Fundraising and vote distribution: A non-equilibrium statistical approach.

The number of votes correlates strongly with the money spent in a campaign, but the relation between the two is not straightforward. Among other factors, the output of a ballot depends on the number of candidates, voters, and available resources. Here, we develop a conceptual framework based on Shannon entropy maximization and Superstatistics to establish a relation between the distributions of money spent by candidates and their votes. By establishing such a relation, we provide a tool to predict the outcome of a ballot and to alert for possible misconduct either in the report of fundraising and spending of campaigns or on vote counting. As an example, we consider real data from two proportional elections with more than 6000 candidates each, where a detailed data verification is virtually impossible, and show that the number of potential misconducting candidates to audit can be reduced to less than ten.

Peasant friendly plant breeding and the early years of the green revolution in Mexico.

Despite their success in boosting cereals production overall, the Green Revolution programs of the 1950s and 1960s were often criticized for failing to achieve their declared aim of alleviating world hunger. Most critics argued that the programs had produced a technology unsuited to the needs of small peasant farmers. This paper explores why such inappropriate technology might have been developed, focusing on the early years of the Rockefeller Foundation's Mexican Agricultural Program (MAP). It shows that some foundation officers as well as agricultural advisors had prior experience of the problems faced by small farmers in the United States and elsewhere. Moreover, the foundation's expressed concern for rural poverty does not appear to have been mere posturing by an organization anxious to be seen as an agent of philanthropy. Furthermore, the program's early work in maize-breeding was well tailored to the conditions of Mexican agriculture. Once the MAP was up and running, however, it became apparent that the task of getting new varieties and cultivation practices to small farmers was going to be difficult. Needing to make some kind of impact quickly, MAP staff chose to concentrate upon projects that were likely to find a rapid uptake. This meant setting aside the needs of peasant farmers to develop high-yielding varieties suited to large commercial farms.

Los fondos de inversión ante el desafío de las autonomías / The funds of invertion in light of the desafio of the autonomias

El presente documento está dividido en cuatro partes: la primera, se analizará el origen y las características de los Fondos de inversión social, que tuvieron su inicio en la década de los 80 con la creación del Fondo Social de Emergencia; la segunda parte se analiza la evolución, el funcionamiento y los resultados que han obtenido los diferentes fondos

Reporte final del subcomponente alternativas de financiamiento

Describe las actividades llevadas a cabo con el fin de evaluar las opciones del mejoramiento de la base financiera para fortalecer los servicios de salud y mejorar la calidad de la atención en salud, permitiendo hacer un uso más eficiente de los recurso asignados. En tal sentido, se han preparado estudios y análisis que permitan identificar las estrategias que pueden desarrollarrse para el cumplimiento de los objetivos de la Política Nacional de salud, definida por el Ministerio de Salud de Nicaragua.

Directrices relacionadas con las donaciones de equipo y material / Directrix related with donations of equipment and material

Esta guia, destinada tanto a los que reciben como a los que hacen donaciones puede ser util tambien para los que proyectan adquirir equipo y material