The Cotonou Agreement and its implications for the regional trade agenda in eastern and southern Africa

Subregional trade arrangements (RTAs) in Eastern and Southern Africa have proliferated in the past 10 to 15 years. The small size of most of the countries in the region, some of which are landlocked, and the security needs in the post independence period largely explain the rapid expansion. These arrangements are characterized by multiple and overlapping memberships, complex structures, and eventually, conflicting and confusing commitments. The influence of RTAs has been limited to assisting the region in increasing trade, attracting foreign direct investment, enhancing growth, and achieving convergence among member countries. But despite their limitations, RTAs have the potential, if properly designed and effectively implemented, to be an important instrument in integrating member countries into global markets. In 1998 most of the Southern African countries, as members of the Africa Caribbean Pacific group (ACP), signed the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union, which includes the negotiation of economic partnership agreements (EPAs) between the EU and the ACP. The Cotonou Agreement explicitly leaves to the ACP countries to decide the level and procedures of the EPA trade negotiations, taking into account the regional integration process. This raises the question of how to decide on the groupings in the context of conflicting regional trade agendas. The author argues that the Cotonou Agreement and EPA negotiations could become the external driving force that will push the regional organizations to rationalize and harmonize their regional trade arrangements, thus strengthening the integration process and economies of the region, and assisting the Eastern and Southern Africa region in becoming a more active partner in the global economy.Rules of Origin,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Trade Policy,Transport and Trade Logistics,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Trade and Regional Integration,Trade Policy,Economic Theory&Research,Rules of Origin

Stabilization and association process in the Banlkans : integration options and their assessment

The stabilization and association process launched by the European Union in the aftermath of the Kosovo war in 1999 has created a new policy environment for five South East European countries (SEE-5). In exchange for EU assistance, the prospect of EU accession, and the continuation of preferential access to EU markets, SEE-5 governments have to upgrade their institutions and governance by European standards and engage in mutual regional cooperation, including stability pact member-countries. The authors examine the benefits to SEE-5 of trade liberalization along two dimensions and suggest conditions under which these could be maximized. They argue that the process of regional trade liberalization should be extended to multilateral liberalization, aligning SEE-5 most-favored-nation (MFN) applied tariffs on industrial products with EU MFN tariffs, and that priority be given to structural reforms and regional cooperation aimed at trade facilitation. As inter-industry trade rather than intra-industry trade dominates intra-SEE-5 trade, the potential for expansion in intra-SEE-5 trade is limited at least within the confines of the existing production structures and transportation infrastructure. Therefore SEE-5 free trade agreements are unlikely to contribute to economic growth without concurrent efforts to improve infrastructure, trade facilitation, business, and investment climate, as well as to increase competition from MFN imports to external preferential suppliers through multilateral liberalization.Rules of Origin,Environmental Economics&Policies,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Trade Policy,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Environmental Economics&Policies,Trade and Regional Integration,Economic Theory&Research,Rules of Origin

For a social cartography of enconunters

This article results from the encounter and experience with the Social Cartography Methodology by Brazilian and Argentinean research groups, composed of architects, urban planners, and geographers in the Dunas neighborhood, within the periphery of Pelotas, in the Southernmost Brazil state of Rio Grande do Sul. The methodology of Social Cartography followed the weaving of the city, the interrelationships of the particular case of the Dunas neighborhood, line-by-line, in the sewing of the daily life, desires, problems, solutions, and public authorities' actions. The text seeks to raise issues related to the Social Cartography method, such as organization, analysis, and forms of applications. It also points to emancipatory and communitarian aspects involved in this process. We propose that Social Cartography can help to weave the city, undoing the dichotomy between center and periphery while new social spaces are produced from intervention research.Fil: Rocha, Eduardo. Universidade Federal de Pelotas; BrasilFil: Diez Tetamanti, Juan Manuel. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia ; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Mesquita Clasen, Carolina. Universidade Federal de Pelotas; Brasi

Consequences of economic: Partnership agreements between East and Southern African countries and the EU for inter- and intra-regional integration

The European Union is currently negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with six African, Caribbean and Pacific country groupings, aiming at establishing mutual free trade. This paper empirically assesses the impact of the EPAs on trade flows and government revenues for 22 East and Southern African countries and discusses implications for intra-regional integration. The results indicate that while moderate trade effects can be expected, relatively large budget effects are likely to occur in a number of these countries, exposing them to considerable structural and financial adjustment requirements. Also, EPAs would strengthen the need to consolidate overlapping intra-regional integration schemes. --Economic Partnership Agreement,EU,ACP Countries,East and Southern Africa

Prickle1 is required for EMT and migration of zebrafish cranial neural crest

The neural crest—a key innovation of the vertebrates—gives rise to diverse cell types including melanocytes, neurons and glia of the peripheral nervous system, and chondrocytes of the jaw and skull. Proper development of the cephalic region is dependent on the tightly-regulated specification and migration of cranial neural crest cells (NCCs). The core PCP proteins Frizzled and Disheveled have previously been implicated in NCC migration. Here we investigate the functions of the core PCP proteins Prickle1a and Prickle1b in zebrafish cranial NCC development. Using analysis of pk1a and pk1b mutant embryos, we uncover similar roles for both genes in facilitating cranial NCC migration. Disruption of either gene causes pre-migratory NCCs to cluster together at the dorsal aspect of the neural tube, where they adopt aberrant polarity and movement. Critically, in investigating Pk1-deficient cells that fail to migrate ventrolaterally, we have also uncovered roles for pk1a and pk1b in the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) of pre-migratory NCCs that precedes their collective migration to the periphery. Normally, during EMT, pre-migratory NCCs transition from a neuroepithelial to a bleb-based and subsequently, mesenchymal morphology capable of directed migration. When either Pk1a or Pk1b is disrupted, NCCs continue to perform blebbing behaviors characteristic of pre-migratory cells over extended time periods, indicating a block in a key transition during EMT. Although some Pk1-deficient NCCs transition successfully to mesenchymal, migratory morphologies, they fail to separate from neighboring NCCs. Additionally, Pk1b-deficient NCCs show elevated levels of E-Cadherin and reduced levels of N-Cadherin, suggesting that Prickle1 molecules regulate Cadherin levels to ensure the completion of EMT and the commencement of cranial NCC migration. We conclude that Pk1 plays crucial roles in cranial NCCs both during EMT and migration. These roles are dependent on the regulation of E-Cad and N-Cad

Parque do Megalitismo de Évora: uma utopia alentejana.

Discute-se a situação do megalitismo alentejano, em termos da respectiva interpretação, musealização e divulgação face aos diferentes tipos de públicos. Apontam-se e caracterizam-se sucintamente os programas de algumas experiências nacionais e de internacionais e, finalmente propõe-se explicitamente o interesse da criação de um Parque do Megalitismo de Évor

CLASS: A Logical Foundation for Typeful Programming with Shared State

Software construction depends on imperative state sharing and concurrency, which are naturally present in several application domains and are also exploited to improve the structure and efficiency of computer programs. However, reasoning about concurrency and shared mutable state is hard, error-prone and the source of many programming bugs, such as memory leaks, data corruption, deadlocks and non-termination. In this thesis, we develop CLASS: a core session-based language with a lightweight substructural type system, that results from a principled extension of the propositions-astypes correspondence with second-order classical linear logic. More concretely, CLASS offers support for session-based communication, mutex-protected first-class reference cells, dynamic state sharing, generic polymorphic algorithms, data abstraction and primitive recursion. CLASS expresses and types significant realistic programs, that manipulate memoryefficient linked data structures (linked lists, binary search trees) with support for updates in-place, shareable concurrent ADTs (counters, stacks, functional and imperative queues), resource synchronisation methods (fork-joins, barriers, dining philosophers, generic corecursive protocols). All of these examples are guaranteed to be safe, a result that follows by the logical approach. The linear logical foundations guarantee that well-typed CLASS programs do not go wrong: they never deadlock on communication or reference cell acquisition, do not leak memory and always terminate, even if they share complex data structures protected by synchronisation primitives. Furthermore, since we follow a propositions-as-types approach, we can reason about the behaviour of concurrent stateful processes by algebraic program manipulation. The feasibility of our approach is witnessed by the implementation of a type checker and interpreter for CLASS, which validates and guides the development of many realistic programs. The implementation is available with an open-source license, together with several examples.A construção de software depende de estado partilhado imperativo e concorrência, que estão naturalmente presentes em vários domínios de aplicação e que também são explorados para melhorar o a estrutura e o desempenho dos programas. No entanto, raciocinar sobre concorrência e estado mutável partilhado é difícil e propenso à introdução de erros e muitos bugs de programação, tais como fugas de memória, corrupção de dados, programas bloqueados e programas que não terminam a sua execução. Nesta tese, desenvolvemos CLASS: uma linguagem baseada em sessões, com um sistema de tipos leve e subestrutural, que resulta de uma extensão metodológica da correspondência proposições-como-tipos com a lógica linear clássica de segunda ordem. Mais concretamente, a linguagem CLASS oferece suporte para comunicação baseada em sessões, células de memória protegidas com mutexes de primeira classe, partilha dinâmica de estado, algoritmos polimórficos genéricos, abstração de dados e recursão primitiva. A linguagem CLASS expressa e tipifica programas realistas significativos, que manipulam estruturas de dados ligadas eficientes (listas ligadas, árvores de pesquisa binária) suportando actualização imperativa local, TDAs partilhados e concorrentes (contadores, pilhas, filas funcionais e imperativas), métodos de sincronização e partilha de recursos (bifurcar-juntar, barreiras, jantar de filósofos, protocolos genéricos corecursivos). Todos estes exemplos são seguros, uma garantia que resulta da nossa abordagem lógica. Os fundamentos, baseados na lógica linear, garantem que programas em CLASS bem tipificados não incorrem em erros: nunca bloqueiam, quer na comunicação, quer na aquisição de células de memória, nunca causam fugas de memória e terminam sempre, mesmo que compartilhem estruturas de dados complexas protegidas por primitivas de sincronização. Além disso, uma vez que seguimos uma abordagem de proposições-comotipos, podemos raciocinar sobre o comportamento de processos concorrentes, que usam estado, através de manipulação algébrica. A viabilidade da nossa abordagem é evidenciada pela implementação de um verificador de tipos e interpretador para a linguagem CLASS, que valida e orienta o desenvolvimento de vários programs realistas. A implementação está disponível com uma licença de acesso livre, juntamente com inúmeros exemplos

Acetylation’s role in Tau structure, electrostatics and dynamics

Dissertação de mestrado em BioinformáticaTau is a Microtubule (MT) associated protein known to malfunction when it undergoes post translational modifications. The present work implements molecular modelling techniques in order to assess the effects of Lys acetylation on Tau’s overall conformation, electrostatics and interactions. Through a thorough assessment of reported harmful Lys sites, 8 analog Tau replicates were generated by mutation of those sites by their acetylated form (aTau). These replicates were evaluated in intracellular fluid and next to a MT model. Our findings demonstrated that the lack of positive Lys charges, through mutation, generate sufficient electrostatic changes in order to acquiesce very different final conformations, in comparison to native Tau. These results are consistent, even when a single site is altered. In both scenarios (Tau in intracellular fluid and near a MT), aTau is frequently folded over itself, although not in the ”paperclip” conformation, as expected. Moreover, the acetylation process hinders the microtubule binding region (MTBR), thus undermining the association to the MT tubulins. This result is in agreement with the fact that these reported Lys positions have been found acetylated in Tau’s deposits in Alzheimer’s disease brains. Therefore, our in silico study elucidates about important molecular events behind multifactorial dementias, as Alzheimer’s.Tau é uma proteína associada a microtúbulos, conhecida por ter a sua função normal prejudicada por eventos de modificações pós translacionais. O presente trabalho implementa técnicas de modelação molecular com o objetivo de avaliar os efeitos da acetilação de locais Lys, na conformação, eletroestática e interações gerais em Tau. Através de uma procura cuidada de locais Lys reportados como prejudiciais, foram gerados 8 réplicas análogas de Tau, através de mutação desses locais Lys, pela sua forma acetilada (aTau). Estas réplicas foram avaliadas em fluído intracelular e perto de um modelo de microtúbulo. Os resultados revelam que a falta de cargas Lys positivas, devido à mutação, gera alterações electroestáticas suficientes para gerar uma conformação final bastante diferente, comparando com Tau nativa. Estes resultados são consistentes, mesmo quando apenas um local é alterado. Em ambos os cenários (Tau em fluido intracelular e perto do MT), aTau apresenta-se frequentemente dobrada sobre si mesma, no entanto não na formação em ”paperclip” como seria esperado. Mais ainda, o processo de acetilação prejudica a região de ligação do microtúbulo (MTBR), e portanto debilitando a sua associação às tubulinas do MT. Estes resultados estão em concordância com o facto de que estas posições Lys foram reportadas como acetiladas em depósitos de Tau em cérebros com doença de Alzheimer, portanto, o nosso estudo in silico elucida acerca de processos moleculares importantes em demências multifatorias, tais como Alzheimer