Sun of Justice Rising: Tonatierra Community Development Institute

Salvador Reza, a longtime organizer for indigenous Mexican rights, helped lead a successful campaign to organize taco vendors in Phoenix. Faced with a local ordinance that would restrict the operation of mobile food stands, effectively banning them, Reza and his colleagues at Tonatierra mobilized the vendors to fight back. Their ultimate success recaptured the spirit of a community traumatized by 500 years of colonization and cultural destruction. Tonatierra's strategies included the following:Involve Vendors: Once vendors understood that the ordinance targeted them and threatened their livelihoods, they were able to establish a working group, representative of the community. They fashioned a way of regulating vendors that would ensure safe food and safe neighborhoods.Create a Team and a United Voice: The vendors negotiated among themselves until they could present their recommendations as a team.Rekindle Culture: According to Reza, "We are fighting back, but not with weapons of guns. Our weapons are culture and understanding and communication.

Relaciones de complacencia y deberes para con los invitados

En la STS, 1a, 17.7.2007 (RJ 2007\4895, MP: Francisco Marín Castán), el Tribunal Supremo sostiene que los daños que sufre una amiga de los demandados en el inmueble de éstos al tropezar con un juguete abandonado en el suelo del pasillo, insuficientemente iluminado, no son indemnizables, porque dada la especial relación de confianza entre las partes, ese nivel extremo de diligencia no es exigible. El Tribunal parece aplicar al caso un patrón de diligencia quam in suis, la que despliega uno en sus propios asuntos, que permitiría limitar la responsabilidad a los casos de dolo o culpa grave. El trabajo comenta la sentencia y presenta, además, la clasificación entre invitee, licensee y trespasser que el Common Law norteamericano ha utilizado tradicionalmente para delimitar los niveles de cuidado de propietarios (o poseedores) de inmuebles y que el borrador No. 6 del Restatement (Third) of Torts, de 12.9.2007, ha simplificado, añadiendo a la regla tradicional de No Duty to Trespasser la de una negligencia simple para los Innocent Trespasser.The Judgment of the Spanish Supreme Court’s Civil Chamber of July 17th 2007 (RJ 2007\4895, Opinion of the Court by Magistrate Francisco Marín Castán) held that the injuries suffered by an invitee after tripping over a forgotten toy left in an ill-lit corridor are not compensable. According to the Court, a qualified level of care to avoid the damage was not required in such a situation. The Court seems to resort to quam in suis level of care, in other words, the level of care defendants would have adopted if dealing with their own issues. Thus, only damages arisen from gross negligence or intentional breach of duty are compensable. This article comments on the judgment and introduces the reader to the US Common Law classification distinguishing among invitee, licensee and trespasser. This classification has traditionally guided the task of setting the boundaries of the duty of care to be requested to land owners or tenants. Recently, Draft. No. 6 of the Restatement (Third) of Torts, of October 12th 2007, has provided a simple but workable response consisting on adding to the non duty to trespasser rule a standard level of care in cases of innocent trespassers

Evaluación formal de blogs con contenidos académicos y de investigación en el área de Documentación

Weblogs –or blogs– are tools for editing and publishing any kind of contents in the Internet, in an easy and fast way. The research and academic community has taken advantage of these characteristics to interchange ideas and information, converting blogs in a new communication channel to disseminate and discuss new scientific advances. However, as it occurs in other traditional means of scientific communication, it seems positive to establish some quality criteria to determine the capabilities of a blog to be considered a reliable way to interchange scientific ideas. In this article formal quality aspects are analysed, not taking into account, in this first approach, the quality of contents

Análisis regional de la pobreza para el colectivo de la Tercera Edad: inferencia clásica vs Técnicas Bootstrap

En este trabajo se analiza el perfil regional de la pobreza en los hogares encabezados por mayores de 65 años, un colectivo especialmente sensible a situarse por debajo del umbral de pobreza. Para ello, a partir de los datos del fichero longitudinal de la Encuesta Continua de Presupuestos Familiares del año 2002, realizada por el Instituto Nacional de Estadística, se estiman índices de la familia de Foster, Greer y Thorbecke que permiten estudiar la incidencia, intensidad y desigualdad de la pobreza. El objetivo de este trabajo es doble. Por un lado, se pretende obtener un mapa de la distribución regional de la pobreza para el colectivo de la tercera edad en España. Los resultados muestran que las comunidades autónomas con mayores niveles de pobreza son Castilla La Mancha, Extremadura y Andalucía. Por el contrario, las comunidades autónomas con menores niveles de pobreza son Navarra, Madrid y País Vasco. Por otro lado, se pretende comparar la precisión de las técnicas de inferencia clásicas con técnicas basadas en métodos computacionales. Para ello, se estiman los índices de pobreza mediante el cálculo de intervalos de confianza utilizando dos métodos alternativos. En primer lugar, se obtienen los intervalos mediante la determinación de distribuciones asintóticas. Posteriormente, se determinan los intervalos utilizando metodología del bootstrap percentil. La comparación de estos métodos de estimación muestra cómo para muestras pequeñas, las técnicas bootstrap permiten obtener resultados más adecuados

Impact of musculoskeletal pain on health-related quality of life among fishing sector workers

[Abstract] This study aims to determine the impact of musculoskeletal pain (in terms of intensity of the pain, location and functional disability due to back pain) and other factors (socio-demographic, lifestyle and co-morbidity) on the health-related quality of life on a group of shellfish gatherers. This observational transversal study included 929 shellfish gatherers (18–69 years, 98.7 % women) who completed a self-administered questionnaire, including socio-demographic and lifestyle questions, co-morbidity, intensity and location of musculoskeletal pain, and Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire (RMDQ). Health-related quality of life was assessed using the 36-item Short Form Survey (SF-36). Physical component summary (PCS) and mental component summary (MCS) of the SF-36 were considered as outcome variables. The impact of the different factors on the PCS and MCS scores was evaluated using a stepwise linear regression analysis. Physical health was found to be independently associated to intensity of musculoskeletal pain (regression coefficient, B = −0.96), number of locations with musculoskeletal pain (MSP) (B = −0.77), presence of pain in the hip-knee (B = −2.26), self-reported rheumatic disorders (B = −2.79), lower back pain (B = −1.62) and age (B = −0.06). Mental health was associated with the presence of self-reported depressive syndrome (B = −1043.1) and RMDQ score (B = −42.2). The sample had significantly lower values than the reference population in all of the dimensions of the SF-36. Intensity of the pain, pain in the hip-knee, lower back pain, functional disability due to back pain and number of locations with musculoskeletal pain were found to have a detrimental impact on the physical health of the workers. Depressive syndrome and greater functional disability due to back pain, in turn, predict worse mental health