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This paper examines the determinants of teacher and course evaluations at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. The paper explores how teacher and course characteristics affect evaluation results. Grades obtained by students directly and positively affect teacher evaluations. Class size negatively affects the results of the evaluations. Finally whether teachers are full or part-time as well as years of experience of teachers have a negligible impact on evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is grounded on an ethnographic investigation on the "Diana Turbay" neighborhood in Bogota. Its objective is to analyze certain aspects that favored the formation of this neighborhood of illegal origin, the organization of its inhabitants in their daily struggle to get better life conditions and the dynamics of change in their social relationships as part of the process of incorporation of the neighborhood to the city. This paper is inscribed on the debates about right to city and urban marginality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to build a review to the correspondence between the discourse of political ideology, the discourse of urban ideology and its manifestation in architectural realization. The text generally consists of two main bodies. The first, reviews the process of building the modern movement in architecture and urbanism and then subsequent transit and implementation in Colombia, specifically in Bogotá. It is necessary to note that the political speech to revise is Colombian, although the Modern Movement has a European origin and American developments, the context to review is specifically limited by the interaction of these ideas with the historical-geographical space of Bogotá, embodied in the urban development of the city. Under these rules, the European political considerations are hardly references to contextualize the modern movement itself and its vicissitudes. Also, the definition of the time period of study, which is due to the appearance in the country of the need to consider the problem of urban planning through intellectual exercises grounded in architecture, urbanism and medicine; the latter as a driver of the concepts of modern ideology of healthy living and social hygiene (Ramírez, 2000b). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2004, the district of Bogotá has built massively schools of great capacity and infraestructure known as Megacolegios (Mega-schools). By 2010, the city counted with 42 new school which were built in the areas of the city with the highest demand for educational access. This paper uses matching techniques to measure the impact of the megacolegios in the students performance on the Saber 11° estandarized test. The results show that the megacolegios have no impact on the students performance. Nevertheless, The megacolegios do mitigate the negative relation between performance and some students characteristics like over age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "hiring carousel" in Bogotá has been the biggest corruption scandal that has been dismantled in Colombia up to this day. Consequently, the Colombian state countered by promoting the creation and modification of legal rules as a way to defeat corruption, as illustrated, for instance, in the 1474 law of 2011 (Anti-Corruption Statute). This paper portrays an evaluation and a comparison between facts and legislative measures that were promoted to offset this corruption phenomenon. Furthermore, this piece analyzes the enforceability of the anti-corruption statute and evaluates if legislative measures are the correct path to defeat and eradicate corruption, or if law, because of its rigidity, is not enough to face this social calamity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to describe some of the ways in which a group of hip-hop youths in Bogotá express their sense of citizenship and some of the ways in which they actively exercise this sense of citizenship. It reports part of the findings of the project, "Conceptions of citizenship in a group of schooled and non-schooled youth in Bogotá." The project was designed around multiple case studies, and pedagogical workshops were used to collect information. Discourse analysis, as proposed by T. van Dijk, was used to analyze the data. The results of the study indicate that this group envisions the exercise of citizenship as a series of aesthetic experiences with a clear political intention, oriented to the improvement of public, economic, and social conditions for the affirmation of hip-hop culture. In addition, the results indicate that these expressions are motivated by a moral sense, which prompts the group to denounce social injustice, and the lack of recognition of human dignity and the contributions that their group can make to the building of a more democratic, diverse, and inclusive society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is the development of an accessibility estimation method as a transport policy assessment tool based on the state of the art of the accessibility concept and measurement techniques, and available information directly related to socioeconomic data, transport demand and supply characteristics for specific areas of Bogotá. Study areas and indicators are defined in order to determine relevant relationships between transport and access to opportunities for individuals with specific socioeconomic characteristics and present mobility conditions. In addition, evaluation of restricted travel budgets scenarios defined both by the standard transport theory and individuals is performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic growth in Bogota and its region will produce important changes in urban development and mobility. Increases in private vehicle ownership in the next decades will contribute to urban sprawl and car dependency in a development pattern similar to the one lived by North American cities. This paper underlines the policy and strategy to be adopted by Bogota District in order to prevent a path of non-sustainable development, promote a more inclusive city and an efficient integration with the Region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper attempts to measure empirically the externalities generated by the street vendors in four zones of the city. Given the lack of information censuses and surveys were carried out during December of 2004 and January 2005. The descriptive statistics show that the established commerce is less formal than expected; whereas the street vendors are mostly stationary, exhibit reduced scale and low space rivalry. The econometric estimations show that the congestion of the public space generated by street vendors has a negative impact on both sales and employment of established retail commerce. The simulations of a reduction of street vendors pinpoint that although street sales account for just 2% of total sales in the four areas under study, they reduce 14% and 16% sales and employment of formal retail commerce respectively. Finally, some limitations of the methodological strategy are raised and some public policy proposals to face the phenomenon are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the results of a research project about practices and representation of natural and cultural heritage in Bogotá, this paper contributes to the anthropology of space and other disciplines associated to it. It introduces the concept of place-heritage as a notion that will be helpful in the participatory management of heritage, regarding social interaction and practices in such places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an exercise on the ethnographic interpretation of the "paseode olla", an urban practice observed at a traditional park in bogotá, the "Parque Nacional Enrique Olaya Herrera". The text combines ethnographic descriptions and reflections about the urban public space as well as socio-spatial analyses of human interaction. The text emphasizes in the importance of space practices analyses as forms of culture materialization in urban contexts. It also shows the persistence of the family in contemporary urban practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biofuels constitute an important alternative for the current national and worldwide energy demand. The main goal of this paper is to summarize the recent contributions of Universidad de los Andes for the development of technologies related to its production. Such efforts have been conveyed to the use of sub products like oil palm empty-fruit-bunch or domestic solid waste for ethanol production, hydrogen production and liquid fuels through anaerobic digestion and waste pyrolysis respectively, and biodiesel by fatty acids esterification. Generally, the limitations of these technologies stand on discovering adequate catalysts either from biological or chemical origin, finding optimum reaction conditions (temperature, pressure and reactive systems) accounting yield and selectivity and, finally, feedstock selection from an economical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perception of security related to crime is not always tied to the individual level of victimization or the real risk of crime, but rather to the fear of crime. To investigate this, we carried out a survey among the community at Universidad de los Andes. We found that the fear of crime is more decisive than the actual victimization in terms of shaping people's perception of security during Bogotá's current administration (i.e., Garzón) as compared to its three former administrations (i.e., Mockus-Peñalosa-Mockus). This becomes even more surprising if one takes into account the fact that Bogotá has experienced a decrease in most high social-impact crimes, according to official data, yet the survey reveals that still one third of those surveyed feel worst under Garzón's administration as compared to the three former ones. We show that the perception of security in public spaces, and on public transport, is determined by factors which are related more to the fear of crime than to the level of subjective victimization (understood as that of the surveyed and his/her kin). This paper also corroborates widely held beliefs that surround the fear-of-crime literature, such as the attitude towards crime risk among the young, and the higher perception of safety that men feel as compared to women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first part of this paper the basics of the estimation of the stochastic production function is discussed. In the second part an application of the former is presented aimed at the hierarquization of the educational institutions which depend of the District of Bogotá, according to a measure of the technical efficiency --using inputs to maximize the output. For the present, a Cobb-Douglas production function is assumed with a symmetric noise and a semi-normal efficiency perturbations. Using maximum likelihood the parameters are obtained and the efficiency for each institution is calculated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since our paper as mathematical educators we think about the collective construction of a problematic situation that needs the mathematical knowledge to be solved and directly contributes to make more optimum the living quality of a social group. Are we well fed?, more than a classroom project, is a real testimony of a young group of last grade in high school, in one of the most rejected zones in Bogotá, which starting from a reflection in class, questioned the nutritional condition of their institution members and worked for the construction of statistical concepts needed to give an answer and find a solution. To educate in democracy means to think about the development of collective tasks that directly contribute to promote values in the student such us respect, autonomy and solidarity, indispensable for living in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the factors underlying the shift of public space management Bogotá's Historic Center from one neglect by presidentially appointed mayors to an aggressive public space recuperation campaign led by Bogotá's elected mayors from 1988 to the present. Faced with the high barriers to public space recovery-the potential loss of needed political support from vendors and the power of vendor unions to obstruct their removal-this article holds that two factors enabled elected Bogotá mayors to recuperate public space. These are: 1. a democratization of the Bogotá Mayor's Office which made elected mayors responsible to the electorate for their neglect of public space, and 2. the political-economic marginalization of traditionally obstructive Bogotá vendor unions. Field work was carried out in metropolitan Bogotá to determine the impact of the public space recuperation on vendors who were relocated by the Mayor's Office of Bogotá. When compared to data from the street, results of the randomized surveys illustrate improvements in working conditions but lower income and fewer clientele for relocated street vendors. The study similarly documents how more benefits accrued to relocated vendors in markets that specialize in the sale of one product instead of more generalized markets. The conclusion points to the importance of public space recovery for the reinstatement of public order and for downtown economic revitalization. These benefits are described parallel to the disadvantages of the intensification of vendor-government conflict and the large-scale abandonment of costly markets by relocated street vendors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of virtual media as a support to formal higher education requires a methodology able to support the teacher's specific educative needs and the pedagogical requirements of diverse subjects and knowledge areas. This paper presents the methodology used on the construction of Learning Virtual Environments as a complement to the face to face activities of ten different disciplines courses on the Universidad de los Andes, at Bogotá (Colombia). The procedure and balance of this methodology are part of the reflection contained in this document. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores, through a teenager guerrilla member's life story, the problem of encounters and the migrant's face as representative expressions of the urban, and of cruelty in general. Using a narrative where alternative images of the war in the mountains appear, and a travel through Bogota streets, this images' meeting is analyzed as a face or as a profane illumination, using Walter Benjamin and Emmanuel Levinas' works. That which cannot be defined in an encounter, as in a face, and that which applies to the way we understand the problem of identity in the city, can only be compared with the surrealist experience of encounters and disencounters between Nadja and André Breton, similar also to the anthropological experience of facing object consumption and the look over things while we walk on the streets and descend from buses that bring us for the first time to the city. This essay is a shorter version of a paper I wrote for the Symposium "Cruel sceneries: esthetics and signs of trance and violence in Puerto Rico and Colombia" that took place in San Juan de Puerto Rico in April 2001. I thank Manuel Hernández Benavides for his reading and suggestions to a previous version of this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]