Can all Cash Transfers Reduce Inequality?

.Poverty, CCT, Cash Transfers, Inequality

Enhanced CO2 Methanation by New Microstructured Reactor Concept and Design

A novel multichannel minireactor with channel internal diameter in the range of millimeters has been conceptually designed and constructed. Its configuration confers to the new concept reactor some features and advantages compared to conventional fixed-bed reactors g.e. better mass-transfer, avoid hot-spots formation, increased performance (10–20%). Consequently, this new reactor concept is ideal to be applied to exothermic reactions such as the Sabatier reaction that demands continuous removal of the heat produced to avoid hot-spot formation and the sintering of the catalyst. Thanks to its configuration, this reactor could control effectively the heat generated by the reaction and several tests were carried out to validate the reactor features. The results obtained demonstrate that the catalysts activity in the reaction is improved with the application of the novel reactor respect the conventional fixed- and fluidized-bed ones and neither catalyst sintering, nor pressure drop was appreciated during the catalytic tests. At the best reaction conditions, Tecnalia’s multichannel minireactor can handle 820 Nm3/h of CO2 per square meter of channel section showing the enormous potential of the new reactor concept.The authors gratefully acknowledge the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) funding under the project RENOVAGAS (RTC-2014-2975-3). Likewise, the authors want to acknowledge the valuable contribution of other colleagues from other entities participating in the project

Topological phases generated with single photons entangled in polarization and momentum

El entrelazamiento puede abordarse desde dos perspectivas diferentes: como un recurso esencial para las tecnologías cuánticas y como un fenómeno fundamental que está íntimamente relacionado con nuestra comprensión de la naturaleza misma. Por otro lado, la teoría cuántica se formula en el marco teórico de los espacios de Hilbert, para los que el entrelazamiento juega un papel importante en la determinación de su geometría y topología. Las características topológicas que puedan exhibirse al utilizar estados entrelazados son largamente independientes de la realización física particular del entrelazamiento: puede afectar a un solo grado de libertad poseído por dos partículas diferentes, o bien puede implicar dos grados diferentes de libertad que se cohesionan a una misma partícula o entidad física, por ejemplo, un campo electromagnético. Resulta que la manipulación de los grados de libertad de polarización y momentum (camino) ya sea de forma independiente el uno del otro o mediante la aplicación de evoluciones unitarias no separables es muy versátil. Con esto en mente, la presente tesis apunta hacia el diseño e implementación de arreglos experimentales que se pueden utilizar para estudiar fases geométricas y topológicas en sistemas de dos qubits mediante el uso de los grados de libertad de momentum (camino) y polarización de un solo fotón. Finalmente mostramos el diseño de un experimento, apuntado a exhibir la fase topológica, y los resultados obtenidos.Tesi

Local-global neural networks: a new approach for nonlinear time series modelling

In this paper, the Local Global Neural Networks model is proposed within the context of time series models. This formulation encompasses some already existing nonlinear models and also admits the Mixture of Experts approach. We place emphasis on the linear expert case and extensively discuss the theoretical aspects of the model: stationarity conditions, existence, consistency and asymptotic normality of the parameter estimates, and model identifiability. A model building strategy is also considered and the whole procedure is illustrated with two real time-series.neural networks, nonlinear models, time-series, model identifiability, parameter estimation, model building, sunspot number.

Conditional Cash Transfers in Brazil, Chile and Mexico: Impacts upon Inequality

This Working Paper decomposes changes in the Gini coefficient in order to investigate whether Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) have had an inequality reducing effect in three Latin American countries: Brazil, Mexico and Chile. Its technique is the decomposition of the Gini coefficient by factor components. Its main finding is that CCT programmes helped reduce inequality between the mid-1990s and roughly the mid-2000s. The share of total income represented by the CCTs has been very small: about 0.5 per cent in Mexico and Brazil and a very small 0.01 per cent in Chile. But since their targeting has been outstanding, their equalizing impact was responsible for about 21 per cent of the fall in both the Brazilian and the Mexican Gini index, each of which fell by approximately 2.7 points during the period that this paper reviewed. In Chile the effect was responsible for a 15 per cent reduction in inequality, although the total reduction in inequality was very modest: a mere 0.1 Gini point. The difference was due to the small size of the Chilean programme relative to the larger Mexican and Brazilian programmes.Distribution, Conditional Cash Transfers, Brazil, Chile, Mexico

Lo femenino: una política para la histeria

This paper aims to punctuate a first exploration on the development of the output of the subject of hysterical discourse, in Lacan´s teach; the one that will give him the basis for the writing of the formulas of sexuation. In deed, Lacan,  at the end of his discourses theory, in his eighteen seminar, in the early seventies, initiate the inquiry that will leed him, a few years later, to establish his famous formulas. Set out the broad lines of his teaching, especially by Jaques-Alain Miller in his courses of The Lacanian Orientation, it is of great interest to review in it those details and reflections that accompany the passages from one period to another, also with the clinical references in which it rests.Este trabajo pretende puntuar una primera exploración de Jacques Lacan de la salida del sujeto del discurso histérico, aquella que le aportará las bases de la escritura de las fórmulas de la sexuación. En efecto, Lacan, al final de su teoría de los discursos, en su seminario titulado De un discurso que no fuera del semblante a principios de los años setenta, iniciará la indagación que lo llevará pocos años más tarde a establecer sus célebres fórmulas. Fijadas las grandes líneas de su enseñanza, sobre todo por Jaques Alain Miller en sus cursos sobre la Orientación Lacaniana, resulta de sumo interés revisar en ella, los detalles y las reflexiones que acompañan los pasajes de un período al otro, junto a las referencias clínicas en las que se apoya

Medio ambiente y la política exterior colombiana en el gobierno de Álvaro Uribe Vélez

La presente investigación se refiere, como su título lo plantea, al tema del medio ambiente y su incidencia en la política exterior de Colombia en los dos periodos presidenciales del Dr. Álvaro Uribe Vélez. Para analizar las implicaciones de este tema se debe tener en cuenta ¿qué mecanismos de política exterior le han permitido a Colombia desde 2002 hasta el 2010, afrontar los desafíos de un mundo en donde los cambios medioambientales se han convertido en un tema relevante a nivel global? De esta manera, se evidenciarán las estrategias de política exterior concernientes al tema ambiental desarrolladas por el gobierno del ex Presidente Álvaro Uribe Vélez.Pregrad