Fragmentation, income, gender and poverty linkages: The case of the Maquila Industry in Guatemala

This article addresses the participation of Guatemala in the world apparel chain of production and its likely impact on income, gender and poverty levels. Making use of household survey data from Guatemala, the study relies on matching techniques for analyzing changes on labour earnings in the assembly industry with special emphasis on female workers. The evidence suggests that maquila-based employees are, on average, better paid than those occupied in the reserve sector, however, the former group seems to be exposed to a less favourable working environment when compared to those employed in other manufacturing industries. Moreover, the study reveals huge income disparities in terms of gender, exacerbated, among others, by the typical patriarchal structure prevailing in the Guatemalan economy. Our results introduce reservations on the role played by the maquila model, calling for a reassessment of its likely poverty reduction effect in Guatemala.

Policy making in asymmetric regional integrations: a methodology for allocating cohesion fund resources

We propose a combination of region- and product-identification procedures in order to map the potential of economic activities in areas with poor infrastructure in an asymmetric regional integration. After identifying spatial units with relative backwardness in terms of infrastructure, we detect the most competitive exports, estimate gravity models for each of them and perform simulations for an improvement of 20% in the value of the infrastructure index. In a final step, we identify goods/provinces where investment in infrastructure should be directed to. A thorough and data intensive application is made to the case of the Fondo de Convergencia Estructural del MERCOSUR (FOCEM), the recently created cohesion fund of one of the most asymmetric integration projects. Our main conclusion is that FOCEM resources, under the global objective of enhancing structural convergence among the members, should be totally directed to Paraguay instead of being dispersed among all backward regions in the bloc.

Far from champions, close to midgets : international production sharing in Central and South America

This paper assesses the relative participation of Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala and Nicaragua in fragmented world production. Based on trade statistics from 2000 to 2004, it analyses whether the trade flows of these economies have evolved towards production sharing schemes, and how great this type of trade is, in order to sustain their presence in the world economy. Guatemala and Nicaragua have reached a moderate insertion in a production sharing scheme, following a North-South trade pattern. Nonetheless, their participation is still small, being threatened not only by international competition, but also by their dependence on a unique market. Brazil has consolidated participation in a few chains, showing a more diversified North–South trade pattern. Argentina has attained insertion in the automotive chain of production, whereas its participation in other ones seems still quite limited. The country has a more South-South trade pattern, which exposes it to a certain degree of dependence.

Dissipative structures in optomechanical cavities

Motivated by the increasing interest in the properties of multimode optomechanical devices, here we study a system in which a driven mode of a large-area optical cavity is despersively coupled to a deformable mechanical element. Two different models naturally appear in such scenario, for which we predict the formation of periodic patterns, localized structures (cavity solitons), and domain walls, among other complex nonlinear phenomena. Further, we propose a realistic design based on intracavity membranes where our models can be studied experimentally. Apart from its relevance to the field of nonlinear optics, the results put forward here are a necessary step towards understanding the quantum properties of optomechanical systems in the multimode regime of both the optical and mechanical degrees of freedom.Comment: Updated version with a more general model and a specific implementation proposal. Comments and (constructive) criticism are welcom

El nihilismo en Crimen y castigo de Dostoievski

Este trabajo representa un recorrido por la principal novela del escritor ruso Fiódor Dostoievski. Tuvo como objetivo demostrar que el libro Crimen y castigo contiene aspectos nihilistas. La metodología utilizada fue el empírico-analítico y la técnica, el análisis de contenido. Se concluyó que el nihilismo en el libro Crimen y Castigo se ve representado en el artículo Acerca del delito y los soliloquios, desarrollado por Rodión Raskólnikov

Charged molecules modulate the volume exclusion effects exerted by crowders on FtsZ polymerization

14 p.-4 fig.-2 tab.We have studied the influence of protein crowders, either combined or individually, on the GTP-induced FtsZ cooperative assembly, crucial for the formation of the dynamic septal ring and, hence, for bacterial division. It was earlier demonstrated that high concentrations of inert polymers like Ficoll 70, used to mimic the crowded cellular interior, favor the assembly of FtsZ into bundles with slow depolymerization. We have found, by fluorescence anisotropy together with light scattering measurements, that the presence of protein crowders increases the tendency of FtsZ to polymerize at micromolar magnesium concentration, being the effect larger with ovomucoid, a negatively charged protein. Neutral polymers and a positively charged protein also diminished the critical concentration of assembly, the extent of the effect being compatible with that expected according to pure volume exclusion models. FtsZ polymerization was also observed to be strongly promoted by a negatively charged polymer, DNA, and by some unrelated polymers like PEGs at concentrations below the crowding regime. The influence of mixed crowders mimicking the heterogeneity of the intracellular environment on the tendency of FtsZ to assemble was also studied and nonadditive effects were found to prevail. Far from exactly reproducing the bacterial cytoplasm environment, this approach serves as a simplified model illustrating how its intrinsically crowded and heterogeneous nature may modulate FtsZ assembly into a functional Z-ring.This work was supported by Spanish government BIO2011-28941-C03 (GR and SZ) and BFU 2014-52070-C2-2-P (GR) (www.mineco.gob.es), European Commission HEALTH-F3-2009-223432 (GR) (http://ec.europa.eu/), and Human Frontiers Science Program RGP0050/2010-C102 (GR) (www.hfsp.org).Peer reviewe

Independence between GTPase active sites in the Escherichia coli cell division protein FtsZ

AbstractWe have analyzed the substrate kinetics of the GTPase activity of FtsZ and the effects of two different GTPase inhibitors, GDP and the slowly hydrolyzable GTP analogue GMPCPP. In the absence of inhibitors the GTPase activity follows simple Michaelis–Menten kinetics, and both GDP and GMPCPP inhibited the activity in a competitive manner. These results indicate that the GTPase active sites in FtsZ filaments are independent of each other, a feature relevant to elucidate the role of GTP hydrolysis in FtsZ function and cell division.Structured summary of protein interactionsFtsZ and FtsZ bind by light scattering (View interaction)

Crowding Activates ClpB and Enhances Its Association with DnaK for Efficient Protein Aggregate Reactivation

AbstractReactivation of intracellular protein aggregates after a severe stress is mandatory for cell survival. In bacteria, this activity depends on the collaboration between the DnaK system and ClpB, which in vivo occurs in a highly crowded environment. The reactivation reaction includes two steps: extraction of unfolded monomers from the aggregate and their subsequent refolding into the native conformation. Both steps might be compromised by excluded volume conditions that would favor aggregation of unstable protein folding intermediates. Here, we have investigated whether ClpB and the DnaK system are able to compensate this unproductive effect and efficiently reactivate aggregates of three different substrate proteins under crowding conditions. To this aim, we have compared the association equilibrium, biochemical properties, stability, and chaperone activity of the disaggregase ClpB in the absence and presence of an inert macromolecular crowding agent. Our data show that crowding i), increases three to four orders of magnitude the association constant of the functional hexamer; ii), shifts the conformational equilibrium of the protein monomer toward a compact state; iii), stimulates its ATPase activity; and iv), favors association of the chaperone with substrate proteins and with aggregate-bound DnaK. These effects strongly enhance protein aggregate reactivation by the DnaK-ClpB network, highlighting the importance of volume exclusion in complex processes in which several proteins have to work in a sequential manner

Active locking and entanglement in type II optical parametric oscillators

Type II optical parametric oscillators are amongst the highest-quality sources of quantum-correlated light. In particular, when pumped above threshold, such devices generate a pair of bright orthogonally-polarized beams with strong continuous-variable entanglement. However, these sources are of limited practical use, because the entangled beams emerge with different frequencies and a diffusing phase difference. It has been proven that the use of an internal wave-plate coupling the modes with orthogonal polarization is capable of locking the frequencies of the emerging beams to half the pump frequency, as well as reducing the phase-difference diffusion, at the expense of reducing the entanglement levels. In this work we characterize theoretically an alternative locking mechanism: the injection of a laser at half the pump frequency. Apart from being less invasive, this method should allow for an easier real-time experimental control. We show that such an injection is capable of generating the desired phase locking between the emerging beams, while still allowing for large levels of entanglement. Moreover, we find an additional region of the parameter space (at relatively large injections) where a mode with well defined polarization is in a highly amplitude-squeezed state

Phage Ø29 Protein p6 Is in a Monomer−Dimer Equilibrium That Shifts to Higher Association States at the Millimolar Concentrations Found in Vivo

Protein p6 from Bacillus subtilis phage Ø29 (Mr = 11 800) binds in vitro to DNA forming a large nucleoprotein complex in which the DNA wraps a multimeric protein core. The high intracellular abundance of protein p6 together with its ability to bind the whole Ø29 DNA in vitro strongly suggests that it plays a role in viral genome organization. We have determined by sedimentation equilibrium analysis that protein p6 (1−100 μM range), in the absence of DNA, is in a monomer−dimer equilibrium, with an association constant (K2) of 2 × 105 M-1. The intracellular concentration of protein p6 (1 mM) was estimated measuring the number of copies per cell (7 × 105) and the cell volume (1 × 10-15 L). At concentrations around 1 mM, protein p6 associates into oligomers. This self-association behavior is compatible with a dimer−hexamer model (K2,6 = 3.2 × 108 M-2) or with an isodesmic association of the dimer (K = 950 M-1), because the apparent weight-average molecular mass (Mw,a) does not reach saturation at the highest protein concentrations. The sedimentation coefficients of protein p6 monomer and dimer were 1.4 and 2.0, respectively, compatible with translational frictional ratios (f/fo) of 1.15 and 1.30, which slightly deviate from the hydrodynamics of a rigid globular protein. Taking together these results and considering the structure of the nucleoprotein complex, we speculate that the observed oligomers of protein p6 could mimic a scaffold on which DNA folds to form the nucleoprotein complex in vivo.Peer reviewe