A Textuary Ray of Hope for LGBTQ+ Workers: Does Title VII Mean What it Says?

Abstract forthcoming

A vulnerability approach to the definition of the middle class

Measurement of the middle class has recently come to the center of policy debate in middle-income countries as they search for the potential engines of growth and good governance. This debate assumes, first, that there is a meaningful definition of class, and second, that thresholds that define relatively homogeneous groups in terms of pre-determined sociological characteristics can be found empirically. This paper aims at proposing a view of the middle class based on vulnerability to poverty. Following this approach the paper exploits panel data to determine the amount of comparable income -- associated with a low probability of falling into poverty -- which could define the lower bound of the middle class. The paper looks at absolute thresholds, challenging the view that people above the poverty line are actually part of the middle class. The estimated lower threshold is used in cross-section surveys to quantify the size and the evolution of middle classes in Chile, Mexico, and Peru over the past two decades. The first relevant feature relates to the fact that the proposed thresholds lie around the 60th percentile of the distribution. The evidence also shows that the middle class has increased significantly in all three countries, suggesting that a higher number of households face lower probabilities of falling into poverty than they did in the 1990s. There is an important group of people, however, which cannot be defined as middle class from this perspective, but are not eligible for poverty programs according to traditional definitions of poverty.Rural Poverty Reduction,Inequality,Regional Economic Development,Urban Partnerships&Poverty,Services&Transfers to Poor

Estabilidad y Variabilidad de los Resultados de Encuestas a Alumnos

La idea de este artículo es comparar los resultados de dos evaluaciones de docentes que se llevan a cabo mediante encuestas a alumnos desde hace cuatro años en la cátedra de Computación I(Sistemas de Información) de la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Se intenta mostrar varios puntos importantes para la administración académica: 1. que todas las preguntas formuladas en las encuestas incluyen un carácter subjetivo, por lo que no se pueden tratar individualmente sino como conglomerados de datos. 2. que las encuestas a alumnos constituyen una herramienta importante, porque permiten conocer lo que sucede realmente en el aula. 3. que los resultados obtenidos en la evaluación de docentes son estables, congruentes y similares aunque el grupo de alumnos cambie 4. que las evaluaciones de los docentes realizadas por esos medios permiten analizar distintos aspectos importantes de su tarea. 5. que comparando dos encuestas con orígenes distintos, se pueden interpretar sus resultados en forma totalmente congruente. El artículo tiene el siguiente desarrollo. En la primera parte analiza las respuestas a la encuesta de la cátedra, una de las encuestas, tomando en cuenta la pregunta que permite evaluar a los docentes en sus clases teóricas. En la segunda se realiza un proceso similar para la encuesta oficial de la Facultad. En la tercera se intenta comparar los resultados

Synthesis and Characterization of New Near-Infrared Chromophores: Cyanine and Phenoxazine Derivatives

This thesis reports the synthesis of new near infrared dyes in three chapters. The first two chapters outline the synthetic procedure for synthesizing mono- and pentamethine cyanine dyes. The initial chapter encompasses the synthesis of asymmetric monomethine dyes with red-shifted optical properties. The second chapter involves the synthesis and assessment of new symmetrical quinolin-4-yl and phenanthridin-6-yl pentamethine dyes as potential oxidative DNA cleavage agents. The last chapter of the thesis details the synthesis and evaluation of new phenoxizinum dyes as contrast agents for insulunomia, a pancreatic cancer. Furthermore, all new compounds were characterized via NMR and their coherent optical properties were obtained

The Decline in Inequality in Latin America: How Much, Since When and Why

Between 2000 and 2009, the Gini coefficient declined in 13 of 17 Latin American countries for which comparable data exist. The decline was statistically significant and robust to changes in the time interval, inequality measures and data sources. In depth country studies for Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Peru suggest that there are two phenomena which underlie this trend: (i) a fall in the premium to skilled labor (as measured by returns to education); and (ii) higher and more progressive government transfers. The fall in the premium to skills results from a combination of supply and demand factors and, in Argentina and, to a lesser extent, in Brazil, from more active labor market policies as well.Income inequality, wage gap, government transfers, Latin America

The decline in inequality in Latin America: How much, since when and why

Between 2000 and 2009, the Gini coefficient declined in 13 of 17 Latin American countries for which comparable data exist. The decline was statistically significant and robust to changes in the time interval, inequality measures and data sources. In depth country studies for Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Peru suggest that there are two phenomena which underlie this trend: (i) a fall in the premium to skilled labor (as measured by returns to education); and (ii) higher and more progressive government transfers. The fall in the premium to skills results from a combination of supply and demand factors and, in Argentina—and to a lesser extent in Brazil--, from more active labor market policies as well.Income inequality, wage gap, government transfers, Latin America.

Complex dynamics in simple systems with seasonal parameter oscillations

We study systems with periodically oscillating parameters that can give way to complex periodic or non periodic orbits. Performing the long time limit, we can define ergodic averages such as Lyapunov exponents, where a negative maximal Lyapunov exponent corresponds to a stable periodic orbit. By this, extremely complicated periodic orbits composed of contracting and expanding phases appear in a natural way. Employing the technique of $\epsilon$-uncertain points, we find that values of the control parameters supporting such periodic motion are densely embedded in a set of values for which the motion is chaotic. When a tiny amount of noise is coupled to the system, dynamics with positive and with negative non-trivial Lyapunov exponents are indistinguishable. We discuss two physical systems, an oscillatory flow inside a duct and a dripping faucet with variable water supply, where such a mechanism seems to be responsible for a complicated alternation of laminar and turbulent phases.Comment: New version with major change

Global Regularity of 2D Navier-Stokes Free Boundary with Small Viscosity Contrast

This paper studies the dynamics of two incompressible immiscible fluids in 2D modeled by the inhomogeneous Navier-Stokes equations. We prove that if initially the viscosity contrast is small then there is global-in-time regularity. This result has been proved recently in [32] for $H^{5/2}$ Sobolev regularity of the interface. Here we provide a new approach which allows to obtain preservation of the natural $C^{1+\gamma}$ H\"older regularity of the interface for all $0<\gamma<1$. Our proof is direct and allows for low Sobolev regularity of the initial velocity without any extra technicality. It uses new quantitative harmonic analysis bounds for $C^{\gamma}$ norms of even singular integral operators on characteristic functions of $C^{1+\gamma}$ domains [21]

AgroFIMS v.1.0 - User manual

The Agronomy Field Information Management System (AgroFIMS) has been developed on CGIAR’s HIDAP (Highly Interactive Data Analysis Platform) created by CGIAR’s International Potato Center, CIP. AgroFIMS draws fully on ontologies, particularly the Agronomy Ontology (AgrO)1. It consists of modules that represent the typical cycle of operations in agronomic trial management (seeding, weeding, fertilization, harvest, and more) and enables the creation of data collection sheets using the same ontology-based set of variables, terminology, units and protocols. AgroFIMS therefore enables a priori harmonization with metadata and data interoperability standards and adherence to the FAIR Data Principles essential for data reuse and increasingly, for compliance with funder mandates - without any extra work for researchers. AgroFIMS is therefore of value to anyone (scientist, researcher, agronomist, etc.) who wishes to easily design a standards-compliant agronomic research fieldbook following the FAIR Data Principles. AgroFIMS also allows users to collect data electronically in the field, thereby reducing errors. Currently this is restricted to the KDSmart Android platform, but we expect to enable this capability with other platforms such as the Open Data Kit (ODK) and Field Book in v.2.0. Once data is collected using KDSmart, the data can be uploaded back to AgroFIMS for data validation, statistical analysis, and the generation of statistical analysis reports. V.2.0 will allow easy upload of the data from AgroFIMS to an institutional or compliant repository of the user’s choice