Public Expenditure Policy in Bolivia: Growth and Welfare

It has been widely documented that fiscal policy can promote economic growth, when it is based on an efficient provision of pubic capital. But little work has been done, in Bolivia, in relation to the macroeconomic and sectoral impacts of increasing public investment in infrastructure. This paper develops a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model for a small open economy with five sectors: Non-tradable or services, importable or manufacturing, hydrocarbons, mining and agriculture. The model is parameterized and solved for the Bolivian economy and several interesting scenarios are simulated by changing government expenditures, taxes, country risk, Total Factor Productivity, effectiveness of public capital and terms of trade. This analysis is relevant for the Bolivian economy, because the government is using fiscal policy as one of its main tool to attack poverty and aims to put public investment as the foremost instruments to promote growth and welfare.Fiscal Policy, Infrastructure, Multisector Growth Model

Establishing a Cultural Connection and a Sense of Place - Virtual Tour

As a student, how important is it to create a strong sense of connection to an educational institution you have chosen to help shape your mind and prepare you for your future profession? This usability study, entitled “Establishing a Cultural Connection and a Sense of Place - Virtual Tour,” serves as a means to establish an enrollment pathway to Honolulu Community College for Native Hawaiian students and create a sense of place at the college for Native Hawaiians that is culturally significant and relevant. It is the Kuleana (responsibility) of an institution to create a distinctive learning environment and campus culture that students can connect to and establish a sense of place (Manning and Kuh, 2005). Creating a sense of place – both physically and emotionally has a direct positive impact on the experiences of students. Manning and Kuh (2005) expressed that colleges that take intentional efforts to create a sense of place foster a “powerful connection to something larger than oneself [and] encourages students to engage with faculty, staff, and peers in meaningful ways” (p.1)

Categorical Properties Of Lattice-valued Convergence Spaces

This work can be roughly divided into two parts. Initially, it may be considered a continuation of the very interesting research on the topic of Lattice-Valued Convergence Spaces given by Jager [2001, 2005]. The alternate axioms presented here seem to lead to theorems having proofs more closely related to standard arguments used in Convergence Space theory when the Lattice is L = f0; 1g:Various Subcategories are investigated. One such subconstruct is shown to be isomorphic to the category of Lattice Valued Fuzzy Convergence Spaces defined and studied by Jager [2001]. Our principal category is shown to be a topological universe and contains a subconstruct isomorphic to the category of probabilistic convergence spaces discussed in Kent and Richardson [1996] when L = [0; 1]: Fundamental work in lattice-valued convergence from the more general perspective of monads can be found in Gahler [1995]. Secondly, diagonal axioms are defned in the category whose objects consist of all the lattice valued convergence spaces. When the latter lattice is linearly ordered, a diagonal condition is given which characterizes those objects in the category that are determined by probabilistic convergence spaces which are topological. Certain background information regarding filters, convergence spaces, and diagonal axioms with its dual are given in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 describes Probabilistic Convergence and associated Diagonal axioms. Chapter 3 defines Jager convergence and proves that Jager\u27s construct is isomorphic to a bireáective subconstruct of SL-CS. Furthermore, connections between the diagonal axioms discussed and those given by Gahler are explored. In Chapter 4, further categorical properties of SL-CS are discussed and in particular, it is shown that SL-CS is topological, cartesian closed, and extensional. Chapter 5 explores connections between diagonal axioms for objects in the sub construct δ(PCS) and SL-CS. Finally, recommendations for further research are provided

To Protect and To Serve: Effects of the Relationship Between the Brown Berets and Law Enforcement

During the late 1960s and into the early 1970s the Brown Berets were heavily involved in the Chicano Movement. They formed as a group of students with the goal of reforming the inequalities Hispanic people faced within the Los Angeles school system, though the greater circumstances quickly led the Brown Berets into the direction of being a militant organization with their focus shifting to police brutality and the Vietnam War. As a result of this shift they became an enemy of the local police and later the federal government. Thus, the Berets adopted the motto, “To Serve, Observe, and Protect,” which they consciously chose as it was extremely similar to the motto of the LAPD (To Protect and To Serve). Using this motto indicated that the Berets believed they were, or should have been, the police of the community. Both the Berets and the Los Angeles police department engaged in what can be called a war of words, in order to discredit one another. Protests, marches, and violence would result from this widening rift between the young militant Chicanos and the local police. The research gathered and presented in this paper allows one to dissect the effects of this hateful relationship and conclude that police harassment, brutality, and infiltration ultimately contributed to the collapse of the Berets, but not before it helped propel the overall Chicano movement. This study not only highlights the negative relationship between the Brown Berets of East Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), but also the tensions between the Berets and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, as well as with the federal government, as the movement gained momentum. These relationships will all be examined within the context of police and legal harassment, brutality, and infiltration tactics put into practice by these institutions against the Chicanos

How a Christian Worldview Enhances and Interacts with Academic Service Learning

Abstract This study assesses how a Christian worldview enhances and interacts with academic service learning. It explains the importance of a Christian worldview and development at the undergraduate level. Faith integration is a distinctive to Christian higher education as part of attaining course objectives and fulfilling the mission of the institution. It considers academic service learning as a tool for teaching and learning in pre-service teacher education with faith integration. Findings explain the interaction of Christian worldview and academic service learning informing university student’s perceptions of teaching and understanding of students with special needs. Quantitative research methods demonstrate that academic service learning can inform pre-service teachers through interaction with Christian worldview. Qualitative research methods produce findings indicating that pre-service teachers understand Christian worldview and an enhanced view of students. Conclusions suggest utilizing academic service learning as a tool for faith integration positively influences undergraduate student’s development of a Christian worldview. Keywords: Christian Worldview, Service learning, Faith Integratio

Adaptive runtime-assisted block prefetching on chip-multiprocessors

Memory stalls are a significant source of performance degradation in modern processors. Data prefetching is a widely adopted and well studied technique used to alleviate this problem. Prefetching can be performed by the hardware, or be initiated and controlled by software. Among software controlled prefetching we find a wide variety of schemes, including runtime-directed prefetching and more specifically runtime-directed block prefetching. This paper proposes a hybrid prefetching mechanism that integrates a software driven block prefetcher with existing hardware prefetching techniques. Our runtime-assisted software prefetcher brings large blocks of data on-chip with the support of a low cost hardware engine, and synergizes with existing hardware prefetchers that manage locality at a finer granularity. The runtime system that drives the prefetch engine dynamically selects which cache to prefetch to. Our evaluation on a set of scientific benchmarks obtains a maximum speed up of 32 and 10 % on average compared to a baseline with hardware prefetching only. As a result, we also achieve a reduction of up to 18 and 3 % on average in energy-to-solution.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Reduction of Lead present in the waters of the Tulumayo river through the use of chitosan [Reducción de plomo presente en aguas del rio Tulumayo mediante uso de quitosano]

The research aimed to determine the efficiency of chitosan to decrease the concentration of lead present in the Tulumayo River, Chanchamayo. A pre-sampling was carried out in 8 equidistant points of 20 meters each, in order to find the point with the highest concentration of lead. A sample of 19 liters of water from the Tulumayo River was collected and sent to the laboratory for analysis. Knowing the result (0.121 ppm of lead), 12 treatments of 0.5 L each were made with 3 repetitions respectively, in total 36 samples were treated. 90% acetic acid was used to lower the pH of each sample, allowing it to bubble for 30 minutes, then be filtered. It was treated at different pH and chitosan concentrations. The highest yield was 90% at pH 5 with 0.3g of chitosan

A Maturity Model of IT Service Delivery

This paper presents a maturity model of IT service delivery that consists of maturity statements grouped on five maturity levels. The model is founded on maturity model properties and IT Capability Maturity Model (IT Service CMM). It was motivated by the interest and limitation of Nicaraguan Internet Service Providers in formalizing and assessing specific IT service elements. The model was applied to traceable information of the current status of IT service delivery in a Nicaraguan Internet Service Provider