Inclusión y exclusión en el sistema educativo: la expansión de la educación superior en Brasil, India y China

This article aims to present briefly some features of the recent expansion process of higher education in Brazil, India and China (three BRIC countries, a group composed by Brazil, Russia, India and China) from the concepts of functional differentiation, inclusion and exclusion of social systems theory. The article shows that these countries are expanding their higher education systems more than the global average; however, still have low levels of access to higher education compared with developed countries. The article concludes that despite the recent strong higher expansion, it is still one of the main factors for the continued economic development in these countries.Este artículo tiene como objetivo presentar brevemente algunas características del reciente proceso de expansión de la educación superior en Brasil, India y China (tres de los  llamados BRIC, grupo integrado por Brasil, Rusia, India y China) desde los conceptos de diferenciación funcional, inclusión y exclusión de la teoría de los sistemas sociales. El artículo muestra que estos países están ampliando sus sistemas de educación superior más que el promedio mundial, sin embargo, aún tienen bajos niveles de acceso a este nivel educativo en comparación con los países desarrollados. El artículo concluye que, a pesar de la reciente y fuerte expansión, la ampliación de la educación superior constituye aún uno de los factores centrales para la continuidad del desarrollo económico en estos países

Profit and Commitment: Lorenzo Dolfin and the Commercial Family in Venetian Long-Distance Trade, c.1399-1475

This study investigates the life and career of Lorenzo Dolfin (c. 1399-1475), a Venetian merchant active mainly during the first half of the fifteenth century. Asking the interrelated questions “how did fifteenth-century Venetian patricians organise their commercial affairs, and what can we learn from their specific example in terms of the wider institutional history of economic development in Europe, the Mediterranean and beyond?”, it combines an historical analysis with a theoretical framework that critically considers methods of social and economic history, economic network theory and institutional economics. The study contends that the patrician family – not, as often maintained, state structures and political frameworks – was the primary social institution supporting Venetian long-distance trade on the brink of the early modern period. It observes a flexible family structure in which individuals were able to freely position themselves between different branches of their paternal and maternal families for various social, political, and economic purposes, which also sheds light on women as significant actors within patrician families. In order to categorise the complexity of intra- and inter-family cooperation, the study proposes an eight-level scheme of structural family components that perform different functions in specific social contexts. Dubbed the comprehensive family, the model highlights the commercial family as an institutional solution to the commitment problem in long-distance trade

Within-plate Volcanism in upper Triassic to lower Jurassic Pucara Group carbonates (Central Peru)

The Pucará Group platform carbonates (Upper Triassic - Lower Jurassic) were laid down in northern and central Peru in a NNW-SSE elongated basin (Fig. 1). They represent the first sediments of the Andean cycle, the beginning of which is marked by a Norian transgression (Mégard, 1978). The sedimentary evolution of the Pucará Group can be explained in terms of a large transgressive/regressive second order sequence which consists of predominantly shallow water carbonates including a maximum flooding period represented by ammonite-bearing bituminous calcareous shales. Detailed investigations in the southern part of the basin show that the Pucará Group thickens progressively from west to east in the form of a half-graben (Fig. 2). This can be explained by asymmetrical subsidence during sedimentation such being assisted by contemporaneous faulting along the eastern margin of the basin (permitting rapid subsidence) and a stable hinge zone to the west. Synsedi - mentary tectonics at the eastern edge led to the formation of discrete structural blocks with extreme variations in thickness and facies. It has been suggested that, during burial diagenesis, these faults served as channelways for the basinal brines responsible for MVT-mineralization (Fontboté et al., 1995, Spangenberg, 1995, and Moritz et al., 1996)

Yield Improvement by the Redundancy Method for Component Calibration

3 pagesInternational audienceWe explore the benefits of a redundant channels methodology for the component calibration. We propose a normal approximation of the yield in order to estimate the number of redundant components needed to provide a minimal area occupied by the components

HarvWSNet: A co-simulation framework for energy harvesting wireless sensor networks

International audienceRecent advances in energy harvesting (EH) technologies now allow wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to extend their lifetime by scavenging the energy available in their environment. While simulation is the most widely used method to design and evaluate network protocols for WSNs, existing network simulators are not adapted to the simulation of EH-WSNs and most of them provide only a simple linear battery model. Therefore, there is a need for a framework suited to EH-WSN simulation and to lifetime prediction. We propose a co-simulation framework, HarvWSNet, based on WSNet and Matlab, that provides adequate tools for the simulation of the network protocols and the lifetime of EH-WSN. Indeed, the framework allows for the simulation of multi-node network scenarios while including a detailed description of each node's energy harvesting, management subsystem and its time-varying environmental parameters. A simulation case study based on a temperature monitoring application demonstrates HarvWSNet's ability to predict network lifetime while minimally penalizing simulation time

Power reconfigurable receiver model for energy-aware applications

International audienceThis paper presents a reconfigurable receiver model whose purpose is to enable the study of reconfiguration strategies for future energy-aware and adaptive transceivers. This model is based on Figure of Merits of measured circuits. To account for real-life RF interference mechanisms, a link quality estimator is also provided.We show that adapting the receiver performance to the channel conditions can lead to considerable power saving. The models proposed can easily be implemented in a wireless network simulation in order to validate the value of a reconfigurable architecture in real-world deployment scenarios