Natural resources, redistribution and Human capital formation

How do resource booms affect human capital accumulation? We exploit time and spatial variation generated by the commodity boom across local governments in Peru to measure the effect of natural resources on human capital formation. We explore the effect of both mining production and tax revenues on test scores, finding a substantial and statistically significant effect for the latter. Transfers to local governments from mining tax revenues are linked to an increase in math test scores of around 0.23 standard deviations. We find that the hiring of permanent teachers as well as the increases in parental employment and improvements in health outcomes of adults and children are plausible mechanisms for such large effect on learning. These findings suggest that redistributive policies could facilitate the accumulation of human capital in resource abundant developing countries as a way to avoid the natural resources curse.

La construcción de sentido del inicio de un cambio estratégico en las organizaciones: el caso de la Universidad del Rosario

A través de un caso de estudio se explora cómo la construcción de sentido de un grupo de directivos, bajo una misma inspiración, generó el inicio de un cambio estratégico en una prestigiosa y reconocida universidad colombiana, la Universidad del Rosario. Una institución que en un momento determinado notó que estaba siendo percibida dentro del sector de la educación superior como pequeña, estática en el avance de algunas disciplinas del conocimiento y conservadora; en otras palabras, que estaba perdiendo el reconocimiento que usualmente la había acompañado. A través del estudio de este caso se utilizó la técnica de análisis de discurso para comprender la construcción de sentido del inicio de un cambio estratégico en las organizaciones. Esta técnica permitió analizar la información cualitativa derivada de las entrevistas que se realizaron en profundidad a la cúpula de directivos de la institución y a algunos destacados representantes del sector de la Educación Superior en Colombia. Los resultados sugieren que se hicieron presentes, efectivamente, algunas condiciones específicas que marcaron el inicio de un cambio estratégico en la institución y un viraje en su identidad e imagen. Hechos que se sustentaron en los miembros de un equipo que procuró interpretar y comprender los cambios existentes en el entorno global y local, y asimilar, igualmente, algunos destacados retos que se planteaban por aquella época, al interior de la propia Universidad

Turing’s imitation game and human thought

In 1950, the English mathematician Alan Mathison Turing proposed the basis of what some authors consider the test that a machine must pass to establish that it can think. This test is basically a game; nevertheless, it has had great infl uence in the development of the theories of the mind performance. The game specifications and some of its repercussions in the conception of thinking, the consciousness and the human will, will be ramifications of the path that will take us through the beginning of the artificial intelligence, passing along some of its singular manifestations, to culminate in the posing of certain restrictions of its fundaments.

Art and human nature

This article presents a visual artist’s point of view about art. This view confronts the Eurocentric traditional cannon with some ignored, but valuable traditions, thus proposing a contra-canon. These ideas are examined on the light of a variety of sources, including prehistoric, pre-Columbian, and 20th century art expressions, in a variety of media, from sculpture to literature. Recent art expressions are characterized by their incorporation of minority values and perspectives that challenge “universal” views. Using samples of works from Latino and African American artists, the author shows that, even today, art is a means to know the world and its people, to exhibit personal life, to create personal symbolism, and to show one’s identity or the search for it. Like the human nature it represents, art has multiple faces.

Identification of the Learning Styles in the Students of Exercise Physiology in the Rehabilitation and Human Development Faculty

The object of this study is to identify the learning styles (LS) used by the students of the subject of physiology of the exercise of the program of Physiotherapy, with the purpose of establishing a direct relationship later on between the learning styles and the possible pedagogic strategies that but they favor the compression of the physiology of the exercise 48 subject of second and third year of career they were interviewed through the instrument standardized compound number (CHAEA). This study carried out an analysis descriptive and of typical deviation of the data. They were differences statistically significant in the styles of active and reflexive learning, in front of the Theoretical and pragmatic styles what puts in evidence the necessity to generate pedagogic strategies inside the subject that this chord with the tendency of the active and reflexive learning of the students.