DECENTRALIZATION’S EFFECTS ON EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES IN BOLIVIA AND COLOMBIA

The effects of decentralization on public sector outputs is much debated but little agreed upon. This paper compares the remarkable case of Bolivia with the more complex case of Colombia to explore decentralization's effects on public education outcomes. In Colombia, decentralization of education finance improved enrollment rates in public schools. In Bolivia, decentralization made government more responsive by re-directing public investment to areas of greatest need. In both countries, investment shifted from infrastructure to primary social services. In both, it was the behavior of smaller, poorer, more rural municipalities that drove these changes.decentralization, education, public investment, Bolivia, Colombia, local government

DECENTRALIZATION´S EFFECTS ON EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES IN BOLIVIA AND COLOMBIA

The effects of decentralization on public sector outputs is much debated but little agreed upon. This paper compares the remarkable case of Bolivia with the more complex case of Colombia to explore decentralization´s effects on public education outcomes. In Colombia, decentralization of education finance improved enrollment rates in public schools. In Bolivia, decentralization made government more responsive by re-directing public investment to areas of greatest need. In both countries, investment shifted from infrastructure to primary social services. In both, it was the behavior of smaller, poorer, more rural municipalities that drove these changes.decentralization, education, public investment, Bolivia, Colombia, local government

Social Dynamics of Gang Involvement: A Mathematical Approach

Gangs have played a significant role in the social and political history of the United States, and continue to impact the country today, as gang violence and participation rates continue to grow. In this paper, we explore the dynamics of gang involvement between at-risk individuals, gang members, and reformed gang members using an SIR-type model. We investigate the effect that social influence of reformed gang members has on the at-risk population using a general function, which takes into account the cost of gang membership and a threat factor. Our results show that the influence of the reformed population is highly sensitive to initial gang member population size, recidivism, and cost

An Innovative Workspace for The Cherenkov Telescope Array

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is an initiative to build the next generation, ground-based gamma-ray observatories. We present a prototype workspace developed at INAF that aims at providing innovative solutions for the CTA community. The workspace leverages open source technologies providing web access to a set of tools widely used by the CTA community. Two different user interaction models, connected to an authentication and authorization infrastructure, have been implemented in this workspace. The first one is a workflow management system accessed via a science gateway (based on the Liferay platform) and the second one is an interactive virtual desktop environment. The integrated workflow system allows to run applications used in astronomy and physics researches into distributed computing infrastructures (ranging from clusters to grids and clouds). The interactive desktop environment allows to use many software packages without any installation on local desktops exploiting their native graphical user interfaces. The science gateway and the interactive desktop environment are connected to the authentication and authorization infrastructure composed by a Shibboleth identity provider and a Grouper authorization solution. The Grouper released attributes are consumed by the science gateway to authorize the access to specific web resources and the role management mechanism in Liferay provides the attribute-role mapping

A mathematical model with nonlinear relapse: conditions for a forward-backward bifurcation

We constructed a Susceptible-Addicted-Reformed model and explored the dynamics of nonlinear relapse in the Reformed population. The transition from susceptible considered {\it at-risk} is modeled using a strictly decreasing general function, mimicking an influential factor that reduces the flow into the addicted class. The {\it basic reproductive number} is computed. Furthermore, $R_0$ determines the local asymptotically stability of the addicted-free equilibrium. Conditions for a forward-backward bifurcation were established using $R_0$ and other threshold quantities. A stochastic version of the model is presented, and some numerical examples are shown. Results showed that the influence of the temporarily reformed individuals is highly sensitive to the initial addicted population.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

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