Génesis de la conciencia racial : un estudio sobre identificación y actitudes hacia el color de piel en niños de tres a once años.

Esta investigación ha sido financiada en el contexto del proyecto: factores cognitivos en el razonamiento racista

La influencia de las creencias en la actuación formal en tareas con contenido étnico-racial.

Se han pasado tres tareas de razonamiento lógico-formal a adultos de niveles socioculturales alto y bajo. El objetivo era averiguar cómo influye el contenido de la tarea (racial, neutral o abstracto) en la actuación de los participantes. Todas las tareas 'raciales' se diseñaron de modo que tuvieran una posible conclusión racista. Los resultados sugieren que los procesos de razonamiento se ven influidos por el contenido de la tarea. Sin embargo, tal influencia no es simple. En las tareas de tipo proporcional y probabilístico, donde hay un aspecto eminentemente aritmético, un signifiativo porcentaje de los participantes tienden a evitar una conclusión (aunque sea lógicamente correcta) si ésta puede interpretarse como una discriminación contra una determinada comunidad étnico-racial. Esta tendencia no se observa cuando la conclusión podría perjudicar a una comunidad no sometida a un prejuicio racial. Habría una activación, en el primer caso, de un cierto contrasesgo en contra del prejuicio dominante. En las tareas de carácter deducivo, donde no hay ningún componente numérico, ese efecto no es tan apreciable.

El desarrollo de la toma de conciencia racial : un estudio evolutivo con niños españoles de tres a cinco años.

Este trabajo de tesis tiene como principal objetivo obtener una medida del desarrollo de la toma de conciencia racial en niños españoles de 3 a 5 años. El principal marco teórico en el que se ha desarrollado el trabajo es la teoría socio-cognitiva. Desde esta teoría se propone que el prejuicio en los niños debe entenderse más como resultado de un proceso evolutivo que como un rasgo de personalidad. En otras palabras, los cambios cognitivos que se producen a lo largo de la niñez desempeñan un papel central en el surgimiento y desarrollo de las actitudes étnico-raciales.. Se diseñan tres estudios sucesivos con objetivos diferentes pero complementarios, en los que se tomó una medida de la conciencia racial así como de su relación con el desarrollo cognitivo del sujeto. Se elaboran un conjunto de tareas basadas en pruebas clásicas con una larga trayectoria en la investigación previa, para evaluar distintos procesos implicados en la conciencia racial. Concretamente, se estudia la percepción de similitudes y diferencias entre grupos raciales (categorización social), el conocimiento de etiquetas socio-convencionales para designar a los grupos raciales, la autoidentificación racial y las actitudes, medidas estas últimas a través de las preferencias y rechazos hacia miembros de distintos grupos raciales.. Los resultados muestran que entre los 3 y los 4 años se produce un importante avance en la toma de conciencia racial. A diferencia de lo que sucede en edades anteriores donde el color de piel apenas era relevante, las respuestas de los niños comienzan a estar guiadas por las claves físicas raciales. Además, la preferencia hacia el grupo interno fue más intensa que el rechazo hacia los grupos externos..

La influencia de las creencias en la actuación formal en tareas con contenido étnico-racial.

Resumen tomado del autor. Resumen en castellano e inglés

Valoración del prejuicio racial en la infancia : adaptación preliminar de la escala de prejuicio racial sutil y manifiesto.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

The Economic anI Racial Implications of the Globalization of Knowledge by Catholic Missionaries in Portuguese India, 16th-18th Centuries

The European Missionaries benefitted from the native Asian sources and knowledge providers much more than it is honestly acknowledged.

La aplicación del Plan Plurinacional para eliminar la discriminación racial y la exclusión étnica en la provincia de Bolívar

Este trabajo analiza la concepción de las políticas públicas en torno a sectores históricamente marginados bajo la óptica de las acciones afirmativas. Se muestra la relación entre los pueblos y nacionalidades y el Estado, enfatizando el caso ecuatoriano y la implementación del Plan Plurinacional para Eliminar la Discriminación Racial y la Exclusión Étnica cuya propuesta plantea superar la exclusión y la discriminación de la cual han sido víctimas ciertos grupos poblacionales en el Ecuador. De esta manera, “el objetivo fundamental de este trabajo es realizar un balance de la aplicación de las políticas de acción afirmativa contenidas en el Plan Plurinacional para eliminar la Discriminación Racial y la Exclusión Étnica en la provincia de Bolívar, utilizando diferentes fuentes de consulta que van desde documentos de análisis sobre la situación del racismo y la discriminación racial a documentos oficiales y uso de entrevistas”.

The development of a new dust uplift scheme in the Met Office Unified Model

Aeolian mineral dust aerosol is an important consideration in the Earth's radiation budget as well as a source of nutrients to oceanic and land biota. The modelling of aeolian mineral dust has been improving consistently despite the relatively sparse observations to constrain them. This study documents the development of a new dust emissions scheme in the Met Office Unified ModelTM (MetUM) based on the Dust Entrainment and Deposition (DEAD) module. Four separate case studies are used to test and constrain the model output. Initial testing was undertaken on a large dust event over North Africa in March 2006 with the model constrained using AERONET data. The second case study involved testing the capability of the model to represent dust events in the Middle East without being re-tuned from the March 2006 case in the Sahara. While the model is unable to capture some of the daytime variation in AERONET AOD there is good agreement between the model and observed dust events. In the final two case studies new observations from in situ aircraft data during the Dust Outflow and Deposition to the Ocean (DODO) campaigns in February and August 2006 were used. These recent observations provided further data on dust size distributions and vertical profiles to constrain the model. The modelled DODO cases were also compared to AERONET data to make sure the radiative properties of the dust were comparable to observations. Copyright © 2009 Royal Meteorological Society and Crown Copyright

Influence of the Tibetan Plateau uplift on the Asian monsoon-arid environment evolution

As one of the most important geological events in Cenozoic era, the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) has had profound influences on the Asian and global climate and environment evolution. During the past four decades, many scholars from China and abroad have studied climatic and environmental effects of the TP uplift by using a variety of geological records and paleoclimate numerical simulations. The existing research results enrich our understanding of the mechanisms of Asian monsoon changes and interior aridification, but so far there are still a lot of issues that need to be thought deeply and investigated further. This paper attempts to review the research on the influence of the TP uplift on the Asian monsoon-arid environment, summarize three types of numerical simulations including bulk-plateau uplift, phased uplift and sub-regional uplift, and especially to analyze regional differences in responses of climate and environment to different forms of tectonic uplifts. From previous modeling results, the land-sea distribution and the Himalayan uplift may have a large effect in the establishment and development of the South Asian monsoon. However, the formation and evolution of the monsoon in northern East Asia, the intensified dryness north of the TP and enhanced Asian dust cycle may be more closely related to the uplift of the main body, especially the northern part of the TP. In this review, we also discuss relative roles of the TP uplift and other impact factors, origins of the South Asian monsoon and East Asian monsoon, feedback effects and nonlinear responses of climatic and environmental changes to the plateau uplift. Finally, we make comparisons between numerical simulations and geological records, discuss their uncertainties, and highlight some problems worthy of further studying.

Impacts of uplift of northern Tibetan Plateau and formation of Asian inland deserts on regional climate and environment

Based on the geological evidence that the northern Tibetan Plateau (NTP) had an uplift of a finite magnitude since the Miocene and the major Asian inland deserts formed in the early Pliocene, a regional climate model (RegCM4.1) with a horizontal resolution of 50 km was used to explore the effects of the NTP uplift and the related aridification of inland Asia on regional climate. We designed three numerical experiments including the control experiment representing the present-day condition, the high-mountain experiment representing the early Pliocene condition with uplifted NTP but absence of the Asian inland deserts, and the low-mountain experiment representing the mid-Miocene condition with reduced topography in the NTP (by as much as 2400 m) and also absence of the deserts. Our simulation results indicated that the NTP uplift caused significant reductions in annual precipitation in a broad region of inland Asia north of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) mainly due to the enhanced rain shadow effect of the mountains and changes in the regional circulations. However, four mountainous regions located in the uplift showed significant increases in precipitation, stretching from the Pamir Plateau in the west to the Qilian Mountains in the east. These mountainous areas also experienced different changes in the rainfall seasonality with the greatest increases occurring during the respective rainy seasons, predominantly resulted from the enhanced orographically forced upwind ascents. The appearance of the major deserts in the inland Asia further reduced precipitation in the region and led to increased dust emission and deposition fluxes, while the spatial patterns of dust deposition were also changed, not only in the regions of uplift-impacted topography, but also in the downwind regions. One major contribution from this study is the comparison of the simulation results with 11 existing geological records representing the moisture conditions from Miocene to Pliocene. The comparisons revealed good matches between the simulation results and the published geological records. Therefore, we conclude that the NTP uplift and the related formation of the major deserts played a controlling role in the evolution of regional climatic conditions in a broad region in inland Asia since the Miocene.

Quantifying particle size and turbulent scale dependence of dust uplift in the Sahara using aircraft measurements

The first size-resolved airborne measurements of dust fluxes and the first dust flux measurements from the central Sahara are presented and compared with a parameterization by Kok (2011a). High-frequency measurements of dust size distribution were obtained from 0.16 to 300 µm diameter, and eddy covariance fluxes were derived. This is more than an order of magnitude larger size range than previous flux estimates. Links to surface emission are provided by analysis of particle drift velocities. Number flux is described by a −2 power law between 1 and 144 µm diameter, significantly larger than the 12 µm upper limit suggested by Kok (2011a). For small particles, the deviation from a power law varies with terrain type and the large size cutoff is correlated with atmospheric vertical turbulent kinetic energy, suggesting control by vertical transport rather than emission processes. The measured mass flux mode is in the range 30–100 µm. The turbulent scales important for dust flux are from 0.1 km to 1–10 km. The upper scale increases during the morning as boundary layer depth and eddy size increase. All locations where large dust fluxes were measured had large topographical variations. These features are often linked with highly erodible surface features, such as wadis or dunes. We also hypothesize that upslope flow and flow separation over such features enhance the dust flux by transporting large particles out of the saltation layer. The tendency to locate surface flux measurements in open, flat terrain means these favored dust sources have been neglected in previous studies.

A comparison of two dust uplift schemes within the same general circulation model

Aeolian dust modelling has improved significantly over the last ten years and many institutions now consistently model dust uplift, transport and deposition in general circulation models (GCMs). However, the representation of dust in GCMs is highly variable between modelling communities due to differences in the uplift schemes employed and the representation of the global circulation that subsequently leads to dust deflation. In this study two different uplift schemes are incorporated in the same GCM. This approach enables a clearer comparison of the dust uplift schemes themselves, without the added complexity of several different transport and deposition models. The global annual mean dust aerosol optical depths (at 550 nm) using two different dust uplift schemes were found to be 0.014 and 0.023—both lying within the estimates from the AeroCom project. However, the models also have appreciably different representations of the dust size distribution adjacent to the West African coast and very different deposition at various sites throughout the globe. The different dust uplift schemes were also capable of influencing the modelled circulation, surface air temperature, and precipitation despite the use of prescribed sea surface temperatures. This has important implications for the use of dust models in AMIP-style (Atmospheric Modelling Intercomparison Project) simulations and Earth-system modelling.