Water struggles in Argentina: international policies, NGOs, and civil society in the pursuit of water rights

As the world’s most valued resource, water has been the source of debate, conflict and even wars throughout history. Its centrality to human life and dignity is universally accepted, but the best means for providing water access are highly debated. The polarity between a market-based approach of privatization and a recent shift towards a rights-based approach has been the source of worldwide societal struggles for water access. In the last decade, international human rights agreements were key in the global shift to a rights-based approach. The conventions and initiatives at the international level were brought to local communities through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that informed and advocated for the public. Although I expected that the international community was the most important player in the realization of water rights, I found that Argentine society, in conjunction with many other communities around the world, actually contributed to the beginnings of the international establishment of the human right to water. A combination of developments in Argentina in recent decades. Including: a notoriously failed water privatization scheme in the 1990s, an active and human rights-oriented public, and major domestic political transitions, showed the power of civil society to create positive change and showed the implications and obstacles for the establishment of the human right to water. This country case study showed both the consequences of internationally hegemonic policies and the increasing public support for the legal recognition of water rights. For this research, I analyzed the interactions between five main players in the water industry: international organizations, the state, multinational corporations (MNCs), national NGOs, and civil society, which I identify as active community groups. The cases, protests, and community solutions to water issues in Argentina offer promising evidence that current international acknowledgement of water rights is necessary but not sufficient. Through more participatory decision-making, using examples of such success stories as in Argentina, the human right to water can be realized throughout the world

On Reducing the Amount of Samples Required for Training of QNNs: Constraints on the Linear Structure of the Training Data

Training classical neural networks generally requires a large number of training samples. Using entangled training samples, Quantum Neural Networks (QNNs) have the potential to significantly reduce the amount of training samples required in the training process. However, to minimize the number of incorrect predictions made by the resulting QNN, it is essential that the structure of the training samples meets certain requirements. On the one hand, the exact degree of entanglement must be fixed for the whole set of training samples. On the other hand, training samples must be linearly independent and non-orthogonal. However, how failing to meet these requirements affects the resulting QNN is not fully studied. To address this, we extend the proof of the QNFL theorem to (i) provide a generalization of the theorem for varying degrees of entanglement. This generalization shows that the average degree of entanglement in the set of training samples can be used to predict the expected quality of the QNN. Furthermore, we (ii) introduce new estimates for the expected accuracy of QNNs for moderately entangled training samples that are linear dependent or orthogonal. Our analytical results are (iii) experimentally validated by simulating QNN training and analyzing the quality of the QNN after training

Water sharing for the environment and agriculture in the Broken catchment

The Commonwealth of Australia Water Act 2007 changed the priority for water use in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) to first ensure environmentally sustainable levels of extraction and then to maximise net economic returns to the community from water use. The Murray- Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) is expected to deliver a draft Basin Plan in 2011 providing a framework for future water planning. The Plan will include Sustainable Diversion Limits (SDLs) which define water diversions for consumption while maintaining environmental assets and ecosystem functions. The 2009 MDBA Concept Statement acknowledged that in some areas less information is available to determine the SDLs. The 2010 MDBA Guide to the Basin Plan proposed SDLs reducing the current long-term average surface water diversions to between 25 and 34% for the Goulburn-Broken region. Representative farm-level models of irrigated dairy, horticulture and viticulture, and dryland broadacre, industries were developed to determine the likely impacts on farm income and farm enterprise mix if the price and quantity of irrigation water changes. Water for ecological benefits and ecosystem functioning was determined for a range of river health levels using a bottom-up approach identifying flow requirements for fish, riparian vegetation, invertebrates, and geomorphic and nutrient processes. A novel part of the analysis is the conjunctive use of water for both purposes, e.g. wetland filling and then pumping for irrigation. The linkages between changed land use and surface/ground water outcomes are assessed using a Catchment Analysis Tool. An experimental design of different proportions of water going to the environment and consumptive uses showed potential trade-offs between agricultural, environmental and surface/ground water outcomes. These trade-offs were examined to assess the impact of alternative water management on catchment welfare, and provide information about setting SDLs.Water sharing, environment, agriculture, Murray-Darling Basin, Broken catchment, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Q18, Q25, Q28,

Shifting molecular localization by plasmonic coupling in a single-molecule mirage

Over the last decade, two fields have dominated the attention of sub-diffraction photonics research: Plasmonics and fluorescence nanoscopy. Nanoscopy based on single-molecule localization offers a practical way to explore plasmonic interactions with nanometre resolution. However, this seemingly straightforward technique may retrieve false positional information. Here, we make use of the DNA origami technique to both control a nanometric separation between emitters and a gold nanoparticle, and as a platform for super-resolution imaging based on single-molecule localization. This enables a quantitative comparison between the position retrieved from single-molecule localization, the true position of the emitter and full-field simulations. We demonstrate that plasmonic coupling leads to shifted molecular localizations of up to 30 nm: A single-molecule mirage.Fil: Raab, Mario. Technical University Of Braunschweig; AlemaniaFil: Vietz, Carolin. Technical University of Braunschweig; Alemania; ArgentinaFil: Stefani, Fernando Daniel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Centro de Investigaciones en Bionanociencias "Elizabeth Jares Erijman"; ArgentinaFil: Acuna, Guillermo Pedro. Technical University Of Braunschweig; AlemaniaFil: Tinnefeld, Philip. Technical University Of Braunschweig; Alemani