Post-Liberal Regionalism in Latin America - A Case Study of Venezuela as a Petro-State.

Since 1910, the major income of Venezuela comes, from the oil exploitation industry which is connected to the consolidation of the nation-state. This oil wealth has throughout history influenced its relations with countries in the Americas, United States and the rest of the world. This case-study examines Venezuela as a petro-state and its impacts on Latin American post-liberal regionalism and political integration by taking a closer look in the history in the Chávez- and Maduro Administration (1999-2014). The study also analysis the various regional integration initiatives (OAS, ALBA-TCP, CELAC, MERCOSUR, PetroCaribe and the Bank of the South) which exist in contemporary Latin America and Caribbean, in which some of them, Venezuela has had a greater impact on, and interest in developing because of the paradigm shift in the country’s foreign policy agenda and rejection of the Washington Consensus Agenda. Thus, the study has both domestic and regional aspects of the Bolivarian Revolution. Key concepts and theories are examined and builds up the framework of analysis. The study is theory-consuming and theory-developing. The purpose of this study is to unfold the following puzzle and research question: Has Venezuela impacted regionalism and the integration processes in Latin America in the 21st Century? Key words: Washington Consensus, Regionalism, Integration, Venezuela, Latin America

Tutorías entre pares: una oportunidad de formación para futuros profesores de matemáticas

En este documento presentamos algunos resultados de una investigación cualitativa que se ha llevado a cabo tras el diseño e implementación de un programa de tutorías entre pares, facilitadas por profesores en formación y coordinada por formadores de profesores. Dicha investigación (aún en curso) tiene entre sus propósitos conceptualizar los aprendizajes emergentes de los profesores en formación –tutores– dentro de procesos de seguimiento y acompañamiento académico “especializado. Al llevar una primera etapa de la implementación, se ha encontrado que las tutorías entre pares sirven como escenario potencial para la práctica real de los profesores en formación

A blood–CSF barrier function controls embryonic CSF protein composition and homeostasis during early CNS development

AbstractIn vertebrates, early brain development takes place at the expanded anterior end of the neural tube, which is filled with embryonic cerebrospinal fluid (E-CSF). Most of the proteins contained within the E-CSF, which play crucial roles in CNS development, are transferred from the blood serum. Two important questions are how E-CSF is manufactured and how its homeostasis is controlled. In this respect, the timing of the blood–CSF barrier formation is controversial. Recently, the concept of a functional dynamic barrier has been introduced. This type of barrier is different from that found in adults and is adapted to the specific requirements and environment of the developing nervous system. In this study, we injected a number of proteins into the outflow of the heart and into the cephalic cavities and examined their transport rate between these two embryo compartments. The results indicated that a functional blood–CSF barrier dynamically controls E-CSF protein composition and homeostasis in chick embryos before the formation of functional choroid plexuses. We also showed that proteins are transferred through transcellular routes in a specific area of the brain stem, close to the ventral mesencephalic and prosencephalic neuroectoderm, lateral to the ventral midline, in particular blood vessels. This study contributes to our understanding of the mechanisms involved in CNS development, as this blood–CSF interface regulates the composition of E-CSF by regulating its specific composition

Analysis of Environmental Culture in Small Enterprises of the “Divino Niño” Sector in the City of Durán, Province of Guayas

Environmental culture is a topic of special interest today due to the environmental deterioration and its consequences for humanity. Thus, companies, of all sizes, should join force and collaborate in the drive for environmental improvements. Therefore, the present research had the general objective of analyzing the environmental culture of small companies in the “Divino Niño” sector of the city of Durán. A mixed quantitative–qualitative approach was used and the research was descriptive. The techniques used were observation, survey, and interview. Among the factors that affect the environmental culture of the companies analyzed, the following stood out – the consumption of plastics, general attitude of people, investment in technologies, environmental knowledge, and recycling practices. The Environmental Behavior Index indicator showed an unsatisfactory value of 63%. Hence, in this paper, we set out the general actions to be taken for the improvement of environmental quality in the context of small companies in the investigated locality in the city of Durán. Keywords: ustainable development, Environmental economics, Environmental indicators, Small business Resumen La cultura ambiental refiere ser un tema de especial interés en la actualidad debido al deterioro ambiental y sus consecuencias para la humanidad. En este sentido, las empresas sean estas pequeñas, medianas o grandes aúnan esfuerzos y colaboran en las mejoras ambientales. En consecuencia, la presente investigación tuvo como objetivo general analizar la cultura ambiental de las pequeñas empresas del sector “Divino Niño” de la ciudad de Durán. La metodología utilizada fue un enfoque mixto cuantitativo-cualitativo y la investigación fue de tipo descriptiva. Las técnicas aplicadas fueron la observación, la encuesta y la entrevista. Entre los resultados más importantes de la investigación se destacan: la evaluación de los factores que inciden en la cultura ambiental de las empresas analizadas, entre ellos se destacan: el consumo de plásticos, las actitudes, la inversión en tecnologías, el conocimiento ambiental y las prácticas de reciclaje. El indicador Índice de Comportamiento Medio Ambiental arrojó un valor del 63%, evidenciando una situación poco satisfactoria. Del mismo modo, la investigación derivó en un conjunto de acciones generales que orientan la mejora continua de la calidad ambiental en el contexto de las pequeñas empresas y la localidad investigada en la ciudad de Durán. Palabras Clave: Desarrollo sostenible, Economía ambiental, Indicadores ambientales, Pequeña empresa

Eficacia de los sitios webs de los diputados chilenos como herramienta de la comunicación política

La creciente y prolífera línea de investigación dedicada al impacto de las nuevas tecnologías de la información en la Comunicación Política ha planteado la posibilidad que el uso y masificación de Internet, como máxima representación de las Tics, podría contribuir a aliviar el déficit estructural y funcional que sufre hoy el sistema político. A diversos autores les asiste la convicción de que nuevos canales comunicativos entre la población y sus representantes, actúan como alternativa a los medios tradicionales, fortaleciendo el poder ciudadano; y diversos ejemplos de movimientos sociales en distintas partes del mundo, con efectos en las decisiones políticas, dan cuenta de ello. Ciertas corrientes optimistas consideran que las redes fortalecidas al amparo de la tecnología son capaces de fortalecer y otorgar mayor poder a la ciudadanía, lo que equivale a fortalecer la democracia. Otra corriente en cambio, ha mostrado una visión a lo menos escéptica respecto de las reales posibilidades de Internet para democratizar el ámbito político. Estas visiones han sido denominadas como ciberoptimistas y ciberpesimistas, respectivamente. El presente estudio realiza un recorrido bibliográfico por los principales exponentes de cada corriente, profundizando además en los diversos movimientos político-sociales que tienen como denominador común el uso de las nuevas tecnologías de la información como esencia de la lógica relacional..

Neuroprotection by the cannabis-related products, cannabidiol and cannabigerol, and their associated mechanisms of action

The discovery and characterization of the endocannabinoid system (ECS) brought out years of research focusing on two aims. The study of its participation in the physiopathology in several diseases, including neurodegenerative disorders, and as a direct or indirect target for treating these disorders by cannabinoids or phytocannabinoids (i.e., specific compounds present in the Cannabis sativa plant). Preclinical evidence and some clinical data have shown the therapeutic potential of the most relevant phytocannabinoids, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC) and cannabidiol (CBD), but less for cannabigerol (CBG). In the present review, we summarized data focused on the therapeutic potential of CBD and CBG as neuroprotective agents. This property appears to be exerted by the direct or indirect activation of targets within the ECS and also by mechanisms non-mediated by the ECS. We provide information which could be useful for future CBD and CBG applications in human neurodegenerative diseases treatment.Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovació

Feature learning with raw-waveform CLDNNs for Voice Activity Detection

Voice Activity Detection (VAD) is an important preprocessing step in any state-of-the-art speech recognition system. Choosing the right set of features and model architecture can be challenging and is an active area of research. In this paper we propose a novel approach to VAD to tackle both feature and model selection jointly. The proposed method is based on a CLDNN (Convolutional, Long Short-Term Memory, Deep Neural Networks) architecture fed directly with the raw waveform. We show that using the raw waveform allows the neural network to learn features directly for the task at hand, which is more powerful than using log-mel features, specially for noisy environments. In addition, using a CLDNN, which takes advantage of both frequency modeling with the CNN and temporal modeling with LSTM, is a much better model for VAD compared to the DNN. The proposed system achieves over 78% relative improvement in False Alarms (FA) at the operating point of 2% False Rejects (FR) on both clean and noisy conditions compared to a DNN of comparable size trained with log-mel features. In addition, we study the impact of the model size and the learned features to provide a better understanding of the proposed architecture