Evangelicals in the Latin American political arena: the cases of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay

The advance of evangelical congregations in the Latin American religious scene is one of the most significant cultural transformations of the last decades. It is so because of the speed with which it has occurred, because of the important number of people involved and because of the depth with which it challenges the Catholic Church, one of the most emblematic institutions of the continent since the conquest. In this paper, we analyze one of the areas in which this religious revolution is manifesting itself in three different countries. We address the changing relationships between evangelicals and politics in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay and prove that, despite the enormous differences among these three countries, there are clear similarities in the political agendas that evangelicals support. Nevertheless, we also show the different articulations that Evangelicals have carried out in the political arena in each case. The Evangelical churches in Brazil have advanced much more in this sense than in Argentina, with Uruguay being the intermediate situation. For this, we will base ourselves on a bibliographic review of research, in statistical data from the Latinobarometer, together with specific in-depth interviews.

Education and Inequality in Finland, Spain and Brazil

Finland, Spain and Brazil are three very internally complex and heterogeneous realities, with contradictions and permanent reforms to their education systems. In a first quantitative approach each country can be placed in a continuum of the education system that goes from most successful in terms of reaching a high level of education all across the population, in conditions of equity and facilitating youths’ incorporation into the labour market, to least successful, with Finland and Brazil occupying either end of the spectrum respectively and Spain occupying an intermediate situation. Although there are differences, they share certain tensions in their respective education systems. On the one hand, about the conception of education, ranging from more utilitarian, human capital theories, to the more humanist and civic-minded perspective. On the other hand, the challenge of comprehensiveness between an academic and a vocational path. In addition, there is also the challenge of improving the education level of the population while also improving equality. The tensions differ from country to country, since their education traditions and cooperation and conflict strategies between the education agents, with varying levels of resources and different alliances with political actors vary, as does the social consensus.

Co-Production in Local Public Service Delivery: The Case of Waste Management

In a simple model of waste management, we analyse the basic aspects of co-production in local public service delivery. Our results suggest that citizen involvement may lead to an expansion of the production possibility frontier, if waste sorting is made sufficiently convenient, relative to work, through an appropriate tax policy. However, by diverting time away from work, this policy may trigger a tax base erosion phenomenon. We find that the incentive power of the tax should be high (low) when local preferences for the service are very high (low) relative to local incomes. In the intermediate situation, two cases arise. First, when preferences are (not very) low relative to incomes, taxation should pursue resource collection purposes and be deprived of its incentive effects. Second, when preferences are middle-to-high relative to incomes, the trade-off between incentive provision and tax base erosion causes the optimal tax rate to first increase, then decrease.

Indefinite expressions and accessibility hierarchy to core argument functionsin a sample of Austronesian languages(and beyond)

In many languages, indefinite expressions are known to have restricted access to core argument functions. This article focuses on the accessibility hierarchy of indefinite expressions to subject and object functions in a sample of Austronesian languages. Aiming at some comparative analysis, some cross-linguistic perspectives on the differential encoding of ± definite core arguments and other types of restrictions are discussed. The questions addressed are: (i) What type of indefinite nouns have core argument function? (ii) If barred from core argument function, how are indefinite arguments circumvented? (iii) Does existence or lack of indefinite articles correlate with access to core argument function, and in what way? In Austronesian languages, one finding is that languages with indefinite articles display fewer restrictions on the access of indefinite NPs to core argument function. Another finding is that differences of definiteness, individuation and specificity of arguments tend to be expressed by distinct domains: the noun phrase in languages with indefinite articles, the verb phrase in languages without indefinite articles (via valency, voice alternations, alignment changes), with an intermediate situation in some Micronesian languages.

The Impact of Improvement in Productivity on the Creation of Value in the Automotive Parts Sector

Improvement in productivity is not an end in itself. It is an intermediate situation applied to exert an impact on results. For its part, created value is the company's power to adapt to environmental conditions, to make relevant adjustments that not only allow its survival, but also the option to enter into other markets successfully. Thus, every interaction that takes place must create value. This chapter identifies present associations between improving productivity by creating value in Bogota's auto parts companies.

Absence of heterosis in hybrid crested newts

Relationships between phylogenetic relatedness, hybrid zone spatial structure, the amount of interspecific gene flow and population demography were investigated, with the newt genusTriturusas a model system. In earlier work, a bimodal hybrid zone of two distantly related species combined low interspecific gene flow with hybrid sterility and heterosis was documented. Apart from that, a suite of unimodal hybrid zones in closely relatedTriturusshowed more or less extensive introgressive hybridization with no evidence for heterosis. We here report on population demography and interspecific gene flow in twoTriturusspecies (T. macedonicusandT. ivanbureschiin Serbia). These are two that are moderately related, engage in a heterogeneous uni-/bimodal hybrid zone and hence represent an intermediate situation. This study used 13 diagnostic nuclear genetic markers in a population at the species contact zone. This showed that all individuals were hybrids, with no parentals detected. Age, size and longevity and the estimated growth curves are not exceeding that of the parental species, so that we conclude the absence of heterosis inT. macedonicus–T. ivanbureschi. Observations across the genus support the hypothesis that fertile hybrids allocate resources to reproduction and infertile hybrids allocate resources to growth. SeveralTriturusspecies hybrid zones not yet studied allow the testing of this hypothesis.

Flexural Strengthening of Damaged T-Joists with Severe Corrosion Using CFRP Sheets

This paper evaluates the residual safety of isolated T-joists with severe corrosion for the two extreme cases of boundary conditions, simply supported and fixed-ended, in order to help in making decisions about the magnitude of the necessary intervention. When the T-joist is part of a complete slab, the boundary conditions will be in an intermediate situation between these two extreme cases, so that it is possible to assess the safety with respect to its degree of embedding. The research is conducted for the cases of healthy T-joist, T-joist with complete corrosion of the lower reinforcement, and repaired T-joists with a variable number of CFRP sheets. This work is based on the ACI 318 load test to maintain a structure in use and proposes a Load Factor (LF), which estimates the safety reserve. The simply supported T-joists specimens with severe corrosion do not meet the Load Factor or ACI 318 criteria, even with a large number of CFRP sheets. On the other hand, fixed-ended cases can be kept in use despite corrosion by applying light CFRP strengthening, and with four sheets the initial safety is restored.

Anatomical differences in three wing muscles of the Grey heron (Ardea cinerea), the Common buzzard (Buteo buteo) and the Common kestrel (Falco tinnunculus): a possible functional interpretation

In this paper, a description of the coracobrachialis caudalis, the scapulotriceps and the extensor carpi radialis muscles is presented in three different species (Common kestrel, Common buzzard and Grey heron) that exhibit notably differing flight styles. The primary goal of this research is to describe the gross anatomy of species not previously examined. Secondly, we attempt to advance a functional interpretation of the structures studied, to understand if such noticeable differences in flight style could have induced a differentiation in the above mentioned wing muscles. Regarding the coracobrachialis caudalis muscle, the Grey heron exhibited an unusual conformation with two “reversed” heads and a great amount of fibrous bundles. Moreover, the “anchors” of the scapulotriceps muscle were well developed in the Grey heron and vestigial in the Common kestrel, while an intermediate situation was observed in the Common buzzard. In addition, the extensor carpi radialis muscle showed interesting findings concerning the number of heads and their disposition. Our data may corroborate some previously advanced functional interpretation. In particular, the structure of the coracobrachialis muscle is in line with the hypothesis of its role as muscular strut. Moreover, the humeral and scapular anchors could play a role in increasing the scapulotriceps tension during some phases of the beat cycle or it may be involved in maintaining wing posture. Regarding the different number of heads and the disposition of the extensor carpi radialis muscle, we believe that it could play a role in maintaining the wing position. Although a correct functional interpretation can be obtained only through multidisciplinary studies, we believe that an in-depth gross anatomy study should always be conducted beforehand, to serve as basis for further and more specific research.

Sustainability of grape-ethanol energy chain

The aim of this work is to evaluate the sustainability, in terms of greenhouse gases emission saving, of a new potential bio-ethanol production chain in comparison with the most common ones. The innovation consists of producing bio-ethanol from different types of no-food grapes, while usually bio-ethanol is obtained from matrices taken away from crop for food destination: sugar cane, corn, wheat, sugar beet. In the past, breeding programs were conducted with the aim of improving grapevine characteristics, a large number of hybrid vine varieties were produced and are nowadays present in the Viticulture Research Centre (CRA-VIT) Germplasm Collection. Some of them are potentially interesting for bio-energy production because of their high production of sugar, good resistance to diseases, and ability to grow in marginal lands. Life cycle assessment (LCA) of grape ethanol energy chain was performed following two different methods: i) using the spreadsheet <em>BioGrace</em>, developed within the <em>Intelligent Energy Europe</em> program to support and to ease the Renewable Energy Directive 2009/28/EC implementation; ii) using a dedicated LCA software. Emissions were expressed in CO₂ equivalent (CO₂eq). These two tools gave very similar results. The overall emissions impact of ethanol production from grapes on average is about 33 g CO₂eq MJ^–1 of ethanol if prunings are used for steam production and 53 g CO₂eq MJ^–1 of ethanol if methane is used. The comparison with other bio-energy chains points out that the production of ethanol using grapes represents an intermediate situation in terms of general emissions among the different production chains. The results showed that the sustainability limits provided by the normative are respected to this day. On the contrary, from 2017 this production will be sustainable only if the transformation processes will be performed using renewable sources of energy.

Energy and information propagation in a finite coupled bosonic heat bath

The finite coupled bosonic model of reservoir introduced by Vasile et al. [Phys. Rev. A 89 (2014) 022109] to characterize non-Markovianity, is used to study the different dissipative behaviors of a harmonic oscillator coupled to it when it is in resonance, close to resonance or far detuned. We show that information and energy exchange between system and heat bath go hand in hand because phonons are the carriers of both: in resonance free propagation of excitations is achieved, and therefore pure dissipation, while when far detuned the system can only correlate with the first oscillator in the bath's chain, leading to almost unitary evolution. In the intermediate situation, we show the penetration of correlations and the formation of oscillatory (dressed state) behavior, which lies at the root of non-Markovianity.