The Role of the Natural Resource Curse in Preventing Development in Politically Unstable Countries: Case Studies of Angola and Bolivia

For about three decades now, development economics researchers have consistently claimed that third world resource-rich countries were not developing as well and/or as fast as they were expected to, given that their natural resources endowment was considered a great opportunity for development. The phenomenon of underperformances concerning primary commodity exporters relative to non resource-rich countries has been often referred to as to the “Natural Resource Curse”. The authors use an historical and political approach to the manifestations of the curse in the specific cases of Angola and Bolivia, both resource abundant countries, but suffering among the lowest development standards in their respective continents. In chapter one, the authors make a quick review of the literature explaining both causes and manifestations of the Resource Curse. The authors go beyond the classical Dutch Disease explanations and show how natural resources lead to behaviours of looting, rent-seeking and civil confrontations. In chapter two, the authors present the framework where they adjust the “African Anti-growth Policy Syndromes” described by Paul Collier to the specific case of the Natural Resource curse. In addition, they add some considerations of the negative effect of natural resource extraction by analysing externalities on environment, education and inequalities. Chapters three and four analyse the case studies of Angola and Bolivia respectively, emphasizing the role of historical context explaining policy behaviour and the critical impact of unexpected windfalls and sudden price collapses. The authors find that natural resources could sustain long lasting conflicts, but that conditions of fractionalization of society determine the possibility of conflict. A country divided in two rigid political factions is more prone to internal conflict, like in Angola, whether in countries where frontiers between blocks are blurried or the country is multi-polar, like in Bolivia, the risks of long-lasting civil war seem less important. Apart from conflict, the authors show that lack of institutions and inequality make of natural resources a source of political instability that has far more impact on economic performances than other factors.Natural Resource curse, Rent-seeking, Civil War, Angola, Bolivia

Ammonia observations of the nearby molecular cloud MBM 12

We present NH3(1,1) and NH3(2,2) observations of MBM 12, the closest known molecular cloud (65 pc distance), aimed to find evidence for on-going star formation processes. No local temperature (with a T_rot upper limit of 12 K) nor linewidth enhancement is found, which suggests that the area of the cloud we mapped (~ 15' size) is not currently forming stars. Therefore, this close ``starless'' molecular gas region is an ideal laboratory to study the physical conditions preceding new star formation. A radio continuum source was found in Very Large Array archive data, close but outside the NH3 emission. This source is likely to be a background object.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, accepted by MNRA

Organización : Toma de Decisiones

Por medio de este documento se trata de introducir al lector en el importante mundo de la toma de decisiones empresariales. La toma de decisiones empresariales día a día es una realidad. Todos los gerentes y equipos encargados de tomar decisiones dentro de una organización enfrentan numerosos hechos y circunstancias que influyen en el proceso de la toma de decisiones. Las empresas deben tomar decisiones empezando por determinar con exactitud el problema en cuestión, posteriormente deben generar soluciones alternativas y evaluarlas, y por ultimo deben tomar la decisión. Es a través de la toma de decisiones que se lleva a cabo el hecho que determinará el éxito o fracaso en el competitivo mundo empresarial que enfrenta una organización. Debido a la gran importancia que conlleva el tomar decisiones, los encargados de llevarla a cabo, deben educarse e informarse constantemente sobre todo lo relacionado no solo con la empresa para la cual trabajan sino que también deben conocer el entorno que rodea el sector industrial de la empresa en que laboran y lo que sucede a nivel nacional e internacional que tenga relación, influencia e impacto al momento de tomar decisiones empresariales

When NGOs fail: A model of advocacy and services provision in weak democracies

We develop a theoretical model in which NGOs financed by foreign donors engage in two types of activities in a developing country: service provision and advocacy. In the model, service provision relieves poverty, but these aid resources risk embezzlement by corrupt authorities. Advocacy can encourage the local population to demand more transparency to the authorities, reducing embezzlement at the cost of investing fewer efforts in direct poverty alleviation. We find that in general advocacy will be underprovided because its benefit, improved governance, has the characteristics of a public good. NGOs can remedy to this under-provision by coordinating their actions, but because this coordination threatens the rents of the local authorities, officials will respond to coordination attempts by cracking down on NGOs. Full coordination is therefore undesirable: crackdown of NGOs will be too strong, which reduces service provision and hurts beneficiaries

Hormesis: ¿Una cuestión de concentración?

The dynamics of biological systems are highly complex, in part, due to the large number of elements that integrate these systems. If we consider that, under certain circumstances, the responses of a given system to the same stimulus may vary with the variation of the stimulus (e.g. the concentration of a chemical stimulus) complex systems become even more complex. This phenomenon is known as hormesis, and its role in biological systems is controversial because of the scarcity of data that support the concept itself. This essay provides an overview of the hormesis concept, describe its types and discusses it.Las dinámicas de los sistemas biológicos presentan una elevada complejidad debido, en parte, al gran número de elementos que participan en ellas. Si a esto añadimos que, en determinadas circunstancias, las respuestas ante un mismo estímulo parecen variar con su intensidad (p.ej. la concentración de una señal química), los sistemas complejos nos lo parecen aún más. Este fenómeno se conoce como hormesis y el papel que desempeña en los sistemas biológicos es motivo de controversia por la escasez de datos que lo respaldan. Con este ensayo se pretende ofrecer una panorámica sobre el concepto de hormesis, presentar los distintos tipos y discutir el mismo

Optimizacion del sistema de calentamiento de lodos para un mayor redimiendo de la planta pesquera Exalmar S.A.A Chimbote

Este trabajo de investigación busca implementar una instalación eléctrica, electrónica y neumática para un funcionamiento automatizado óptimo del sistema de calentamiento de lodos en la pesquera para así mejorar el rendimiento de la planta pesquera Exalmar S.A.A Chimbote En este trabajo de investigación se realizó la visita técnica a planta pesquera Chimbote con el fin de ver la problemática de la investigación, durante la visita se realizó metrados, cotización de materiales y mano de obra que se va requerir para realizar el proyecto de investigación. Tuve la necesidad de desarrollar la investigación y ver la realidad problemática que tiene, el funcionamiento del sistema de calentamiento de lodos está inoperativo además la bomba de recirculación de lodos no funcionaba además no había un control respectivo del proceso. Para realizar esta optimización se implementará un tablero eléctrico de fuerza y de control que su función será funcionar la bomba con el fin de recircular el lodo hacia el intercambiador de calor, además se implementará un sistema neumático que suministrará aire a presión para la función de la válvula posicionadora sea apertura y cierre, mientras que en la parte electrónica controlar la temperatura de lodo suministrando vapor para el calentamiento del lodo. El objetivo general es mediante la optimización de este sistema de calentamiento de lodos mejorará el rendimiento respecto a la harina de pescado de la planta pesquera porque consecuencia mejorará la producción y rentabilidad analizado la tasa de interés de retorno (TIR) y el valor actual neto (VAN) de la planta pesquer

Characterisation of Grasp Quality Metrics

Robot grasp quality metrics are used to evaluate, compare and select robotic grasp configurations. Many of them have been proposed based on a diversity of underlying principles and to assess different aspects of the grasp configurations. As a consequence, some of them provide similar information but other can provide completely different assessments. Combinations of metrics have been proposed in order to provide global indexes, but these attempts have shown the difficulties of merging metrics with different numerical ranges and even physical units. All these studies have raised the need of a deeper knowledge in order to determine independent grasp quality metrics which enable a global assessment of a grasp, and a way to combine them. This paper presents an exhaustive study in order to provide numerical evidence for these issues. Ten quality metrics are used to evaluate a set of grasps planned by a simulator for 7 different robot hands over a set of 126 object models. Three statistical analysis, namely, variability, correlation and sensitivity, are performed over this extensive database. Results and graphs presented allow to set practical thresholds for each quality metric, select independent metrics, and determine the robustness of each metric,providing a reliability indicator under pose uncertainty. The results from this paper are intended to serve as guidance for practical use of quality metrics by researchers on grasp planning algorithms