The dream of a nation

A challenging new era is under consideration and on its way. With it, comes new problems and questions to solve and answer. Nevertheless, positive thinking is required of all those who participate in or share part of the Space Station's responsibility. Hence, no longer is space an unknown, unreachable environment. It is simply a place for men and women to live, work, and learn

"Cuadrivio", de Octavio Paz: La crítica literaria "tradicional" o "parcial" que ejercen los poetas

La crítica literaria es un aspecto fundamental en la obra de Octyavio Paz; y Cuadrivio es donde se revela esta situación

Restoration of an International River Basin

The Rio Grande River flows from its headwaters in southern Colorado, south through New Mexico, turning southeast at El Paso, Texas, where it becomes the international boundary between the United States and Mexico until it drains into the Gulf of Mexico. The Rio Grande is a “National Historic River.” The Rio Grande is managed according to interstate and international agreements that apportion its water through the operation of reservoirs and diversion systems. Downstream of Elephant Butte Reservoir, New Mexico the waters of the Rio Grande are used primarily by irrigators on both sides of the border. The City of El Paso, however, under contractual agreements with the local irrigation districts treats Rio Grande water to supplement the city’s drinking water supply. This paper provides an overview of the hydrologic challenges of making the Rio Grande “wet” once again through the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez region on the U.S.-Mexico border. Currently water is released downstream only during the irrigation season, which during normal-flow years extends from late February to early October. Every aspect of water delivery in the stretch of the Rio Grande from Elephant Butte Reservoir and El Paso, Texas is managed through the use of engineering structures that divert water for irrigation or municipal uses. In the past 100 years, the response to declining flow within the actual river has turned a once meandering stream to an efficient conveyance channel. The historical water flow and water quality data recorded at various gauging locations downstream of the Elephant Reservoir to Fort Quitman, Texas are reviewed and analyzed to determine the impacts and structure of the existing delivery system. Key issues discussed include the implications to the efficiency of water delivery, flood control, sedimentation buildup in the river channel, and water quality. An extensive literature review of hydrological data, field visits, and interviews with local stakeholders is being conducted to evaluate the current structure. The main objective of this work is the development and assessment of scenarios that would allow the river to remain “wet” through the year in the El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico portion of the Rio Grande while minimizing the impact to the existing water delivery structure. A review and analysis of hydrological data will help to demonstrate potential long-term consequences of water development in other rivers

A descriptive analysis of mentoring on pre-service physical education teachers related to classroom and behavior management: A case study

The purpose of this study was to explore the development of instructional management behaviors of pre-student teachers, who have received pre-service preparation through a course in classroom and behavior management and who receive supervision and mentoring specifically in regard to classroom and behavior management.. Two junior level pre-student teachers served as key participants in this study. The intensive mentorship occurred over the course of five weeks with two observations per week. The data were collected and triangulated through interviews, observations, field notes, video recorded lessons, and artifacts such as lesson plans. Two distinct case studies were developed in this field study once the data was analyzed. Based on the findings of this study, it is evident that there was a favorable relationship between mentoring physical education pre-student teachers and observable teaching behaviors related to classroom and behavior management

The implementation of the Gender Perspective in the EU civilian and military missions: Leadership wanted. Security Policy Brief No. 67, October 2015

Fifteen years have passed since the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, through which time the EU has grown as a security actor. The keys to produce a change in implementing gender mainstreaming in the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) are well known by member states; the EU and external implementation reports1 are repeated again and again, but real change requires real willingness on the part of member states, and leadership

Treatment of Synthetic Oil Sands Tailing Water with Activated Carbon

The extraction of bitumen from the Canadian tar sands has thus far generated approximately 840 billion liters of oil sands process affected water (OSPW) that is currently being stored in containment ponds. OSPW is known to be acutely toxic to various organisms, due to the presence of naphthenic acids (NAs). The scale and sheer volume of OSPW being stored in tailing ponds have generated serious public concerns. Many emerging technologies have been investigated as treatment options for OSPW reclamation. This work studied the feasibility of using granular activated carbon (GAC) to adsorb several naphthenic acids in a model solution of OSPW in a batch adsorption process. The effect of process pH on both competitive and single solute adsorption was studied at equilibrium (i.e. isotherms) and transient conditions (i.e. kinetics). The adsorption results for the multi-component solution were compared to those for single compound adsorption. The model compounds selected for this work were 1,4- cylochexanedicarboxylic acid, 2-naphthoic acid, and diphenylacetic acid. GAC showed good adsorption capacity for all three model compounds and the adsorption was significantly affected by the solution pH. Maximum adsorption occurred at pH 4, and adsorption decreased with increasing pH. For multi-component adsorption it was found that at pH 8 the overall capacity increased and the time constant decreased as compared to the single compound results. Additionally it was found that 1,4-cyclohexanedicarboxylic acid exhibited cooperative adsorption, adhering to an S-class isotherm profile. The other two model compounds demonstrated conventional isotherm profiles, either L or H-class. It was found that cooperative adsorption could be hindered in multi-component adsorption due to solute competition. This was observed at all pH investigated other than pH 8 and 9. This finding is promising, as the pH range in which cooperative adsorption took place corresponds to the tailing water pH. The point of zero charge was found to be a significant factor; as the pH of the system approached the pHpzc the adsorbent performance decreased. The findings of this work show promising results regarding the use of GAC for naphthenic acids removal from water

povThe Effect of Cash Transfer Programs on Poverty Reduction

The paper aims to set in a global context and examine the impact of Conditional Cash Transfers Programs (CCTP) in the Latin America & the Caribbean (LAC) region. In the context of global commitments to reduce poverty, as it is the case of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Agenda, this paper addresses the concerning of evaluating CCTPs as policy instruments. Literature built on empirical evidence at household level across LAC countries suggests that CCTPs have yielded positive and significant effects on poverty reduction, school enrollment, and access to health care services. With data over a panel of 18 LAC countries that started the operation of CCTPs at a given point during the period 1990 – 2013, I found significant effects of CCTPs on outcomes of poverty reduction, education, and health. The results obtained for a panel of LAC countries suggested that an increase of one percentage point of the population coverage of CCTPs was associated on average with a decrease of 0.04 percentage points on the poverty headcount ratio at $1.90 per day. In addition, the CCTPs led an increase of the school enrollment at primary and secondary levels by 0.12 and 0.25 percentage points, respectively. Finally, CCTPs showed to yield positive impacts on improving nutrition conditions and immunization coverage. For instance, CCTPs had an effect on decreasing the prevalence of stunting by 0.26 percentage points and increasing the HepB3 immunization coverage by 0.21 percentage points

A scalable parallel Monte Carlo algorithm for atomistic simulations of precipitation in alloys

We present an extension of the semi-grandcanonical (SGC) ensemble that we refer to as the variance-constrained semi-grandcanonical (VC-SGC) ensemble. It allows for transmutation Monte Carlo simulations of multicomponent systems in multiphase regions of the phase diagram and lends itself to scalable simulations on massively parallel platforms. By combining transmutation moves with molecular dynamics steps structural relaxations and thermal vibrations in realistic alloys can be taken into account. In this way, we construct a robust and efficient simulation technique that is ideally suited for large-scale simulations of precipitation in multicomponent systems in the presence of structural disorder. To illustrate the algorithm introduced in this work, we study the precipitation of Cu in nanocrystalline Fe.Comment: 12 pages; 10 figure

Toxic Intraocular Syndrome

This article is a Letter to the Editor. Please download the PDF or view the article HTML