Osallistuminen ja läpinäkyvyys kuntatasolla : tapaustutkimus Nicaraguasta

In this Master's thesis I go through the principals of the good governance. I apply these principals to the Nicaraguan context and especially in two rural municipalities in Chontales department. I clarify the development of the space of participation in Nicaraguan municipal level. I start my examination from the period when Somoza dictatorship ended and first open elections were held, and I end it to the municipal eleccions held in November 2008. These elections were robbed in 33 municipalities and because of this there started a crisis in Nicaragua and among the actors of development cooperation. As a methods of research I use two types of interview in the thesis, the interviews for the citizens and interviews for the experts. These interviews answer to my questions of the methods of participation. I also review the level of the trust of a citizen to an authority by asking if s/he voted in the municipal eleccions in November 2008. Furthermore, I define the work of municipal government in the point of view of the citizen. I also find out if a citizen wants to take more part in the decision making in her/his municipal. I have classified the types of citizens by the interviews I made. Due to this classification I explain how many people actually have opportunity to participate the dialogue of the municipal decision making and how many can follow the activity of the municipal governance. The result is that after the elections in November 2008 only one typed group can freely take part in the dialogue. This does not apply the principals of good governance, especially in subterms of participation and transparency. The incidents after the municipal elections have affected strongly on the co-operation of Finland and Nicaragua. Because of the fault of the elections Finland like the other co-operative countries brought down the directly paid budget support. This has caused a great economical crisis in Nicaragua which the covering will take a long time. The Master's thesis is a case study of two rural municipalities called Santo Tómas and Villa Sandino. Santo Tómas has a sandinista municipal government which is not legitimate. In Villa Sandino the government is liberal and legitimate.

Role of population transfer under strong probe conditions in electromagnetically induced transparency

We analyze theoretically the phenomenon of electromagnetically induced transparency (UT) under conditions where the probe laser is not in the usual weak limit. We consider the effects in both three-level and four-level systems, which are either closed or open (due to losses to an external metastable level). We find that the EIT dip almost disappears in a closed three-level system but survives in an open system. In four-level systems, there is a narrow enhanced-absorption peak (EITA) at line center, which has applications as an optical clock. The peak converts to an EIT dip in a closed system, but again survives in an open system. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Photoinduced transparency of effective three-photon absorption coefficient for femtosecond laser pulses in Ge16As29Se55 thin films

We report a dramatic change in effective three-photon absorption coefficient of amorphous Ge16As29Se55 thin films, when its optical band gap decreases by 10 meV with 532 nm light illumination. This large change provides valuable information on the higher excited states, which are otherwise inaccessible via normal optical absorption. The results also indicate that photodarkening in chalcogenide glasses can serve as an effective tool to tune the multiphoton absorption in a rather simple way. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics.

Aryl monosulphides and symmetrical disulphides based second order nonlinear optical chromophores with transparency in the visible

A series of aryl monosulphides and disulphides have been synthesized and characterized. Their molecular hyperpolarizability (beta) has been measured in solution with the hyper-Rayleigh Scattering technique and also calculated by semiempirical AMI method. The trend in the observed and calculated values of first hyperpolarizability of these compounds has been found to be in good agreement. These compounds show moderate P values and excellent transparency in the visible region.

Unsymmetrical aryl disulfides with excellent transparency in the visible region for second order nonlinear optics

Several unsymmetrically substituted aromatic donor acceptor disulfides have been synthesized and analysed for their second order nonlinear optical properties. These molecules exhibit moderately high first hyperpolarizability (beta) with excellent transparency in the visible region. Most of the unsymmetrical disulfides have a cut-off wavelength below 420 nm. Calculations show that the molecules have an asymmetric charge distribution around the disulfide bond which is responsible for their high beta values. These results provide motivation for the design and synthesis of nonlinear optical chromophores with multiple disulfide bonds for large second order nonlinearity and excellent visible transparency.

Population, globalization and urbanization: Trends and underlying prosesses

Third World hinterlands provide most of the settings in which the quality of human life has improved the least over the decade since Our Common Future was published. This low quality of life promotes a desire for large number of offspring, fuelling population growth and an exodus to the urban centres of the Third World, Enhancing the quality of life of these people in ways compatible with the health of their environments is therefore the most significant of the challenges from the perspective of sustainable development. Human quality of life may be viewed in terms of access to goods, services and a satisfying social role. The ongoing processes of globalization are enhancing flows of goods worldwide, but these hardly reach the poor of Third World countrysides. But processes of globalization have also vastly improved everybody's access to Information, and there are excellent opportunities of putting this to good use to enhance the quality of life of the people of Third World countrysides through better access to education and health. More importantly, better access to information could promote a more satisfying social role through strengthening grass-roots involvement in development planning and management of natural resources. I illustrate these possibilities with the help of a series of concrete experiences form the south Indian state of Kerala. Such an effort does not call for large-scare material inputs, rather it calls for a culture of inform-and-share in place place of the prevalent culture of control-and-command. It calls for openness and transparency in transactions involving government agencies, NGOs, and national and transnational business enterprises. It calls for acceptance of accountability by such agencies.

Conversion between electromagnetically induced transparency and absorption in a three-level lambda system

We show that it is possible to change from a subnatural electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) feature to a subnatural electromagnetically induced absorption (EIA) feature in a (degenerate) three-level. system. The change is effected by turning on a second control beam counter-propagating with respect to the first beam. We observe this change in the D-2 line of Rb in a room temperature vapor cell. The observations are supported by density-matrix analysis of the complete sublevel structure including the effect of Doppler averaging, but can be understood qualitatively as arising due to the formation of N-type systems with the two control beams. Since many of the applications of EIT and EIA rely on the anomalous dispersion near the resonances, this introduces a new ability to control the sign of the dispersion. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2012

Narrowing of resonances in electromagnetically induced transparency and absorption using a Laguerre-Gaussian control beam

We study the phenomenon of electromagnetically induced transparency and absorption (EITA) using a control laser with a Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) profile instead of the usual Gaussian profile, and observe significant narrowing of the resonance widths. Aligning the probe beam to the central hole in the doughnut-shaped LG control beam allows simultaneously a strong control intensity required for high signal-to-noise ratio and a low intensity in the probe region required to get narrow resonances. Experiments with an expanded Gaussian control and a second-order LG control show that transit time and orbital angular momentum do not play a significant role. This explanation is borne out by a density-matrix analysis with a radially varying control Rabi frequency. We observe these resonances using degenerate two-level transitions in the D-2 line of Rb-87 in a room temperature vapor cell, and an EIA resonance with width up to 20 times below the natural linewidth for the F = 2 -> F' = 3 transition. Thus the use of LG beams should prove advantageous in all applications of EITA and other kinds of pump-probe spectroscopy as well.

Structural Integrity of the Greek Key Motif in beta gamma-Crystallins Is Vital for Central Eye Lens Transparency

Background: We highlight an unrecognized physiological role for the Greek key motif, an evolutionarily conserved super-secondary structural topology of the beta gamma-crystallins. These proteins constitute the bulk of the human eye lens, packed at very high concentrations in a compact, globular, short-range order, generating transparency. Congenital cataract (affecting 400,000 newborns yearly worldwide), associated with 54 mutations in beta gamma-crystallins, occurs in two major phenotypes nuclear cataract, which blocks the central visual axis, hampering the development of the growing eye and demanding earliest intervention, and the milder peripheral progressive cataract where surgery can wait. In order to understand this phenotypic dichotomy at the molecular level, we have studied the structural and aggregation features of representative mutations. Methods: Wild type and several representative mutant proteins were cloned, expressed and purified and their secondary and tertiary structural details, as well as structural stability, were compared in solution, using spectroscopy. Their tendencies to aggregate in vitro and in cellulo were also compared. In addition, we analyzed their structural differences by molecular modeling in silico. Results: Based on their properties, mutants are seen to fall into two classes. Mutants A36P, L45PL54P, R140X, and G165fs display lowered solubility and structural stability, expose several buried residues to the surface, aggregate in vitro and in cellulo, and disturb/distort the Greek key motif. And they are associated with nuclear cataract. In contrast, mutants P24T and R77S, associated with peripheral cataract, behave quite similar to the wild type molecule, and do not affect the Greek key topology. Conclusion: When a mutation distorts even one of the four Greek key motifs, the protein readily self-aggregates and precipitates, consistent with the phenotype of nuclear cataract, while mutations not affecting the motif display `native state aggregation', leading to peripheral cataract, thus offering a protein structural rationale for the cataract phenotypic dichotomy ``distort motif, lose central vision''.

Combined transparency and optical nonlinearity enhancement in flexible covalent multimers by operating through-space interactions between dipolar chromophores

Subtle manipulation of mutual repulsion and polarisation effects between polar and polarisable chromophores forced in closed proximity allows achieving major (100%) enhancement of the first hyperpolarisability together with increased transparency, breaking the well-known nonlinearity-transparency trade-off paradigm.

First demonstration on the non-transparency of FWM and its application of 40 Gbit/s all-optical CSRZ-to-RZ format conversion

We report first experimental demonstration on the non-transparent characteristic of FWM using NRZ-DPSK, RZ-DPSK, CSRZ-DPSK, and CSRZ signals. One potential non-transparency application of 40Gbit/s CSRZ-to-RZ format conversion is experimentally demonstrated. © 2008 IEEE.

Interaction between a strategic mass media firm and a government

Resumen: Este artículo intenta teorizar acerca de la dinámica entre los medios masivos de comunicación y los gobiernos de los países latinoamericanos. Si bien en la última década los gobiernos atacaron públicamente a los medios de comunicación, se afirma que no se dio por las razones que dicen, sino más bien por asuntos económicos. Por lo tanto, se ha diseñado un modelo utilizando el método de “principal” vs “incumbente”, donde se alcanzará un equilibrio de Nash perfecto en subjuegos. Además de esto, se realiza un repaso por la literatura conocida, y concluye señalando las fortalezas y debilidades del modelo propuesto.