Verdaguer a Folgueroles: un recurs local ben aprofitat estudi d'un sistema local territorial

És més que evident la relació de JacintVerdaguer amb el poble de Folgueroles. Tanmateix, aquest estudi mostra llur relaciódes d’una nova perspectiva, en la qual el desenvolupament territorial n’és la base. Folgueroles percep quelcom d’identitari enel poeta i el fa esdevenir recurs clau per tirar endavant un projecte de poble. Mitjançant la descripció del Sistema Local Territorial sorgit a Folgueroles al voltant de la figura del poeta, es defineix aquest projecte, els seus actors principals i les seves relacions, i, finalment, se’n farà una valoració

Food security, food safety and small farmers

Some of the elements that characterize the globalization of food and agriculture are industrialization and intensification of agriculture and liberalization of agricultural markets, that favours elongation of the food chain and homogenization of food habits (nutrition transition), among other impacts. As a result, the probability of food contamination has increased with the distance and the number of “hands" that may contact the food (critical points); the nutritional quality of food has been reduced because of increased transport and longer periods of time from collection to consumption; and the number of food-related diseases due to changes in eating patterns has increased. In this context, there exist different agencies and regulations intended to ensure food safety at different levels, e.g. at the international level, Codex Alimentarius develops standards and regulations for the marketing of food in a global market. Although governments determine the legal framework, the food industry manages the safety of their products, and thus, develops its own standards for their marketing, such as the Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) programs. The participation of the private sector in the creation of regulatory standards strengthens the free trade of food products, favouring mostly large agribusiness companies. These standards are in most cases unattainable for small producers and food safety regulations are favouring removal of the peasantry and increase concentration and control in the food system by industrial actors. Particularly women, who traditionally have been in charge of the artisanal transformation process, can be more affected by these norms than men. In this project I am analysing the impcact of food safety norms over small farms, based on the case of artisanal production made by women in Spain.

The dynamic adjustment of local government budgets : Does Spain behave differently?

[spa] El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar si los municipios españoles se ajustan en presencia de un shock presupuestario y (si es así) qué elementos del presupuesto son los que realizan el ajuste. La metodología utilizada para contestar estas preguntas es un mecanismo de corrección del error, VECM, que estimamos con un panel de datos de los municipios españoles durante el período 1988-2006. Nuestros resultados confirman que, en primer lugar, los municipios se ajustan en presencia de un shock fiscal (es decir, el déficit es estacionario en el largo plazo). En segundo lugar, obtenemos que cuando el shock afecta a los ingresos el ajuste lo soporta principalmente el municipio reduciendo el gasto, las transferencias tienen un papel muy reducido en este proceso de ajuste. Por el contrario, cuando el shock afecta al gasto, el ajuste es compartido en términos similares entre el municipio – incrementado los impuestos – y los gobiernos de niveles superiores – incrementando las transferencias. Estos resultados sugieren que la viabilidad de las finanzas pública locales es factible con diferentes entornos institucionales.

The dynamic adjustment of local government budgets : Does Spain behave differently?

[spa] El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar si los municipios españoles se ajustan en presencia de un shock presupuestario y (si es así) qué elementos del presupuesto son los que realizan el ajuste. La metodología utilizada para contestar estas preguntas es un mecanismo de corrección del error, VECM, que estimamos con un panel de datos de los municipios españoles durante el período 1988-2006. Nuestros resultados confirman que, en primer lugar, los municipios se ajustan en presencia de un shock fiscal (es decir, el déficit es estacionario en el largo plazo). En segundo lugar, obtenemos que cuando el shock afecta a los ingresos el ajuste lo soporta principalmente el municipio reduciendo el gasto, las transferencias tienen un papel muy reducido en este proceso de ajuste. Por el contrario, cuando el shock afecta al gasto, el ajuste es compartido en términos similares entre el municipio – incrementado los impuestos – y los gobiernos de niveles superiores – incrementando las transferencias. Estos resultados sugieren que la viabilidad de las finanzas pública locales es factible con diferentes entornos institucionales.

Adapting established instruments to build useful food sovereignty indicators

The recent context of global food emergency and ecological crisis has increased the relevance of people’s struggle for food sovereignty (FSv), which promotes the transformation of the dominant food system and claims ‘the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems’. Revisiting two Spanish and Catalan articles developing FSv indicators, this article aims at discussing the need and utility of developing FSv indicators at different territorial levels. Confronting these two territorial scales, the paper also identifies common steps that can facilitate other future processes of building FSv indicators. As a conclusion, the paper suggests that these processes of building indicators can contribute to providing political direction at different geographical scales for the implementation of the FSv proposal. At the same time, they favor the movement’s self-reflexivity in its practices while supporting the collective shaping of future actions

Empowering local democracy in Catalonia: tools and policy domains to implement a top-down solution

This article is the result of an ongoing research into a variety of features of Spanish local government. It aims, in particular, at providing a profile of the tools implemented by local authorities to improve local democracy in Catalonia. The main hypothesis of the work is that, even though the Spanish local model is constrained by a shared and unique set of legal regulations, local institutions in Catalonia have developed their own model of local participation. And the range of instruments like these is still now increasing. More specifically, the scope of this research is twofold. On the one hand, different types of instruments for public deliberation in the Catalan local administration system are identified and presented, based on the place they take in the policy cycle. On the other hand, we focus on policy domains and the quality of the decision-making processes. Researching the stability of the participation tools or whether local democracy prefers more 'ad hoc' processes allows us to analyze the boundaries/limits of local democracy in Catalonia. The main idea underlying this paper is that, despite the existence of a single legal model regulating municipalities in Catalonia, local authorities tend to use their legally granted selfmanagement capacities to design their own instruments which end up presenting perceivable distinct features, stressing democracy in different policy domains, and in diverse policy cycles. Therefore, this paper is intended to identify such models and to provide factors (variables) so that an explanatory model can be built.

Industrial districts, innovation and I-district

The I-district effect hypothesis establishes the existence of highly intense innovation in Marshallian industrial districts due to the presence of external localization economies. However, industrial districts are characterized by specific manufacturing specializations in such a way that this effect could be due to these dominant specializations. The objective of this research is to test whether the effect is explained by the conditions of the territory or by the industrial specialization and to provide additional evidence of the existence and causes of the highly intense innovation in industrial districts (I-district effect). The estimates for Spain of a fixed effects model interacting territory and industry suggest that the high innovative performance of industrial districts is maintained across sectors whereas the industrial specialization behaves differently depending on the type of local production system in which it is placed. The I-district effect is related to the conditions of the territory more than to the industrial specialization. The territory is a key variable in explaining the processes of innovation and should be considered a basic dimension in the design of innovation and industrial policies.

Determinación de sistemas de flujo regionales y locales en las depresiones tectónicas del Baix Empordà y La Selva (NE de España) en base a datos hidroquímicos e isotópicos

The Baix Empordà-Selva-Gavarres aquifer system is related to the fault set that created the tectonic basins of Empordà and Selva areas (NE Spain) during the Neogene. In this work, we describe groundwater hydrogeological, hydrochemical and isotopical (3H, δD, δ18O, and the 87Sr/86Sr ratio) characteristics of this system in order to illustrate the relevance of fault zones in groundwater flow-paths and the recharge. In that way, we identify two flow systems, with distinct hydrochemistry and isotopes. A local flow system originates at the Gavarres Range, and it flows towards the basins of the Baix Empordà and Selva, with an approximate residence time of 20 years. Additionally, a regional flow system has only been identified in the Selva basin. This one is related to the main fault zones, as preferential flow paths. Its recharge is located in mountain ranges with higher altitudes, namely the Transversal and Guilleries Ranges, with residence times larger than 50 years. Isotopical data has also shown mixing processes between both flow systems and rainfall recharge while multivariate statistical analysis of principal components has shown the main processes that control hydrochemistry of each flow systems

Comparison of the consumption of antidepressants in the immigrant and native populations in a Spanish health region: an observational study

BACKGROUND: Health professionals and organizations in developed countries adapt slowly to the increase of ethnically diverse populations attending health care centres. Several studies report that attention to immigrant mental health comes up with barriers in access, diagnosis and therapeutics, threatening equity. This study analyzes differences in exposure to antidepressant drugs between the immigrant and the native population of a Spanish health region. METHODS: Cross-sectional study of the dispensation of antidepressant drugs to the population aged 15 years or older attending the public primary health centres of a health region, 232,717 autochthonous and 33,361 immigrants, during 2008. Data were obtained from computerized medical records and pharmaceutical records of medications dispensed in pharmacies. Age, sex, country of origin, visits, date of entry in the regional health system, generic drugs and active ingredients were considered. Statistical analysis expressed the percentage of persons exposed to antidepressants stratified by age, gender, and country of origin and prevalence ratios of antidepressant exposition were calculated. RESULTS: Antidepressants were dispensed to 11% of native population and 2.6% of immigrants. Depending on age, native women were prescribed antidepressants between 1.9 and 2.7 times more than immigrant women, and native men 2.5 and 3.1 times more than their immigrant counterparts. Among immigrant females, the highest rate was found in the Latin Americans (6.6%) and the lowest in the sub-Saharans (1.4%). Among males, the highest use was also found in the Latin Americans (1.6%) and the lowest in the sub-Saharans (0.7%). The percentage of immigrants prescribed antidepressants increased significantly in relation to the number of years registered with the local health system. Significant differences were found for the new antidepressants, prescribed 8% more in the native population than in immigrants, both in men and in women. CONCLUSIONS: All the immigrants, regardless of the country of origin, had lower antidepressant consumption than the native population of the same age and sex. Latin American women presented the highest levels of consumption, and the sub-Saharan men the lowest. The prescription profiles also differed, since immigrants consumed more generics and fewer recently commercialized active ingredients.

Els moviments en transició : model participatiu per treballar el sector alimentació : ciutat d'estudi, Granollers

Entenent el context global en el que estem amb les pertorbacions com són el pic del petroli o el canvi climàtic, el projecte ha treballa el vector alimentació de Granollers des de la perspectiva de les ciutats en Transició. Primer per entendre les iniciatives en Transició i com s'implementen s'ha elaborat unes entrevistes semiestrucutrades a 4 iniciatives en Transició. S'ha observat que totes les iniciatives depenen dels contextos objectius en que estant tot i que busquen la resiliència. Per treballar el vector alimentació s'ha portat a terme un model participatiu on s'han extret un conjunt de propostes i preocupacions per part d'actors relacionats amb el sistema alimentari de Granollers. Aquest treball serveix com una eina per entendre més bé les iniciatives en Transició i per començar a treballar el vector alimentació a partir de les conclusions extretes del model participatiu.

Limnological research in the Iberian Peninsula: a ten-year survey of published literature.

Research on limnology in southern Europe had achieved a notable presence in the international arena before the onset of the current dramatic cuts in public investment in science. We assessed the limnological research published in peer-reviewed journals by Spanish and Portuguese (i.e., Iberian) researchers during the decade prior to the economic recession (2000 to 2009). The Thompson Reuters Web of Knowledge database was used to retrieve all publications on limnology authored by researchers affiliated with Spanish or Portuguese institutions independently of the geographical setting of the study. The publishing pattern was characterised in terms of authors, journals, and citation statistics. In addition, a thematic characterisation of the research was performed by a manual assignation of several categorical descriptors combined with a blind word count analysis. Iberian researchers produced an annual mean of 278 papers on limnology. Papers were published in journals that had impact factors ranging from 0.1 to 31.4, with a mean of 2.0. Based on citations, the impact of the Iberian limnological research was not due to a few highly cited papers but rather to a wide number of publications; each paper received a mean of 8 citations. The Iberian limnological research involved up to 5460 researchers, with a mean of 4.3 authors per paper. The research largely focused on fluvial systems, with 47 % of total publications (2778) devoted to these ecosystems. There was a dominant focus on local, within-system aspects of study sites and the research was mostly restricted to the Iberian Peninsula; larger spatial scales of analysis (i.e., landscape, regional, or global) tended to be overlooked. Iberian research addressed fundamental (75 %) rather than applied (17 %) or methodological (5 %) questions and was vastly dominated by observational approaches (75 %). Interestingly, Iberian limnological research increased its scientific productivity during the analysed decade at a higher rate than its international counterpart (increase of 119 %). Overall, Iberian research on limnology appeared to be in good health during the analysed decade. Certain areas have been more studied than others, which opens opportunities to develop new research.

Sources of Competitiveness in Tourist Local Systems

At the end of the XIX Century, Marshall described the existence of some concentrations of small and medium enterprises specialised in a specific production activity in certain districts of some industrial English cities. Starting from his contribute, Italian scholars have paid particular attention to this local system of production coined by Marshall under the term industrial district. In other countries, different but related territorial models have played a central role as the milieu or the geographical industrial clusters. Recently, these models have been extended to non-industrial fields like culture, rural activities and tourism. In this text, we explore the extension of these territorial models to the study of tourist activities in Italy, using a framework that can be easily applied to other countries or regions. The paper is divided in five sections. In the first one, we propose a review of the territorial models applied to tourism industry. In the second part, we construct a tourist filiere and we apply a methodology for the identification of local systems through GIS tools. Thus, taxonomy of the Italian Tourist Local Systems is presented. In the third part, we discuss about the sources of competitiveness of these Tourist Local Systems. In the forth section, we test a spatial econometrics model regarding different kinds of Italian Tourist Local Systems (rural systems, arts cities, tourist districts) in order to measure external economies and territorial networks. Finally, conclusions and policy implications are exposed.

Codex Search: propuesta e implementación de un sistema de recuperación de información de ámbito local basado en casos

CODEX SEARCH es un motor de recuperación de información especializado en derecho de extranjería que está basado en herramientas y conocimiento lingüísticos. Un motor o Sistema de Recuperación de Información (SRI) es un software capaz de localizar información en grandes colecciones documentales (entorno no trivial) en formato electrónico. Mediante un estudio previo se ha detectado que la extranjería es un ámbito discursivo en el que resulta difícil expresar la necesidad de información en términos de una consulta formal, objeto de los sistemas de recuperación actuales. Por lo tanto, para desarrollar un SRI eficiente en el dominio indicado no basta con emplear un modelo tradicional de RI, es decir, comparar los términos de la pregunta con los de la respuesta, básicamente porque no expresan implicaciones y porque no tiene que haber necesariamente una relación 1 a 1. En este sentido, la solución lingüística propuesta se basa en incorporar el conocimiento del especialista mediante la integración en el sistema de una librería de casos. Los casos son ejemplos de procedimientos aplicados por expertos a la solución de problemas que han ocurrido en la realidad y que han terminado en éxito o fracaso. Los resultados obtenidos en esta primera fase son muy alentadores pero es necesario continuar la investigación en este campo para mejorar el rendimiento del prototipo al que se puede acceder desde &http://161.116.36.139/~codex/&.

WMR navigation using local potential field corridors and narrow local occupancy grid perception

Path planning and control strategies applied to autonomous mobile robots should fulfil safety rules as well as achieve final goals. Trajectory planning applications should be fast and flexible to allow real time implementations as well as environment interactions. The methodology presented uses the on robot information as the meaningful data necessary to plan a narrow passage by using a corridor based on attraction potential fields that approaches the mobile robot to the final desired configuration. It employs local and dense occupancy grid perception to avoid collisions. The key goals of this research project are computational simplicity as well as the possibility of integrating this method with other methods reported by the research community. Another important aspect of this work consist in testing the proposed method by using a mobile robot with a perception system composed of a monocular camera and odometers placed on the two wheels of the differential driven motion system. Hence, visual data are used as a local horizon of perception in which trajectories without collisions are computed by satisfying final goal approaches and safety criteria

Local WMR navigation with monocular data

This article presents recent WMR (wheeled mobile robot) navigation experiences using local perception knowledge provided by monocular and odometer systems. A local narrow perception horizon is used to plan safety trajectories towards the objective. Therefore, monocular data are proposed as a way to obtain real time local information by building two dimensional occupancy grids through a time integration of the frames. The path planning is accomplished by using attraction potential fields, while the trajectory tracking is performed by using model predictive control techniques. The results are faced to indoor situations by using the lab available platform consisting in a differential driven mobile robot