Currently viewing the tag: "Ecuador"

Ahora inicia la sesión para dar inicio al nuevo mandato 2013-2017 del Presidente Rafael Correa Delgado y el Vice Presidente Jorge Glas.

Se puede ver la transmisión en vivo aquí:

http://envivo.asambleanacional.gob.ec/

Hay muchísima expectativa y mucho entusiasmo por para del pueblo ecuatoriano, han asistido delegaciones de 93 paises, luego de la session en la Asamblea Nacional, se   dirigirán al Parque Centenario (antiguo aeropuerto de Quito) donde se espera habra 100,000 personas y un expectáculo musical de mucha calidad, con 4 orquestas sinfónicas con alrededor de 300 músicos.

Kitu

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By Eric Mack 

Editor’s note: This the first of a four-part series by Eric Mack about Ecuador’s plans to create what officials say could be one of the top research communities of the world. Planners say their aim is to create a ‘Silicon Valley of South America,’ to attract scientists and researchers from all parts of the globe.  Mack is a writer for Crave, managing editor of Crowdsourcing.org and the author of books about Alaska and Android.

Imagine it’s 2023. Things have shifted in the world of technology, and I’m not just talking about the elimination of the standard-transmission vehicle in favor of autonomous transport. Companies in Asia, the United States, and Europe still produce many of the world’s major innovations in everything from energy efficiency and biotechnology to IT and consumer electronics, and many of those products are still made in China.

But there’s also a new player on the scene that wasn’t registering on anyone’s radar in the tech world just a decade ago.

In this particular vision of the future, a small but rapidly growing number of innovations are born, nurtured, produced, and sent to market from a tiny but vivacious country sandwiched between the Pacific and the Amazon — Ecuador.

Scientists and researchers flock to this new Latin American take on Silicon Valley to develop new medicines near the remarkably biodiverse Amazon rain forest. Other nearby abundant natural resources aid in the development of cutting-edge solar cells and new petrochemical technologies. And software and hardware designers take advantage of a network of incubators and an adjacent industrial park to see their next big things spring to life without ever having to make the long journey to and from an Asian factory.

That’s the rather bold dream that’s already under construction here in this rapidly developing nation of 15 million. Since taking office in 2007, Ecuador’s socialist government, led by American- and European-educated economist Rafael Correa, has been on a spending spree — modernizing highways, pouring money into schools and hospitals, and increasing access to the Internet at blinding speed, among numerous other projects.

But perhaps the most ambitious initiative just getting under way in the northern fringes of Ecuador’s highlands is Yachay, a planned “City of Knowledge” that the Correa administration hopes will one day compete and collaborate with Silicon Valley, South Korea, Japan, and the other great innovation centers of the world.

I had never heard of Yachay before I came to Ecuador late last year. I encountered it in a Google search while sitting in an apartment in Cuenca, Ecuador’s third-largest city researching the insane retail prices for consumer electronics in Ecuador and much of the rest of Latin America. (Want last year’s iPod Nano? That’ll be $350 — nearly the average monthly income here.) There’s little reporting on the project in English, and the conceptual videos and promotional propaganda on the official government Web site seemed at first glance like pie in the sky on the scale of those suddenly ubiquitous schemes to mine asteroids.

So I booked a flight to Quito to get the direct scoop from the man with the plan, Rene Ramirez, Ecuador’s minister of higher education, science, technology, and innovation.

Ramirez, at least from my perspective as an outsider, embodies many characteristics of the new, more modern Ecuador. Today’s Ecuador has been rapidly emerging since the Correa administration began a relentless campaign to update and stabilize the country, which had for decades been thought of on the international stage as a bit of an economic basket case.

Ramirez sports a ponytail and bright red Bono-esque glasses. He understands and speaks English, but answers my queries in his native Spanish to be able to use more precise language.

While a translator repeats his detailed answers for me, he swipes away on his iPad, perhaps checking his Twitter feed, which boasts nearly 20,000 followers. It’s not too difficult to imagine this guy giving a TED talk. Problem is, 18 minutes wouldn’t be nearly enough for him to say everything he wants to about Yachay.

“What’s it going to be?” Ramirez asks, surrounded by staff in a conference room at the offices of Ecuador’s Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation here in the nation’s capitol. “It is an entire, extensive city that is the first planned city of knowledge not only in Ecuador, but in all of Latin America…

“The city is going to be (centered around) a university, and it’s also going to be a special economic development zone. Within the city there will be the experimental university…and there will also be other public research institutions — all the centers of research and development, both international and domestic, and also there will be technological parks of knowledge. There will also be incubators and pre-incubators of the innovation that will be born in these centers of research.”

And, of course, Ramirez says there will be everything else that goes with a city — primary schools, housing in the style of New Urbanism, restaurants, nightlife. He imagines Yachay not only as a destination for big thinkers, makers, movers, and shakers, but for tourists as well. Think Palo Alto, Calif., meets Dubai, a logical addition to the standard Ecuadorian itinerary that includes the Galapagos Islands, Amazonian rain forest, and Andean highlands.

The chunk of land Ecuador’s government has already purchased for the project clocks in at just under 17 square miles, or the same size as Atlantic City — a more appropriate comparison might be to the city of Palo Alto, which would be about the same size if all of its open space were stripped out. Of course, if Yachay takes off, there’s room for growth in the surrounding Andean highlands.

Yachay isn’t starting totally from scratch, though. On the site now are several dozen essentially abandoned buildings — some are up to 200 years old, and the government refers to them as “patrimonial sites” — in various states of disrepair that are now being preserved, rehabbed, and integrated into the university section of the development.

“There isn’t really a place in South America that currently attracts a lot of students and scientists…There are good schools, but none of them are really hot,” Jose Andrade, an associate professor in the engineering and applied sciences division at the California Institute of Technology, told me over the phone. Andrade is originally from Ecuador and has played a key role in CalTech’s increasing involvement with the development of Yachay.

Andrade told me CalTech is helping out with the design of a plan for implementing Yachay University and the overall strategy that will help innovations developed within the “City of Knowledge” grow from research concepts to finished products, which could be manufactured in an attached industrial park.

If all goes according to plan, a number of products from solar cells to software and even pharmaceuticals could one day bear a “Hecho en Ecuador” stamp.

It could take decades for the full vision of Yachay — a modern, vibrant metropolis centered around a top-tier international research university and peppered with startup incubators, R&D facilities, and factories that compete with those in China or Brazil — to be realized, but Ecuador’s government is wasting no time.

The Correa government hopes to mimic the economic miracles of Asian countries like Japan and South Korea that seized on an opportunity to export high-tech and other manufactured goods to the world, rapidly transforming themselves from war-torn and impoverished regions into global powerhouses. In fact, Ecuador’s government has partnered with and plans to model Yachay on South Korea’s up-and-coming Incheon Free Economic Zone.

“For the first time, there’s a group of people that are thinking about technology and knowledge and having a university of excellence…that’s unheard of in this country,” Andrade said. “This project — I am personally in love with it. It’s one of the greatest things that I’ve seen in this country, ever.”

As of right now, the location has been chosen; key partnerships are in place; and ground has been broken on the site of the new university that will be the focal point of Yachay, particularly in its early stages of development. Yachay’s project manager told me matter of factly that he expects some classes to begin later this year.

Of course, holding a few classes in a university that’s under construction is one thing. Convincing the world that this tiny country — best known in the tech world for giving shelter to Wikileaks publisher and wanted man Julian Assange in its London embassy — is the next big hub for innovation is quite another.

Next in the series on Yachay, Mack travels to the Galapagos Islands to learn what the project could mean for the rest of Ecuador, and the world.

Credit: reposted from http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57575554-1/plotting-the-next-silicon-valley-youll-never-guess-where/; photo caption: map of the Yachay project and President Correa checks out an old building being renovated at part of the ‘City of Knowledge.’

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Según el Alcalde de Rumiñahui, Ing. Héctor Jácome hay planes y los estudios están siendo desarrollados con lo que planearía la construcción de un tren Mono-riel elevado que conectaría la cuidad de Quito con el Valle de los Chillos. Los estudios preliminares dicen que hay un potencial de alrededor de 100.000 viajes/persona al día entre el Valle de los Chillos y la ciudad de Quito, con estimado de 59.600.000 viajes al año. Aquí unos datos del proyecto:
Viajes al día = 100.000 (viajes-persona)
Viajes anual = 59.600.000 (viajes-persona)
Recorrido = 22 Km
Tiempo del recorrido = 16 minutos
Número de estaciones= 16
Costo/Km= $12.000.000
Estimado total= $ 272.000.000
 Monoriel para Quito
 
 

Es un interesante proyecto que según el alcalde se lo desarrollaría en menos de 2 años y se lo edificaría usando la zona del parter de la autopista que uno Quito y el Valle de los Chillos. Lo que disminuye el costo en la adquisición de terrenos para la construcción de un tren convencional.

 
 
 
Monoriel para Quito

Monoriel para Quito

Lo importante en este proyecto será la palnificación en función del sistema de transporte en Quito para que la transferencia de pasajeros de un medio de transporte como es el mono-riel y el metro, el trole o buses en Quito. Y en este sentido no es solamente la capacidad de transferencia de una manera adecuada en la que el usuario goze de una zona de transferencia corta y horarios coordinados entre los medios de transporte a utilizar de ahi que la frequencia es un factor importantísimo. También se tiene que tomar en cuenta como los usuarios llegarán y saldrán de cada una de las 16 estaciones, si estas estaciones no tienen medios de trasnporte público (buses, ciclo vias) y/o areas de parquadero, se forzará a que solo ciertas estaciones sean usadas, con lo que se crea un conflicto de movilidad de esa zona. El mono-riel sin un sistema cordinado de alimentadores hará un sistema conflictivo.

Si el proyecto llega a ser realidad, se lo puede financiar, quitaría unos 80.000 carros diarios que suben a la capital ecuatoriana día a día. Sería un beneficio enorme.
Wayra
 
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El ecuatoriano Iván Vallejo completó su gran meta de coronar las 14 cumbres de más de 8 mil metros sobre el nivel del mar del planeta, todas ubicadas en la zona de los Himalayas. Iván cumple con gran esfuerzo y con varias asañas, como la de subir al Everest por dos ocaciones en el 1999 y 2001, y los 14 montes sin tanque de oxígeno. Iván es otro de los ecuatorianos de ejemplo para todos, ejemplo de lucha, mucho amor a lo que uno hace, enorme voluntad, amor al medio ambiente, amor a la montaña, digno de seguir sus pasos.

Aquí la lista de los 14 de 8 mil metros sobre el nivel del mar:

  1. Everest
  2. K2
  3. Kanchenjunga
  4. Lhotse
  5. Makalu
  6. Cho Oyu
  7. Dhaulagiri
  8. Manaslu
  9. Nanga Parbat
  10. Annapurna
  11. Gasherbrum I
  12. Broad Peak
  13. Gasherbrum II
  14. Shishapangma

Con esto es el primer ecuatoriano en culminar esta meta, y uno de los 15 andinistas nivel mundial en mantener este record.

  Nombre Período
1 Reinhold Messner 1970-1986 Italia
2 Jerzy Kukuczka 1979-1987 Polonia
3 Erhard Loretan 1982-1995 Suiza
4 Carlos Carsolio 1985-1996 México
5 Krzysztof Wielicki 1980-1996 Polonia
6 Juanito Oiarzabal 1985-1999 España
7 Sergio Martini 1976-2000 Italia
8 Hong-Gil Um 1988-2000 Corea
9 Park Young Seok 1993-2001 Corea
10 Alberto Inurrategi 1991-2002 España
11 Han Wang Yong 1994-2003 Corea
12 Ed Viesturs 1989-2005 EEUU
13 Alan Hinkes(disputed) 1987-2005 Inglaterra
14 Silvio Mondinelli 1993-2007 Italia
15 Ivan Vallejo 1999-2008 Ecuador

Muy bien por Iván y por el país, ya que gente así motiva a las siguientes generaciones a luchar y ha ponerse metas que llevan a todo el país a crear un nivel de confiaza y empeño.

Saludos Iván un ECUATORIANO con unos pulmones enormes.

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Deacuerdo a la Consultora de Estadísticas y Sondeos de México, la Consulta Mitofsky, meciona lo siguiente. El documento esta aquí.

En este documento presentamos una recopilación que comprende 20 países de América y 10 más en Europa, Asia y Australia y aunque las metodologías utilizadas en cada país pueden variar, es una excelente oportunidad de ver en un solo documento el nivel que alcanza cada mandatario y compararlos entre sí.

EVALUACIÓN SOBRESALIENTE: Con evaluaciones de más de 70% de sus gobernados encontramos que sólo un mandatario se coloca en esta posición. Rafael Correa de Ecuador se ubica en la primera posición como el mandatario mejor evaluado de América con 75%, superando el 58% obtenido en enero de este año, y alcanzando los niveles con los que inició su gestión en abril de 2007.

EVALUACIÓN ALTA: En un segundo bloque de evaluaciones con porcentajes que oscilan entre 55 y 70 por ciento aparecen cuatro mandatarios: Juan Manuel Santos de Colombia, Mauricio Funes de El Salvador, Hugo Chávez de Venezuela; Ollanta Humala de Perú.

EVALUACIÓN MEDIA: Con porcentajes menores al 55 por ciento y mayores a 45 por ciento consideramosniveles de popularidad media, y en esa escala encontramos a 7 mandatarios: Ricardo Martinelli de Panamá; Felipe Calderón de México; Cristina Fernández de Kirchner de Argentina; Dilma Roussef de Brasil; de Guatemala Alvaro Colom, y Porfirio Lobo de Honduras.

EVALUACIÓN BAJA: Con porcentajes menores a 45 por ciento pero superiores a 40 por ciento se ubican 5 de los 20 mandatarios evaluados en esta lista.

EVALUACIÓN MUY BAJA: con menos de 40 por ciento de la aprobación de sus gobernados encontramos a los últimos 4 mandatarios evaluados

 

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