Biopiracy and intellectual property over natural resources : the consequences for Tobas : a comparative work with the New Zealand experience : thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Public Policy at Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand

Some Spanish language throughoutIndigenous groups have always been discriminated against in Argentina. Since colonization ages their land was systematically expropriated under the, what became known as, terra nullius principle. Genocide took place not only in Argentina but in most countries of Latin America, thus only few groups remain and some of these face extinction. For the "survivors", the scenario is not promising, they are living in indigenous reserves, (most of which are not in fertile land), in very poor and unhealthy conditions facing potential diseases such as cholera and tuberculosis. The scenario is not necessarily the same for the indigenous people of New Zealand: the Maori. The conquest of the islands by British was made in a more peaceful way if compare with other cases. However, there were also wars, confiscation of lands, and suppression of traditional Maori practices. Nowadays, while Maori are integrated to the society some of the injustices of the past are seen as affecting their spiritual and material way of life. It is claimed by indigenous activists that, the Intellectual Property Regimes (IPR), under the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements could make indigenous people face the possibility of being deprived of the free use of plants that they have been using for centuries for food and medicinal healing purposes among others, because of the patenting processes of multinational companies. In addition, aborigine communities could find themselves negotiating without full knowledge of the purpose of the extraction or the use to which the material will be put; and because of biopiracy, not receiving royalties in exchange for their knowledge of plants. In this context, their situation would become even worse. However, if these processes and agreements were being made in a more equal and fair legal context, they could obtain the royalties for the use of their knowledge by pharmaceuticals or seed companies, as other people obtain royalties for their knowledge in more "traditional" or market-oriented industrial areas. This money could help them to achieve other goals such as a more indigenous-oriented education, or start their own productive activities to give just some examples. These kind of agreements are part of a more general discussion that includes the rights of indigenous peoples to regulate their own traditional knowledge (TK), this involve: defining what TK is to any given indigenous community, as well as developing norms and standards around who outside the indigenous community can access their knowledge, under what conditions and for what benefit. This research will analyze the Argentine and the New Zealand cases to compare the public policies implemented in both countries and the effects on indigenous peoples. Detailed objectives are going to be mentioned further in this thesis.[FROM INTRODUCTION

Party system institutionalization and the quality of democracy in eastern Europe

Almost two decades have passed since the Third Wave of democratization brought an avalanche of new, relatively unstable democracies into being in Eastern Europe. Although democracy and a market economy seem to have taken firm root, at least for the ten Eastern European countries currently members of the European Union (EU), in the light of the complicated post-communist legacy, this may have not been enough time for their political parties and party systems to institutionalize. Moreover, a well-rehearsed litany of complaints has been recited against the countries in the region encompassing, inter alia, weak governability and accountability, a representation deficit; corruption and clientelism, populism, and threats to democratic stability; raising once again the question, "How important the former (i.e. political parties and party systems) are for the quality of democracy?

Identifying structures in the continuum: Application to 16^{16}Be

The population and decay of two-nucleon resonances offer exciting new opportunities to explore dripline phenomena. The understanding of these systems requires a solid description of the three-body (core+N+N) continuum. The identification of a state with resonant character from the background of non-resonant continuum states in the same energy range poses a theoretical challenge. It is the purpose of this work to establish a robust theoretical framework to identify and characterize three-body resonances in a discrete basis. A resonance operator is proposed, which describes the sensitivity to changes in the potential. Resonances are then identified from the lowest eigenstates of the resonance operator. The operator is diagonalized in a basis of Hamiltonian pseudostates, built within the hyperspherical harmonics formalism using the analytical THO basis. The energy and width of the resonance are determined from its time dependence. The method is applied to 16Be in a 14Be+n+n model. An effective core+n potential, fitted to the available information on the subsystem 15Be, is employed. The 0+ ground state resonance of 16Be presents a strong dineutron configuration, which favors the picture of a correlated two-neutron emission. Fitting the three body interaction to the experimental two-neutron separation energy |S2n|=1.35(10) MeV, the computed width is Gamma(0+)=0.16 MeV. From the same Hamiltonian, a 2+ resonance is also predicted with E_r(2+)=2.42 MeV and Gamma(2+)=0.40 MeV. The dineutron configuration and the computed 0+ width are consistent with previous R-matrix calculations for the true three-body continuum. The extracted values of the resonance energy and width converge with the size of the pseudostate basis and are robust under changes in the basis parameters. This supports the reliability of the method in describing the properties of unbound core+N+N systems in a discrete basis.Comment: 11 pages, 14 figures. Accepted as PR

Remembering the future: An overview of co-evolution in musical improvisation

Musical improvisation is driven mainly by the unconscious mind, engaging the dialogic imagination to reference the entire cultural heritage of an improvisor in a single flash. This paper introduces a case study of evolutionary computation techniques, in particular genetic co-evolution, as applied to the frequency domain using MPEG7 techniques, in order to create an artificial agent that mediates between an improvisor and her unconscious mind, to probe and unblock improvisatory action in live music performance or practice

Braneworld with Induced Axial Symmetry

We take arbitrary gravitational perturbations of a 5d spacetime and reduce it to the form an axially symmetric warped braneworld. Then, we write the filed equations for the linearized gravity perturbations. We obtain the equations that describes the graviton, gravivector and the graviscalar fluctuations and analyse the effects of the Schr\"odinger potentials that appear in these equations.Comment: 3 pages, one figure, typos corrected, to apear in the special issue of Brazilian Journal of Physics dedicated to the conference 100 years of relativity, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 200

"He said Ireland has more than one story": multiple belongings in perspective

Focusing on non-fictional and fictional memoirs, respectively Hugo Hamilton's The Speckled People (2003), and Jennifer Johnston's The Gingerbread Woman (2000), this paper addresses the experience of those who find themselves perceiving the world from outside the walls of the Palace of Sans Souci, and who has a result try to work out how their perception may both belong to, and change, the prevailing picture of the world they inhabit