Del sincretismo ideológico en la reflexión económica novogranadina: política económica y economía política en Cartagena de Indias, 1800-1809

De 1800 a 1808, diferentes comerciantes y funcionarios reales en Cartagena de Indias solicitaron la ejecución de una política económica que les permitiera sobrevenir los bloqueos portuarios generados por las guerras que España libró en aquellos años: el comercio neutral. Al tomar la historia de las discusiones alrededor de esta política comercial como una puerta de entrada a la reflexión sobre economía política en el Nuevo Reino de Granada, este artículo busca explorar los fundamentos teóricos del comercio neutral. Tres momentos de la discusión sobre la medida se ponen de relieve en el artículo: 1800, 1805 y 1808. En cada uno de ellos, defensores y opositores del comercio neutral argumentaron a favor y en contra sustentados en dos premisas fundamentales. Primera, la observación de la aplicación de políticas económicas en territorios vecinos era un método válido para analizar su pertinencia y, segunda, un comercio activo era inexcusable para alcanzar la “felicidad pública” del reino. Estas dos premisas y su finalidad pragmática señalan el sincretismo ideológico que informó los fundamentos teóricos del reformismo borbónico, del cual emergió el comercio neutral. Este artículo propone una respuesta a la pregunta sobre la naturaleza de la reflexión económica novogranadina al situarla dentro de su intención práctica, esto es, la formulación y evalución de políticas económicas, y al sugerir que dentro de estos límites pragmáticos se encuentran nuevas voces, nuevos documentos y una nueva propuesta historiográfica sobre la economía política en el Nuevo Reino de Granada.From 1800 to 1808, merchants and royal officers in Cartagena de Indias requested the execution of an economic policy that allowed them to overcome the port blockades caused by the several wars Spain waged those years: comercio neutral. By taking the history of the discussions around this measure as a gateway to understand the economic thought of the time in the Nuevo Reino de Granada, this article seeks to explore the theoretical foundations upon which comercio neutral was grounded. Three moments are studied: 1800, 1805 and 1809. In each moment, those who proposed and those who attacked the measure argued for and against hinging upon two main premises: first, the observation of the application of economic policies was a valid method to analyze their pertinence and, second, an active commerce was the sine qua non for achieving felicidad pública. These two premises and their pragmatic end display the ideological syncretism that informed the theoretical foundations of Bourbon Reformism, from which comercio neutral stemmed. This article answers the question about the nature of New-Grenadine economic thought by situating it within its practical intentions and by suggesting that within this pragmatical boundaries new voices, new documents and a new historiographical proposal on the political economy of the Nuevo Reino de Granada are found

Electrostatic Design and Characterization of a 200 keV Photogun and Wien Spin Rotator

High-energy nuclear physics experiments at the Jefferson Lab Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) require high spin-polarization electron beams produced from strained super-lattice GaAs photocathodes activated to negative electron affinity in a high voltage photogun operating at 130 kV dc. A pair of Wien filter spin rotators in the injector provides precise control of the electron beam polarization at the end station target. An upgrade of the CEBAF injector to better support the upcoming Moller experiment requires increasing the electron beam energy to 200 keV, resulting in better transmission through injector apertures and improved photocathode lifetime. In addition, the energy increase is expected to reduce unwanted helicity correlated intensity and position systematics. These requirements led to the design of a shielding electrode described in this work, which minimizes the electric field at the triple-point junction and linearizes the potential along the insulator, thus reducing the risk of field emission induced insulator arcing. The Wien spin rotator design was modified for increasing the electric field from 1.6 to 2.7 MV/m and the magnetic field from 9.1 to 13 mT. The upgrades required detailed modeling in Solidworks, electrostatic simulations using CST, beam dynamics using GPT, device implementation, and in situ high voltage characterization of the world’s first 200 keV polarized photoelectron gun and compatible Wien filter spin rotator

On Real-Time AER 2-D Convolutions Hardware for Neuromorphic Spike-Based Cortical Processing

In this paper, a chip that performs real-time image convolutions with programmable kernels of arbitrary shape is presented. The chip is a first experimental prototype of reduced size to validate the implemented circuits and system level techniques. The convolution processing is based on the address–event-representation (AER) technique, which is a spike-based biologically inspired image and video representation technique that favors communication bandwidth for pixels with more information. As a first test prototype, a pixel array of 16x16 has been implemented with programmable kernel size of up to 16x16. The chip has been fabricated in a standard 0.35- m complimentary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) process. The technique also allows to process larger size images by assembling 2-D arrays of such chips. Pixel operation exploits low-power mixed analog–digital circuit techniques. Because of the low currents involved (down to nanoamperes or even picoamperes), an important amount of pixel area is devoted to mismatch calibration. The rest of the chip uses digital circuit techniques, both synchronous and asynchronous. The fabricated chip has been thoroughly tested, both at the pixel level and at the system level. Specific computer interfaces have been developed for generating AER streams from conventional computers and feeding them as inputs to the convolution chip, and for grabbing AER streams coming out of the convolution chip and storing and analyzing them on computers. Extensive experimental results are provided. At the end of this paper, we provide discussions and results on scaling up the approach for larger pixel arrays and multilayer cortical AER systems.Commission of the European Communities IST-2001-34124 (CAVIAR)Commission of the European Communities 216777 (NABAB)Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIC-2000-0406-P4Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIC-2003-08164-C03-01Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TEC2006-11730-C03-01Junta de Andalucía TIC-141

Spike Events Processing for Vision Systems

In this paper we briefly summarize the fundamental properties of spike events processing applied to artificial vision systems. This sensing and processing technology is capable of very high speed throughput, because it does not rely on sensing and processing sequences of frames, and because it allows for complex hierarchically structured cortical-like layers for sophisticated processing. The paper includes a few examples that have demonstrated the potential of this technology for highspeed vision processing, such as a multilayer event processing network of 5 sequential cortical-like layers, and a recognition system capable of discriminating propellers of different shape rotating at 5000 revolutions per second (300000 revolutions per minute)

Cooper, Frederick.Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History

El historiador indio Dipesh Chakrabarty sugirió en Provincializing Europe que algunas categorías comunes para pensar en fenómenos como la modernidad política en lugares que fueron sujetos a la experiencia colonial europea –en este caso, India– son típicamente europeas ya que sus genealogías están afincadas profundamente en tradiciones intelectuales y hasta teológicas de Europa2 . En otras palabras, las categorías conceptuales europeas se han utilizado para pensar sociedades no-occidentales: la misma disciplina histórica haría parte de esta tradición y sería, pues, una tradición típicamente colonial. El problema se agrava cuando se considera que muchas de estas categorías han sido usadas y se usan en el presente como herramientas de reclamación o acción política y, así, algunos académicos se inclinarían a sumirse en la inacción, tanto intelectual como política, pues, al final de cuentas, ¿no estarían entonces luchando por conceptos y con conceptos que son, en principio, una imposición colonial

Crònica del fòrum social mundial de Caracas

Abstract not availabl

A Market-Based Analysis on the Main Characteristics of Gearboxes Used in Onshore Wind Turbines

Even though wind energy is one of the most mature renewable technologies, it is in continuous development not only because of the trend towards larger wind turbines but also because of the development of new technological solutions. The gearbox is one of the components of the drive train in which the industry is concentrating more effort on research and development. Larger rotor blades lead to more demanding requirements for this component as a consequence of a higher mechanical torque and multiplication ratio (due to lower rotational speed of blades while the rotational speed on the generator side remains at similar values). In addition, operating conditions become increasingly demanding in terms of reliability, performance, and compactness. This paper analyses the different gearbox arrangements that are implemented by manufacturers of onshore wind turbines, as well as their market penetration (including different aspects that affect the design of the gearbox, such as drive train configuration and turbine size). The analysis carried out shows a clear convergence towards gearboxes with three stages. However, there is a noticeable diversity in the types of gears used, depending to a large extent on the preferences of each manufacturer but also on the nominal power of the wind turbine and drive train configuration

On the Technological Acceptance of Moodle by Higher Education Faculty—A Nationwide Study Based on UTAUT2

Moodle is an open-source learning management system that is widely used today, especially in higher education settings. Although its technological acceptance by undergraduate students has been extensively studied in the past, very little is known about its acceptance by university professors. In particular, as far as we know, the literature contains no previous experiences related to South American teachers. This paper aims to bridge this gap by quantifying and analyzing the drivers of Moodle’s technological acceptance among Ecuadorian academic staff. Considering the responses of 538 teachers and taking a modified UTAUT2 model as a theoretical basis, we found that Ecuadorian teachers have high levels of acceptance of Moodle, regardless of their age, gender, ethnicity, or discipline. However, this acceptance is significantly higher in teachers with high levels of education and with considerable previous experience with e-learning systems. The main determinants of this acceptance are attitude strength, effort expectancy, performance expectancy, and facilitating conditions. We found no moderating effects in relation to the age, gender, or previous experience of the participants (including second- and third-order interactions derived from these variables). We conclude that, albeit moderately (e.g., adjusted R2 = 0.588), the model tested confirms the predictive power of the part of UTAUT2 that was inherited from UTAUT

An AER handshake-less modular infrastructure PCB with x8 2.5Gbps LVDS serial links

Nowadays spike-based brain processing emulation is taking off. Several EU and others worldwide projects are demonstrating this, like SpiNNaker, BrainScaleS, FACETS, or NeuroGrid. The larger the brain process emulation on silicon is, the higher the communication performance of the hosting platforms has to be. Many times the bottleneck of these system implementations is not on the performance inside a chip or a board, but in the communication between boards. This paper describes a novel modular Address-Event-Representation (AER) FPGA-based (Spartan6) infrastructure PCB (the AER-Node board) with 2.5Gbps LVDS high speed serial links over SATA cables that offers a peak performance of 32-bit 62.5Meps (Mega events per second) on board-to-board communications. The board allows back compatibility with parallel AER devices supporting up to x2 28-bit parallel data with asynchronous handshake. These boards also allow modular expansion functionality through several daughter boards. The paper is focused on describing in detail the LVDS serial interface and presenting its performance.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TEC2009-10639-C04-02/01Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2012-37868-C04-02/01Junta de Andalucía TIC-6091Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad PRI-PIMCHI-2011-076

El indio mestizo, el indio-origen (La doble-imagen del indígena en la Exposición arqueológica y etnográfica de 1938)

The celebration of the IV centenary of Bogotá’s foundation was accompanied by several social acts displaying a myriad of different self-representations of the Colombia’s national character. A prominent event was the Archaeological and Ethnographical Exposition, in which both objects and indigenous people themselves were exhibited. Both journalists and “amateur” etnologists or archaelogists forged a representation on what the indio meant for the past and the present of the nation. This image was constituted of two overlapping images: the image of the indio-mestizo and the image of the indio-origen. This article suggests that 1938 was a breaking point in the story of this double-image: both origins and future; the best and the worst of the “national soul” was to be found in the representations evident in press of the not-quite-citizensyet indigenous people of Colombia. This article proposes a consideration to the history of an anthropological or etnological knowledge in Colombia through the analysis of this double-imageLa Exposición arqueológica y etnográfica de 1938 corrió paralela a una de las celebraciones conmemorativas más importantes de Colombia: el IV Centenario de la fundación de Bogotá. Este espacio constituyó una oportunidad única en el cual los sujetos de la República admiraron objetos de exposición arqueológica que representaban el pasado más remoto, el origen, de la nación. Pero no sólo objetos, sino, como apareció en la prensa de la época, “ejemplares” indígenas fueron traídos y “expuestos”. En su observación, una representación particular tomó lugar sobre ellos: una imagen que los proyectó como indios-mestizos e indios-origen: dos caras de una misma moneda que sólo podían coexistir por medio de una mistificación de esta imagen. Este artículo propone, pues, una reflexión a la historia del conocimiento antropológico o etnológico a través del análisis de esta doble-imagen