El sector del transporte es uno de los principales responsables de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero, estas emisiones han venido aumentando en las últimas décadas llegando a valores nunca antes alcanzados a pesar de las mejoras tecnológicas implementadas en los medios de transporte. Esta situación requiere de especial cuidado sobre todo en ciudades en desarrollo donde su crecimiento económico y demográfico lleva consigo mayores niveles de motorización y de distancias recorridas. El presente trabajo estudia las emisiones de CO2 desde el punto de vista de la demanda de transporte en el Área Metropolitana del Valle de Aburrá, para ello se emplearon los datos de la encuesta de movilidad cotidiana EOD2012. Los resultados permitieron conocer como las variables relativas al viaje, variables socioeconómicas y territoriales contribuyen a las emisiones de CO2. Además se empleó un árbol de decisión tipo CHAID para observar de qué manera los factores socioeconómicos afectan la decisión de usar un medio de transporte más contaminante que otro, dando cuenta de la estrecha relación entre renta y emisiones de CO2 por el uso del transporte.

El presente trabajo de fin de máster tiene por objetivo ofrecer un análisis del impacto en los precios de los medicamentos a partir del cambio en la financiación de los medicamentos en España derivados de la introducción del RDL 16/2012, también conocido como el ‘medicamentazo’. Además se ofrecerá una perspectiva de los retos futuros y cambios en el entorno de competencia para la industria farmacéutica, así como las diferentes estrategias adoptadas por los laboratorios en el acceso al mercado.

Zusammenfassung: Zurzeit stellt die kolumbianische Regierung tausende kostenlose Häuser für Gewaltopfer, Naturkatastrophe Opfer und Menschen, die in extremer Armut leben, bereit. Um diese Initiative zu unterstützen, hat das Kulturministerium in Partnerschaft mit den zwei Institutionen, UARIV – Behörde für die Achtung der Opfer und Wiedergutmachung und ANSPE – Nationale Behörde für die Überwindung der extremen Armut, das soziokulturelle Großprojekt Gemeine-ist Kunst, Bibliothek und Kultur initiiert. Zwischen Juli und November 2014 beteiligte ich mich am Projekt Gemeinde-ist als Koordinatorin und Kunstvermittlerin im Wohnviertel Altos de Betania. In diesem im Norden der Stadt von Bucaramanga gelegenen Bezirk entwickelte ich gemeinsam mit vier weiteren Künstlern, einer Sozialarbeiterin und unter der aktiven Beteiligung der Gemeinschaft verschiedene kulturelle Strategien. Die Hauptziele des Projekts waren, das Zugehörigkeitsgefühl der BewohnerInnen zu ihrem Wohnviertel zu stärken und das Zusammenleben zwischen den neuen BewohnernInnen zu verbessern. Aus dieser Erfahrung konnte ich interessante neue Fragestellungen ableiten: Kann Kunst zur Friedenskonsolidierung beitragen? Welche Rolle spielen Kunst und Kultur bei der Wiedergutmachung für die Gewaltopfer? Ist es durch Kunst möglich, das Empowerment der Gemeinschaft zu fördern? Diese Masterarbeit besteht aus einer schriftlichen Arbeit, in der ich zum einen meine Beteiligung am und meine Erfahrungen mit dem Projekt Gemeinde-ist dokumentiere und reflektiere. Zum anderen analysiere ich kritisch dessen künstlerische Potenziale und setze mich mit den Grenzen solcher soziokulturellen Projekte auseinander. Resumen: Actualmente el gobierno colombiano está haciendo entrega de miles de casas gratuitas a personas que han sido víctimas del conflicto armado, en condición de pobreza extrema o damnificados por desastres naturales. Para apoyar esta iniciativa, el Ministerio de Cultura en articulación con la Unidad para la Atención y Reparación Integral a las Víctimas – UARIV- y la Agencia Nacional para la Superación de la Pobreza Extrema – ANSPE – iniciaron el proyecto sociocultural Comunidad-es Arte, Biblioteca y Cultura. Entre julio y noviembre de 2014, participé en el proyecto Comunidad-es como coordinadora y facilitadora artística en la Urbanización Altos de Betania. En este barrio, situado al norte de la ciudad de Bucaramanga, desarrollé diversas estrategias culturales junto con cuatro facilitadores socioculturales y bajo la participación activa de la comunidad. Los principales objetivos del proyecto fueron fortalecer el tejido social y mejorar la convivencia entre los nuevos residentes. A partir de esta experiencia se abrieron para mí nuevas e interesantes preguntas: ¿Puede el arte contribuir a la construcción de paz? ¿Qué rol tiene el arte y la cultura en la reparación de las víctimas de la violencia? ¿Es posible a través del arte promover el empoderamiento de la comunidad? Esta tesis de Maestría consta de un trabajo escrito, en el que en primer lugar, documento y reflexiono sobre mi participación y mi experiencia en el proyecto Comunidad-es. En segundo lugar, analizo críticamente el potencial artístico y los límites de este tipo de proyecto sociocultural.

Pregnancy during adolescence is a worldwide public health concern. In developing countries, 14 million adolescents give birth each year, which accounts for 90% of all worldwide pregnancies. The proportion of adolescent women aged 10-19 whom have been pregnant in Mitú, Colombia is of approximately 25%, in comparison to 19.5% at the national level. This report aims to review the effectiveness and identifying best practice of adolescent pregnancy interventions in low and middle income countries and use formative research to make specific recommendations for policy and practice to prevent adolescent pregnancy in Mitú, Colombia. EMBASE, Medline, CINHAL, Cochrane library, GLOBAL HEALTH, ADOLEC, Popline, LILACS and REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH LIBRARY were searched to identify studies examining adolescent pregnancy prevention interventions in developing countries. GOOGLE was searched to identify grey literature. Five semi-structured interviews were also conducted with key service providers in the field of Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health in Mitú to explore the needs of the region in regards to adolescent pregnancy prevention and the barriers and facilitators for programme implementation. The literature review found that adolescent pregnancy prevention interventions in developing countries had a positive impact on the knowledge of pregnancy prevention and may contribute to the delay of sexual initiation. However, impact on the use of contraceptive methods and reduction of adolescent pregnancy inconclusive. Interviews revealed key societal, familial and individual factors that were viewed to be linked to adolescent pregnancy in Mitú. Relationships between military personnel and young women appeared to be an important factor in high teenage pregnancy rates. Barriers for the adequate implementation and continuation of programmes included lack of political commitment, lack of financial, human and material resources and lack of inter-institutional collaboration, the high rate of staff turnover and the lack of monitoring programmes. Only few facilitators were mentioned that consisted mainly in the willing of both adolescent and military to collaborate in the implementation of adolescent pregnancy prevention interventions. In conclusion, evidence suggests that adolescent pregnancy prevention strategies are effective in increasing knowledge of pregnancy and might delay sexual initiation in low and middle-income countries. Features of effective programmes were identified and discussed and are important in designing and developing new strategies. However, cultural, environmental and social barriers need to be addressed through political commitment and inter-institutional collaboration in order to develop effective interventions for pregnancy prevention in Mitú.

Background: This study assessed the contributions of individual and characteristics of area of residence-level to socio-economic inequalities in violent mortality in a metropolitan Italian region. Setting: Turin, Italy. Methods: Study population was extracted from the Turin Longitudinal Study including all residents aged 20 years or more, who were censused in Turin in 2001. A mortality follow up was carried out from November 2001 to December 2008, taken into account all deaths for homicide (ICD IX 800-949), suicide (ICD IX 950-959), AIDS and overdose (ICD IX 960-979) and alcohol related causes (ICD IX 980-989). Two multilevel Poisson regression models were fitted to assess the effects of individual socioeconomic conditions (controlling for educational level, occupational status, and housing conditions) and the independent contribution of contextual-level socioeconomic conditions (Gini income concentration index and neighbourhood deprivation index) on mortality risk for the total number of violent-deaths. Results: the analysis suggest that risks to suffer any violent death for causes observed regularly increasing with lower education and is 50% higher in the lower educated individuals, compared with people with high education, to be employed showed significantly lower mortality than all the other categories. A significantly two-fold risk among those living in disadvantaged house and significantly higher among people living in small rented houses. After include in the second model area indicators-level neither the socio-economic characteristics of the neighborhood nor the relative distribution of income seem to be associated with an increase of risk of mortality from the analyzed causes. Conclusions: The socio-economic characteristics are the main determinants of individual variability in risk of mortality from violent causes and discomfort, while the characteristics of the social context does not seem to play a significant role in a large Italian metropolitan city, independently on the influence of individual socioeconomic status. The policy implications suggest that reducing socioeconomic inequalities in violence mortality may require continuing along the model developed by the environmental organization, and other cities to invest selectively on new environmental features that may moderate further the risk of violent death among people most deprived.

Modern architecture is dead. The spirit of modern architecture has evaporated. These two ideas, raised by critics such as Charles Jencks were at one point generally believed to be true. This thesis, in part, explores the ambiguity that exists around these issues and its relationship to my own work. The modern spirit refuses to disappear completely and modern architecture survives in many parts of the world. My work as an artist is not intended as a nostalgic review of these alleged losses; through images borrowed from modernity, through fictional stories, texts and cultural hybrids, my work considers the possible meanings of this hybridized, polluted, yet still desirable modernity. Using these topics, I will discuss the specific research carried out during the development of four installations exhibited over the course of the last two years at Stony Brook University galleries and other venues abroad: the project Sleep Is Just A Bad Habit has strong ties to two projects by Buckminster Fuller and his obsession with progress, time and the future; Closer Than We Think connects futuristic architecture and design from the 50s, 60s and 70s with a circular idea of time and with imagery of the future imagined in those years; the death of modern architecture and the iconic housing project Pruit Igoe by Minoru Yamasaki are the basis for the piece Superbloques in its different versions; Circa 1954 allows me to explore the relationship between text and art after Magritte's Ceci n'est pas une pipe and the idea of authorship and the author's signature. Referecia: Jencks, Charles. What is Post – Modernism? Academy Editions, London, 1986. P. 15

If architecture has succeeded the natural impulse of evolution and demonstrated its everchanging creative power, urbanism has challenged its operationality by revealing a logic that surpasses any established concepts within the field. New urbanisms today are understood by weakening public life, changing the nature of the streets and modifying the human scale. Furthermore, the emergent post-urban life appears unmanageable due to conditions never diagnosed before: edge cities, peripheries, nodality and disarticulation seem problematic to conceptualize. What is it about the challenge of architecture capable to deploy a logic that drives urban design with a certain direction? Architecture can expand its potential design approaches through the investigation of its own rationality in order to find new sources that intersect emerging urban landscapes. The façade performs as a critical surface that articulates urban affects and provides a positive understanding of the street-grid as a persistent and flexible planning instrument along time. If the plan is not sufficient anymore, by securing its spatial hierarchies the building skin becomes significant to a contemporary discussion where architecture gains an instrument to overcome the difference. The dialogue amongst architectural design process is not reducible to a fixed set of values but to opening up its own disciplinary boundaries. It intends to rethink these borders in new terms utilizing few notions and examples that have proven as techniques of formal stability within architecture, as opposed to the diffuse and complex transformational processes of the city. Paradoxically, it is inside architecture where non-static surfaces of composition open the field to creative processes, since they are by nature given to experimentation.

The central system for generating genetic diversity and protecting the genomic integrity of replicating cells, from bacteria to humans, involves the homologous recombination (HR) machinery. It involves the process of exchange of molecules between DNA strands using the homology sequences. Because these machineries are highly efficient and precise it has become a useful analytical tool for the bacterial geneticists, thus, the engineering recombinant DNA molecules by homologous recombination, method called recombineering, is functional for sequence deletions, substitutions, or insertions. Under some conditions, the phage-mediated recombination system can be provided in E. coli by the ? phage Red enzymes, Red? and Red?. It involves a processive 5’ to 3’ exonuclease or a member of helicase family, namely Red?, which generates single stranded DNA (ssDNA) regions that are substrates for the single strand annealing protein (SSAP), i. e. Red?, which promotes joining of the DNA molecules by joining the recently replicated complementary sequences. The motivation of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the physical and functional coupling of the two enzymes Red? and Red?, as well as understanding the influence of including the DNA into the reaction, which acts as the substrate. Consequently, the experiments were designed and performed incorporating in vitro techniques not only for finding protein-protein interactions, such as co-immunoprecipitations and size exclusion chromatography, but also for analyzing the exonuclease activity of Red?. Also, the interaction of DNA with Red enzymes by means of the mobility shift assays was evaluated. In parallel, in vivo tests were made with the objective of defining the stoichiometry of the intracellular concentrations of both proteins during the co-expression in E. coli. In order to reveal more about the physical coupling of Red system’s components the preliminary data of a fluorescence correlation spectroscopy assay is described with the aim of determining whether the presence of Red? has an effect on Red?’s dwell-time on its substrate.

In 2007, the European Commission recognized “Café de Colombia” as the first non-European Protected Geographical Indication. It was the result of longstanding advertising efforts promoting the Colombian Coffee as a synonym of quality, particularly guaranteeing its singleorigin. Around the indication “Café de Colombia”, economical, cultural, political and social benefits have been achieved. Consequently, this case demonstrates the relevance of indications of geographical origin (IGOs), and the need for adequate measures of protection. Nevertheless, this case also reveals the inconvenient regulation of the TRIPS Agreement regarding this matter. First, the paper demonstrates that the TRIPS Agreement allows the registration of individual Trademarks (TMs) containing or consisting of IGOs, which leads to a symbiosis between two incompatible regimes. As a result, the TRIPS Agreement makes feasible the monopolization of IGOs through TM registration. It also godfathers the potential misleading use of TMs regarding the geographical origin of the products. To support these assertions, it is required to draw a parallel between TM law and the IGO regime. It is also relevant to present the variety of means of protection that national jurisdictions might adopt to implement the TRIPS Agreement, avoiding the registration of individual TMs. Second, the document highlights the discriminatory regulation adopted by the TRIPS Agreement on IGOs, favoring indications for wines and spirits. It studies the origins of such a discriminatory system of protection, to demonstrate that no plausible justification lies on it. Therefore, this paper advocates for the extension of the protection currently reserved to indications for wines and spirits. In doing so, the analysis of “Café de Colombia” results even more eloquent because Colombia, a country famous for its coffee rather than for its production of wines and spirits (in which it has no tradition at all), is part of the opponent group, advocating for the discriminatory two-tiered system adopted by the TRIPS Agreement.

The sum of small and big decisions made in all levels of companies determines its performance. Also, the quality of the decisions can be improved when there is information available to help decision makers in their task. All this has motivated the development of specific types of information systems aimed to provide the information necessary in the different levels of the company to support structured and semi-structured decision making. This research will be focused on a specific group of information systems to support decisions that make intensive use of historic data integrated from multiple sources; Data-driven Decision Support Systems (DDSS). On the other hand the features of the systems to support decisions together with tasks and techniques that are unique for these systems demanded the creation of specific development methodologies to perform the development process. In response to that demand, several proposals have been elaborated but there is no consensus in the field. Currently there is a debate around two development methodologies that are analysed on this paper. After the analysis of the proposed methodologies a case study organization with experience on the development of DDSS will be analysed. The research aims to understand and present the development process carried out in the organization to develop DDSS. In the analysis the influence of the existing methodologies and other sources, like traditional development methodologies and standardization is included. Finally a proposal to improve the development of DDSS in the case study organization is presented. The proposal is generated in the light of the existing methodologies and other particular proposals that deal with single tasks on the development process.