El diario personal : propuestas para su escritura.

Se presentan una serie de indicaciones dirigidas a profesores que quieran desarrollar en sus clases la actividad de escribir un diario. El manual se divide en cinco unidades: el diario íntimo, diario de viaje, diario del naturalista, diario amoroso y diario del lector. Cada una de ellas aborda la relación con el mundo desde una perspectiva diferente aunque todas ellas complementarias. Las cuatro primeras pueden trabajarse en el orden en que se presentan y la última, que es la más extensa y que está centrada en los cuentos, sería mejor utilizarla de forma paralela intercalándola con las otras. El objetivo final es que el alumno vaya redactando por su cuenta un diario durante al menos treinta días con las anotaciones personales que el considere y que a su vez se desarrollen en clase los ejercicios que aparecen a lo largo del libro.

Innovation, entrepreneurship and outsourcing: essays on the use of knowledge in business environments

Innovació, emprenedoria i subcontractació són els pilars temàtics de la present tesi doctoral. L'ús del coneixement per part de les empreses representa l'element comú d'aquestes temàtiques. Les evidències empíriques provenen principalment del món empresarial, però es complementen amb les del món acadèmic com a principal proveïdor de coneixement a la societat actual, la finalitat de la qual és crear riquesa i benestar socioeconòmic. L'objectiu principal d'aquesta tesi doctoral és contribuir a les diferents àrees de recerca. La primera, gestió de la innovació, més concretament innovació organitzativa, reflexionant sobre la seva importància i monitorització a través d'enquestes. Tot seguit, un exemple d'innovació organitzativa -treball en equip- s'analitza en profunditat, així com també els seus determinants. La segona, analitza el procés de transició d'una universitat tradicional cap a una universitat emprenedora, començant per la fase de disseny fins a l'actualitat contemplant la seva funcionalitat i eficiència en el marc de les institucions públiques de recerca d'Europa. I la tercera, descriu les barreres que les empreses han de fer front a l'hora de cooperar, en general, i amb universitats, en particular. La mateixa mostra d'empreses gasela també serveix per analitzar la decisió de fer-o-comprar. El resum d'aquests resultats, les conclusions, així com les futures línies de recerca finalitzen el treball.

Metodología para el cálculo de la prima ajustada por riesgo que debe aportar una institución del sistema cooperativo, por concepto de seguro de depósitos

El objetivo de la presente tesis es establecer una metodología apropiada que logre determinar el valor de la prima ajustada por riesgo que debe aportar una IFI, la cual deberá tener la connotación de estar fijada entre 0 y 3,5 por mil anual. Rango definido por la Ley de Creación de la Red de Seguridad Financiera. Para desarrollar la metodología se ha considerado pertinente dividir el estudio en cuatro capítulos: El primero tiene como propósito revisar los hechos históricos de mayor relevancia acaecidos entre 1995 y 1998, referentes al ámbito económico - político y financiero del país, a fin de entender las razones e identificar las posibles alertas de riesgo por las cuales varias instituciones financieras se liquidaron. Así como también la normativa expedida en este tema. En el segundo capítulo. Sobre la base de los indicadores financieros desarrollados se procedió a agruparlos conforme el método CAMEL; y, se determinó el impacto de éstos en la salud financiera de la IFI. Posteriormente se estableció una calificación cualitativa definida como vulnerabilidad financiera. La finalidad del tercer capítulo es el de categorizar a una IFI de acuerdo a su mayor o menor nivel de vulnerabilidad financiera, para lo cual se seleccionaron como variables dependientes la calificación de riesgos entregada por las empresas calificadoras a la Superintendencia de Bancos y Seguros y, la calificación realizada por el autor de la presente tesis; y, como variables independientes los indicadores CAMEL y variables macroeconómicas. En el cuarto capítulo se definió el valor de la prima ajustada por riesgo. Valor resultante de aplicar la probabilidad obtenida a través del modelo logístico y de la relación número de depositantes para la población total.

Análisis, evolución y proyección del sector cooperativo controlado por la Superintendencia de Bancos y Seguros en el Ecuador en el período comprendido 2002 - 2009

El presente trabajo está orientado al análisis, evolución y proyección del Sector Cooperativo controlado por la Superintendencia de Bancos y Seguros en el Ecuador en el período comprendido 2002 – 2009, para lo cual se ha considerado la evolución y Crecimiento del Sistema Financiero Ecuatoriano en los últimos 9 años junto con la importancia del Sistema Cooperativo en el Ecuador, además de la participación del Sistema Cooperativo en las principales cuentas del Sistema Financiero siendo estas: Activos, Pasivos, Patrimonio, Obligaciones con el Público y Cartera, bajo este contexto también se muestra una breve descripción de la Bancarización y Profundización del Sector Cooperativo y su comportamiento durante el 2002 al 2010. Otro aspecto importante dentro de este estudio es la manera en la que el sector cooperativo administra sus recursos financieros, en tal virtud se realizó una evaluación financiera orientada a las cooperativas grandes, medianas, pequeñas y muy pequeñas junto con la permanencia en el tiempo a través del CAMEL, éste método permitió evaluar el comportamiento del sector cooperativo regulado por la Superintendencia de Bancos y Seguros de forma integral y el tipo de calificación de acuerdo a su manejo; alcanzando para el 2010una calificación A (2 cooperativas) y una calificación D (5 cooperativas) en tanto que para el 2002 se obtuvo una calificación de BBB (1 cooperativa) y calificación D (5 cooperativas),lo cual evidencia un mayor control en el manejo de balances para el año 2010 en comparación al 2002. Finalmente, se elaboró una regresión Arimade la cual se pudo visualizar que para diciembre de 2014 los Activos, Pasivos, Patrimonio, Obligaciones con el Público y Cartera de Crédito tendrán un crecimiento de 3.480 millones, 2.946 millones, 525 millones, 2.627 millones, 2.443 millones respectivamente, siendo mayor que para diciembre de 2011.

Desarrollo de una metodología de evaluación financiera para cooperativas de ahorro y crédito en el Ecuador

El sistema financiero es de gran importancia para el desempeño económico de un país. Así como un sistema financiero saludable es capaz de promover el desarrollo del país; un sistema financiero débil y carente de normas regulatorias puede causar crisis económicas que llevan a las economías y habitantes a padecer condiciones precarias. El Sistema Financiero Nacional está conformado por varios tipos de Instituciones. Entre las principales se encuentran los Bancos, Cooperativas, Mutualistas, entre otros. Para esta investigación se ha decidido evaluar específicamente a las Cooperativas, debido a que en los últimos años, la importancia de estas instituciones en el Sistema Financiero ecuatoriano ha evolucionado favorablemente. Es por esta razón que surge la necesidad de analizar metodologías que provean alertas tempranas a fin de que tanto las Instituciones involucradas como los entes reguladores estén en la capacidad de intervenir a tiempo y evitar pérdidas y posibles crisis financieras. En este contexto, es importante mencionar que existen numerosas metodologías que intentan fungir como alarmas ante posibles crisis y cada una de estas se mide a través de parámetros o indicadores. En el Ecuador, actualmente se utiliza la metodología CAMEL. El objetivo del presente trabajo es establecer una metodología que considere indicadores ajustados para las Cooperativas de Ahorro y Crédito en el país, y que permitan realizar un adecuado análisis de riesgos. En este sentido se propone la Metodología PILAR tiene como propósito de medir y determinar el riesgo de crisis de las Cooperativas de Ahorro y Crédito del Ecuador, a través de evaluar su desempeño con el análisis de indicadores financieros y de riesgo, utilizando como base la información contable reportada mensualmente a la Superintendencia de Economía Popular y Solidaria y el supuesto de normalidad. PILAR es una metodología de alerta temprana que permite identificar los periodos en los que una Cooperativa de Ahorro y Crédito se encuentra en crisis o vulnerabilidad, a fin de propender a facilitar las decisiones gerenciales de los representantes de las Cooperativas y sus entidades supervisoras.

Reliability comparison of transmit/receive diversity and error control coding in low-power medium access control protocols

Low-power medium access control (MAC) protocols used for communication of energy constraint wireless embedded devices do not cope well with situations where transmission channels are highly erroneous. Existing MAC protocols discard corrupted messages which lead to costly retransmissions. To improve transmission performance, it is possible to include an error correction scheme and transmit/receive diversity. It is possible to add redundant information to transmitted packets in order to recover data from corrupted packets. It is also possible to make use of transmit/receive diversity via multiple antennas to improve error resiliency of transmissions. Both schemes may be used in conjunction to further improve the performance. In this study, the authors show how an error correction scheme and transmit/receive diversity can be integrated in low-power MAC protocols. Furthermore, the authors investigate the achievable performance gains of both methods. This is important as both methods have associated costs (processing requirements; additional antennas and power) and for a given communication situation it must be decided which methods should be employed. The authors’ results show that, in many practical situations, error control coding outperforms transmission diversity; however, if very high reliability is required, it is useful to employ both schemes together.

Effect of migration on food habits of Somali women living as refugees in Australia

This study aimed to assess the dietary changes that occur for migrants moving from a low-income to a high-income country. The sample included 45 females who had migrated to Australia from Somalia within the past 5years (1996-2001). The data for the study was derived from structured interviews conducted by a bilingual interviewer and anthropometry. Usual dietary intake and frequency of consumption of 54 foods were determined both for Australia (current home) and for Somalia (previous home). In Australia, subjects maintained the structure of the diet from their country of birth. They did increase their consumption of some processed food, such as instant noodles, crisps, and pizza. However, there was little evidence that the subjects adopted ready or partially prepared meals or takeaway meals. A significant addition to the diet in Australia was the use of breakfast cereals. Significant substitutions were of ready-baked bread for traditional bread and lamb for camel meat. The mean BMI of the sample was 27.4kg/m². Sixty percent of the sample were overweight or obese (BMI>25). Some of the dietary changes observed may be consistent with increased energy intake and altered nutrient density. Given the association between transition to a high-income diet and obesity, it is important that migrants are encouraged to retain the best of their traditional diet while adopting healthy foods from host country.

Photography and christian mission: George Brown`s images of the New Britain mission 1875-80

In 1875, Methodist George Brown arrived in the Bismarck Archipelago to establish the New Britain Mission. Based in the Duke of York Islands, Brown's territory covered New Ireland and the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain. The mission was one of the first to be photographed from its inception. The Australian Museum holds 96 plates from the first five years of the mission. Brown's photographs are a visual record of conditions and peoples of the time. Analysed in relation to Brown's writings they are indicative of the relationships and bonds established through photography both in the mission field and across wider scientific and church audiences. The methodology employed here also challenges the kinds of interpretations of photographs that can arise from visual analyses relying solely on the caption and the posing of the subject.

Post-migration food habits of sub-Saharan migrants in Victoria: a cross-sectional study

Objective: (i) To describe sub-Saharan African (SSA) post-migration food habits and eating patterns; and (ii) to examine how the food habits of SSA households in Victoria reflect post-migration acculturation.
Design: A cross-sectional survey using a snowball sampling technique. Data on food habits and eating patterns were obtained using semi-structured, face-to-face interviews from November 2001 to April 2002.
Subjects: A total of 139 households of demographically diverse recent migrants from across sub-Saharan Africa.
Setting: Melbourne metropolitan and Melbourne fringes.
Analysis: Data were summarised using descriptive statistics.
Results: SSA migrants and refugees indicated dietary acculturation characterised by three processes: substitution, supplementation and modification of recipes. They experienced difficulty locating their traditional foods, in particular, African vegetables (34.2%), unprocessed maize meal (29.1%), camel milk (23.1%) and maize grain (13.7%). The new foods adopted since arrival were pizza, breakfast cereals and fast foods, but also included new fruits and vegetables. Takeaway food such as Pizza Hut or McDonalds featured prominently in the SSA post-migration diet. Reasons for eating out were favourite food (48.3%), routine family outing (38.3%), special occasion (33.3%) and no time to cook (25%). A significant change in meal pattern was the inclusion of breakfast, although 21% reported skipping breakfast.
Conclusion: Many of the observed dietary changes were not consistent with good health and may predispose this population to rapid weight gain and chronic disease. Rapid modernisation and the Anglo-Australian culture interact in a complex way with traditional eating and socialisation practices of SSA migrants. Understanding these forces can allow effective health promotion and community development strategies to be developed for the future health of SSA migrants and their communities.

The privatisation experience in banking and insurance in Australia

The role of ownership in performance of financial institutions is under-examined yet remains a topical issue. Whilst ownership changes in the banking sector have been evaluated in several studies, the link with other sectors has not been a focus of in depth analysis. A controlled comparison of performance between privatising banks and insurance firms in Australia is undertaken via a ‘meso’ approach of pairing privatising with comparator private institutions across the event period. Performance is evaluated using commercial CAMEL indicators and applying Wilcoxon rank tests (Otchere and Chan 2003) which provide statistically robust findings in the small annual data samples available around the privatisation event. Performance of privatising and private institutions is found to be quite similar before and after the event. For the privatising banks, some indicator medians improved to commercial levels (CBA) or were mostly unchanged (Colonial). By contrast one of the privatising insurance institutions (Suncorp) was found to outperform the private insurance comparator while there was little difference for the other (GIO).

Privatization and performance : the case of four Australian financial institutions

This paper investigates the performance after privatization of institutions in Australian banking and insurance. Privatization was anticipated to improve firm performance in Australia and elsewhere, yet findings are mixed. A comparative institutional approach is taken to analyzing firm performance in the longer term which allows for further structural change. A CAMEL analysis of performance before and after privatization events is undertaken for four privatized institutions, two each from banking and insurance sectors. These are matched with private peer institutions. Privatized institutions are found to perform quite similarly to private peer institutions both before and after privatization.

An energy-autonomous home in Melbourne - myth or reality?

Energy-autonomous buildings are possible. Completely energy self-sufficient houses can be found, for example, in Europe. If it is possible to cover the entire energy demand of a household from only renewable energy generated on site in a central European climate, what is required in a temperate climate, typical of southern Australia? This paper describes an investigation to broadly assess the technical, practical and financial feasibility of energy-autonomy for a hypothetical suburban house in Melbourne, Victoria. The findings firstly demonstrate the importance of reducing energy demand by using passive solar building strategies and energy efficient appliances to reduce demand to a reasonable level. The paper then discusses four scenarios and combinations of technologies to meet this reduced demand. The three scenarios which give energy autonomy increase the capital cost of a typical house by between 15% and 3%, and there would be insufficient roof area to accommodate the solar technologies required in two of the scenarios investigated. It is therefore concluded that while the goal of energy autonomy is technically feasible, it is not likely to be financially or practically acceptable. A fourth scenario of an energy-exporting house was also investigated and is shown to be a much more attractive option.

Variation in the softness and fibre curvature of cashmere, alpaca, mohair and other rare animal fibres

Softness of apparel textiles is a major attribute sought by consumers. There is surprisingly little objective information on the softness properties of rare animal fibres, particularly cashmere, alpaca and mohair. Samples of these and other rare animal fibres from different origins of production and processors were objectively measured for fibre diameter, fibre curvature (FC, crimp) and resistance to compression (softness). While there were curvilinear responses of resistance to compression to FC and to mean fibre diameter, FC accounted for much more of the variance in resistance to compression. Fibre type was an important determinant of resistance to compression. The softest fibres were alpaca, mohair and cashgora and all of the fibres measured were softer than most Merino wool. Quivet, llama, camel, guanaco, vicuña, yak wool, bison wool, dehaired cow down and Angora rabbit were also differentiated from alpaca, mohair and cashmere. There were important differences in the softness and FC of cashmere from different origins with cashmere from newer origins of production (Australia, New Zealand and USA) having lower resistance to compression than cashmere from traditional sources of China and Iran. Cashmere from different origins was differentiated on the basis of resistance to compression, FC and fibre diameter. Cashgora was differentiated from cashmere by having a lower FC and lower resistance to compression. There were minority effects of colour and fibre diameter variation on resistance to compression of cashmere. The implications of these findings for the identification and use of softer raw materials are discussed.

Feltability of cashmere and other rare animal fibres and the effects of nutrition and blending with wool on cashmere feltability

Felting is a unique attribute of animal fibres used for the production of a range of industrial and apparel textiles. Felting can be an adverse attribute as a consequence of dimensional shrinkage during laundering. As there is little objective information regarding the feltability of rare animal fibres or the factors which may affect felting three investigations were undertaken. A survey (n = 114) of the feltability of cashmere from different origins of production, cashgora, quivet, camel hair, llama, guanaco, bison wool, cow fibre and yak wool quantified the large variation between and within these fibre types. Cashmere from some origins and cashgora produced higher feltball density than the other fibres. Different nutritional management of cashmere goats (n = 35) showed that cashmere grown by poorly fed goats had a lower propensity to felt compared with cashmere grown by better fed goats. A consequence of the progressive blending of cashmere (n = 27) with a low propensity to felt superfine wool (high fibre curvature) increased the propensity of the blend to felt, but when the same cashmere was blended with low curvature superfine wool, there was little or no effect on feltability. The mechanisms which lead to variance in feltability of these fibres were quantified with multiple regression modelling. The mechanisms were similar to those reported for wools, namely variations in the resistance to compression, fibre curvature and mean fibre diameter, with likely effects of fibre crimp form. It is possible to source cashmere and other animal fibres which have different propensities to felt and therefore to produce textiles which are likely to have different textile properties.

A colostrum trypsin inhibitor gene expressed in the Cape fur seal mammary gland during lactation

The colostrum trypsin inhibitor (CTI) gene and transcript were cloned from the Cape fur seal mammary gland and CTI identified by in silico analysis of the Pacific walrus and polar bear genomes (Order Carnivora), and in marine and terrestrial mammals of the Orders Cetartiodactyla (yak, whales, camel) and Perissodactyla (white rhinoceros). Unexpectedly, Weddell seal CTI was predicted to be a pseudogene. Cape fur seal CTI was expressed in the mammary gland of a pregnant multiparous seal, but not in a seal in its first pregnancy. While bovine CTI is expressed for 24-48h postpartum (pp) and secreted in colostrum only, Cape fur seal CTI was detected for at least 2-3months pp while the mother was suckling its young on-shore. Furthermore, CTI was expressed in the mammary gland of only one of the lactating seals that was foraging at-sea. The expression of β-casein (CSN2) and β-lactoglobulin II (LGB2), but not CTI in the second lactating seal foraging at-sea suggested that CTI may be intermittently expressed during lactation. Cape fur seal and walrus CTI encode putative small, secreted, N-glycosylated proteins with a single Kunitz/bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor (BPTI) domain indicative of serine protease inhibition. Mature Cape fur seal CTI shares 92% sequence identity with Pacific walrus CTI, but only 35% identity with BPTI. Structural homology modelling of Cape fur seal CTI and Pacific walrus trypsin based on the model of the second Kunitz domain of human tissue factor pathway inhibitor (TFPI) and porcine trypsin (Protein Data Bank: 1TFX) confirmed that CTI inhibits trypsin in a canonical fashion. Therefore, pinniped CTI may be critical for preventing the proteolytic degradation of immunoglobulins that are passively transferred from mother to young via colostrum and milk.