The effect of relaxation of interstate banking restrictions on the probability of bank failures and the expected value of FDIC liabilities

The relaxation of interstate banking restrictions would allow small and medium-sized banks the opportunity to alter the composition of their loan portfolios. The issue addressed in this research is what affect this would have on the banks\u27 riskiness. While the variance of asset returns is commonly used to measure risk from an investor\u27s perspective, it is not the best measure of social risk. Two alternative measures of social risk, the probability of bank failure and the expected value of payout by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) are investigated. It is demonstrated that these risk measures are not always compatible with the variance as an indicator of risk changes;The project develops a 2-bank, 2-asset probabilistic framework to analyze the risk changes that result from geographic deregulation. Assuming that loan losses between regions are distributed as a truncated bivariate normal distribution, the necessary integrals to derive the desired probabilities and expected payouts are specified. Since no apparent closed-form solutions exist for the derivatives of these integrals, a simulation exercise is conducted to determine the changes in social risk that would result from deregulation. Using various assumptions about bank capitalization rates, the mean and variance of loan losses and the correlation of losses between regions, the sensitivity of the results are examined;The results suggest that geographic deregulation would provide the opportunity for banks to reduce their probability of failure and the expected payout by the FDIC to a representative bank. However, whether banks actually reduce their riskiness will depend on their portfolio reoptimization. From a systemic viewpoint, it is shown that the probability of a bank failing would likely decline, but the probability of multiple bank failures would increase. Finally, the total expected payout by the FDIC would potentially decline

Validation of Diagnostic Imaging Criteria for Primary Progressive Aphasia

For two decades, researchers and clinicians have been using the diagnostic criteria for FTD to generally diagnose a patient as suffering from PPA and the criteria of Neary et al. (1998) to further specify the diagnosis as progressive nonfluent aphasia or semantic dementia. However, there were a number of PPA cases that could not be classified according to the criteria of Neary and colleagues, which led to a revision of the diagnostic clinical and research criteria for PPA by Gorno-Tempini et al. (2011). The revised criteria encompass three PPA variants (svPPA, nfvPPA, and lvPPA) with three stages characterized by increasing evidence: clinical diagnosis, imaging-supported diagnosis, and diagnosis with definite pathology. As compared to the previous diagnostic criteria, more emphasis is placed on imaging markers as supportive features. These imaging criteria were however proposed based on a purely qualitative evaluation of the literature and have not been validated so far. The aim of this thesis was to quantitatively evaluate the validity of the new diagnostic imaging criteria for PPA variants using anatomical likelihood meta-analyses (study 1) and to investigate the usefulness of these imaging criteria for the individual diagnosis of PPA patients in clinical routine using support vector machine classification (study 2)

Corinne Grenouillet, Usines en textes, écritures au travail. Témoigner du travail au tournant du xxie siècle

Omniprésente dans l’espace public, comme dans l’univers médiatique, la notion de témoignage en tant que type de discours renvoyant à un « genre » narratif s’avère peu traitée par les études littéraires (Charlotte Lacoste, Séductions du bourreau. Négation des victimes, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2010), alors que l’impact du dispositif médiatique sur la fabrication de témoignages a été particulièrement bien cerné par les sciences de l’information et de la communication (Béatrice F..

Entre mémoire et culture : résidences d’auteurs et maisons d’écrivain

Depuis la fin des années 1980, on constate en France un véritable engouement culturel pour la maison d’écrivain, comme espace d’identification et d’appropriation, qui témoigne de l’attractivité territoriale de la littérature. En cela, la maison d’écrivain prend appui sur un double ancrage : un patrimoine matériel (édifices, monuments, sites historiques) et un patrimoine immatériel (langue, littérature, et toute autre forme de connaissance ou de compétence reconnue par des groupes et communautés). Au même moment, on note également dans le pays un développement sans précédent du dispositif de la résidence d’auteurs qui combine création littéraire et activités de médiation culturelle autour de la littérature. La résidence d’auteur, en tant que lieu symbolique, se construit à partir d’une combinatoire de catégories normalisées mais cependant fluctuantes et extrêmement diversifiées et investit souvent des lieux patrimoniaux. Cette convergence ou du moins cet ancrage de la résidence d’auteurs dans les murs des maisons d’écrivain mérite réflexion. Quelles relations se nouent entre maison d’écrivain et résidence d’auteurs ? Le dispositif résidentiel participe-t-il à la construction, à la consécration des maisons d’écrivain ou n’est-il qu’un outil culturel greffé sur des lieux visant un enjeu relationnel ou communicationnel ? Cet article propose dans un premier temps d’effectuer une mise au point conceptuelle visant à éclairer la notion d’ancrage, c’est-à-dire en mettant en jeu la question du lieu patrimonial et des acteurs culturels dans un processus de valorisation de la littérature. Ensuite, par le biais d’une étude de cas, cet article vise à établir une sélection de résidences d’auteurs au sein de maisons d’écrivain (la Maison Jules Roy, la Maison Julien Gracq, le Chalet Mauriac), en montrant comment ces formes relèvent d’une construction culturelle qui articule une donnée monumentale et esthétique, entre lieux réels et lieux imaginaires, ancrage et mobilité, institutions et publics.Since the end of the 1980s, there has been a real cultural craze in France for the writer’s house as a space for identification and appropriation, which testifies to the territorial attractiveness of literature. In this respect, the writer’s house is based on a double anchorage: a tangible heritage (buildings, monuments, historic sites) and an intangible heritage (language, literature, and any other form of knowledge or skill recognized by groups and communities). At the same time, there has also been an unprecedented development of the country’s author residency scheme, which combines literary creation and cultural mediation activities based on literature. The author’s residence, as a symbolic place, is built from a combination of standardized but nevertheless fluctuating categories that are extremely diverse and often occupy heritage sites. This convergence, or at least this anchoring of the author’s residence within the walls of writers’ houses deserves reflection. What is the relationship between a writer’s house and an author’s residence? Does the residential system participate in the construction and consecration of writers’ houses or is it merely a cultural tool grafted onto places with a relational or communicational purpose? This article first proposes a conceptual refinement aimed at clarifying the notion of anchoring, that is to say, by bringing into play the question of the heritage site and the cultural actors in a process of literature promotion. Then, through a case study, this article aims to establish a selection of author residencies within writers’ houses (the Maison Jules Roy, the Maison Julien Gracq, the Chalet Mauriac), showing how these forms are part of a cultural construction that articulates a monumental and aesthetic data, between real and imaginary places, anchoring and mobility, institutions and publics

Introduction

Partant d’un état de situation montrant la transformation actuelle des pratiques de création et de diffusion de la littérature, ce texte vise à mieux cerner la notion émergente d’arts littéraires, que les articles de ce dossier abordent sous des angles variés.Starting from a state of affairs showing the current transformation of the practices of creation and diffusion of literature, this text aims at better defining the emerging notion of literary arts, which the articles of this file approach under various angles

ChromID® CARBA Agar Fails to Detect Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae With Slightly Reduced Susceptibility to Carbapenems

After first detections of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae (CPE) in animals, the European Union Reference Laboratory for Antimicrobial Resistance has provided a protocol for the isolation of carbapenemase-producingEscherichia(E.)colifrom cecum content and meat. Up to now, only few isolates were recovered using this procedure. In our experience, the choice of the selective agar is important for the efficacy of the method. Currently, the use of the prevailing method fails to detect CPE that exhibit a low resistance against carbapenems. Thus, this study aims to evaluate the suitability of selective media with antibiotic supplements and commercial ChromID(R)CARBA agar for a reliable CPE detection. For comparative investigations, detection of freeze-dried carbapenemase-resistant bacteria was studied on different batches of the ChromID(R)CARBA agar as well as on MacConkey agar supplemented with 1 mg/L cefotaxime and 0.125 mg/L meropenem (McC+CTX+MEM). The suitability of the different media was assessed within a time of 25 weeks, starting at least six weeks before expiration of the media. Carbapenem-resistant isolates exhibiting a serine-based hydrolytic resistance mechanism (e.g.,bla(KPC)genes) were consistently detected over 25 weeks on the different media. In contrast, carbapenemase producers with only slightly reduced susceptibility and exhibiting a zinc-catalyzed activity (e.g.,bla(VIM),bla(NDM), andbla(IMP)) could only be cultivated on long-time expired ChromID(R)CARBA, but within the whole test period on McC+CTX+MEM. Thus, ChromID(R)CARBA agar appears to be not suitable for the detection of CPE with slightly increased minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) against carbapenems, which have been detected in German livestock and thus, are of main interest in the national monitoring programs. Our data are in concordance with the results of eleven state laboratories that had participated in this study with their ChromID(R)CARBA batches routinely used for the German CPE monitoring. Based on the determined CPE detection rate, we recommend the use of McC+CTX+MEM for monitoring purposes. This study indicates that the use of ChromID(R)CARBA agar might lead to an underestimation of the current CPE occurrence in food and livestock samples

Multiclass prediction of different dementia syndromes based on multi-centric volumetric MRI imaging

IntroductionDementia syndromes can be difficult to diagnose. We aimed at building a classifier for multiple dementia syndromes using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).MethodsAtlas-based volumetry was performed on T1-weighted MRI data of 426 patients and 51 controls from the multi-centric German Research Consortium of Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration including patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, the three subtypes of primary progressive aphasia, i.e., semantic, logopenic and nonfluent-agrammatic variant, and the atypical parkinsonian syndromes progressive supranuclear palsy and corticobasal syndrome. Support vector machine classification was used to classify each patient group against controls (binary classification) and all seven diagnostic groups against each other in a multi-syndrome classifier (multiclass classification).ResultsThe binary classification models reached high prediction accuracies between 71 and 95% with a chance level of 50%. Feature importance reflected disease-specific atrophy patterns. The multi-syndrome model reached accuracies of more than three times higher than chance level but was far from 100%. Multi-syndrome model performance was not homogenous across dementia syndromes, with better performance in syndromes characterized by regionally specific atrophy patterns. Whereas diseases generally could be classified vs controls more correctly with increasing severity and duration, differentiation between diseases was optimal in disease-specific windows of severity and duration.DiscussionResults suggest that automated methods applied to MR imaging data can support physicians in diagnosis of dementia syndromes. It is particularly relevant for orphan diseases beside frequent syndromes such as Alzheimer’s disease

A Modified Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test Predicts Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia Better Than Executive Function Tests

Behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is characterized by deep alterations in behavior and personality. Although revised diagnostic criteria agree for executive dysfunction as most characteristic, impairments in social cognition are also suggested. The study aimed at identifying those neuropsychological and behavioral parameters best discriminating between bvFTD and healthy controls. Eighty six patients were diagnosed with possible or probable bvFTD according to Rascovsky et al. (2011) and compared with 43 healthy age-matched controls. Neuropsychological performance was assessed with a modified Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), Stroop task, Trail Making Test (TMT), Hamasch-Five-Point Test (H5PT), and semantic and phonemic verbal fluency tasks. Behavior was assessed with the Apathy Evaluation Scale, Frontal Systems Behavioral Scale, and Bayer Activities of Daily Living Scale. Each test's discriminatory power was investigated by Receiver Operating Characteristic curves calculating the area under the curve (AUC). bvFTD patients performed significantly worse than healthy controls in all neuropsychological tests. Discriminatory power (AUC) was highest in behavioral questionnaires, high in verbal fluency tasks and the RMET, and lower in executive function tests such as the Stroop task, TMT and H5PT. As fluency tasks depend on several cognitive functions, not only executive functions, results suggest that the RMET discriminated better between bvFTD and control subjects than other executive tests. Social cognition should be incorporated into diagnostic criteria for bvFTD in the future, such as in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-11, as already suggested in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM)-5