Empowering the IMF: Should Reform be a Requirement for Increasing the Fund's Resources?

This paper briefly reviews the IMF’s current practices and policy-making in the context of a proposed quadrupling of IMF resources to $1 trillion dollars, and a consequent increase in the Fund’s influence over economic policy-making in developing countries. It finds that the IMF is still prescribing inappropriate policies that could unnecessarily exacerbate economic downturns in a number of countries. The paper concludes that these pro-cyclical policies can exacerbate the world economic downturn. Perhaps more importantly, the re-establishment of the IMF as a major power in economic and decision-making in low-and-middle income countries, with little or no voice for these countries in the IMF’s decision-making, could have long-term implications for growth, development, and social indicators in many countries. The authors propose some reforms in the areas of governance and accountability to be attached of funding increases, in order to help prevent adverse outcomes.IMF

The Dynamic Conception of Being in the First Philosophers and the Notion of φύσις

According to Aristotle, the "object" of study of the first philosophers was the φύσις. Even though the term appears for the first time in Heraclitus, the early answers to the question "what is the 'being' of τὰ ὄντα" present already it as a source of active and dynamic life, according to the etymology of φύσις. This is the meaning in Homer (Od. X.303), and this is also the case of water (Thales), air (Anaximenes), and the γόνιμα contained in the φύσις ἄπειρον (Anaximander, apud Ps.-Plutarch). The φύσις of Heraclitus inherits this meaning, because, for him, reality, "changing, is at rest" (fr. 84a). &nbsp

Les deux manières d’expliquer la réalité proposées par Parménide

Towards the end of fragment 1 of his Poem, Parmenides puts forward two methods or paths that a priori explain the same object of study: the existence of the fact or state of being. One of the options leads to the core of the truth and is, therefore, pursued. The other is merely a set of contradictory opinions and is, accordingly, abandoned. These two paths are expounded in the rest of the Poem, while fragment 4 shows that even the erroneous conception, which had to be set aside, can still be fruitful. Once the firm foundation of truth has been established, fragments 10 and 11 propose to widen the inquiry to the whole of reality. This interpretation suggests a rejection of the arrangement of the Poem that has become canonical, and a criticism of the doxographic tradition that since Aristotle has “Platonised” the philosophy of Parmenides by assimilating the “opinions” (which are only points of view) to the “appearances” (in the Platonic sense of the term)

An excision scheme for black holes in constrained evolution formulations: spherically symmetric case

Excision techniques are used in order to deal with black holes in numerical simulations of Einstein equations and consist in removing a topological sphere containing the physical singularity from the numerical domain, applying instead appropriate boundary conditions at the excised surface. In this work we present recent developments of this technique in the case of constrained formulations of Einstein equations and for spherically symmetric spacetimes. We present a new set of boundary conditions to apply to the elliptic system in the fully-constrained formalism of Bonazzola et al. (2004), at an arbitrary coordinate sphere inside the apparent horizon. Analytical properties of this system of boundary conditions are studied and, under some assumptions, an exponential convergence toward the stationary solution is exhibited for the vacuum spacetime. This is verified in numerical examples, together with the applicability in the case of the accretion of a scalar field onto a Schwarzschild black hole. We also present the successful use of the excision technique in the collapse of a neutron star to a black hole, when excision is switched on during the simulation, after the formation of the apparent horizon. This allows the accretion of matter remaining outside the excision surface and for the stable long-term evolution of the newly formed black hole.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures. New section added and changes included according to published articl

Franz Schubert y Miguel Pantalón ante la muerte en dos relatos de Fernando Quiñones

La muerte es un tema recurrente en la literatura de Quiñones, particularmente en sus novelas y relatos. Este artículo se centrará en el empleo de la muerte y de la vida después de la muerte en su narrativa como una forma de impostura política desde dos perspectivas diferentes. En primer lugar, la plasmación de la muerte como una herramienta para desmarcarse de la noción de la muerte católica; lo que consigue poblando su obra con muertes imposibles y paranormales, fantasmas y espectros, disociando así su obra del nacionalcatolicismo y criticando al franquismo (lo cual se mostrará en el análisis de “Una salchichita para Franz”). En segundo lugar, Quiñones usó la muerte como una herramienta de crítica social y de denuncia de los abusos de la sociedad capitalista, como se desprende del relato ya citado y de “El testigo”, dos textos emparentados no solo por la muerte, sino también por dos protagonistas vinculados a la música (música del Romanticismo y el flamenco, respectivamente).Death is a recurrent topic in the literature of Quiñones, particularly in his novels and short stories. This paper will focus in the use of death and afterlife in his narrative as a form of political imposture from two different perspectives. Firstly, his portrayal of death was a tool to differentiate himself from the Catholic notion of death, which he did through peppering his work with impossible and paranormal deaths, ghosts and specters, dissociating his oeuvre from National Catholicism and criticizing Francoism (which will be proven in the analysis of “A Sausage for Franz”). Secondly, Quiñones deployed death as a tool for social critique and denouncement of the abuses of capitalist society, as in the already mentioned short-story and in “The Witness,” two texts related not only by death, but also by two protagonists linked to music (music of the Romanticism and flamenco, respectively)

Abelian complex structures on 6-dimensional compact nilmanifolds

summary:We classify the $6$-dimensional compact nilmanifolds that admit abelian complex structures, and for any such complex structure $J$ we describe the space of symplectic forms which are compatible with $J$

Improved constrained scheme for the Einstein equations: An approach to the uniqueness issue

Uniqueness problems in the elliptic sector of constrained formulations of Einstein equations have a dramatic effect on the physical validity of some numerical solutions, for instance when calculating the spacetime of very compact stars or nascent black holes. The fully constrained formulation (FCF) proposed by Bonazzola, Gourgoulhon, Grandcl\'ement, and Novak is one of these formulations. It contains, as a particular case, the approximation of the conformal flatness condition (CFC) which, in the last ten years, has been used in many astrophysical applications. The elliptic part of the FCF basically shares the same differential operators as the elliptic equations in CFC scheme. We present here a reformulation of the elliptic sector of CFC that has the fundamental property of overcoming the local uniqueness problems. The correct behavior of our new formulation is confirmed by means of a battery of numerical simulations. Finally, we extend these ideas to FCF, complementing the mathematical analysis carried out in previous studies.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures. Minor changes to be consistent with published versio