Inflation and Finance: Evidence from Brazil

In this paper we examine the impact of inflation on financial development in Brazil. The data available permit us to cover the eventful period between 1985 and 2002 and the results-based initially on time series and then on panel time series data and analysis, and robust for different estimators, specifications and financial development measures-suggest that high and erratic rates of inflation presented deleterious effects on finance at the time. The main policy implication arising from the results is that poor macroeconomic performance, exemplified by high rates of inflation, can only have detrimental effects on finance, a variable that is important for directly affecting, e.g., economic growth and development, and income inequality. Therefore, low and stable inflation is a necessary first step to achieve a more inclusive and active financial sector with all its attached benefits.Financial development, inflation, growth, inequality, Brazil.

Macroeconomic Performance and Inequality: Brazil 1983-94

We examine how macroeconomic performance, mainly in the role of inflation, affected earnings inequality during the 1980’s and early 90’s in regional Brazil. The evidence shows that the high and volatile inflation rates existent at the time, combined with incomplete indexation coverage, had a regressive and significant effect on inequality. The results, based on panel time series T>N data and analysis, are robust for different concepts of inflation, inequality measures, estimators and specifications. Hence, sound macroeconomic policies, which keep inflation low and stable in the long run, are to be a necessary first step of any policy implemented to alleviate high inequality, and improve welfare in Brazil.Inequality, inflation, indexation coverage, minimum wage

Financial Development and Inequality: Brazil 1985-99

We examine the impact that financial development had on earnings inequality in Brazil in the 1980's and 90's. The empirical evidence, based on panel time series and time series data, shows that more broad access to financial and credit markets had a significant and robust effect in reducing inequality during the period investigated. We suggest that this is not only because the poor can invest the acquired credit in all sorts of productive activities, but also because those with access to financial markets can insulate themselves against recurrent poor macroeconomic performance, which is exemplified by high inflation rates. The main implication of the results is that a seemingly nondistortionary policy, such as more credit aimed at the poor, alleviates the extreme inequality present in Brazil and consequently improves welfare without distorting economic efficiency.Financial development and markets, credit, inequality and welfare, inflation.

Financial Development and Inequality: Brazil 1985-99

We examine the impact that financial development had on earnings inequality in Brazil in the 1980’s and 90’s. The empirical evidence, based on panel time series and time series data, shows that more broad access to financial and credit markets had a significant and robust effect in reducing inequality during the period investigated. We suggest that this is not only because the poor can invest the acquired credit in all sorts of productive activities, but also because those with access to financial markets can insulate themselves against recurrent poor macroeconomic performance, which is exemplified by high inflation rates. The main implication of the results is that a seemingly non-distortionary policy, such as more credit aimed at the poor, alleviates the extreme inequality present in Brazil and consequently improves welfare without distorting economic efficiency.Financial development and markets, credit, inequality and welfare, inflation.

Protein families, natural history and biotechnological aspects of spider silk.

Spiders are exceptionally diverse and abundant organisms in terrestrial ecosystems and their evolutionary success is certainly related to their capacity to produce different types of silks during their life cycle, making a specialized use on each of them. Presenting particularly tandemly arranged amino acid repeats, silk proteins (spidroins) have mechanical properties superior to most synthetic or natural high-performance fibers, which makes them very promising for biotechnology industry, with putative applications in the production of new biomaterials. During the evolution of spider species, complex behaviors of web production and usage have been coupled with anatomical specialization of spinning glands. Spiders retaining ancestral characters, such as the ones belonging to the Mygalomorph group, present simpler sorts of webs used mainly to build burrows and egg sacs, and their silks are produced by globular undifferentiated spinning glands. In contrast, Araneomorphae spiders have a complex spinning apparatus, presenting up to seven morphologically distinct glands, capable to of rigidness and elasticity associated with distinct behaviors. Aiming to provide a discussion involving a number of spider silks? biological aspects, in this review we present descriptions of members from each family of spidroin identified from five spider species of the Brazilian biodiversity, and an evolutionary study of them in correlation with the anatomical specialization of glands and spider?s spinning behaviors. Due to the biotechnological importance of spider silks for the production of new biomaterials, we also discuss about the new possible technical and biomedical applications of spider silks and the current status of it

A Physics-based prognostics approach for Tidal Turbines

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from IEEE via the DOI in this recordTidal Stream Turbines (TST) have the potential to become an important part of the sustainable energy mix. One of the main hurdles to commercialization is the reliability of the turbine components. Literature from the Offshore Wind sector has shown that the drive train and particularly the Pitch System (PS) are areas of frequent failures and downtime. The Tidal energy sector has much higher device reliability requirements than the wind industry because of the inaccessibility of the turbines. For Tidal energy to become commercially viable it is therefore crucial to make accurate reliability assessments to assist component design choices and to inform maintenance strategy. This paper presents a physics-based prognostics approach for the reliability assessment of Tidal Stream Turbines (TST) during operation. Measured tidal flow data is fed into a turbine hydrodynamic model to generate a synthetic loading regime which is then used in a Physics of Failure model to predict component Remaining Useful Life (RUL). The approach is demonstrated for the failure critical Pitch System (PS) bearing unit of a notional horizontal axis TST. It is anticipated that the approach developed here will enable device/project developers, technical consultants and third party certifiers to undertake robust reliability assessments both during turbine design and operational stages.ETIEngineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

CEPSim: Modelling and Simulation of Complex Event Processing Systems in Cloud Environments

The emergence of Big Data has had profound impacts on how data are stored and processed. As technologies created to process continuous streams of data with low latency, Complex Event Processing (CEP) and Stream Processing (SP) have often been related to the Big Data velocity dimension and used in this context. Many modern CEP and SP systems leverage cloud environments to provide the low latency and scalability required by Big Data applications, yet validating these systems at the required scale is a research problem per se. Cloud computing simulators have been used as a tool to facilitate reproducible and repeatable experiments in clouds. Nevertheless, existing simulators are mostly based on simple application and simulation models that are not appropriate for CEP or for SP. This article presents CEPSim, a simulator for CEP and SP systems in cloud environments. CEPSim proposes a query model based on Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) and introduces a simulation algorithm based on a novel abstraction called event sets. CEPSim is highly customizable and can be used to analyze the performance and scalability of user-defined queries and to evaluate the effects of various query processing strategies. Experimental results show that CEPSim can simulate existing systems in large Big Data scenarios with accuracy and precision

Mobility-aware application scheduling in fog computing

Fog computing provides a distributed infrastructure at the edges of the network, resulting in low-latency access and faster response to application requests when compared to centralized clouds. With this new level of computing capacity introduced between users and the data center-based clouds, new forms of resource allocation and management can be developed to take advantage of the Fog infrastructure. A wide range of applications with different requirements run on end-user devices, and with the popularity of cloud computing many of them rely on remote processing or storage. As clouds are primarily delivered through centralized data centers, such remote processing/storage usually takes place at a single location that hosts user applications and data. The distributed capacity provided by Fog computing allows execution and storage to be performed at different locations. The combination of distributed capacity, the range and types of user applications, and the mobility of smart devices require resource management and scheduling strategies that takes into account these factors altogether. We analyze the scheduling problem in Fog computing, focusing on how user mobility can influence application performance and how three different scheduling policies, namely concurrent, FCFS, and delay-priority, can be used to improve execution based on application characteristics