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.

La industria hotelera se ha convertido en un ‘jugador’ central dentro de la economía global. La creciente movilidad de la fuerza de trabajo y el proceso de globalización de la industria son una realidad. Las organizaciones expandiéndose más allá de las fronteras locales están enfrentando, más que nunca, el reto de dirigir una fuerza de trabajo culturalmente diversa. Por tanto, la importancia de desarrollar métodos de selección culturalmente sensitivos dentro de un ambiente multicultural, representa un gran reto para la industria. La primera parte comprende una revisión de la literatura, la cual destaca temas claves como el proceso de globalización, los mercados laborales internacionales, el concepto de cultura, las prácticas en el área de los Recursos Humanos, la diversidad cultural, las prácticas discriminatorias, la validez y sensibilidad cultural de los métodos de selección, y las reacciones de los candidatos ante el proceso de selección. Un modelo es sugerido con el propósito de comprender la interacción de estos elementos. La segunda parte describe la investigación empírica llevada a cabo en tres grupos hoteleros internacionales establecidos en el Reino Unido. Las conclusiones advierten que los ‘nuevos’ individuos que están llegando a la industria hotelera están retando las prácticas tradicionales en las organizaciones. Hay una falta de conciencia (preocupación) cultural de la industria en cuanto a los métodos de selección. El reto de seleccionar empleados multiculturales no ha sido logrado por la industria aún. Las recomendaciones apuntan a que podría ser tiempo de revaluar, revisar y, de ser necesario, cambiar las prácticas de la industria. El talento debería ser más importante que la nacionalidad cuando los reclutadores seleccionen aspirantes de diferentes orígenes étnicos. Los aspirantes mismos también podrían necesitar el desarrollo de una actitud diferente ante el proceso de selección. Finalmente, es evidente que no existen estudios enfocados a la selección dentro de un ambiente multicultural.Investigaciones posteriores deberían ser dirigidas a identificar las dimensiones de las diferencias culturales que afectan los métodos de selección así como a medir su objetividad y sensibilidad cultural. De igual forma, se sugiere el diseño de un modelo conceptual consistente que procure comprender la interacción de los factores internos y externos que inciden sobre el proceso de selección.

International recovery of illegal assets has received considerable attention in the last 25 years. International conventions against corruption, organized crime and terrorism have recognized its central importance for international and national security, development policy and the Rule of Law. International institutions such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank (WB) have created special units and programs to deliver and implement policy recommendations on the issue. Moreover, private organizations such as Transparency International and the Basel Institute on Governance have also engaged in supporting efforts done by States and local NGOs around the world, especially in developing countries. However all these initiatives to design and implement a comprehensive and effective framework to identify, trace, freeze, confiscate and recover illegal assets from abroad have not fulfilled the expectations of victims, civil society, States and international community. Extensive literature claims that political, legal and operational problems impede an effective approach to international recovery of illegal assets in the context of the fight against organized crime. Yet, there are no studies that consider international asset recovery in the context of peace negotiations between the State and illegal armed groups, where cooperation, compromise and mutual concessions are essential features of such situation. I argue that a peace process is a special opportunity for international asset recovery because in this context parties can create the incentives to overcome the key obstacles of ordinary asset recovery. Still, this requires to rethink international asset recovery in terms of restorative justice. I argue that a peace process setting is an exceptional background to create complementary, temporal and exceptional mechanisms by which illegal armed groups can effectively map, identify and cooperate with State authorities in order to recover, repatriate and liquidate their illegal assets from abroad. By pursuing this, the State would not only comply with the international standards of asset recovery, but also could fulfil the obligations owed to victims of international crimes. I claim that we should examine this new dimension of international asset recovery because most illegal armed groups involved in peace negotiations are also involved in drug trafficking, money laundering and terrorism at a global scale. This dissertation aims to link the standard literature of international asset recovery with the field of restorative justice, peace-making and transitional justice to explore a new a research agenda that could have relevant policy implications. 

In this work, the particularities of natural resource wealth are the building blocks for the theoretical identification of some challenges faced by national governments in relation to extractive activities. Such challenges are later on unfolded from the perspective of overlapping claims on both environmental sustainability and social justice. The discussion here presented travels between different spatial, institutional and temporal scales, and particularly from the national to the regional (sub-national) levels. In order to observe how some of the challenges of extractive activities are manifested in practice, the case of La Colosa, an intended gold mining venture in the Colombian Andean region, is addressed. This work exposes some relevant tasks that the Colombian government has to undertake if the economic growth of the country is to be based on natural resources exploitation. In regards to long-term provision of environmental goods and services, the analysis done in this work allows the identification of tensions between the mining interests and the need to protect environmental functions related to the availability and quality of land and water resources. These tensions are aggravated by the existence of disjointed institutions and policies at the national level as well as between regional and national scales. So as to the achievement of social justice, this analysis reveals how the national interest on extractive activities for economic growth need to be not superimposed on, but harmonised with regional interests on natural resources for environmental functionality and local livelihoods, so as to avoid a systematic misrecognition of population’s needs and rights. Misaddressing this challenge conduces local entities to the necessary search of other avenues for claiming their recognition and participation. In this second stage, there is an additional need to ensure the security, effectiveness and legitimacy of participatory spaces that, if overshadowed by particular interests, may end up further reproducing the misrecognition patterns, exhausting the avenues for assertive claiming and even triggering conflict.

La thèse ci-dessous donne lieu á une « ethnographie généalogique » au sujet des principaux aspects historiques qui confèrent au secteur de San Victorino, dans la ville de Bogota, D.C. (Colombie, Amérique du Sud), une série de caractéristiques spatiales et socioculturelles propres à une « zone de frontière urbaine » dont la haute valeur stratégique, aussi bien en termes patrimoniaux qu’immobiliers et de position dans la ville, attire de manière significative l’intérêt des réformateurs urbains. Cela a engendré ces dernières années une série de conflits reliés à la construction de traits d’identité de la part des acteurs sociaux présents dans le secteur, qui réclament une série de pratiques et de modes de vie produits dans l’environnement local, face aux tendances signalées par une ville qui intensifie son insertion dans le processus actuel de globalisation. C’est précisément ce facteur qui permet de mettre en évidence des situations similaires dans d’autres métropoles du sous continent latino-américain (Quito, Lima, et Mexico, D.F.), marqués par des éléments historiques, socioculturels et urbanistiques communs, contribuant á la réalisation d’une réflexion ethnologique et anthropologique par le biais d’une analyse comparative. L’objectif de cette analyse consiste à comprendre les effets que les réformes urbaines poussées par les tendances de la ville globale du XXIème siècle ont sur ces zones de frontière et sur les groupes de population qui habitent les scénarios locaux où se développent ce genre d’interventions, beaucoup d’entre eux ayant déjà créé un modus vivendi dans ces lieux et voyant se transformer leur existence à partir des projets promus par les administrations urbaines.

Tesis de medicina de Rafael C. del Valle, en la que realiza un estudio crítico apoyado en observaciones personales sobre las ventajas e inconvenientes del atoxil , que tiende a restringir y precisar su empleo en las afecciones sifilíticas.

Las mujeres jefas de hogar en general son consideradas un gmpo vulnerable debido a que están expuestas a condiciones más difíciles de sobrevivencia, y no obstante entre el sector de pobres no difieren mucho de las mujeres no jefes. La jefatura femenina constituye un gmpo heterogéneo, tanto de edades como de condición social y económica. El presente proyecto se ocupará de las mujeres con jefatura femenina de mayor pobreza.