The purpose of this essay is to explain why it is not only reasonable but also necessary for companies that aim to survive in the long term, to adapt to the shifts that have happened in the market by embedding a system thinking and becoming sustainable businesses, through the adoption of sustainable business strategies that deliver benefits for the Triple Bottom Line. This paper first describes the current situation of the Earth, it will also describe the existing criticism towards businesses and the raising expectations for business acting as a source of long-term solutions and change. Subsequently, it exposes the main reasons why it has been so difficult for businesses to see a business case for sustainability. Finally, this essay demonstrates that to survive in the long term it is of vital importance for companies to embed sustainable business strategies and sustainable business models that deliver benefits for the Triple Bottom Line.

Bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) is an important pathogen of cattle that has been frequently associated with in vitro produced (IVP) embryos. The zona pellucida (ZP) of IVP embryos shows higher affinity for BVDV than the ZP of in vivo produced embryos and treatments that can eliminate BVDV from in vivo produced embryos are unsuccessful in the case of the IVP embryos. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether different culture conditions change the affinity of the ZP of day-7 IVP bovine embryos to BVDV. Morula and blastocysts were produced under four different culture systems: 1) in vitro culture in Menezo's B2 media and coculture with bovine oviductal epithelial cells (B2-BOEC culture); 2) in vitro culture in modified synthetic oviductai fluid with aminoacids (mSOFaa culture); 3) in vivo culture in ligated oviducts of synchronized sheep; and 4) in vivo produced embryos flushed from superovulated cows seven days after breeding. The embryos were exposed to BVDV for 24 hours, and washed 10 times and treated with trypsin, according to the recommendations of the international Embryo Transfer Society. After pooling the embryos in groups of five, the samples were homogenized and tested for the presence of BVDV by indirect immimoperoxidase assay (IIP) or reverse transcription-polymerase chah reaction (RT-PCR). No significant differences were found between the two detection systems but the IIP assay tended to detect a higher number of positive sarnples. According to the IIP assay, the mSOFaa group had a significantliy higher number of positive findings (78.6%) followed by the B2-BOEC group (32.1%), and the oviductal culture group (7.1%). None of the in vivo embryos tested positive for BVDV. These results show that different culture conditions in which embryos develop alter the way the ZP interacts with pathogens. The oviductal culture of in vitro produced zygotes seems to be beneficial in reducing the affinity of the ZP to BVDV and the washes and trypsin treatments applied to these embryos after culture appear to be more effective than in embryos completely produced in vitro.

Miguel Angel Rojas es uno de los artistas colombianos contemporáneos más prolíficos. Sus inicios como dibujante hiperrealista, su incursión en la pintura neoexpresionista de la siguiente década, sus obras indigenistas – interculturales de los años 90 y sus más recientes obras políticas referidas al narcotráfico son en conjunto, manifestaciones de un espíritu creativo, curioso y autoexigente. Sin embargo su obra fue poco conocida y divulgada hasta fechas recientes. Su actitud estética, profusa, ecléctica y abierta a los cambios, refleja el temperamento del mejor arte colombiano, aquel que le ha permitido entrar y salir con éxito y desprejuicidamente de las impredecibles y siempre cambiantes corrientes y contracorrientes del arte contemporáneo sin perder de vista su realidad local. Esta investigación intenta realizar por primera vez una revisión de la obra total del artista, cubriendo tres décadas de trabajo. Se da a conocer su obra y la interesante producción colombiana actual.

It is now widely acknowledged that is indispensable to address disaster risk in order to advance development efforts. Alongside other issues such as poverty, food security and land use planning, disaster risk needs to be mainstreamed into the development agendas of urban centres worldwide. The indissoluble bond between disasters and climate change has encouraged this mainstreaming to be carried out through the coordination of efforts between Disaster Risk Reduction DRR and Climate Change Adaptation CCA. The unequal paths of evolution and institutional arrangements for DRR and CCA in Colombia have rendered obstacles for their coordination. DRM started by focusing on response and recovery while forgoing the discourse about the social construction of disasters. In regards to CCA, an initial and needless focus on mitigation rather than adaptation, delayed the development of the adaptation agenda in Colombia. However, the recent acknowledgment of concepts such as vulnerability and resilience in the equation of risk have begun to pave the way for framing disasters as an issue of development. The linkage between climate change and disasters in Colombia, although with previous experiences, became evident with the extensive damages that the country experienced during La Niña 2010-2011. This series of events prompted the most recent efforts for development policy and practice that have targeted the coordination of DRR and CCA in the country to achieve sustainable development. Efforts for DRM at the city level have emerged as examples with the potential to prepare the Colombian urban settings for the challenges and uncertainties of future climate change impacts. For this potential to be materialised it is necessary to take advantage of the existing entry points for coordination of DRR and CCA and their mainstreaming into development planning. Since the same body in Colombia, the National Planning Department, leads the development of the guidelines for the advancement of the two fields, there are parallel levels of intervention amongst them that can facilitate joint actions. Targeting the vulnerability and the resilience building of populations in urban contexts must be the main objective of such efforts to effectively deal with disaster risk in Colombia as a way to advance development. 

With the advent of ubiquitous computing, interaction design has broadened its object of inquiry into how smart computational artifacts inconspicuously act in  people’s everyday lives. Although user-centered design approaches remains useful for exploring how people cope with interactive systems, they cannot explain how this new breed of artifact participates in people’s sociality. User-centered design approach assumes that humans control interactive systems, but neglects any possibility of the agency of smart artifacts.Following Actor-network Theory, this research recognizes that artifacts and humans share the capacity of influencing society and meshing with each other, constituting hybrid social actors. From that standpoint, the research offers a triadic structure of networked social interaction as a methodological basis to investigate how smart devices perceive their social setting and adaptively mediate people’s interactions within activities. These triadic units of analysis account for the interactions within and between humannonhuman collectives in the actor-network. The within interactions are those that hold together humans and smart artifacts inside a collective and put forward the collective’s assembled meaning for other actors in the network.The between interactions are those that occur among collectives and characterize the dominant relational model of the actor-network. This triadic approach was modeled and used to analyze the interactions of participants in three empirical studies of social activities with communal goals, each mediated by a smart artifact that enacted – signified – a balanced distribution of obligations and privileges among subjects. Overall, the studies found that actor-networks exhibit a social viscosity that hinders people’s interactions. This is because when people try to collectively accomplish goals, they offer resistance to one another. The studies also show that the intervention of smart artifacts can facilitate the achievement of cooperative and collaborative interaction between actors when the artifacts enact the dominant moral principles which prompt the preservation of social balance, enhance the network’s information integrity, and are located at the focus of activity. The articulation of Actor-Network Theory principles with interaction design methods opens up the traditional user-artifact dyad towards triadic collective enactment by embracing diverse kinds of participants and practices, thus facilitating the design of enhanced sociality. The theoretical conceptual framework, methods and tools developed in this research are relevant to product and interaction designers, ubiquitous computing and Science and technology studies (STS) researchers; as well as practitioners interested in making the interaction between humans and computers smarter, more intuitive and more enjoyable. The outcome of this research is addressed to designers, engineers and urban planners who are responsible for the design of the new generation of computational artifacts that will cohabitate today’s transportation terminals and vehicles, offices, parks, streets, among other social spaces of the constructed world.

Previous studies have shown that residential water consumption in Phoenix, Arizona is significantly related to changes in climate, although that sensitivity varies substantially from one census tract to another. In this investigation, we determine the empirical relationship between water consumption and variations in temperature and precipitation. We find the sensitivity of consumption to either climate variable is positively related to the percent of land covered in mesic irrigated landscaping, mean household income, lot size, and percent of single-family residential lots containing swimming pools.  We use estimated changes in temperature and precipitation for 50 model – scenario combinations presented by the IPCC, and we determined that mean water consumption should increase by an average of over three percent by 2050, but the climate-induced change in consumption varies considerably across the census tracts. 

The following report describes the work done during my internship in AlbaTERN Ltd, a company focused in the design and construction of wave energy devices that capture energy from ocean waves and convert it into sustainable low- carbon electricity. A background of existing research in the area of Wave Energy conversion and its potential around the world is given in the first chapters. The main objective of my thesis has been support the design and construction of a unique wave energy conversion system constructed from multiple SQUID modules in a hexagonal array configuration. The project has been focused to look specifically at improving the hydraulic energy conversion efficiency, the feasibility of auto-setting operational variables according to the sea conditions, and the overall adaptability of the design to suit the specifications of the site and power requirements. Simulations using SimHydraulics have been developed to assess the design an optimal Hydraulic energy conversion system. With the output of the several simulations and hydraulic laboratory tests have been possible the sizing of its different components, and the design of special manifold blocks with self-setting hydraulic control, reducing the quantity and complexity the electronic devices for the general control. The key challenge facing the Wave Energy conversion Industry is lowering the cost of energy generation, where is required research and Development in order to design a device with high efficiency, high availability and low cost for the mass production. So achieving a viable wave energy future depends as much upon developing a technology that can be rapidly and economically scaled to high volume production. This project provides a solid foundation for scaling WaveNET arrays in excess of 10 MW.

El Estado colombiano ha tenido un conflicto armado desde la década del 60 del siglo XX, cuyas raíces se remontan a décadas pasadas a ésta. En éste han participado distintos grupos de izquierda y de derecha que reclutaron de manera indiscriminada niños, niñas y adolescentes. Durante años, se realizaron diferentes esfuerzos para obtener la desmovilización de los grupos armados y alcanzar la paz. Estos esfuerzos se enmarcaron, en mayor o menor medida, en las herramientas de la justicia transicional. En ese marco, las políticas de juzgamiento desarrolladas buscaban en los últimos tiempos sancionar a las personas que cometieron graves crímenes con ocasión de su participación en el grupo armado. Estas políticas, sin embargo, se realizaron a partir de un imaginario fuertemente arraigado según el cual los grupos armados estaban compuestos solo por adultos. Sin embargo, a los adolescentes reclutados ilícitamente y desvinculados de los grupos armados se les aplicó un régimen penal ordinario, distinto al de los adultos, que generó prácticas discriminatorias según la forma de desvinculación del grupo y respecto del grupo que provenían. Pero además, el trato jurídico brindado no fue menos gravoso que el establecido para los adultos que los reclutaron, entre otras cosas, porque las políticas de juzgamiento diseñadas para los desmovilizados no tuvieron perspectiva de infancia.

The main idea of this project is to identify possible indicators to evaluate civil engineering works that involves geotechnical techniques. Furthermore, the idea to encourage the developing of new technologies using as base, properly process that are available at the moment, might be attempt. However, to find these indicators of sustainable geotechnical engineering is the principal objectives of the project. In general words, the objectives of this thesis are: In base of sustainable indicators from different areas such as economics, water management, environment regulations, productivity in the industrial field among others, adapted and developed indicators for geotechnical engineering field. According with the sustainable geotechnical requirements, proposed new indicators relevant for this field. Validate and prove the use of the mentioned indicators with a case study and apply them to analyze their results. Develop an evaluation model to summaries and illustrated the indicators performance. Show the viability of new technologies confronting to regular procedures. This dissertation has found an important and fundamental tool for geotechnical engineers that want to go further that the actual design parameters. Moreover, the necessities to supply the present requirements are covering with the use of sustainability geotechnical evaluation model (S.G.E.M) that is the final result of this dissertation.

The paper examines the way in which several private firms in Colombia have deployed Corporate Social Responsibility programmes via peacebuilding initiatives, as in a gift-exchange scheme. These initiatives often have taken place in different regions of the country regardless of the geopolitical influence armed groups have on them. Whereas the Colombian government and FARC guerrillas have started peace-talks since 2012, many areas are still vulnerable to the reproduction of violence. The national –however non-state– campaign ""Soy Capaz"" led by 120 big companies, reveal a deep interest from within the private sector to engage in peacebuilding as part of its corporate strategy. The objective of this paper is to describe how peace initiatives by the private sector could be interpreted as a gift-giving relationship between corporate firms and government officials, institutions, and the Colombian society as a whole. Higher corporate expansion and regional consolidation, national and international positive reputation, increased leverage in government decision-making and policy-making, and a greater consumption of goods and services, are possible outcomes among other benefits that could be expected in exchange for these peace initiatives led from and by the private sector. However, the question Mauss already posited in his search for “a rule of legality and self-interest”, a “power residing in the object” (2002, p. 4), suggests a possible underlying and even deeper interest behind these initiatives. The very nature of this gift –its embedded asymmetry for reciprocation, its morality and its spirituality– creates affect within a population desirous of peace and reconciliation. However, the seriousness and scope of such venture coming from the Colombian private sector are still an issue to be clarified.