Linking the poor to new modalities in service delivery. Partnership innovations in solid waste management in Bogotá, Colombia

Waste picking has become a prominent activity in the urban landscape, bridging the gap between shortfalls in service delivery and personal income generation in virtually all cities of the developing world. Overcoming previous stigmatization and work fragmentation through organization and dialogue, social economy organizations constituted by waste pickers are emerging as valuable actors in the governance framework, partnering at times with the public and private sectors to fulfil public service provision while aiming to improve the livelihoods of the poor and overcome the institutional nature of poverty. Bogota’s Plan Maestro Integral de Residuos Solidos (PMIRS) serves as a case study to explore these new modalities in service delivery, and to delve into the theoretical dimensions and practical implications of fomenting the inclusion of informal waste pickers into integrated solid waste management systems

The temperature dependence of the isothermal bulk modulus at 1 bar pressure

It is well established that the product of the volume coefficient of thermal expansion and the bulk modulus is nearly constant at temperatures higher than the Debye temperature. Using this approximation allows predicting the values of the bulk modulus. The derived analytical solution for the temperature dependence of the isothermal bulk modulus has been applied to ten substances. The good correlations to the experiments indicate that the expression may be useful for substances for which bulk modulus data are lacking

Mixing and Accretion in lambda Bootis Stars

Strong evidence for deep mixing has been uncovered for slowly rotating F, and A stars of the main sequence. As the accretion/diffusion model for the formation of lboo stars is heavily dependent on mixing in superficial regions, such deep mixing may have important repercussions on our understanding of these stars. It is shown that deep mixing at a level similar to that of FmAm stars increases the amount of matter that needs to be accreted by the stars with respect with the standard models by some three orders of magnitude. It is also shown that significantly larger accretion rates have to be maintained, as high as $10^{-11}$~M_\sun yr^{-1}, to prevent meridional circulation from canceling the effect of accretion. The existence of old ($\approx 1$~Gyr) is not a likely outcome of the present models for accretion/diffusion with or without deep mixing. It is argued that lboo stars are potentially very good diagnostics of mixing mechanisms in moderately fast rotators.Comment: To appear in Astrophysical Journal Letters. 4 pages, 2 fgure

Probabilistic Approach to Time-Dependent Load-Transfer Models of Fracture

A probabilistic method for solving time-dependent load-transfer models of fracture is developed. It is applicable to any rule of load redistribution, i.e, local, hierarchical, etc. In the new method, the fluctuations are generated during the breaking process (annealed randomness) while in the usual method, the random lifetimes are fixed at the beginning (quenched disorder). Both approaches are equivalent.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures. To appear in Phys.Rev.

Space-Time Clustering and Correlations of Major Earthquakes

Earthquake occurrence in nature is thought to result from correlated elastic stresses, leading to clustering in space and time. We show that occurrence of major earthquakes in California correlates with time intervals when fluctuations in small earthquakes are suppressed relative to the long term average. We estimate a probability of less than 1% that this coincidence is due to random clustering.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to PR

Using synchronization to improve earthquake forecasting in a cellular automaton model

A new forecasting strategy for stochastic systems is introduced. It is inspired by the concept of anticipated synchronization between pairs of chaotic oscillators, recently developed in the area of Dynamical Systems, and by the earthquake forecasting algorithms in which different pattern recognition functions are used for identifying seismic premonitory phenomena. In the new strategy, copies (clones) of the original system (the master) are defined, and they are driven using rules that tend to synchronize them with the master dynamics. The observation of definite patterns in the state of the clones is the signal for connecting an alarm in the original system that efficiently marks the impending occurrence of a catastrophic event. The power of this method is quantitatively illustrated by forecasting the occurrence of characteristic earthquakes in the so-called Minimalist Model.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Scaling in the time-dependent failure of a fiber bundle with local load sharing

We study the scaling behaviors of a time-dependent fiber-bundle model with local load sharing. Upon approaching the complete failure of the bundle, the breaking rate of fibers diverges according to $r(t)\propto (T_f-t)^{-\xi}$, where $T_f$ is the lifetime of the bundle, and $\xi \approx 1.0$ is a quite universal scaling exponent. The average lifetime of the bundle $$ scales with the system size as $N^{-\delta}$, where $\delta$ depends on the distribution of individual fiber as well as the breakdown rule.Comment: 5 pages, 4 eps figures; to appear in Phys. Rev.

Phase Transition in a Random Fragmentation Problem with Applications to Computer Science

We study a fragmentation problem where an initial object of size x is broken into m random pieces provided x>x_0 where x_0 is an atomic cut-off. Subsequently the fragmentation process continues for each of those daughter pieces whose sizes are bigger than x_0. The process stops when all the fragments have sizes smaller than x_0. We show that the fluctuation of the total number of splitting events, characterized by the variance, generically undergoes a nontrivial phase transition as one tunes the branching number m through a critical value m=m_c. For m<m_c, the fluctuations are Gaussian where as for m>m_c they are anomalously large and non-Gaussian. We apply this general result to analyze two different search algorithms in computer science.Comment: 5 pages RevTeX, 3 figures (.eps

Smooth-filamental transition of active tracer fields stirred by chaotic advection

The spatial distribution of interacting chemical fields is investigated in the non-diffusive limit. The evolution of fluid parcels is described by independent dynamical systems driven by chaotic advection. The distribution can be filamental or smooth depending on the relative strength of the dispersion due to chaotic advection and the stability of the chemical dynamics. We give the condition for the smooth-filamental transition and relate the H\"older exponent of the filamental structure to the Lyapunov exponents. Theoretical findings are illustrated by numerical experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure