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If one considers that the reorientation of biology towards the neurosciences was steered by a small group of first-rank scientists who seemed to have independently selected their aims, & if one observes the applications to which their findings have been put, one must conclude that neuroscientists, despite their relatively independent (from military agencies eg) status, must assume responsibility for the use of the knowledge generated by them. The industrial-military complex, in the service of the dominant classes, has the infrastructure, the expertise, & the necessary amount of financial, political, & technical power to make use of that knowledge, made freely accessible to all interested in the subject through the many international journals. Leaders of the scientific community, in fact, offer opinions on the conduct of public affairs & predict the future in their capacity as scientists & in a manner supportive of the repressive status quo. Inventing & propagating among fellow scientists & laymen doctrinal explanations of the intrinsic nature of human violence, they reinforce the pessimism & hopelessness which the majority of the world population already feels about their deteriorating conditions & justify their 'solutions' to poverty, hunger, violence, overpopulation & pollution, which are consistent with the interests of powerful groups fighting to maintain the status quo. Those solutions include interrogation techniques based on the findings about sensory deprivation; psychodrugs, & electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB) to suppress violence which is really caused by objective conditions (the class antagonism eg), but which is viewed as a mere reflection of precultural 'instinctive' or 'innate' aggressiveness by the leaders of ESB research; the mystification of the powers of artificial intelligence. When intelligence is viewed in terms of 'genetic endowment' or 'the secondary instructions derived from fetal life' (John C. Eccles, THE FUNCTION OF THE BRAIN, New York, NY, 1972), ie, apart from any consideration of the environment (the fact eg, that 2,000 million people are hungry) as determinant in the creation of intelligence, this underscores how much science shares the values of the system in which it develops. K. Schmitt.

When one wishes to formulate, evaluate and implement public projects or policies, the existence of a plurality of social actors, with interest in the options being assessed, generates a conflictual situation. In this article, I show that the compensation principle was invented by Kaldor and Hicks to achieve two clear objectives: to compare individuals' preferences according to the efficiency oriented utilitarian calculus, explicitly avoiding the principle one individual, one vote; to implement an objective evaluation criterion, that could be accepted in the framework of the dominant positivistic philosophical paradigm. Here, I try to prove that in the compensation principle, there is no escape from value judgements, it is not the positivistic objective evaluation criterion. A relevant question is: are the original Kaldor-Hicks objectives still relevant in the 21st Century?Keywords: public policy, well-being, Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation

As currency crises revealed the limitations of pegging a country's currency to another country's currency through currency boards, the focus of the monetary community turned to dollarization and euroization. De jure dollarization/euroization is the unilateral adoption of the dollar/euro as sole legal tender in lieu of the prior domestic currency through a formal political decision, thereby irreversibly giving up the chance to influence money supply and exchange rates through national monetary and political authorities. After showing the origins of unilateral euroization, I will list the costs and benefits of currency replacement and identify which countries could most probably benefit from euroization. In the second part, I will explain why European Union (EU) institutions – in contrast to US policy makers with respect to dollarization – oppose the unilateral adoption of the euro. Then, I will describe the official route for euroization envisaged by the EU and finally focus the discussion on whether EU institutions can legally prevent unilateral euroization under European or international law and whether the involved states have any other rights or obligations under customary international law. Furthermore, I will show the implications of the current financial crisis for future trends of euroization.

[SPA] El suelo es un recurso afectado por fuentes de contaminación que lo pueden convertir en un recurso contaminado. El contenido en metales pesados del suelo es uno de los criterios empleados para la estimación de la calidad ambiental del suelo, siendo necesario, el establecimiento de niveles de fondo en los metales y sus correspondientes niveles genéricos de referencia. El suelo tiene unos valores naturales de presencia de determinados elementos traza, metales, que son los valores de fondo, que generan un riesgo admisible. Pero cuando ese riesgo se convierte en inadmisible, se han de establecer otros valores. Estos valores serían los niveles genéricos de referencia del suelo, y son los valores que nos indicarán si estamos ante un suelo potencialmente contaminado, o contaminado. Los "elementos traza" aparecen mayoritariamente en los residuos mineros relativos a las industrias extractivas. Estos materiales ya sean residuos, recursos o subproductos reciben, por lo general, el tratamiento de residuos inertes, cuando en realidad deberían ser tratados como residuos peligrosos. El presente estudio critica las disposiciones normativas que regulan los residuos y suelos propios de los distritos de minería metálica, con la finalidad de proponer mejoras normativas que permitan la adecuación de la legislación aplicable a los nuevos conocimientos científico-técnicos. [ENG] Soil is a resource affected by sources of pollution that can become contaminated resource. The heavy metal content of the soil is one of the criteria for estimating the environmental quality of the soil, being necessary to establish background levels in metals and their corresponding levels generics de reference. The floor has natural presence values of certain trace elements, metals, which are the background values, which generate an acceptable risk. But when that risk becomes unacceptable, they have to set other values. These values would be the generic reference levels of soil, and are the values that will tell us if this is a potentially contaminated or contaminated soil. The "trace elements" appear mostly in mining waste relating to extractive industries. These materials either waste resources or byproducts are, in general, the treatment of inert waste, when they should be treated as hazardous waste. This study criticizes the regulatory provisions governing waste and soils own metal mining districts, in order to propose improvements regulations that facilitate adjustment of the legislation applicable to new scientific and technical knowledge. ; Agradecer al equipo del TAIDA el poder formar parte de este grupo de doctorado.

Electricity systems are so strongly path dependent and deeply embedded in society that vertically integrated monopolistic or oligopolistic supply are justified. However, over-incentivize for capacity investment, excess dependency on fossil fuel, inefficient supply, and lack of customized services, accountability and participation raise dissatisfaction with the prevailing system, urging system transition. Given high potential of renewable energy in breaking the lock-in and generating positive feedback effects, this paper aims to explore how niche innovators and incumbents capitalize on their resources and power to create, augment or weaken prevailing political path-dependencies and lock-in of the prevailing electricity supply system to prospect a future energy transition, taking China as a case. Main findings are: (a) renewable energy has generated feedback effects in China; (b) regime actors have capitalized on their resources and power to organize alliances to be consistent with the government policy orientation while blocking institutional reforms for energy transition; and (c) their resources and power are derived from the monopolistic or oligopolistic electricity supply system and the government price control, both of which are justified for the sake of energy security and economic stabilization.

Leveraging, according to David M. Anderson and his colleagues, is both a basic principle of human conduct and the most dominant strategy in recent years that individuals, organizations and countries use to pursue their ends. Although many scholars agree that a crisis of "over-leveraging" caused the financial crisis of 2008-2010, it has not been appreciated that an "over-leveraging" crisis has existed in American politics and the American family system as well. This book addresses the need for a "Leverage Mean" (falling between the extremes of too much leverage and too little leverage) in the economy, politics, family life, and international relations. It identifies three different kinds of leveraging-bargaining, resource, and investment and provides an explanatory and normative theory which draws on the fields of economics, political science, sociology, history, psychology, international relations, law, and philosophy. Moreover, it shows how the dissolution of the Cold War, the dismantling of the modern family, and the rise of the Internet along with the deregulation of the financial services industry led to the diffusion of power which has made leveraging of the first importance for everyone. This book should be of interest to social scientists, philosophers, political theorists, public policy makers and politicians. David Anderson and his colleagues are the first to characterize and assess one of the major instruments of power of the contemporary era. This volume represents the best work on leverage since Archimedes and will be widely read and discussed. Benjamin Ginsberg, David Bernstein Professor of Political Science and Chair, Center for Advanced Governmental Studies, Johns Hopkins University Leverage might literally be the operative word of the 21st century. Anderson's volume is a wide-ranging and illuminating study of this fundamental and dynamic concept. Parag Khanna, Senior Fellow, New America Foundation, author of The Second World: How Emerging Powers Are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-first Century