Environmental Costs Account: a base for measuring sustainability in transport plans.

Each city need to develop sustainable transport plans according to its fu-ture developments. This means identifying the best policy package of transport measures that could produce more sustainable future scenarios: lowest environmental impact, but also better social standards and at mini-mum cost. To that end, it is necessary to measure the environmental and social costs of each alternative transport mode. This paper proposes a me-thodology to calculate those costs in different city contexts: city centre and metropolitan suburbs. It provides a measure of the following environmen-tal costs: pollution, noise, green house gasses and land taken. Then the so-cial costs as congestion and accident costs. These two cost categories are calculated for each mean of transport: metro, bus, private car and taxi. The methodology has been applied to Madrid Region through modeling its mobility demand in 2004. The outputs are costs per passenger-km in each mode and Area: city centre and metropolitan ring. Therefore it is possible to assign monetary costs to environmental and social costs of each trans-port option; for example, car environmental costs are four times higher than buses on average, but it differs a lot from city centre to outskirt areas. Finally, some guidelines can be extracted to develop a more sustainable transport policy for Madrid Region

Evolution of the Gypsy people and future challenges

.Como introducción a este monográfico, nos planteamos la conveniencia de echar una primera ojeada que nos diera perspectiva sobre cuáles han sido los cambios fundamentales en el pueblo gitano los últimos veinte años. A la vez, parecía interesante identificar cuáles son los nuevos retos para el futuro inmediato. Para hacer esta primera exploración decidimos entrevistar a los representantes de tres entidades suficientemente significativas. Los entrevistados son el Sr. Juan de Dios Ramírez Heredia, de la Unión Romaní, el Sr. Domingo Jiménez, de la Fundació Pere Closa y el Sr. Manuel Heredia, de la Federació d'Associacions Gitanes de Catalunya (FAGiC) .The introduction to this monographic analysis weighs the option of taking an initial overview to gain insighr on the essential changes in the Gypsy people over the past 20 years. Likewise, it seemed opportune to identify the new challenges emerging in rhe immediare furure . For this initial examination. it was decided to interview representatives from three significant organisations. The subjects are Juan de Dios Ramírez Heredia , of Unión Romaní, Domingo Jiménez. of the Fundació Pere Closa, and Manuel Heredia . from Federació d' Associacions Gitanes de Catalunya (FAGiC

El aprovisionamiento de agua en la ciudad de San Juan : su evolución y ordenamiento actual

Fil: Heredia de Gaviola, Luz. Universidad Nacional de Cuy

Countdown for elections: A tightrope walk for the DRC?

Officially announced for November 28, 2011, the countdown for elections and its related stress are already underway in the DRC. The recent experience of the Ivory Coast and the ongoing accusations against how the Kabila government is managing the electoral process, warn of the impact of elections on a still fragile DRC. Although elections are not likely to change anything for the Congolese people, they put the DRC’s peace process on a tightrope walk and with that, they also expose the government’s and the international community’s undone housework

Practices and processes in International Relations

Tomando como referencia los giros histórico y práctico en las Relaciones Internacionales, este artículo analiza los conceptos de “práctica” y de “proceso”. En ambos giros estos dos conceptos han servido para satisfacer preocupaciones éticas y metodológicas entorno al estudio de patrones de actuación, continuidad y cambio; la necesidad de ligar los niveles micro y macro; y el uso de la historia como parte de la explicación teórica. Más aún, ambos giros han proclamado el estudio de procesos y prácticas como parte de una investigación más rigurosa, más ética e incluso emancipadora. No obstante, el hecho de que se hayan creado dos corrientes intelectuales aparentemente distintas —histórica y práctica— suscita la necesidad de explorar esta herencia intelectual, y qué aportan estas categorías al estudio de las Relaciones Internacionales. Para responder a estas cuestiones, el artículo hace un recorrido intelectual y empírico a través los estudios de Michel De Certeau, Norbert Elias, y de los procesos de paz dentro del debate de la paz liberal. El artículo aporta una importante conclusión: si bien el estudio de prácticas y procesos promete resolver cuestiones metodológicas y éticas dentro de marcos teóricos, las inquietudes interdisciplinares y ontológicas de las Relaciones Internacionales no están satisfechas por el uso de determinadas categorías sino por el la dialéctica existente entre la metodología, la teoría y el argumento que lidera la investigaciónWith the historical and the practice turns in International Relations as a reference, this article analyses the concepts of “practice” and “process”. In both turns these concepts have satisfied ethical and methodological concerns relating to the study of patterns of action, continuity and change; to the need of linking the micro and macro levels; and to the use of history as part of the theoretical explanation. Moreover, both turns have claimed that the study of processes and practices is part of a more rigorous, ethical, and even emancipatory research. However, the fact that two seemingly different intellectual schools have been formed – historical and practice – presses us to inquire not only about their intellectual heritage, but also about what these categories bring to study of International Relations. In order to answer these questions, this article traces intellectually and empirically the work of Michel De Certeau, Norbert Elias, and that on peace processes within the liberal peace debates. The article concludes with an important contribution: Even though the study of practices and processes promises to resolve methodological and ethical questions within different theoretical frameworks, the interdisciplinary and ontological concerns of International Relations, as a field, are not satisfied by the use of particular categories but by the dialectic that exists between methodology, theory, and the argument that leads the researc

Negotiating electoral results in the DRC

By Marta Iniguez de Heredia, a PhD candidate in the Department of International Relations. She was a long-term electoral observer with the Carter Center in the province of Equateur. The views expressed here are her own and in no way do they represent those of the Carter Center

#DRCDecides2016: Political actors hold the key reversing the current electoral crisis

As Joseph Kabila refuses to say whether he will step down as President of the Democratic Republic of Congo at the end of his second term in office, LSE alumna Marta Iñiguez de Heredia discusses the factors which would lead to a delay in the elections scheduled for November 2016 and therefore a crisis and what the government and DRC opposition can do to get the electoral timetable back on track

Everyday resistance in post-conflict statebuilding: the case of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

The thesis explores everyday resistance in post-conflict statebuilding. Despite the turn in peace and conflict studies to study everyday forms of resistance, the concept and the account of its practices remain limited. In addressing these limitations, the thesis develops an alternative account of both resistance and post-conflict statebuilding. Following the framework of James Scott, resistance is understood as the pattern of acts of individuals and collectives in a position of subordination against the everyday experience of domination. What is resisted is not an externally driven liberal intervention, but the coercive and extractive practices fostered by statebuilding. These dynamics are examined through the case of Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, focusing on the provinces of North and South Kivu. Generally studied as a paradigmatic case of state-failure, the DRC provides an insight into post-conflict statebuilding as a plural, improvised and contradictory process. In the thesis, this is linked to historical and sociological practices of statebuilding more generally, and to the specificities of the African political space. Although statebuilding claims to be a strategy to restore state authority, peace, and democracy, the result has so far been a militarised environment, a pluralisation of state authority and a deterioration of living conditions. The thesis examines discursive, violent and survival practices that deny statebuilders the claim to legitimate authority and to the monopoly of violence, while enacting alternative channels of re-appropriation based on solidarity and reciprocity. Post-conflict statebuilding does not require a special framework of resistance. It requires a historicised account of practices, which grasps their heterogeneity and gradients, and which ultimately accounts for resistance as a prosaic presence in the relations of domination that sustain statebuilding

Analysis of the C/EBP family of transcription factors in neuronal repair

PhDNeurons within the peripheral nervous system (PNS) have a remarkable ability to repair themselves after injury; however, neurons within the central nervous system (CNS) do not spontaneously regenerate. Therefore, understanding the molecular elements responsible for successful regenerative response in the PNS can help us to establish basic principles and strategies for promoting regeneration in CNS structures such as the spinal cord. Nerve repair in the PNS has been suggested to be in part due to the involvement of intrinsic molecules such as transcription factors. In this thesis, I am focusing on the C/EBP family of transcription factors and their potential role in axonal regeneration after PNS injury. I examined the expression of different C/EBP members in PNS after injury after, using the sciatic nerve crush injury model I found that C/EBPδ mRNA is upregulated 4, 24 and 72 hours in dorsal root ganglia (DRG) following injury, whereas C/EBPβ and C/EBPγ expression is transiently upregulated by 4 hours resuming background levels after 72 hours. Conversely, C/EBPα and C/EBPε did not show upregulation following injury. In order to determine the function of C/EBPs in axonal growth in an in vitro system I used the ND7/23 cell line where I found that upon neurite growth induced by cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP), the mRNA levels of C/EBPβ and C/EBPδ were upregulated. Furthermore, the conditional expression of a C/EBP total inhibitor or a C/EBPδ antisense construct decreases neurite elongation in vitro. Additionally, I found that 24 hours after treatment of ND7/23 cells with trichostatin A (TSA) C/EBPδ expression is elevated. Subsequently, I found that in DRG cultures from C/EBPδ knock-out animals, the lack of C/EBPδ affects the intrinsic growth capacity of dorsal root ganglion neurons which show a 3 drastically reduced axonal growth in vitro. To address the role of C/EBPδ in vivo, peripheral nerve repair was assessed in transgenic C/EBPδ knock-out animals following sciatic nerve crush. C/EBPδ knock-outs show, by immunostaining, impaired nerve regeneration 3 days and 14 days after sciatic nerve injury. Furthermore, functional recovery and morphometric analysis indicate that nerve regeneration is delayed in C/EBPδ deficient animals. These data demonstrate that the C/EBPδ gene is involved in neuronal repair after peripheral nerve injury

Everyday Resistance, Peacebuilding and State-making

Everyday Resistance, Peacebuilding and State-making addresses debates on the liberal peace and the policies of peacebuilding through a theoretical and empirical study of resistance in peacebuilding contexts. Examining the case of ‘Africa’s World War’ in the DRC, it locates resistance in the experiences of war, peacebuilding and state-making by exploring discourses, violence and everyday forms of survival as quotidian acts that attempt to challenge or mitigate such experiences. The analysis of resistance offers a possibility to bring the historical and sociological aspects of both peacebuilding and the case of the DRC, providing new nuanced understanding on these processes and the particular case. The book also makes a significant contribution to the theorisation of resistance in International Relations