Modeling framework for comparing taxi operational modes: case study in Barcelona

This paper presents an aggregated mathematical model for the estimation of key performance indicators of the taxi market based on the system’s generalized cost function, which is calculated using the expected statistical values of customers’ trip distance, waiting/access time and the cost of the involved actors, including externalities, who are the taxi drivers, the taxi customers and the city represented by the rest of the drivers and the citizens. Optimum values for the taxi supply are obtained from mathematical formulations depending on the demand level and the size of the city. The model is developed for stand, hailing and dispatching taxi markets and the results are compared, presenting conclusions for the best type of market for each demand level and city size. The model is applied in the city of Barcelona, presenting useful conclusions on the performance indicators of the taxi services and the impact of the applied policies as well as the optimum number of taxis for each operational mode, ranging between 30 and 40 vehicles per hour and km2.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Treatments, Islet Transplantation and Beta Cell Research

Diabetes is a disease that affects millions of people in the United States, but also all around the world. With different types of diabetes that exist, it has been hard for researchers to find a cure for diabetes. Current diabetes treatments are expensive, and not always available for patients around the world. Researchers have tried to understand how insulin, Islets of Langerhans and diabetes functions in order to try to find more efficient treatments and possibly a cure in the future. Islet B-cells are found in the pancreas and produce the hormone insulin. In patients with Type 1 diabetes, islet B-cells don’t function correctly, leading to very little or no insulin being produced. This is obviously an issue, if B-cells don’t produce insulin, glucose cannot be. With this knowledge, researchers have explored a way to possibly use transplanted b-cell islets from donor cadavers to help type 1 diabetic patients whom are typically insulin dependent, become insulin independent. Islet transplantation has been explored in many countries. Being a new, experimental procedure many doctors are skeptical about this new treatment. Some patients seeing good results, gives hope that with future research and more trials performed that this can be an effective treatment for diabetes. Although this new treatment seems exciting and ground breaking for type 1 diabetic patients, it still hasn’t been found to work as well as insulin. There’s a fair chance that with further research there will be treatments that work as effective or even more than insulin, but for now, insulin dependent patients will have to continue to use insulin as their main treatments

About errors and errata: how to correct and to standardize an academic text

En el presente artículo, se intenta demostrar en primer lugar, a partir de ejemplos de una revista académica de lingüística, que errores y erratas tienen el mismo protagonismo en la corrección de textos académicos. Pero además, que los criterios y procedimientos de normalización – definida como el conjunto de decisiones y de procedimientos que tienden a unificar el estilo de un escrito en todos sus niveles– son fundamentales para que un conjunto de artículos científicos de autores varios o una serie de trabajos de un mismo autor, de distinto tema o etapas académicas, puedan llegar a convertirse en una publicación periódica o en un libro.In the present article, we first intend to demonstrate, by showing examples taken from an academic journal on Linguistics, that errors and errata are equally essential in correction of academic texts. In addition, the aim of our work is to show that both criteria and procedures towards normalization – this, defined as a set of decisions and procedures which tend to unify the style of a writing in all its levels – are the basis on which a group of scientific articles belonging to different authors, or else a body of work written by the same author, dealing with different topics or belonging to several academic stages, may become a periodical publication or a book.Fil: Estrada, Andrea Maria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas y Crítica Textual; Argentin

The commodification of bodies. Soccial peace among men or undeclared war against women?

En la sociedad del espectáculo, la mercantilización de los cuerpos es presentada como el ejercicio de una “nueva” ciudadanía, inscrita en un transgresor discurso emancipatorio de los cuerpos. La historia de la ciudadanía, desde una perspectiva crítica feminista, ha supuesto la historia de un fracaso por lo que a los derechos de las mujeres respecta ¿Esa “nueva” ciudadanía, promesa en la sociedad del espectáculo, será compatible con la vindicación de nuestros derechos? ¿Es realmente subversiva su propuesta? Reflexionar sobre ello resulta inevitable para el feminismo.In the society of spectacle the commodification of bodies is presented as the exercise of a "new" citizenship, enrolled in a transgressive emancipatory discourse of bodies. The history of citizenship from a critical feminist point of view has meant the history of a failure regarding to women's rights. Does this "new" citizenship, pledge in the society of spectacle, will be compatible with the vindication of our rights? Is it really subversive its proposal? Thinking about it is inevitable for feminism

Productive Development Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Case of Mexico

While Mexico has potential to grow rapidly, its economic growth has remained low for the past three decades. There is no consensus on the country’s development path or on how to achieve specific goals. Since the policy debate remains ideological and lacks pragmatism, productive development policies (PDPs) are often uncoordinated, redundant or even incongruent with each other. It is therefore important to understand the process whereby PDPs are designed and the institutional setting in which they are are implemented. This paper consequently examines whether PDPs respond to market failures and/or government failures. When PDPs are not designed to address specific market failures they can produce unwanted results or prove completely ineffective. When PDPs do address government failures, it is important to determine the reasons why the failure cannot be corrected in the first place and whether PDPs will be effective at addressing the problem in a second-best manner.Industrial Policy, Institutions, Policymaking, Mexico

Emergent Identities and Representations in ELT in Minority Language Contexts in Northern Mexico

In the early 2000s, Mexico experienced a series of changes modelled after UNESCO’s guidelines for intercultural education, which necessitated the establishment of the General Office of Intercultural Bilingual Education. This institution aims to provide indigenous students with education that acknowledges their cultural identity, language, knowledge, and attitudes. Another parallel change occurring in Mexico stemmed from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and the United States. NAFTA impacted Mexican educational policy by incorporating the teaching of English at the state and national levels beginning in public elementary schools. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this dissertation explores the role of English Language Teaching (ELT) in a community in northwestern Mexico where a minority language – Mayo – was taught alongside English. The research also seeks to unfold the discourse(s) embodied in the representation of minority students and languages in Mexico through the analysis of policy documents used in Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) programs, as well as in the attitudes of the teachers and stakeholders involved in them. I also look at representations of indigenous people in two texts designed by IBE for the Mayo community. This dissertation incorporates an ethnographic study that uses participant observations in Mayo and English language classes and semi-structured interviews with teachers and stakeholders attached to a rural school in northwestern Mexico as primary data collection strategies. Policy documents and curricular materials are analyzed using the tools of Critical Discourse Analysis. Through qualitative data analysis, we discover how the nation-state instantiates a particular Mexican identity and perpetuates stereotypes of indigenous minorities through policy documents and curricular texts. At the same time, the data obtained through ethnographic fieldwork indicate that teacher agency was a powerful tool in linguistic and cultural maintenance and in transforming language policy and planning at the local level, such that Mayo and English were positioned equally in the curriculum

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThis dissertation examines race as cultural identity and specifically what is produced and legitimated when race is expressed on the surface of the body through our daily discourses and repeated performances of those discourses. The framework defines identity as daily and repeated communicative, linguistic and corporeal enactments. It also asks whether there is power in these expressions and whether a self-reflexive approach to these expressions of race as culture could be subversive or transformative. The framework of this dissertation is built on a rejection of the categories of identity as arbitrary and as part of a discourse used to divide, rank and degrade people. The framework is propped up with constructs adapted from the work of Butler, Bakhtin and Foucault's interpretations of power and specifically the idea that labels are the work of power used to police exclude and prohibit. From Foucault I adopted the notion that power does not emanate from a single sovereign source, and is instead disseminated through various actors across multiple relationship networks. From Bakhtin I adopted the metaphor of centripetal or unifying discourses vs. centrifugal or diversifying discourses, which provided clarifying imagery regarding the ways in which power moves inside language, more often than not fixing meanings to objects in limiting and tyrannical ways. Finally, from Butler I adopted the idea of performativity, which defines identities as daily repeated communicative, linguistic and corporeal enactments and explains how discourse is manifested through our bodies such that we might accomplish things with words when we perform with and through powerful discourses. The dissertation concludes that bodies (race) and categories (culture) are not fixed entities but rather engaged in a dialogic process with what has been and could be. Our enactment and engagement of categories give durability and credibility to those discourses and performances in large part through the naturalization created by daily repetition. Furthermore, we can self-reflect on our bodies and performances, the discourses that we have helped sustain, and the possibilities that open up once we understand that there is power in our repeated performances and possibilities in the spaces that open once we halt the repetition

HERITAGE LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE: A MEXICAN AMERICAN MOTHER’S SUCCESS WITH RAISING BILINGUAL CHILDREN

This is a single case study of an octogenarian Mexican-American single mother who raised her children bilingually in the United States, creating diglossia—with Spanish spoken at home and church and English spoken in school and community as recommended by Hakuta and others. Trained as a teacher in Mexico, this mother brought her children to full cultural literacy as well as bilingualism by practicing heritage traditions and speaking the heritage language exclusively with them. Through extensive interviewing this past year, I report on the themes in her stories, analyze the decisions she made, and discuss the success of her children. The sources of her resilience are identified and discussed. This Mexican-American single parent discussed her own education and teacher preparation in Mexico, graduating from high school in the late 1940’s, though she was born in the United States. Heritage language maintenance and ethnic identity are major areas of this investigation that provide relevant cultural information by employing ethnographic methods and applying constructivist grounded theory. At the same time, I review laws that were passed during her lifetime, insuring the maintenance of Spanish and the acquisition of English for those in public schools. Like Anzaldua and other successful Mexican American scholars, the subject was highly motivated to be educated and to educate her children despite the fact that her own mother died young, leaving her to be raised under difficult conditions