A Review of the DAC Evaluation Criteria: Upgrading Efficiency

Background: Efficiency has remained for long time the Cinderella of evaluation practice. According to several meta-evaluations only a small number of evaluations include robust and meaningful assessments in this field. Purpose: Following the review of the Development Assistance Committee’s (DAC) evaluation criteria this article reviews the main causes of efficiency remaining in a secondary role in evaluation practices and proposes: 1) upgrading it through broadening the current economic definition of efficiency, and 2) proposing a set of four evaluation dimensions revolving around the principle of sound financial management, social perceived value, result-based budgeting and interconnectedness with other criteria. Setting: Not applicable. Intervention: Not applicable. Research design: Literature review and empirical pilot testing of proposed evaluation methodology. Data collection & analysis: Qualitative analysis. Findings: This paper calls for a shift in focus from efficiency to a broader enriched principle of sound financial management including a strong partner-based focus and highlighting management as a pre- condition “sine qua non” for an intervention to be efficient. Efficiency assessments would then be twofold: managerial (procedures, policies and practices that lay out the requirements for efficiency to take place) and substantial (context, circumstances and reasoning for the existing budget balance between results and target groups). The key aspects of the proposal involve four proposed dimensions to be analysed under this renewed criteria that imply audits and evaluations come much closer and look at each other. Keywords: DAC evaluation criteria; efficiency; economy; equity; sound financial management; performance audit

Effect of the rotating domain size in multiple reference frame simulations of two radial flow impellers in a baffled stirred tank

78 páginas. Doctorado en Ingeniería de Procesoscomputational fluid dynamics (CFD) study was conducted in order to simulate the flow induced by both a turbine of four flat blades, and a high shear impeller (HSI) Norstone® type. The investigation was carried out in a stirred baffled-tank operating in laminar and turbulent flow conditions. To account for the rotation of the impeller-shaft array, the multiple reference frame (MRF) approach is employed, which in its core demands a demarcation for a surface separating the computational domain into two very distinctive regions: the rotating reference frame (RRF) and the static reference frame (SRF). This research project focuses specifically on investigating the role of the location of the separating surface over the accuracy of numerical approximations. To this end, several cylindrical volumes are constructed surrounding each of the impellers. In order to conduct simulations of the stirred-tank working at Reynolds numbers below 115, the laminar model was considered, whereas for Reynolds numbers above 21000, the standard κ-ε turbulence model was employed. To validate the digital replicas employed in the numerical simulations, power number measurements corresponding to laminar and turbulent flow regimes were obtained from a lab-scale cylindrical stirred-tank equipped with either of the two impellers previously mentioned. The computer results reveal that in the case of laminar flow, the position of the surface separating both regions for the two evaluated impellers do not have a substantial effect on the corresponding numerical approximations. However, its position influences numerical accuracy as the Reynolds number increases, i.e., the higher this is, the larger the RRF must be. The optimal extension for the RRF-region for the four flat blades impeller found in this work in turbulent flow were employed for reproducing satisfactorily experimental results of a published system. An analysis based on grid density for the two digital replicas built for this study, revealed that numerical power number values and local velocity profiles are more sensitive to changes in the extension of the RRF domain rather tan to an increase in the number of grid points for the mesh representing the stirred-tank system equipped with the four flat-blade turbine. On the other hand, in the case of the stirred-tank system equipped with the Norstone® impeller, sensitive changes were only substantial in the case of the velocity profiles

Fuentes, orden y familias de códigos. La codificación del derecho comercial de Chile, en el contexto de Latinoamérica en el siglo XIX

The codification of commercial laws in Latin America in the xixthc entury took into account not only foreign elements, but also local laws, developed from the Spanish legal heritage. This process was not developed by each country on an individual basis in Latin America, but each of them took advantage of the experience of others, located either in Latin America or in Europe. Neither it was done disorderly, because there were families of codes and consequently heads of those families. The Chilean Commercial Code (1865) is an original work, which contains local and foreign elements, as was the standard practice then. It was used for others Latin American countries which took its elements and merged them with other influences. Therefore, was placed as the head of one of the Latin American commercial codes families in the xixth century, together with the Spanish Code (1829).    La codificación comercial en Latinoamérica en el siglo XE, no sólo consideró sólo elementos foráneos, sino también su derecho propio, constituido por su herencia jurídica española. Este proceso no se desarrolló en Latinoamérica en forma aislada, sino que cada país aprovechó la experiencia codificadora de otros del continente y de Europa. Tampoco se hizo en forma desordenada, prueba de lo cual hay familias y por consiguiente cabezas de códigos. El Código de Comercio de Chile de 1865 es una obra original, que contiene elementos propios y foráneos, como fue usual. Pudo ser aprovechado por otros países latinoamericanos que supieron tomar sus elementos para fundirlos con otras influencias. Quedó constituido así como la cabeza de una de las familias de códigos latinoamericanos de derecho comercial del siglo XIX, junto al español de 1829.  

El periodismo educativo: objetivos

Además de una especialidad sectorial o temática de la investigación y de la práctica profesional, el Periodismo Educativo es una reflexión sistemática sobre los aspectos educadores de la información de actualidad, coadyuvante necesario de una orientación social contemporánea y determinante que llamamos Sociedad Educativa o Educación para Toda la Vida. En el artículo se describen los objetivos fundamentales de dicho Periodismo, se distinguen de los característicos de la Educomunicación, se establece su temario y se propone una selección bibliográfica (1990–1998), en la que se segrega lo periodístico de lo pedagógico y didáctico

Internet searches as a leading indicator of house purchases in a subnational framework: the case of Spain

[EN] Most people use web search tools to collect information on goods or services they intend to buy. Given the prominence of Google among the search engines and the availability of Google trends (GT) as a tool packaging some characteristics of those searches (geography, topic, categories, among others) it is only natural to use this instrument in order assess trends in the market. In this paper we build indicators reflecting the real estate market stance. To do so we rely GT’s TOPIC´s option that approximates the concept (housing, purchase, sale ...) instead of the exact wordings used by searchers. This approach is particularly useful in a country with several official languages and an important foreign market. The baseline quarterly model describes house sales (measured by its year-onyear growth rate) as an autoregressive AR (1/4) model and unemployment rate as a covariate. The alternative augments the baseline with contemporary a Google indicator. The models are estimated for 2004Q1-2014Q4 and recursive one period ahead forecasts are made for 2015Q1-2018Q4. The inclusion of Google indicator reduces the EAM of prediction errors (outside the sample) from 0.077 to 0.034. The forecasts also have greater accuracy and lower bias. The same procedure has been replicated for regions with very similar results for the main regional markets (Madrid and Catalonia) and more unequal in other regions.Artola, C.; Herrera De La Cruz, J. (2020). Internet searches as a leading indicator of house purchases in a subnational framework: the case of Spain. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 338-338. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/148776OCS33833

Día Internacional de los Archivos 2016. Las legumbres en los documentos de trabajo de investigadores de la Escuela de Estudios Árabes

Peer reviewe

Día del Libro 2017

Resumen de las actividades organizadas por la Biblioteca de la Escuela de Estudios Árabes para celebrar el Día del Libro 2017.Peer reviewe