Agenda 21 local como herramienta de desarollo sostenible : La situación en Suiza

1999an Suitzak bere konpromisoa bete zuen, garapen iraunkorra Konstituzioan barneratu baitzuen. Herrialde hau Tokiko Agenda 21 delakoaren moduko prozesu zehatzak sustatzeko hainbat estrategia ari da probatzen. 2005eko uztailean, Suitzako udalerrien % 4 baino ez zegoen prozesu honetan sartuta; hau da, biztanleriaren % 29. Suitzako tokiko agintaritzek, sistema federala dela eta, autonomia handia izan dute aspalditik; gainera, biztanleek demokrazia zuzeneko sistema suitzarraren bidez, Europako beste herrialde batzuetan baino zuzenago parte har dezakete erabaki politikoak hartzerakoan. Epe luzera, Garapen Iraunkorreko Estrategia Nazionalaren helburua garapen iraunkorra agintari publikoen jarduera eta politika guztietan barneratzea da.In 1999, Switzerland made good its pledge by writing sustainable development into its Constitution. Different strategies and programs are going on to promote Agenda 21-like processes. In July 2005, just 4% of municipalities were involved in the process, though this does represent 29% of the population. In Switzerland, under the country¿s federal system, local authorities have for a long time enjoyed considerable autonomy and, under the Swiss system of direct democracy, citizens are able to participate more fully in all political decision-making than in other countries. In the longer term, the aim of the National Sustainable development Strategy is to include sustainable development in all the policies and activities of public authorities.En 1999, Suiza cumplió con su compromiso al incluir el desarrollo sostenible en la Constitución. Este país está ensayando diferentes estrategias para fomentar determinados procesos del estilo de la Agenda 21 Local. En julio de 2005, tan sólo un 4% de los municipios suizos se habían involucrado en este proceso, si bien representan un 29% de la población. Las autoridades locales suizas, bajo un sistema federal, han disfrutado durante mucho tiempo de una autonomía considerable. Y los ciudadanos, mediante el sistema suizo de democracia directa, pueden participar de una manera más activa que en otros países europeos en la toma de decisiones políticas. A largo plazo, el objetivo de la Estrategia Nacional de Desarrollo Sostenible es incluir el desarrollo sostenible en todas las actividades y políticas de las autoridades pública

Operational experience, improvements, and performance of the CDF Run II silicon vertex detector

The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) pursues a broad physics program at Fermilab's Tevatron collider. Between Run II commissioning in early 2001 and the end of operations in September 2011, the Tevatron delivered 12 fb-1 of integrated luminosity of p-pbar collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV. Many physics analyses undertaken by CDF require heavy flavor tagging with large charged particle tracking acceptance. To realize these goals, in 2001 CDF installed eight layers of silicon microstrip detectors around its interaction region. These detectors were designed for 2--5 years of operation, radiation doses up to 2 Mrad (0.02 Gy), and were expected to be replaced in 2004. The sensors were not replaced, and the Tevatron run was extended for several years beyond its design, exposing the sensors and electronics to much higher radiation doses than anticipated. In this paper we describe the operational challenges encountered over the past 10 years of running the CDF silicon detectors, the preventive measures undertaken, and the improvements made along the way to ensure their optimal performance for collecting high quality physics data. In addition, we describe the quantities and methods used to monitor radiation damage in the sensors for optimal performance and summarize the detector performance quantities important to CDF's physics program, including vertex resolution, heavy flavor tagging, and silicon vertex trigger performance.Comment: Preprint accepted for publication in Nuclear Instruments and Methods A (07/31/2013

SHAPE-directed Discovery of Potent shRNA Inhibitors of HIV-1

The RNA interference (RNAi) pathway can be exploited using short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) to durably inactivate pathogenic genes. Prediction of optimal target sites is notoriously inaccurate and current approaches applied to HIV-1 show weak correlations with virus inhibition. In contrast, using a high-content model for disrupting pre-existing intramolecular structure in the HIV-1 RNA, as achievable using high-resolution SHAPE (selective 2′-hydroxyl acylation analyzed by primer extension) chemical probing information, we discovered strong correlations between inhibition of HIV-1 production in a quantitative cell-based assay and very simple thermodynamic features in the target RNA. Strongest inhibition occurs at RNA target sites that both have an accessible “seed region” and, unexpectedly, are structurally accessible in a newly identified downstream flanking sequence. We then used these simple rules to create a new set of shRNAs and achieved inhibition of HIV-1 production of 90% or greater for up to 82% of designed shRNAs. These shRNAs inhibit HIV-1 replication in therapy-relevant T cells and show no or low cytotoxicity. The remarkable success of this straightforward SHAPE-based approach emphasizes that RNAi is governed, in significant part, by very simple, predictable rules reflecting the underlying RNA structure and illustrates principles likely to prove broadly useful in understanding transcriptome-scale biological recognition and therapeutics involving RNA

Combined search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying to a bb pair using the full CDF data set

We combine the results of searches for the standard model Higgs boson based on the full CDF Run II data set obtained from sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV p-pbar collisions at the Fermilab Tevatron corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9.45/fb. The searches are conducted for Higgs bosons that are produced in association with a W or Z boson, have masses in the range 90-150 GeV/c^2, and decay into bb pairs. An excess of data is present that is inconsistent with the background prediction at the level of 2.5 standard deviations (the most significant local excess is 2.7 standard deviations).Comment: To be published in Phys. Rev. Lett (v2 contains minor updates based on comments from PRL

Observation of Exclusive Gamma Gamma Production in p pbar Collisions at sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV

We have observed exclusive \gamma\gamma production in proton-antiproton collisions at \sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV, using data from 1.11 \pm 0.07 fb^{-1} integrated luminosity taken by the Run II Collider Detector at Fermilab. We selected events with two electromagnetic showers, each with transverse energy E_T > 2.5 GeV and pseudorapidity |\eta| < 1.0, with no other particles detected in -7.4 < \eta < +7.4. The two showers have similar E_T and azimuthal angle separation \Delta\phi \sim \pi; 34 events have two charged particle tracks, consistent with the QED process p \bar{p} to p + e^+e^- + \bar{p} by two-photon exchange, while 43 events have no charged tracks. The number of these events that are exclusive \pi^0\pi^0 is consistent with zero and is < 15 at 95% C.L. The cross section for p\bar{p} to p+\gamma\gamma+\bar{p} with |\eta(\gamma)| < 1.0 and E_T(\gamma) > 2.5$ GeV is 2.48^{+0.40}_{-0.35}(stat)^{+0.40}_{-0.51}(syst) pb.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure