Stiglitz : la falsa polémica entre crecimiento y pobreza

La publicación en castellano del libro El malestar en la globalización nos ha vuelto la mirada hacia J. E. Stiglitz y su historia. Este trabajo presenta las ideas básicas, los apoyos, las críticas, y los estudios que protagonizaron el debate en torno al binomio crecimiento/pobreza en la gestión institucional de las crisis del Sudeste Asiático y Rusia; debate marcado con el cese de Stiglitz como Economista Jefe del Banco Mundial, y el de su Consejero principal Ravi Kanbur. El episodio nos debería precaver acerca de la fe con la que se reciben ciertos documentos de trabajo simplemente por el hecho de ir avalados por el Fondo Monetario o el Banco Mundial. _________________________________________The Spanish publication of J. E. Stiglitz´s book entitled Globalization and its discontents turn us back this economics professor. This paper attempts to summarize the main ideas, supports, criticisms, and some studies that have dominated the debate about the relationship between growth/poverty in the cases of Southern Asiatic and Rusia. This debate has been characterized by the fire of Stiglitz as Economist Chief of the World Bank, and his main Advisor Ravi Kanbur. Therefore, we have to be careful about some working papers published by WB or IMF, because of the lack of rigour

Current collection by an active spherical electrode in an unmagnetized plasma

A theoretical model for the steady-state response of anodic contactors that emit a plasma current Ii and collect electrons from a collisionless, unmagnetized plasma is presented. The use of a (kinetic) monoenergetic population for the attracted species, well known in passive probe theory, gives both accuracy and tractability to the theory. The monoenergetic population is proved to behave like an isentropic fluid with radial plus centripetal motion, allowing direct comparisons with ad hoc fluid models. Also, a modification of the original monoenergetic equations permits analysis of contactors operating in orbit-limited conditions. Besides that, the theory predicts that, only for plasma emissions above certain threshold current a presheath/double layer/core structure for the potential is formed (the core mode), while for emissions below that threshold, a plasma contactor behaves exactly as a positive-ion emitter with a presheath/sheath structure (the no-core mode). Ion emitters are studied as a particular case. Emphasis is placed on obtaining dimensionless charts and approximate asymptotic laws of the current-voltage characteristic

The citizen in the face of cultural Heritage: some reflexions on the scope of its active legal position in light of the planned legal regimen for its protection

El autor presenta una aproximación de las carencias del ordenamiento jurídico cuando se trata de canalizar la implicación de los ciudadanos en la conservación y puesta en valor del patrimonio cultural. El punto de partida es la evaluación de los principios rectores que, en lo tocante a cultura y patrimonio, están recogidos en la Constitución y en las diferentes leyes y normas que se ocupan de este particular.The author presents an approach to the deficiencies of the legal regulations regarding channelling the implication of citizens in the conservation and revitalising of our cultural heritage. The starting point is an assessment of the guiding principles that, in that referring to culture and heritage, are included in the Constitution and in the different laws and standards that govern this subject

Introducing Type-2 Fuzzy Sets for Image Texture Modelling

In this paper, the texture property ”coarseness” is modeled by means of type-2 fuzzy sets, relating representative coarseness measures (our reference set) with the human perception of this texture property. The type-2 approach allows to face both the imprecision in the interpretation of the measure value and the uncertainty about the coarseness degree associated to a measure value. In our study, a wide variety of measures is analyzed, and assessments about coarseness perception are collected from pools. This information is used to obtain type-2 fuzzy sets where the secondary fuzzy sets are modelled by means of triangular membership functions fitted to the collected data

Wetland restoration and nitrate reduction: the example of the periurban wetland of Vitoria-Gasteiz (Basque Country, North Spain)

Changes in land use and agricultural intensification caused wetlands on the quaternary aquifer of Vitoria-Gasteiz (Basque Country) to disappear some years ago and nitrate concentration in groundwaters increased very quickly. The Basque Government recently declared the East Sector of this aquifer a Vulnerable Zone according to the 91/676/CEE European Directive. Recently, the wetlands have been restored through the closure of the main drainage ditches, the consequent elevation of the water table and the abondonment of agricultural practices near the wetlands. This is the case of the Zurbano wetland. Restoration has allowed the recovery of its biogeochemical function, which has reduced nitrate concentrations in waters. Nitrate concentrations which exceed 50 mg l–1 in groundwaters entering into the wetland are less than 10 mg l–1 at the outlet. Conditions in the wetland are conducive to the loss of nitrates: organic matter rich wetted soils, clay presence allowing a local semiconfined flow and very low hydraulic gradient. Water quality monitoring at several points around the wetland showed the processes involved in nitrate loss, although some aspects still remain unresolved. However, during storm events, the wetland effectively reduces the nitrate concentration entering the Alegria River, the most important river on the quaternary aquifer

Influence of phase-diversity image reconstruction techniques on circular polarization asymmetries

Full Stokes filter-polarimeters are key instruments for investigating the rapid evolution of magnetic structures on the solar surface. To this end, the image quality is routinely improved using a-posteriori image reconstruction methods. We analyze the robustness of circular polarization asymmetries to phase-diversity image reconstruction techniques. We use snapshots of magneto-hydrodynamical simulations carried out with different initial conditions to synthesize spectra of the magnetically sensitive Fe I line at 5250.2 A. We degrade the synthetic profiles spatially and spectrally to simulate observations with the IMaX full Stokes filter-polarimeter. We also simulate the focused/defocused pairs of images used by the phase-diversity algorithm for reconstruction and the polarimetric modulation scheme. We assume that standard optimization methods are able to infer the projection of the wavefront on the Zernike polynomials with 10% precision. We also consider the less favorable case of 25% precision. We obtain reconstructed monochromatic modulated images that are later demodulated and compared with the original maps. Although asymmetries are often difficult to define in the quiet Sun due to the complexity of the Stokes V profiles, we show how asymmetries are degraded with spatial and spectral smearing. The results indicate that, although image reconstruction techniques reduce the spatial smearing, they can modify the asymmetries of the profiles, mainly caused by the appearance of spatially-correlated noise.Comment: 10 pages, accepted for publication in A&