Disability pensions and social security reform : analysis of the Latin American experience

This paper describes the disability pension arrangements prevailing in ten Latin American countries that reformed their pension systems. The analysis is limited to the topic of disability pensions, without attempting to evaluate other critical aspects such as the available infrastructure: handicapped access generally (ramps, blind cues), medical and nursing support, home care, and so on. The relative significance of disability pensions is highly dependant on these factors and, however, they are really limited in most countries of Latin America.Gender and Law,Social Protections&Assistance,Pensions&Retirement Systems,Gender and Law,Social Cohesion

Digital Technologies and performative pedagogies: Repositioning the visual

Images are becoming a primary means of information presentation in the digitized global media and digital technologies have emancipated and democratized the image. This allows for the reproduction and manipulation of images on a scale never seen before and opens new possibilities for teachers schooled in critical visuality. This paper reports on an innovative pre-service teacher training course in which a cross-curricula cohort of secondary teachers employed visual performative competencies to produce a series of learning objects on a digital platform. The resulting intertextual narratives demonstrate that the manipulation of image and text offered by digital technologies create a powerful vehicle for investigating knowledge and understandings, evolving new meaning and awakening latent creativity in the use of images for meaning making. This research informs the New Literacies and multimodal fields of enquiry and argues that visuality is integral to any pedagogy that purports to be relevant to the contemporary learner. It argues that the visual has been significantly under-valued as a conduit for knowledge acquisition and meaning making in the digital environment and supports the claim that critical literacy, interactivity, experimentation and production are vital to attaining the tenets of transformative education (Buckingham, 2007; Walsh, 2007; Cope & Kalantzis, 2008)

The Embodiment of Photographic Imagery Through the Lens of Time, Light and Memory

The photograph has its own unseen and implied past and future. The lens of memory accesses both the conscious and subconscious thoughts of its creator and audience. The photographer utilizes memory as an embodied experience in the construction of the photograph. Memory is filtered through the prevision experiences, assumptions beliefs, and cultural biases of its creator. This paper is a theoretical discussion about the way memory, experience and vision can connect the photographer to their photomechanical device, the camera, as an extension of the body. capturing time, light and memory shapes new states of beings and opens possibilities whereby the improbable and the impossible are envisioned as an embodiment of the photographers past, present and future imaginings. In field of visual art and design education, students must develop skills as inventive designers and photographers who can connect to their embodied past. For the students to achieve embodiment of the image, they need to have control of the technical and aesthetic elements of the photographic medium through the lens of time, light and memory

The similarity heuristic

Decision makers are often called on to make snap judgments using fast-and- frugal decisionrules called cognitive heuristics. Although early research into cognitive heuristicsemphasized their limitations, more recent research has focused on their high level ofaccuracy. In this paper we investigate the performance a subset of the representativenessheuristic which we call the similarity heuristic.Decision makers who use it judge the likelihood that an instance is a member of one category rather than another by the degree towhich it is similar to others in that category. We provide a mathematical model of theheuristic and test it experimentally in a trinomial environment. The similarity heuristic turnsout to be a reliable and accurate choice rule and both choice and response time data suggest itis also how choices are made

Transdisciplinary Art-Science Identities and the Artification of Learning

Transdisciplinary art-science learning is linked to semiosis and the performative nature of learning. At the core of contemporary learning is sensemaking through images. We learn through how we perceive, remember, and imagine the world. An ethics-approved inquiry looked at the artmaking practices of gifted secondary school students between the ages of 15 and 17 years (n = 108) with a focus on their art-science performative learning. The study applies Deleuzoguattarian thinking and other post-structural perspectives on contemporary representational practices for learning and communication in art-science spaces. One of the research key findings is that artified visual pedagogies can both transverse and/or facilitate meaning-making across art-science spaces and brings forth the creation of science-linked identities. Educators must now engage with the idea that visual reasoning as performative action is now the connecting pedagogy in all epistemic fields

On monotonous separately continuous functions

[EN] Let T = (T, ≤) and T1= (T1 , ≤1) be linearly ordered sets and X be a topological space. The main result of the paper is the following: If function ƒ(t,x) : T × X → T1 is continuous in each variable (“t” and “x”) separately and function ƒx(t) = ƒ(t,x) is monotonous on T for every x ∈ X, then ƒ is continuous mapping from T × X to T1, where T and T1 are considered as topological spaces under the order topology and T × X is considered as topological space under the Tychonoff topology on the Cartesian product of topological spaces T and X.Grushka, YI. (2019). On monotonous separately continuous functions. Applied General Topology. 20(1):75-79. https://doi.org/10.4995/agt.2019.9817SWORD7579201G. Birkhoff, Lattice theory, Third edition. American Mathematical Society Colloquium Publications, Vol. XXV, American Mathematical Society, Providence, R.I., New York, 1967.K. C. Ciesielski and D. Miller, A continuous tale on continuous and separately continuous functions, Real Analysis Exchange 41, no. 1 (2016), 19-54. https://doi.org/10.14321/realanalexch.41.1.0019O. Karlova, V. Mykhaylyuk and O. Sobchuk, Diagonals of separately continuous functions and their analogs, Topology Appl. 160, no. 1 (2013), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.topol.2012.09.003J. L. Kelley, General topology, University series in higher mathematics, Van Nostrand, 1955.R. L. Krusee and J. J. Deely, Joint continuity of monotonic functions, The American Mathematical Monthly 76, no. 1 (1969), 74-76. https://doi.org/10.1080/00029890.1969.12000144V. Mykhajlyuk, The Baire classification of separately continuous and monotone functions, Scientific Herald of Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University 349 (2007), 95-97 (Ukrainian).V. Nesterenko, Joint properties of functions which monotony with respect to the first variable, Mathematical Bulletin of Taras Shevchenko Scientific Society 6 (2009), 195-201 (Ukrainian).H. Voloshyn, V. Maslyuchenko and O. Maslyuchenko, On layer-wise uniform approximation of separately continuous functioins by polynomials, Mathematical Bulletin of Taras Shevchenko Scientific Society 10 (2013), 135-158 (Ukrainian).W. Young, A note on monotone functions, The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics (Oxford Ser.) 41 (1910), 79-87

Introduction of technological innovations: valuation, selection and timing

In this dissertation, we tackle challenges associated with the introduction of technological innovations, namely (1) the difficulty of valuing new initiatives due to inherent uncertainties and optionalities, (2) the challenges in selecting innovations due to conflicting objectives and stakeholders, and (3) the trade-offs associated with timing the development activities and product introduction. Our research is inspired by problems faced by companies we have worked with and aims to offer practical decision making support and valuable managerial insights. Following an introduction, the second and third chapters present a multi-stakeholder, multi-objective methodology we developed for the valuation and selection of air traffic management system enhancements in relation to the Single European Sky initiative, in effort to cope with forecasted increase in traffic, whilst maintaining safety and protecting the environment. We frame this strategic decision problem and develop a mathematical model, combining quantitative and qualitative multi-criteria decision analysis techniques with large-scale optimization methods, allowing for different stakeholder views on the importance of the objectives and on the performance of the possible enhancements. The fourth chapter examines technological innovation at the firm level. We develop a stochastic dynamic programming framework for valuing managerial flexibilities, accounting for (1) uncertainty in product performance and market requirements, (2) different market environments, and (3) varying strength of competition. We introduce two dimensions of competition, namely its intensity and the competitors' capabilities. We show that the effect of competition on the value of managerial flexibility is complex. Stronger competition may increase or decrease the value of flexibility. We demonstrate that the option of delaying product launch is typically most valuable when competitors are weak, but under certain conditions, delay can offer value in more competitive environments. Our insights can help firms understand how managerial flexibility should be explored, depending on the nature and intensity of the competition they face