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This paper reflects on achievements of the expansion policies in Latin American universities, focusing on their strengths and the grey areas that can limit their democratizing effects. From a theoretical viewpoint, outlines of the concept of democratization will be examined, acknowledging diverse meanings and approaches. This theoretical construction will be applied to analyze the cases of Argentina and Brazil. The working hypothesis poses the existence of a certain cut back in the democratizing scope of these policies, which implies that, although new social groups have access to a college education, this situation does not always translate into reducing social inequalities [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the relationship between the performance of Latin American stock markets with their real economies, applying seven econometric models for the cases of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. The relationship between stock market yields in these countries and their respective GDPS is examined and compared, applying to the series for each country unit root tests, cointegration analysis, error correction model analysis, Granger causality modeling, self-regression vector analysis, stimulus and response functions, and variance decomposition analysis. The series comprise the following stock markets: Argentina's MERVAL, Brazil's BOVESPA, Chile's IGPA, and Mexico's IPC, as compiled by Economática. The GDP series were obtained from the Cepalstat data base. The series are monthly and are for the period 1993-2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nanotechnology, which is the manipulation of matter at a scale of one billionth of a meter, is poised to be one of the main technological developments of the twenty-first century. Although great uncertainty still surrounds it, the advances in nanotechnology have been impressive, and, given its potential, capitalist competition in the field is becoming increasingly intense. This paper addresses nanotechnology from a socio- political and geo-economic perspective in order to highlight the dynamics and interests at stake, the social networks and power relations involved, and the existing tensions due to capitalist competition and contradiction, among other aspects. This case study of nanotechnology in the Western hemisphere allows us to show and discuss some of the principal ways high technology is fomented in the metropolis (the United States in this case) and how this research agenda is adopted in the periphery (in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]