Browsing by Subject "Chile"
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Item Open Access A Climate and Operational Vulnerability Assessment of the Water Company in Salamanca, Chile(2017-04-28) Gochicoa, Pedro I.; Eastman, Lucas B.The present master’s project is an analysis of the future vulnerability of the water company (Aguas del Valle) in Salamanca, Chile to potential changes in population, per capita water use, leakage, and climate. Scenario modelling and sensitivity analyses were carried out in Excel and Stella. We find that under a business as usual scenario, the water company will reach maximum production capacity according to its current water rights in the year 2030. In the most pessimistic scenario, the company will reach maximum capacity in year 2025 and need to produce nearly 13 million m3 in 2050, while in the most optimistic scenario, it will not reach maximum capacity before the year 2050, and will only need to produce 510,000 m3 yearly. A detailed sensitivity analysis revealed that population growth was the principal driver of water production for the future of the water company. A Monte Carlo analysis showed that there is a 60% probability that production will be 3.4 million m3 or less in year 2050. We recommend that the company reduce leakage, which has averaged 34% over the past 10 years. We also recommend that the company invest in demand management as well as an increase in storage of the system from the 9 hours of current consumptive volume to at least 24 hours of emergency storage.Item Open Access A Defense of the Role of History in Education Through the Analysis of the Chilean School Curriculum(2017-01-17) Brahm Rivas, Maria TrinidadIn 2010, the Chilean Government tried to cut the school hours per week of social sciences in the 5th to 10th grade school curriculum in order to increase the hours of language (Spanish) and mathematics. This reform tried to follow the trend of “successful” schools and the recommendations of the OECD based on the experience of countries that have more hours of language and mathematics and higher scores in national and international quantitative standards of measurement. The example of the Chilean case represents how humanities and social sciences have been left aside since a “humanistic” approach to education is less amenable to testing. This research project develops a qualitative analysis of the contradictions between the current objectives of education and the role of the subject of history in the school curriculum. The goal of this work is to understand 1) how the benefits of history education might be recognized within the current discussion about education and its objectives, and 2) what has been the role of the history subject in the Chilean schools´ curriculum. To develop this purpose, the paper is organized in three different chapters that explain why the study of history is important during high-school years and how the Chilean government has been modifying the history school curriculum considering the political evolution of the country. The last chapter examines the tenth and eleventh grade Chilean social studies programs in order to analyze if the current way history is taught helps students to develop higher learning outcomes and abilities, such as critical thinking, analytical and creative abilities, and social consciousness. The inconsistency between the history school programs and how they are put into practice is a key element to understand the design of educational policies to develop students´ effective learning outcomes.Item Open Access An Analysis of Water Management Strategies in Drought Prone Areas(2018-04-26) Vogel, SarahThere is an old adage in the West: “whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting”. In the American West, as well as locales all over the globe, water scarcity is a subject rife with conflicts and emotion. Human beings approach drought in reactionary ways. Rather than plan for the eventuality of drought, societies enact drought policy or regulations well into, and not before experiencing drought conditions. Researchers have predicted that more than half of humanity will live in water-stressed areas in the near future. Understanding the significant role drought plays in water management and the costs of reactionary decision making can help stakeholders create proactive approaches to water allocation. This paper seeks to understand how drought affects water management strategies; how regulation is affected by drought conditions; how local agencies and state authorities interact to manage water resources in California; and how California water management compares to water management strategies employed in other drought prone areas of the globe.Item Open Access An Examination of the Technical-Economic Feasibility of Green Hydrogen Production From Solar Clipping Losses in Northern Chile(2022-04-07) Klebanoff, Meagan; Villar Poblete, NicolasOver the past several years, Chile has sought to position itself as a leading country for green hydrogen production. This project analyzes the technical-economic feasibility of green hydrogen production from solar clipping losses in northern Chile. The target solar project falls under the Pequeño Medio de Generación Distribuido (PMGD) tariff category in Chile, which sets an injection limit of 9 MWac and results in solar clipping losses. We develop a financial model to analyze whether or not a green hydrogen pilot project at the solar plant is financially viable. Inputs include the estimated annual solar clipping losses (MWh), electrolyzer hydrogen production capacity (kg/MWh), and the estimated willingness to pay ($/kg) for green hydrogen from two domestic industries, mining companies and gas utilities. Our analysis indicates that the solar clipping losses business model does not produce enough hydrogen to offset the initial CAPEX investment based on the estimated prevailing green hydrogen prices in Chile.Item Open Access Documenting Chile: Visualizing Identity and the National Body from Dictatorship to Post-Dictatorship(2016) Suhey, Amanda SuheyI study three contemporary Chilean works of visual culture that appropriate and re-assemble visual material, discourse, and atmosphere from the bureaucracy of the military state. I examine Diamela Eltit’s textual performance of legal discourse in Puño y letra (2005); Guillermo Núñez’s testimonial art Libertad Condicional (1979-1982) based on the documents pertaining to his imprisonment, parole and forced exile; and Pablo Larraín’s fictional film Post Mortem (2010) inspired by Salvador Allende’s autopsy report. I argue that they employ a framework that exposes both the functional and aesthetic modes of bureaucracy complicit in state terror that operate within the spectacular and the mundane. Furthermore, I trace bureaucracy’s origins from the founding of the nation to its current practices that enabled the societal conditions for dictatorship and continue to uphold dictatorial legacies into the present.
In my analysis, I engage theories from performance, legal and media studies to interpret how Eltit critiques the press coverage of human rights trials, Núñez informs institutionalized preservation of memory, and Larraín demonstrates the power of fiction in our documentary reconstruction of the past. I conclude by arguing that this examination of bureaucracy is imperative because state bureaucracy anchors vestiges of the dictatorship that persist into the present such as the dictatorship-era constitution and the newly revived preventative control of identity documentation law.
Item Open Access Essays in Institutional Economics(2011) Lustig, Scott JordanThis dissertation is a collection of three chapters all pertaining to institutional economics. In short, the eld of institutional economics is an outgrowth of public economics, in the sense that in many cases he key institutions that frame economic decisionmaking are the product of public policy. However this is not exclusive. Institutional economics' key contribution is the acknowledgement that cultural and social institutions --- often developed organically over the course of centuries --- can play as signicant a role in individuals' economic choices as governmental policy. In the pages that follow, we will address the economic impact of cultural and political institutions in three contexts: Judicial decisionmaking in Islamic courts, the effects
of negative health shocks on retirement savings, and the tradeoff between retirement savings and investment in durable goods.
Item Open Access The Southern Cone Novel and Human Rights Crises: Form and Narrative Responsibility (1973-2000)(2015-04-29) Pearce, AlexisThe Southern Cone Novel and Human Rights Crises: Form and Narrative Responsibility (1973-2000) Abstract: Argentina and Chile experienced violent oppression throughout the 1970s and 1980s when the quest to exterminate communism and the desire for neoliberal economics culminated into military regimes that acted with impunity. Most common among the techniques were the kidnapping, torturing, and, especially in Argentina, the “disappearing” of victims. The thousands of human rights transgressions that occurred during this time period opened up deep wounds and chasms across Argentine and Chilean society. The strength, however, of human rights organizations and their political pressure led to popular social mobilizations, most notably the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, which urged the transitional governments of both countries to begin judicial processes against the juntas. The truth commissions, el Informe Sábato (Argentina, 1984) and el Informe Rettig (Chile, 1991), delineated the transgressions undertaken by the Armed Forces and attempted to calculate the number of disappeared and/or tortured. Interestingly, el Informe Sábato, as suggested by its informal name, was directed by Ernesto Sábato, who, despite his limited publications, was a profound literary and moral figure in Argentina. That such a literary voice presided over the National Commission for Disappeared Persons speaks to the overlapping of literature, human rights, and justice that occurred during and right after the military dictatorships. This study seeks to explore these intersections further by examining various approaches to Argentine and Chilean literary production and human rights discourse across a timespan of twenty-five years. Libro de Manuel by Julio Cortázar (Manual for Manuel, 1973), Abaddón el exterminador by Ernesto Sábato (Abaddón the Exterminator, 1974), and Nocturno de Chile by Roberto Bolaño (By Night in Chile, 2000) serve as the primary literary texts analyzed in this study. While both Cortázar in Libro de Manuel and Sábato in Abaddón el exterminador employ distancing techniques in order to challenge their reader critically, Bolaño employs his masterful storytelling to draw in the reader while still presenting problematics related to Chile’s recent past and politics of amnesia. Mainly focusing on literary analysis and exploration of themes of human rights, justice, and the articulation of both in the texts themselves, the theoretical framework of this study relies on The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City (2002) and Cruel Modernity (2014) by Jean Franco, as well as Human Rights, Inc. (Joseph Slaughter, 2014) and ideas posited by Andreas Huyssen that relate to memory and utopia. It is within this latter heuristic model that the study ends by questioning the transition from the future-oriented texts of Cortázar and Sábato to fiction anchored in turbulent historical moments, as represented by Bolaño’s fiction. As time, dominant historical narratives, and amnesia continue to distance us from the thousands of human rights transgressions whose justice still has not been exhausted, it is of the utmost importance to reproblematize the past and its representations. In this way, we are able to serve our duty to the past and there relocate a utopia in which justice is given to those whose basic rights were ignored in the conquest of progress.