Dos nuevas especies de Pogonomyrmex (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) de la Argentina

Se describen dos nuevas especies de Pogonomyrmex Mayr para la Argentina: P. mendozanus sp. nov. y P. kusnezovi sp. nov. Se presenta una lista actualizada de las especies de Pogonomyrmex de la Argentina junto con datos de distribución, comentarios sobre la biología de las especies nuevas y figuras. Se ofrece una clave revisada, basada en obreras, para todas las especies del género citadas para la Argentina.Two new species of Pogonomyrmex Mayr from Argentina, P. mendozanus sp. nov. and P. kusnezovi sp. nov., are described. An updated list of species of Pogonomyrmex from Argentina is provided, as well as distributional data, comments on the biology of new species, and figures. A revised key of the known species for Argentina based on workers is offered.Fil: Cuezzo, Fabiana del Carmen. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales e Instituto Miguel Lillo. Instituto Superior de Entomología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucumán; ArgentinaFil: Claver, Silvia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas; Argentin

Selective maintenance optimisation for series-parallel systems alternating missions and scheduled breaks with stochastic durations

This paper deals with the selective maintenance problem for a multi-component system performing consecutive missions separated by scheduled breaks. To increase the probability of successfully completing its next mission, the system components are maintained during the break. A list of potential imperfect maintenance actions on each component, ranging from minimal repair to replacement is available. The general hybrid hazard rate approach is used to model the reliability improvement of the system components. Durations of the maintenance actions, the mission and the breaks are stochastic with known probability distributions. The resulting optimisation problem is modelled as a non-linear stochastic programme. Its objective is to determine a cost-optimal subset of maintenance actions to be performed on the components given the limited stochastic duration of the break and the minimum system reliability level required to complete the next mission. The fundamental concepts and relevant parameters of this decision-making problem are developed and discussed. Numerical experiments are provided to demonstrate the added value of solving this selective maintenance problem as a stochastic optimisation programme

Modern Democracy and Traditional Bantu Governance: Towards an Alternative Policy

This study starts from the analysis of the limits of modern democracy to propose a new form of Bantu-inspired political governance. The uprising of peoples in democratic countries signals the end of democracy based on ultra-liberalism. It is therefore urgent to think of a new type of political governance, much more concerned with people’s lives. The traditional Bantu (people) government is therefore a model to revisit and update, in this world where people feel abused by politics. We propose a political theory, based on consensual governance and the well-being of people. It is necessary to assert that the solution to the problems posed by modern democracy can only come from the traditional political governance model of the Bantu

Sound recordings of leading professors of Spanish Manufacturing Engineering. Analysis of contents.

ISBN 978-84-09-10387-4"Academic Lives in Industrial Engineering" is one of the different initiatives developed by PATRIF, a Working Group of the Manufacturing Engineering Society (MES) / Sociedad de Ingeniería de Fabricación (SIF). This activity intends to create a sound recording archive with interview format, in order to disseminate the trajectory of the great professors of the Spanish Industrial Engineers Faculties. It seeks to preserve and bring closer to the new generations the experiences and the personality of these professors, with a story told in the first person. This work aims to show the characteristics of this activity, presenting the profile of the interviewees, pointing out the most outstanding aspects of their interventions, carrying out an analysis of the follow-up of the broadcasted interviews and assessing their impact. Despite other areas of engineering are covered in this initiative, present work limit its analysis to the group of professors who have developed their academic and professional life within the Manufacturing Engineering and it also wants to serve as tribute and recognition to their trajectories and dedication to the Spanish Manufacturing Engineering.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

War, Cinema and History. Prisoners of War in 20th Century Conflicts

Since the first films were created, the will of filmmakers to represent the History on the screen has been a constant. War, as a regular and important event, repeated constantly through History, would be one of the main motifs used in movies. Among those war films, the stories of prisoners would be a useful resource to develop a discourse about the conflict, since there, the “good” and the “bad” side of the tale can be clearly shown through the characters imprisoned and the keepers. If we focus on the 20 th century, there are three wars that have been the object of several filmic creations: World War I, World War II and Vietnam War. In this text, we are going to summarize some films, which tell us the stories of prisoners of war during those three conflicts, and through them we are going to think over the relationship between these films and the academic History. With Jean Renoir´s La Grande Illusion, a film about World War I, we will see, apart of the historical reading of the movie, that the interpretations of a film can change over time. Through the stories about World War II, Stalag 17 by Billy Wilder and Unbroken by Angelina Jolie, we would learn about the shift that the treatment of prisoners of war suffered during WWII: from standard of correctness to widespread mistreatment. Rescue Dawn, finally, would confirm that shift, emphasized during the Cold War and specially present on the Vietnam War that is the setting for this film made by Werner Herzog. This movie, otherwise, could be placed into the American narrative created along the Cold War, in which the tales about the Vietnam War are ever¬present, even if there are more evident examples on other films. Through the cultural products developed within this narrative there was the will to present the United States as the “good guys”, the guarantors of democracy and defenders of freedom. This kind of creations would be, precisely, one of the major utilities of films, to create a discourse through which a certain cultural consciousness is spread

Stravinski: ¿compositor moderno, antimoderno o postmoderno?

Frente a la vinculación de la música de Stravinski con una estética postmoderna, este artículo pretende reinscribir la práctica y los planteamientos teóricos del compositor dentro de las coordenadas de la música moderna. Para ello el artículo recurre a interpretaciones alternativas sobre su obra y ofrece una nueva perspectiva sobre la diferencia existente entre la música moderna y la postmoderna.Stravinskiren musika estetika postmodernoarekin lotzen dutenaren aurka, musikagile horren praktika eta planteamendu teorikoak musika modernoaren koordenatuen barnean berrezarri nahi ditu artikulu honek. Hartarako, Stravinskiren obrari buruzko interpretazio alternatiboei heltzen die eta ikuspegi berria eskaintzen du musika modernoaren eta postmodernoaren arteko desberdintasunaz.Face au lien de la musique de Stravinski avec une esthétique post-moderne, cet article tente de réinscrire la pratique et les approches théoriques du compositeur dans les coordonnées de la musique moderne. Pour cela l'article fait appel à des interprétations alternatives sur son oeuvre et offre une nouvelle perspective sur la différence qui existe entre la musique moderne et la post-moderne.As against the connection of Stravinski's music with post-modern aesthetics, this article pretends to re-inscribe the composer's practice and theoretical proposals within the coordinates of modern music. For this purpose the article recurs to alternative interpretations on his work and offers a new perspective on the difference that exists between modern and post-modern music

Calibration of BVRI Photometry for the Wide Field Channel of the HST Advanced Camera for Surveys

We present new observations of two Galactic globular clusters, PAL4 and PAL14, using the Wide-Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and reanalyze archival data from a third, NGC2419. We matched our photometry of hundreds of stars in these fields from the ACS images to existing, ground-based photometry of faint sequences which were calibrated on the standard BVRI system of Landolt. These stars are significantly fainter than those generally used for HST calibration purposes, and therefore are much better matched to supporting precision photometry of ACS science targets. We were able to derive more accurate photometric transformation coefficients for the commonly used ACS broad-band filters compared to those published by Sirianni, et al. (2005), owing to the use of a factor of several more calibration stars which span a greater range of color. We find that the inferred transformations from each cluster individually do not vary significantly from the average, except for a small offset of the photometric zeropoint in the F850LP filter. Our results suggest that the published prescriptions for the time-dependent correction of CCD charge-transfer efficiency appear to work very well over the ~3.5 yr interval that spans our observations of PAL4 and PAL14 and the archived images of NGC2419.Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in PAS

Perceiving the Burundi social crisis

The ethnic conflict of Burundi has deep historical and social roots. In the pre-colonial period, Burundi was a hierarchical society, but the interdependence of the political and social system gave coherence and social strength. It could be argued that the reasons for the violent internal conflicts of Burundi range from the impacts of the measures of the colonial administration to processes that have occurred during the post-independence period. The tensions between social groups in Burundi are interpreted by both Burundians as well as external observers as being caused by an ethnic strife. The ethnic identities of people are never the main cause of social crisis and violence. The ethnic divisions of communities however become an extremely dangerous source of conflicts, when they are manipulated politically. Today, the strategic natural resources are still unexploited. However, the competition for land contributes to aggravate the present social conflict. The public sector, however, remains the most important source of income for the elites. Hence, the roots of the ethnic conflict in Burundi stems from a combination of factors, such as poverty, competition for scarce resources, governance policies and practices which cause economical and social exclusion, the struggle of groups and corporations for interests and the control of the country’s limited resources. The combination of these reasons have strengthened the ethnic tensions in Burundi, particularly between the groups labelled Hutu and Tutsi and these divisions have become a tool which elite groups deploy for political mobilisation, in order to secure economical and political benefits. This thesis briefly explores the historical, political and economical causes of the Burundi social crisis, how people interpret this conflict, the role the political elite groups and the national and international actors play for these conflicts, particularly concerning the struggle for the control over natural resources. The thesis recommends that all factions in the conflict form a committee and draft a political agreement, which both spells out the explicit causes of the conflict and presents a political action plan which accounts for how the conflict shall be solved and how a reconciliation process between the groups of the conflict shall be staged

Frontières et conflits chez les Dagara et leurs voisins au sud-ouest du Burkina Faso : (XVIIIème - XIXème siècle)

La présente esquisse vise à montrer l'importance des frontières et des conflits chez les Dagara et leurs voisins du Burkina Faso précolonial. En partant des écrits disponibles et de nos propres enquêtes dans le sud-ouest burkinabè, elle en est arrivée à dégager deux périodes historiques bien distinctes. La première, allant de la fin du XVIIIème siècle à la seconde moitié du XIXè siècle en gros, fut dominée par le dynamisme du front pionnier. L'appropriation de l'espace y engendrait quelques heurts interethniques, voire intra-ethniques, fussentils latents ou ouverts. La deuxième période identifiée, elle, s'étend de la seconde moitié du siècle dernier à la conquête française du sud-ouest burkinabè en 1897-1898. Les Dagara, à l'instar des autres ethnies du sud-ouest sont directement ou indirectement confrontés à des conquérants islamisés parmi lesquels les Zaberma, les troupes samoriennes, et surtout Moctar Karantao de Wahabou. Ce nouveau contexte géopolitique différemment accueilli par les ethnies en place aurait été à l'origine d'une guerre dite de sept ans durant laquelle on note des alliances et pactes interethniques. L'analyse des tactiques et stratégies de ces regroupements ponctuels en temps de crises permet de mieux cerner le comportement des Dagara et des ethnies circonvoisines face à la conquête coloniale