations, by atmospheric dispersion calculations, in a nuclear power plant control room, following an offsite accidental release in the frame of probabilistic safety assessment

This project is categorized as an atmospheric dispersion study about how a toxic gas external dispersion might reach a nuclear power plant control room with dangerous concentration. In fact, it is contained within a larger project, which studies how likely a train accident, related with hazardous materials transport, could end up in a dangerous toxic vapour concentration in the control room, affecting the plant safety. The scope of the actual study is to obtain control room toxic vapour concentrations by performing a probabilistic approach of atmospheric dispersion calculations. The goal is to apply a prospective approach, aiming to use the results in the probabilistic safety assessment of the plant. The tasks developed consist of regulations review, atmospheric dispersion codes comparison and selection, scenario design and release points distribution, meteorological analysis and calculations automation, and finally, control room vapour diffusion calculations. The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has provided the Nuclear Engineering Research Group (NERG) from the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) with the dispersion and diffusion codes, HABIT and ARCON96, for the development of the present study, under consideration of academic purposes. The whole project is developed within the frame of a collaborative agreement between NERG group (UPC) and Nuclear Plant Licensee. Since this agreement is confidential, no real names and codification for the plant and its systems, components and materials are used. Therefore, the generic expression “The plant” is written instead

A review of lower-limb wearable exoskeletons for overground rehabilitation

Gait disorders are common among people with neuromuscular impairments –60% of the patients– and generally have a high impact on their quality of life . Lack of physical activity increases the risk of secondary health conditions such as respiratory and cardiovascular complications, bowel/bladder dysfunction, obesity, osteoporosis and ulcers; which can further diminish life expectancy. Therefore, walking recovery is one of the main rehabilitation priorities for patients with a neuromuscular impairment. Wearable exoskeletons are emerging as a revolutionary device for gait rehabilitation, mainly due to both the active participation required from the user promoting physical activity10 and the possibility to work as an assistive device in the community. In fact, the number of research studies during the past 10 years has shown a large increase following the general tendency of rehabilitation robotics . Although wearable exoskeletons are starting to be used in clinical practice, their efficacy is still not clear. This study provides a comprehensive overview on wearable powered exoskeletons for overground rehabilitation without body weight support in people with neuromuscular impairments.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

The Arabidopsis NADPH oxidases RbohD and RbohF display differential expression patterns and contributions during plant immunity

Plant NADPH oxidases, also known as respiratory burst oxidase homologues (RBOHs), produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) that perform a wide range of functions. RbohD and RbohF, two of the 10 Rboh genes present in Arabidopsis, are pleiotropic and mediate diverse physiological processes including the response to pathogens. We hypothesized that the spatio-temporal control of RbohD and RbohF gene expression might be critical in determining their multiplicity of functions. Transgenic Arabidopsis plants with RbohD and RbohF promoter fusions to β-glucuronidase and Luciferase reporter genes were generated. Analysis of these plants revealed a differential expression pattern for RbohD and RbohF throughout plant development and during immune responses. RbohD and RbohF gene expression was differentially modulated by pathogen-associated molecular patterns. Histochemical stains and in vivo expression analysis showed a correlation between the level of RbohD and RbohF promoter activity, H2O2 accumulation and the amount of cell death in response to the pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000 and the necrotrophic fungus Plectosphaerella cucumerina. A promoter-swap strategy revealed that the promoter region of RbohD was required to drive production of ROS by this gene in response to pathogens. Moreover, RbohD promoter was activated during Arabidopsis interaction with a non-virulent P. cucumerina isolate, and susceptibility tests with the double mutant rbohD rbohF uncovered a new function for these oxidases in basal resistance. Altogether, our results suggest that differential spatio-temporal expression of the Rboh genes contributes to fine-tune RBOH/NADPH oxidase-dependent ROS production and signaling in Arabidopsis immunity

Control de gestión de las empresas turísticas: implicaciones para la formación de profesionales

En la actualidad, el turismo es uno de los sectores económicos más importantes. En particular, en nuestro país las actividades turísticas supusieron en el año 2000, un 11% del Producto Interior Bruto, lo que da una idea de su significación. Como consecuencia de este impacto en la economía, es evidente que se hace necesario que las empresas que operan en este sector, lo hagan de forma eficaz y eficiente. Para ello, se considera esencial el diseño e implantación de sistemas de Control de Gestión adecuados que permitan mejorar las actividades de planificación y control y, por tanto, el Rendimiento Organizativo. En este contexto, el Control de Gestión se constituye como una herramienta básica para la gestión. Ahora bien, dada la creciente complejidad del entorno económico y, por consiguiente, de la gestión empresarial, entendemos necesario conceptualizar el Control de Gestión de forma amplia y tener en cuenta las implicaciones que ello plantea para la formación de futuros profesionales. Asimismo, la elaboración de estudios de caso a través de trabajos de campo en grupo se ha revelado como un método con un elevado potencial para estrechar las relaciones entre la docencia, la investigación y la práctica empresarial, con el enriquecimiento mutuo que ello posibilita, y para desarrollar capacidades no técnicas en los futuros profesionales.Nowadays, tourism is one of the most important economic sectors in the world. Particularly, this activity had a significant contribution to the Spanish economic in 2000. Thus it was 11 % of the Gross Domestic Product which is quite indicative of its significance. As a consequence, the impact of this sector on the economic should be taking into consideration in order to have efficient and effective organizations operating in it. To make this possible it is considered essential designing and implementing Management Control Systems appropriated to improve both planning and control activities and, henee, Organizational Performance. In this context, Management Control is a key tool to improve management at the organizations. Concerning to the above idea it need to be considered that environment uncertainty and complexity is continuously growing and, consequently, business management is getting more complicated. Therefore, we understand that Management Control should be conceptualise in a broader way and the main implications of this should be taking into consideration in the education and training processes of the future managers for this sector. Likewise, conducting case studies at real organizations has been a method with a high potential to reduce the distance between teaching, research and business practice which provokes an effect of mutually enrichment, this fact makes possible a development of non-technical skills in the new future manager generations

El cuadro de mando como instrumento para la gestión: una propuesta para el sector hotelero

El entorno en el que operan actualmente las empresas hoteleras es el resultado de los cambios profundos experimentados en las últimas décadas. Este nuevo escenario está afectando a las pautas tradicionales de actuación de estas empresas, a las prácticas de gestión imperantes y a las necesidades informativas que de ellas se derivan, para una toma de decisiones eficaz y eficiente. En consecuencia, se hace necesario usar más y mejor los sistemas de información de gestión para que sus directivos puedan satisfacer las expectativas de sus clientes y, en última instancia, alcanzar sus objetivos organizativos. En este sentido, el Cuadro de Mando se presenta como una herramienta de gestión que permite sintetizar en un sólo documento, los indicadores financieros y no financieros más importantes para el negocio. Estos indicadores se derivan de la estrategia empresarial, deben estar integrados entre sí y ser congruentes con aquella, pues determina la forma de competir y, por consiguiente, han de informar sobre todos los aspectos relevantes de la gestión que deben ser medidos y controlados. Ahora bien, hemos de señalar que no existen cuadros de mando umversalmente válidos. Cada hotel deberá adaptar este instrumento a sus necesidades que variarán dependiendo del entorno socioeconómico en el que desarrolle su actividad, el segmento en el que compita, la estrategia elegida, su estructura organizativa, etc. Considerando todo lo anterior, en este trabajo se analizan las necesidades de información para la gestión en el sector hotelero y en función de éstas, se articula una propuesta de Cuadro de Mando que pueda utilizarse como instrumento en los procesos de planificación y control. Palabras clave: Cuadro de Mando, Sector Hotelero, Contabilidad para la Gestión, Indicadores de Gestión

Factores claves de eficiencia en las pymes andaluzas: especial referencia a los sistemas de información

En este trabajo analizamos el papel de los Sistemas de Información como factor clave empresarial para la eficiencia de las pymes andaluzas. Para ello hemos desarrollado un estudio empírico empleando una doble fuente de datos, por un lado, los económico financieros extraídos de la base de datos SABI y, por otro los aspectos relacionados con los Sistemas de Información a través de un cuestionario. En cuanto a la metodología se han utilizado el análisis de las tablas de contingencias y también, cuando ha sido posible, análisis de comparación de la varianza (ANOVA) así como tests de “Student”. Como principal resultado debemos destacar que la inversión en la implantación e innovación en tecnologías de la información y las comunicaciones se ha convertido en una fuente de ventaja competitiva, básicamente, mediante el diseño y uso de Sistemas de Informació

¿Qué caballos son aquellos que hacen sombra en el mar?

Tradução espanhola do romance Que cavalos são aqueles que fazem sombra no mar?, de António Lobo Antunes, com © em castelhano para todo o mundo, realizada por Antonio Sáez Delgado