Educataion and the international credit organizations:. Loans and recommendations to América Latina (2000-2015)

The paper tackles the main subjects and the strategies which underlie the projects funded by the World Bank and the Interamerican Development Bank in Argentina, Brasil, Chile and Mexico, since year 2000 up today. From a historical perspective, their role in the educational reforms in Latin America in the nineties and the new guidings taken in recent times, are analized. Studying the projects one may assert that, in spite of the specific fundings in each country, by each entity, there are some persistance lines which are shown as the technical solution to be replayed afront old and new problems of the educational systems. The actions of both banks in the educational world are strongly guided by the interest in education from the perspective of Theory of Human Capital, the search for improving the productivity and “employability” of workers and the support of social orderEl trabajo aborda los temas prioritarios y las estrategias que subyacen en los proyectos financiados por el Banco Mundial y el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo en Argentina, Brasil, Chile y México, a partir del año 2000 y hasta la actualidad. Desde una perspectiva histórica, se analiza su papel en las reformas educacionales de América Latina de los ‘90 y las nuevas orientaciones adoptadas en la etapa más reciente. El análisis de los proyectos permite afirmar que, a pesar de las especificidades del financiamiento en cada país, por parte de cada entidad, existen ciertas líneas de continuidad que son presentadas como solución técnica a replicar frente a viejos y nuevos problemas de los sistemas educativos. El interés en la educación desde la perspectiva de la Teoría del Capital Humano, la búsqueda de la mejora de la productividad y “empleabilidad” de los trabajadores y el mantenimiento del orden social orientan fuertemente la acción de ambos bancos en el ámbito de la educació

Business model innovation and digital transformation in global management consulting firms

Purpose: This paper contains an exploratory analysis of the business model innovations (BMIs) that management consulting firms (MCFs) undertake to remain competitive during digital transformation. Design/methodology/approach: This paper uses data from a longitudinal multiple case study of the European practices of major global MCFs to provide an overview of how they reconfigure their business model (BM) to gain competitive advantages. It maps BMIs in MCFs through value creation innovation, value proposition innovation and value capturing innovation. Findings: There is a shift in value proposition from solely giving advice or supporting information technology (IT) implementation to providing end-to-end digital solutions. To materialize value propositions, MCFs acquire new knowledge and digital assets through talent scouting, and mergers and acquisitions (M&As). MCFs rely heavily on complementary knowledge and capabilities of actors within ecosystems; thus, they focus on expanding, creating their ecosystems and adopting platforms' configuration and characteristics. Research limitations/implications: Inductively, the authors reached an analytical generalization through six propositions and a theoretical frame that embeds propositions in the previous literature. Future research should test them across the overall management consulting industry. Practical implications: MCFs are recognized as drivers of innovation and BMIs in most client firms. However, MCFs are rarely analyzed with respect to their BMIs. Understanding how MCFs innovate their business models (BMs) to provide digital transformation (DT) consulting services is relevant for delivering management innovation across industries. Originality/value: This is the first exploratory study on BMI inside global MCFs during DT

Resolving the Crab pulsar wind nebula at teraelectronvolt energies

The Crab nebula is one of the most-studied cosmic particle accelerators, shining brightly across the entire electromagnetic spectrum up to very-high-energy gamma rays1,2. It is known from observations in the radio to gamma-ray part of the spectrum that the nebula is powered by a pulsar, which converts most of its rotational energy losses into a highly relativistic outflow. This outflow powers a pulsar wind nebula, a region of up to ten light-years across, filled with relativistic electrons and positrons. These particles emit synchrotron photons in the ambient magnetic field and produce very-high-energy gamma rays by Compton up-scattering of ambient low-energy photons. Although the synchrotron morphology of the nebula is well established, it has not been known from which region the very-high-energy gamma rays are emitted3,4,5,6,7,8. Here we report that the Crab nebula has an angular extension at gamma-ray energies of 52 arcseconds (assuming a Gaussian source width), much larger than at X-ray energies. This result closes a gap in the multi-wavelength coverage of the nebula, revealing the emission region of the highest-energy gamma rays. These gamma rays enable us to probe a previously inaccessible electron and positron energy range. We find that simulations of the electromagnetic emission reproduce our measurement, pro

Benefits of Urologic-Dermatologic Consultations for the Diagnosis of Cutaneous Penile Lesions: A Prospective Study

INTRODUCTION: We evaluated the benefits of a specialized consultation created in 2014 for cutaneous penile lesions. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We performed a descriptive prospective study evaluating all patients sent for a monthly urologic-dermatologic consultation at a French university hospital from September 2014 to September 2015 for cutaneous penile lesions. All patients evaluated were included. We collected the demographic data, clinical examination findings, and the proposed diagnosis and treatment for every patient. RESULTS: A total of 27 patients were included; 4 (14.8%) had been referred by a general physician and 23 (85.2%) by a specialist. Cutaneous penile lesions had evolved within 12 months in 15 patients (55.6%). Penile cancer was diagnosed in 5 patients (18.5%), of which 3 were squamous cell carcinoma (11.1%), 1 was metastasis of melanoma (3.7%), and 1 was extramammary Paget disease (3.7%). In addition, 1 patient (3.7%) had a premalignant lesion on a condyloma, 12 (44.4%) had balanitis, 2 (7.4%) had psoriasis lesions, 3 (11.1%) had condylomas, 1 (3.7%) had genital melanosis, and 3 (11.2%) had normal findings. Four patients (16.6%) underwent biopsy, 8 (33.3%) underwent surgery, and 12 (50%) received local treatment. CONCLUSION: The use of urologic-dermatology specialized consultations resulted in encouraging findings. Patients can benefit from multidisciplinary expertise and rapid treatment of various disorders. Thus, it seems important to develop reference centers created specifically for cancerous disease

Weak and strong chaos in Fermi-Pasta-Ulam models and beyond

We briefly review some of the most relevant results that our group obtained in the past, while investigating the dynamics of the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) models. The first result is the numerical evidence of the existence of two different kinds of transitions in the dynamics of the FPU models: (i) A stochasticity threshold (ST), characterized by a value of the energy per degree of freedom below which the overwhelming majority of the phase space trajectories are regular (vanishing Lyapunov exponents). It tends to vanish as the number N of degrees of freedom is increased. (ii) A strong stochasticity threshold (SST), characterized by a value of the energy per degree of freedom at which a crossover appears between two different power laws of the energy dependence of the largest Lyapunov exponent, which phenomenologically corresponds to the transition between weak and strong chaotic regimes. It is stable with N. The second result is the development of a Riemannian geometric theory to explain the origin of Hamiltonian chaos. Starting this theory has been motivated by the inadequacy of the approach based on homoclinic intersections to explain the origin of chaos in systems of arbitrarily large N, or arbitrarily far from quasi-integrability, or displaying a transition between weak and strong chaos. Finally, the third result stems from the search for the transition between weak and strong chaos in systems other than FPU. Actually, we found that a very sharp SST appears as the dynamical counterpart of a thermodynamic phase transition, which in turn has led, in the light of the Riemannian theory of chaos, to the development of a topological theory of phase transitions. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics

Hamiltonian dynamics and geometry of phase transitions in classical XY models

The Hamiltonian dynamics associated to classical, planar, Heisenberg XY models is investigated for two- and three-dimensional lattices. Besides the conventional signatures of phase transitions, here obtained through time averages of thermodynamical observables in place of ensemble averages, qualitatively new information is derived from the temperature dependence of Lyapunov exponents. A Riemannian geometrization of newtonian dynamics suggests to consider other observables of geometric meaning tightly related with the largest Lyapunov exponent. The numerical computation of these observables - unusual in the study of phase transitions - sheds a new light on the microscopic dynamical counterpart of thermodynamics also pointing to the existence of some major change in the geometry of the mechanical manifolds at the thermodynamical transition. Through the microcanonical definition of the entropy, a relationship between thermodynamics and the extrinsic geometry of the constant energy surfaces $\Sigma_E$ of phase space can be naturally established. In this framework, an approximate formula is worked out, determining a highly non-trivial relationship between temperature and topology of the $\Sigma_E$. Whence it can be understood that the appearance of a phase transition must be tightly related to a suitable major topology change of the $\Sigma_E$. This contributes to the understanding of the origin of phase transitions in the microcanonical ensemble.Comment: in press on Physical Review E, 43 pages, LaTeX (uses revtex), 22 PostScript figure