REGIONAL CUSTOMS DIRECTORATES MANAGEMENT

The management of a regional customs directorate is analyzed. A new approach of the managerial system, in the European integration context, is presented.The customs system is one of the first “doors” to a new economic, social and cultural community. ForPerformance management, strategic management, human resource management

Associations Between Campus Bathroom Use And Mental Health Among Gender Minority And Cisgender Students

Introduction: Gender minority individuals, including university students, experience worse mental health compared with cisgender individuals. Although there are many factors that may shape these mental health disparities, inequitable bathroom access is one known factor. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to explore how campus bathroom use influences the mental health of gender minority students compared with cisgender students. Specifically, this study examines how discordance in bathroom preference and bathroom use is associated with mental health. Method: This was a cross-sectional online study administered across three universities in the United States. Participants (N=120) completed an online survey. Respondents answered questions about mental health, bathroom preferences, and bathroom use across three bathroom types: 1) sex-segregated, multi-user, 2) all-gender, multi-user, and 3) single-user. The sample included 23 (19.2%) gender minority students. Results: Using linear and logistic regression models, this study found that gender minority students were more likely than cisgender students to experience poor mental health as a result of campus bathroom use (B = 1.28, 95% CI = 0.61-1.94). Unexpectedly, discordance between bathroom preference and most frequent type of bathroom usage was protective of mental health (OR = 0.29, 95% CI = 0.10-0.86), but gender did not moderate this association. In addition, findings suggest that both cisgender and gender minority participants prefer single-user and all-gender, multi-user bathrooms over sex-segregated, multi-user bathrooms. Conclusions: Findings highlight that inequitable bathroom access contributes to mental health disparities between gender minority and cisgender individuals. Implications for universities include renovating or constructing more inclusive bathrooms across campuses

Effects of Inducible cAMP Early Repressor (ICER) on Herpes Simplex Virus -1 (HSV-1) Replication

While inducible cAMP early repressor (ICER) is known for many roles, including inhibition of anti-apoptosis transcription and regulation of hormone signaling in human / animals, little is known of the role of ICER when interacting with viral cAMP responsive elements (CREs). Prior to this study, CRE sites were found in a variety of human viruses, in locations relating to DNA binding, DNA replication, and latency. A gel shift assay confirmed that ICER can bind to viral CRE sequences, and a reporter gene assay demonstrated that the presence of ICER on a viral promoter upregulates viral expression. In an attempt to further understand the effects of ICER on viral replication, an in vivo study was conducted, focused on infecting an inducible expression system and analyzing the changes of viral infectivity, using Herpes Simplex Virus-1 as a model virus. In addition, two variants of ICER (an HA tag on the carboxyl terminus and an HA tag on the amino terminus) were studied. This study demonstrates that inducing ICER with an HA tag on the C-terminus limits the viral replication capacity in Vero cell cultures

Algunas consideraciones sobre el argumento de indispensabilidad en matemáticas

La tesis de indispensabilidad se toma habitualmente como un argumento (posiblemente el mejor) para defender el realismo matemático. La propuesta se asocia con Quine y Putnam, y establece que, en tanto en cuanto las entidades matemáticas se muestran indispensables para nuestras mejores teorías físicas, comparten el estatus ontológico de las entidades científicas. Pese a que el argumento ha sufrido ataques desde prácticamente todas las direcciones, algunos autores continúan tratando de defenderlo. En este artículo se analizan de manera especial las críticas de Elliot Sober al argumento y se sugiere que debería ser abandonado o, al menos, reformulado.The thesis of indispensability is usually taken to be an argument (probably the best one) for defending mathematical realism. The claim is associated with Quine and Putnam and asserts that, as far as the mathematical entities are indispensable to our best physical theories, they share the ontological status of scientific entities. Despite the fact that the thesis has suffered attacks from seemingly all directions, some authors keep trying to defend it. This paper tries mainly to analyse Elliot Sober’s criticism against the argument and it is suggested that must be abandoned or, at least, re-formulated

Action Search: Spotting Actions in Videos and Its Application to Temporal Action Localization

State-of-the-art temporal action detectors inefficiently search the entire video for specific actions. Despite the encouraging progress these methods achieve, it is crucial to design automated approaches that only explore parts of the video which are the most relevant to the actions being searched for. To address this need, we propose the new problem of action spotting in video, which we define as finding a specific action in a video while observing a small portion of that video. Inspired by the observation that humans are extremely efficient and accurate in spotting and finding action instances in video, we propose Action Search, a novel Recurrent Neural Network approach that mimics the way humans spot actions. Moreover, to address the absence of data recording the behavior of human annotators, we put forward the Human Searches dataset, which compiles the search sequences employed by human annotators spotting actions in the AVA and THUMOS14 datasets. We consider temporal action localization as an application of the action spotting problem. Experiments on the THUMOS14 dataset reveal that our model is not only able to explore the video efficiently (observing on average 17.3% of the video) but it also accurately finds human activities with 30.8% mAP.Comment: Accepted to ECCV 201

Emprendimientos tecnológicos en Chile: aspectos tributarios

El emprendimiento tecnológico durante la última década en Chile, ha mostrado un significativo aumento avalado por los buenos resultados económicos y el constante apoyo económico del Estado a este tipo de iniciativas. Son más de un millón setecientos cincuenta mil emprendedores (start-up) asociados al sector tecnológico, ya sea como creadores de tecnología o como usuarios de ella para llevar a cabo sus proyectos. Existen diferentes programas de subsidios para emprendimientos como Start-Up Chile, Innova Bío-Bío, entre otros, que ha promovido la creación e innovación a través de compartir experiencias entre los emprendedores nacionales como también atrayendo talentos extranjeros. Sin embargo, dentro de las muchas actividades que deben enfrentar los emprendedores y que muchas veces dejan de lado, ya sea por desconocimiento o por lo costoso del servicio, es un análisis periódico de la situación tributaria de su negocio. En Chile existen un sinnúmero de incubadoras de negocios que apoyan el emprendimiento, sin embargo carecen de herramientas para asesorar o "incubar" el crecimiento de estas empresas, y por lo tanto también dejan de lado las obligaciones tributarias de estos proyectos, dejando un flanco de riesgo latente que deben enfrentar estas empresas. Una muestra de este riesgo, fue la fiscalización que aplicó el Servicio de Impuestos Internos a los servicios prestados por Google AdWords durante los años comerciales 2010 y 2011, y que derivó en giros a diferentes empresas por parte del organismo fiscalizador, por montos de entre los $10.000.000 hasta los$1.500.000.000. Por ello el presente artículo se enfocará en los principales aspectos, desde el punto de vista de la Ley sobre Impuesto a la Renta y la Ley sobre Impuesto a las Ventas y Servicios, a los que se pueden ver enfrentadas las empresas de emprendimiento tecnológico en Chile, para de esta forma alertar sobre posibles riesgos tributarios. Pero este artículo también ayudará a otros tipos de emprendimiento, ya que se analizarán desde la arista tributaria, operaciones que transversalmente toca a todo el mundo del emprendimiento, como la utilización de las stock options, exportaciones de servicios o contratación de personas sin domicilio ni residencia en Chile

Application Of Antenna Synthesis And Digital Signal Processing Techniques For Active Millimeter-wave Imaging Systems

Millimeter-wave imaging has gathered attention in recent years for its ability to penetrate clothing, thin layers of soils, and certain construction materials. However, image quality remains a challenge that needs to be addressed. One way of improving image quality is by increasing the dimensions of the collecting aperture. A sparse array can be used to synthesize a larger aperture with a limited set of relatively small detectors. In this research we design, build, and test a test-bed having an active source at 94 GHz and an array of coherent detectors, mounted on arms that extend radially on a rotary table. Using this test bed a circular area with a maximum diameter of 900 mm can be scanned. The signal is down-converted using heterodyne receivers with digital in-phase and quadrature detection. Signal correlation is performed using the digitized data, which is stored for post-processing, electronic focusing, and image reconstruction. Near-field imaging using interferometric reconstructions is achieved using electronic focusing. Imaging tests show the ability of the system to generate imagery of concealed and unconcealed objects at distances between 400 and 700 mm. A study of the effects of redundant and nonredundant configurations on image quality for 4 common detector configurations is presented. In this document we show that an active sparse-aperture imaging system using digital correlators is a viable way to generate millimeter-wave images