Environmental and Occupational Optometry. Lesson 9 (Course 2013-2014)

Tema 9: Visión y conducción. Actividad obligatoria nº 5.

Environmental and Occupational Optometry. Lesson 10 (Course 2013-2014)

Tema 10: visión y deporte. Actividad voluntaria 6.

Fonaments de les Bases de Dades. Material de teoria i pràctiques (curs 2013-2014)

Material en valencià de l’assignatura Fonaments de les Bases de Dades.

Efectos de la erosión del suelo sobre los patrones de la vegetación y su composición florística. Una revisión bibliográfica

En este artículo se revisan los estudios realizados sobre la influencia que tienen los procesos erosivos sobre la vegetación. Fundamentalmente se revisan las tendencias generales en la composición florística de las comunidades vegetales sometidas a fuertes procesos erosivos, así como las tendencias de los patrones de la vegetación y, en menor medida, de los atributos y tipos de plantas. Este campo de trabajo presenta pocos precedentes, siendo escasos los estudios de la influencia de la erosión sobre la vegetación desde un punto de vista ecológico-botánico. Por otro lado, algunos de los resultados parecen a primera vista contradictorios, por lo que es difícil extraer tendencias generales y más o menos universales. Algunas de las generalidades observadas son que el incremento de la erosión del suelo produce un descenso muy claro y mantenido en la cobertura vegetal y en el número de especies. El proceso erosivo no suele acarrear una sustitución de especies vegetales y comunidades, sino solamente la pérdida paulatina de especies, al menos en los estadios más degradados. Por otro lado, se ha observado en ocasiones que la flora de los terrenos más erosionados depende muy fuertemente de las características de la roca madre, variando más entre litologías que la flora de terrenos menos erosionados. Los hemicriptófitos y los caméfitos son las formas vitales de Raunkiaer más frecuentes en estos ambientes. Se discute el papel que pueden tener las diferencias de clima, procesos y tasas erosivas para explicar la gran diversidad de tendencias observadas.

Eurozone Crisis and Social Models: What We Can Learn from Italy and Spain. CES Papers - Open Forum #20, 2013-2014

This paper considers the role of social model features in the economic performance of Italy and Spain during the run-up to the Eurozone crisis, as well as the consequences of that crisis, in turn, for the two countries social models. It takes issue with the prevailing view - what I refer to as the “competitiveness thesis” - which attributes the debtor status of the two countries to a lack of competitive capacity rooted in social model features. This competitiveness thesis has been key in justifying the “liberalization plus austerity” measures that European institutions have demanded in return for financial support for Italy and Spain at critical points during the crisis. The paper challenges this prevailing wisdom. First, it reviews the characteristics of the Italian and Spanish social models and their evolution in the period prior to the crisis, revealing a far more complex, dynamic and differentiated picture than is given in the political economy literature. Second, the paper considers various ways in which social model characteristics are said to have contributed to the Eurozone crisis, finding such explanations wanting. Italy and Spain ́s debtor status was primarily the result of much broader dynamics in the Euro- zone, including capital flows from richer to poorer countries that affected economic demand, with social model features playing, at most, an ancillary role. More aggressive reforms responding to EU demands in Spain may have increased the long term social and economic costs of the crisis, whereas the political stalemate that slowed such reforms in Italy may have paradoxically mitigated these costs. The comparison of the two countries thus suggests that, in the absence of broader macro-institutional reform of the Eurozone, compliance with EU dictates may have had perverse effects.

Imperial legacy? The EU's Developmental Model and the Crisis of the European Periphery. CES Papers - Open Forum #19, 2013-2014

The high hopes for rapid convergence of Eastern and Southern EU member states are increasingly being disappointed. With the onset of the Eurocrisis convergence has given way to divergence in the southern members, and many Eastern members have made little headway in closing the development gap. The EU´s performance compares unfavourably with East Asian success cases as well as with Western Europe´s own rapid catch-up to the USA after 1945. Historical experience indicates that successful catch up requires that less-developed economies to some extent are allowed to free-ride on an open international economic order. However, the EU´s model is based on the principle of a level-playing field, which militates against such a form of economic integration. The EU´s developmental model thus contrasts with the various strategies that have enabled successful catch up of industrial latecomers. Instead the EU´s current approach is more and more reminiscent of the relations between the pre-1945 European empires and their dependent territories. One reason for this unfortunate historical continuity is that the EU appears to have become entangled in its own myths. In the EU´s own interpretation, European integration is a peace project designed to overcome the almost continuous warfare that characterised the Westphalian system. As the sovereign state is identified as the root cause of all evil, any project to curtail its room of manoeuvre must ultimately benefit the common good. Yet, the existence of a Westphalian system of nation states is a myth. Empires and not states were the dominant actors in the international system for at least the last three centuries. If anything, the dawn of the age of the sovereign state in Western Europe occurred after 1945 with the disintegration of the colonial empires and thus historically coincided with the birth of European integration.

Banks and the political economy of the sovereign debt crisis in Italy and Spain. CES Papers - Open Forum #18, 2013-2014

This paper sets out to explain why Spain experienced a full-fledged sovereign debt crisis and had to resort to euroarea financial assistance for its banks, whereas Italy did not. It undertakes a structured comparison, dissecting the sovereign debt crisis into a banking crisis and a balance of payments crisis. It argues that the distinctive features of bank business models and of national banking systems in Italy and Spain have considerable analytical leverage in explaining the different scenarios of the crises in each country. This ‘bank-based’ analysis contributes to the flourishing literature that examines changes in banking with a view to account for the differentiated impact of the global banking crisis first and the sovereign debt crisis in the euroarea later.