La situación laboral de la mujer en Japón

Desde 1980 la presencia de la mujer en el mercado de trabajo japonés ha experimentado un incremento sustancial a nivel cualitativo y cuantitativo. Sin embargo, esta mayor participación no se ha correspondido con una mejora de sus condiciones de trabajo. Aunque esta circunstancia no es exclusiva del sistema de empleo japonés, las diferencias con procesos similares en Europa y América hacen del japonés un caso representativo de la dificultad de desarrollar políticas de igualdad de oportunidades y trato entre géneros en el empleo, no tanto por la crisis económica padecida a los largo de la década de 1990, sino a causa de un entorno organizacional donde la cultura patriarcal determina tanto las condiciones como las relaciones laborales. A este respecto, la igualdad jurídica entre trabajadoras y trabajadores es socavada por prácticas discriminatorias que desencadenan un continuo conflicto cultural durante el ciclo laboral de la mujer japonesa

La materia mediçinal de la Nueva España: indagaciones sobre su origen e historia

El hallazgo de un manuscrito atribuido a Francisco Hernández, la Materia mediçinal de la Nueva España, da pie en este artículo a enunciar una serie de hipótesis sobre su autor, contenido y origen. Un acercamiento inicial al mismo muestra que es una traducción mexicana del conocido manuscrito De Materia Medica Novae Hispaniae de Recchi. Este manuscrito y la historia que le envuelve revelan la compleja situación de la medicina en la plurilingüe Nueva España del siglo XVII, además de las vicisitudes que ha atravesado la obra de Francisco Hernández y la de otros personajes relacionados con ella durante los siglos XVIII y XIX.The recent finding of a manuscript —the Materia mediçinal de la Nueva España— attributed to Francisco Hernández has given rise to many hypotheses about its author and its content. The initial investigation proves that it is a Mexican translation of the Recchi’s manuscript, De Materia Medica Novae Hispaniae, even the existence of other works in vernacular languages. This manuscript reveals to us the complex situation of the New Spanish medicine in the 17th century. Moreover, its difficult life shows the vicissitudes of both the Hernández’s work and the several historical figures related to it between the 18th and 19th centuries

M2-branes, Einstein manifolds and triple systems

This is the written version of a talk given on 1 July 2009 at the XXV Max Born Symposium: the Planck Scale, held in Wroclaw, Poland. I review the possible transverse geometries to supersymmetric M2-brane configurations and discuss the representation-theoretic description of their conjectured dual superconformal Chern-Simons theories.Comment: 12 pages; V2: reference(s) adde

Reconciling Speed Limits with Design Speeds

In recent years, context-sensitive highway design has been promoted to ensure that designers consider the environmental, scenic, aesthetic, historic, community, and preservation aspects of the road. Context-sensitive design may lead to situations where the current design standards cannot be met because of restricting local conditions. Indiana has road sections designed and built some time ago. In a considerable number of roads with the statutory limit of 55 mph (90 km/h), the road geometry does not meet the current standards. At individual intersections and on curves, advisory speeds are posted together with warning signs. Although this solution increases the safety of road users and allows for traveling at reasonably high speeds outside of these segments, the final solution is to upgrade their geometry to the desirable level. This report presents models that predict user-selected percentile free-flow speeds on two-lane rural and four-lane rural and suburban highways. The percentile speeds are computed as a linear combination of the mean speed and the standard deviation in panel data models with random effects. The developed percentile speed models involve more design variables than typical speed models, and separate the mean speed factors from the speed dispersion factors. These benefits ease the model interpretation and its use in highway design. The study results should help designers bring the predicted speed to the desired speed as close as possible given the budget constraints. Engineering judgment can then be applied to balance safety and construction cost in highway improvement projects

Adherence of Molecules to Silica Glass Surface: Experimental Results and Theoretical Calculations

The adherence of molecules to surfaces is used in a wide scope of technological applications. In this work we study the attachment of molecules onto porous silica glass surface obtained from a Vycor glass, after glassglass phase separation and leaching of the soluble phase with water. Nitrogen adsorption at 77 K was used for the determination of the specific surface area (BET area) and pore size distribution on the leached glass. The adherence onto the glass surface, of model molecules methylene blue (MB) and eosine yellow (EY), with positive and negative electrical charges respectively, was studied. The adsorption kinetics was determined from aqueous solutions using UV-VIS spectroscopy. It was found that the silica glass surface as prepared in of glass was found for methylene blue, and almost null adsorption for eosine yellow. First principles calculations were performed using the Density Functional Theory in order to model the interaction between both molecules and the glass surface.Fil: Rivera Figueroa, Edison. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Area de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; ArgentinaFil: Prado, Miguel Oscar. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Area de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Comision Nacional de Energia Atomica. Centro Atomico Bariloche; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Nuñez, Matias. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Comision Nacional de Energia Atomica. Centro Atomico Bariloche; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; Argentin

On-chip compensation of device-mismatch effects in analog VLSI neural networks

Device mismatch in VLSI degrades the accuracy of analog arithmetic circuits and lowers the learning performance of large-scale neural networks implemented in this technology. We show compact, low-power on-chip calibration techniques that compensate for device mismatch. Our techniques enable large-scale analog VLSI neural networks with learning performance on the order of 10 bits. We demonstrate our techniques on a 64-synapse linear perceptron learning with the Least-Mean-Squares (LMS) algorithm, and fabricated in a 0.35µm CMOS process.

Novel compact magnetless isolator based on a magneto-optical garnet material

A compact magnetless isolator for optical communication systems based on a ring resonator with an outer layer made of silicon and an inner layer made of a magneto-optical material that does not require an external magnet to keep its magnetization saturated is suggested. Three-dimensional computational simulations of the device performed with the full-wave electromagnetic solver COMSOL Multiphysics show that the insertion loss and isolation levels are about −1.9 dB and −23 dB, respectively, thus confirming the feasibility of the isolator. An analytical model of the device based on the temporal coupled-mode theory method has been formulated and there is a good agreement between the analytical and simulation results. Since it does not require a magnetization scheme based on permanent magnets or electromagnets as conventional isolators do, the presented isolator is much more compact, with a footprint at least one order of magnitude smaller in comparison with other isolator designs known from the literature, and this feature makes the suggested device an ideal candidate for optical circuits with very high integration density

Dual-camera high-speed imaging of n-hexane oxidation in a high-pressure shock tube

Shock tubes are widely used in the study of chemical kinetics. Its benefits rely on the almost ideal shock-heating process that provides high temperatures and pressures to a chemical system for a limited test time. Just like any reactor, shock tubes are not immune to non-ideal effects. The study of conditions that might deviate experiments from ideal conditions is thus of the utmost importance. High-speed imaging has been proven to be a powerful bytool to analyze non-ideal / non-homogenous combustion in shock tubes. In this work, dual-camera high-speed imaging experiments were performed at 10, 15 and 20 bar in a high-pressure shock tube (HPST). An optical section was designed as an extension of the HPST which enabled simultaneous visualization from the endwall and the sidewall of the driven section of the shock tube. n-Hexane, a fuel with a negative temperature coefficient (NTC) behavior that has been identified as prone to non-homogenous ignition, is used as a test fuel. Reactive mixtures and thermodynamic conditions were selected to visually analyze ignition processes at the high-temperature, NTC and low-temperature regimes. Non-homogeneous ignition was observed mostly at the local maximum of the IDT, which is comprised by the high-temperature and NTC regions. Stoichiometric n-hexane mixture with high fuel loading (5% n-hexane) presented the highest deviation from constant volume chemical kinetic simulations. The inclusion of helium as a bath gas to mitigate preignition was tested and it showed to improve the susceptibility of the mixtures to develop reaction fronts. The modified Sankaran criterion for the identification of ignition regimes in shock tubes was tested and it showed an overall good agreement against the experimental observations.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figures, 1 tabl