Indigenous Social Movements and Institutional Reform: Mechanisms of Interest Representation in Three Colombian Municipalities

In the 1990s, Colombia passed but unevenly enforced multicultural reforms to address indigenous rights. Parallel to this, decentralization laws delegated key aspects of interest intermediation to local governments. These reforms changed the political opportunity structure that framed the relationship between indigenous people and the state. Indigenous activists engaged nonindigenous authorities and institutions at the local level in contentious, cooperative, or competitive strategies of interest intermediation to redistribute assets, claim indigenous rights, and create coalitions committed to ethnic governance. These strategies involved various mechanisms including framing indigenous claims, mobilizing communities, and repurposing or revising existing institutions to help keep indigenous territories and communities together. The reforms opened new opportunities, and activists responded by sustaining contentious strategies of interest intermediation such as social protests and testing cooperative and competitive mechanisms to coordinate different jurisdictions, participate in local elections, build up broader constituencies, and increase coalitions to support indigenous rights. En la década de 1990, Colombia aprobó reformas multiculturales para abordar los derechos indígenas, pero procedió a ejercerlas de manera desigual. Paralelamente, las leyes de descentralización delegaron aspectos clave de la intermediación de intereses a los gobiernos locales. Estas reformas cambiaron la estructura de oportunidades políticas que enmarcaba la relación entre los pueblos indígenas y el Estado. Los activistas indígenas involucraron a autoridades e instituciones locales no indígenas en estrategias de intermediación de intereses contenciosas, cooperativas o competitivas para redistribuir activos, reclamar derechos indígenas y crear coaliciones comprometidas con la gobernanza étnica. Estas estrategias implicaron diversos mecanismos, entre ellos la formulación de reclamos indígenas, la movilización de las comunidades y la reutilización o revisión de las instituciones existentes para ayudar a mantener unidos los territorios y las comunidades indígenas. Las reformas dieron lugar a nuevas oportunidades, y los activistas respondieron sustentando estrategias contestatarias de intermediación de intereses, como protestas sociales, y probando mecanismos cooperativos y competitivos para coordinar distintas jurisdicciones, participar en elecciones locales, construir grupos más amplios y aumentar las coaliciones en apoyo a los derechos indígenas.

Retinal Axon Interplay for Binocular Mapping

In most mammals, retinal ganglion cell axons from each retina project to both sides of the brain. The segregation of ipsi and contralateral projections into eye-specific territories in their main brain targets—the dorsolateral geniculate nucleus and the superior colliculus—is critical for the processing of visual information. The investigation of the developmental mechanisms contributing to the wiring of this binocular map in mammals identified competitive mechanisms between axons from each retina while interactions between axons from the same eye were challenging to explore. Studies in vertebrates lacking ipsilateral retinal projections demonstrated that competitive mechanisms also exist between axons from the same eye. The development of a genetic approach enabling the differential manipulation and labeling of neighboring retinal ganglion cells in a single mouse retina revealed that binocular map development does not only rely on axon competition but also involves a cooperative interplay between axons to stabilize their terminal branches. These recent insights into the developmental mechanisms shaping retinal axon connectivity in the brain will be discussed here.

Updating the governmental control over oil production and refining in Russia

Subject. The article focuses on the governmental policy for the oil production and refining sector. Objectives. We analyze reasons for the emergence of market structures in oil production and refining, and the efficacy of competitive mechanisms implemented there. The article also evaluates the governmental policy for vertically integrated oil companies. Methods. The study is based on the comprehensive analysis of the history and consequences of market structures that emerged in the oil production and refining sector of Russia. Results. Based on the retrospective analysis of institutional changes in oil production and refining, we conclude on the existence of vertically integrated oil companies, which are sustainable over time. The fact such large companies emerged in the early 1990s is quite logic. During dramatic changes in economic relations, the emergence of companies, which together form the oil production and refining sector, could be considered acceptable and ensure the national security from economic and political perspectives. Unfortunately, the sector grew not only into the most considerable economic unit, which influence national income, but also a substantial agent in the governmental economic policy. Conclusions and Relevance. The persisting oligopolistic structure of the market affects the elasticity of the governmental economic policy. The implementation of competitive mechanisms in the respective market will have no positive effects. As a result of external and internal factors, vertically integrated oil companies demonstrate a notably stable response to any economic changes. They manage to offset their economic losses in the global market through increased prices in the domestic segment.

Designing Educational Board Games For Children On Snake Handling Using Competitive Mechanisms

Education with material and only listening to explanations make some people bored so that the information they want to convey is not well received. In addition, there is a lack of media that can educate snake handling and facilitate children in learning in a fun way and can be played outside of study hours. This study aims to analyze an educational board game for snake handling using competitive mechanisms in children. This research uses a descriptive method. The techniques used in collecting data are interviews, observations, and questionnaires. The instrument used to collect data is a questionnaire. Sources of data obtained from previous studies, online articles, and interviews will be analyzed descriptively. Based on the results of data analysis, the board game as an educational media about the basic handling of snakes has a positive impact on the target. 80% of the targets who do not understand handling snakes and other types of snakes understand and enjoy the education implemented in the board game media. It can be concluded that educational board games can educate children about snake handling using competitive mechanisms.

Optical field coupling in ZnO nanorods decorated with silver plasmonic nanoparticles

This work outlines the two underlying competitive mechanisms of non-radiative plasmonic hot-electron transfer, namely direct electron transfer and plasmonic induced resonance energy transfer in a light harvesting system.

Effect of storage cycle on improvement in photovoltaic parameters of planar triple cation perovskite solar cells

One of the important challenges in the field of perovskite solar cells is to investigate the competitive mechanisms of humidity and oxygen which improve efficiency of cells at moderate humidity...

SIGNIFICANCE OF INTERSPECIES AND INTRASPECIES INTERACTIONS OF MICROORGANISMS AS A SUB-ORGANISM LEVEL IN THE HIERARCHY OF THE EPIDEMIC PROCESS

In the modern period, the epidemic process is considered as a complex multi-level system, which includes a suborganism level (tissue, cellular, molecular), organismic and socio-ecosystem (population). In the human population, many pathogenic microorganisms circulate and cause disease in humans at the same time. As a rule, they exist in an associated state - a universal phenomenon for the vast majority of representatives of the microworld. Nevertheless, the possibility of interrelationships between them and their reflection in the development of the epidemic process and its manifestations, as a rule, is not taken into account. In the present work, based on an analysis of publications on the results of our own research by the authors and world literature, it is shown that at the sub-organism level of the epidemic process there is an active inter- and intraspecies interaction between representatives of different types of microorganisms, realized through integration-competitive mechanisms. This interaction is reflected both at the organism and population levels of epidemic process. Therefore, when conducting epidemiological studies, it is necessary to use an integrative approach that takes into account processes taking place at a suborganism level. Understanding the fact that microorganisms actively interact with each other will significantly increase our ability to develop new approaches to protect organism from infections, as well as adequately predict the occurrence and time of the development of epidemics.