HUMAN CAPITAL AND OPENNESS TO INTERNATIONAL TRADE: EVIDENCE FROM THE ENLARGED EUROPE

In the increasingly knowledge-based global economy, a well-educated and highly-skilled labour force and a significant degree of openness to international trade are vital for countries to successfully meet the challenge of worldwide competition. This paperhuman capital, openness to international trade, economic growth

HUMAN CAPITAL AND DEVELOPMENT: SOME EVIDENCE FROM EASTERN EUROPE

The concept of development is not only referred to the level or to the growth rate of GDP of a country, but it concerns different aspects of individual life. Development leads to a changing of values, behaviours and attitudes of people interested in it and in the well-being of the whole society. \\r\\nSince the second part of the last century, more and more economists always assert that human capital is a fundamental asset to promote economic growth and development. Health and education are the two principal ingredients of human capital. There is a strong positive bidirectional relationship between education and health; in fact, it is statistically supported that the two variables move together, so healthy people are more likely to achieve an higher level of education rather than sick people and, vice-versa, more educated people are more likely to enjoy good health status. This generates a virtuous cycle that can lead to greater development. Indeed, health increases people's capabilities allowing achievement in their well-beings, since healthy people can work longer and with higher productivity than poor health people. For this reason individuals' income rises allowing them major choices in terms of consumption, savings and investments. Considering the economic benefits that start from health and education, not only at microeconomic level but also for a country, it is important to pay attention to the role of this two variables in the economic development process. There are several channels through which health and education can be associated with better enhancement in economic results. They can be find in the labour market and in the participation in the labour market; worker productivity; human capital investments; saving capacity; availability of save to invest in physical and intellectual capital; fertility choices and structure of population.\\r\\nThe present paper analyzes the two-way linkage between education and health and their relationship with economic development identifying the conditions of some Eastern European countries. The methodology through which the results are obtained is the multidimensional scaling method which allows to define relations between countries in terms of proximity/distance with respect to the considered indicators, providing a spatial representation of themhuman capital, education, health, economic development, multidimensional scaling

CONCISE: Compressed 'n' Composable Integer Set

Bit arrays, or bitmaps, are used to significantly speed up set operations in several areas, such as data warehousing, information retrieval, and data mining, to cite a few. However, bitmaps usually use a large storage space, thus requiring compression. Nevertheless, there is a space-time tradeoff among compression schemes. The Word Aligned Hybrid (WAH) bitmap compression trades some space to allow for bitwise operations without first decompressing bitmaps. WAH has been recognized as the most efficient scheme in terms of computation time. In this paper we present CONCISE (Compressed 'n' Composable Integer Set), a new scheme that enjoys significatively better performances than those of WAH. In particular, when compared to WAH, our algorithm is able to reduce the required memory up to 50%, by having similar or better performance in terms of computation time. Further, we show that CONCISE can be efficiently used to manipulate bitmaps representing sets of integral numbers in lieu of well-known data structures such as arrays, lists, hashtables, and self-balancing binary search trees. Extensive experiments over synthetic data show the effectiveness of our approach.Comment: Preprint submitted to Information Processing Letters, 7 page

Neural-Based Nonlinear Device Models for Intermodulation Analysis

A new procedure to learn a nonlinear model together with its derivative parameters using a composite neural network is presented.So far neural networks have never been used to extract large-signal device model accounting for distortion parameters.Applying this method to FET devices leads to nonlinear models for current- voltage functions which allow improved prediction of weak and mildly device nonlinearities in the whole bias region. The resulting models have demonstrated to be suitable for both small-signal and large-signal analyses,including intermodulation distortion prediction

INTERNATIONALIZATION AND INNOVATION: THE CHALLENGES FOR EUROPE IN A CHANGING WORLD

A large part of the economic literature is unanimous in believing technological progress and openness to foreign trade are key variables to trigger the processes of stable and persistent economic growth. An in-depth analysis of these factors, thus, becomes necessary both to meet the challenges of the international market, and to strengthen the European integration process. This paper aims to provide an empirical analysis of the interaction between foreign trade and technological progress by performing a multidimensional scaling. This technique is used to produce a graphical representation of the 27 EU member states, in accordance to the degree of similarity or dissimilarity between them. The indicators used, and the indexes calculated, reflect the different degree of internationalization of each country's economy, the regulation of trade flows, investment in specific R&D and technological progress.International trade, integration, technological progress

Better bitmap performance with Roaring bitmaps

Bitmap indexes are commonly used in databases and search engines. By exploiting bit-level parallelism, they can significantly accelerate queries. However, they can use much memory, and thus we might prefer compressed bitmap indexes. Following Oracle's lead, bitmaps are often compressed using run-length encoding (RLE). Building on prior work, we introduce the Roaring compressed bitmap format: it uses packed arrays for compression instead of RLE. We compare it to two high-performance RLE-based bitmap encoding techniques: WAH (Word Aligned Hybrid compression scheme) and Concise (Compressed `n' Composable Integer Set). On synthetic and real data, we find that Roaring bitmaps (1) often compress significantly better (e.g., 2 times) and (2) are faster than the compressed alternatives (up to 900 times faster for intersections). Our results challenge the view that RLE-based bitmap compression is best

NASA Aerosciences Evaluation and Test Capabilities Project

Overview of the NASA Aerosciences Evaluation and Test Capabilities Project and NASA's new Aeroscience Ground Testing Funding Mode

Current NASA Icing Research Overview

No abstract availabl

Electrocardiographic Abnormalities and Treatment with Benznidazole among Children with Chronic Infection by Trypanosoma cruzi: A Retrospective Cohort Study

Background: Chronic infection by Trypanosoma cruzi could cause heart conduction disturbances. We sought to analyze electrocardiographic abnormalities among children with chronic T. cruzi infection with and without trypanocidal treatment with benznidazole. Methodology/Principal Findings: We studied 111 children 6–16 years of age with asymptomatic chronic T. cruzi infection who were recruited in 1991–1992 in Salta, Argentina. Most children were randomly assigned to benznidazole 5 mg/Kg/day (n = 47) or matching placebo (n = 48) for 60 days. Remaining children (n = 16) received treatment with benznidazole 5 mg/Kg/day open-label. Electrocardiograms were obtained at baseline and in 1995–1996, 1998, 2000 and 2005, and were analyzed using the Buenos Aires method. Among the 94 children with an electrocardiogram at baseline, 8 (8.5%) had electrocardiographic abnormalities, including 4 (4.7%) children with right bundle branch block. Proportion of abnormal electrocardiograms in the full population (n = 111) remained constant over time (media follow-up 8.6 years). Multivariable adjusted prevalence ratios (95% confidence interval [95%CI]) for electrocardiographic abnormalities in 1995–1996, 1998, 2000 and 2005 comparing children treated with benznidazole versus those not treated were 2.76 (0.66, 11.60), 2.33 (0.44, 12.31), 3.06 (0.48, 19.56), and 1.94 (0.33, 11.25), respectively. Among the 86 children with a normal electrocardiogram at baseline, 16 (18.6%) developed electrocardiographic abnormalities during follow-up. The multivariable adjusted hazard ratio for incident electrocardiographic abnormalities comparing children treated with benznidazole versus those not treated was 0.68 (95%CI: 0.25, 1.88). Conclusions/Significance: Electrocardiographic abnormalities are frequent among children with chronic T. cruzi infection. Treatment with benznidazole for 60 days may not be associated with less electrocardiographic abnormalities.Fil: Colantonio, Lisandro Damián. University of Alabama at Birmingahm; Estados Unidos. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina; ArgentinaFil: Prado, Nilda. Dirección Nacional de Instituto de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorio e Instituto de Salud “Dr. C. G. Malbrán”. Instituto Nacional de Parasitología "Dr. Mario Fatala Chaben”; ArgentinaFil: Segura, Elsa Leonor. Dirección Nacional de Instituto de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorio e Instituto de Salud “Dr. C. G. Malbrán”. Instituto Nacional de Parasitología "Dr. Mario Fatala Chaben”; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Sosa-Estani, Sergio Alejandro. Dirección Nacional de Instituto de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorio e Instituto de Salud “Dr. C. G. Malbrán”. Instituto Nacional de Parasitología "Dr. Mario Fatala Chaben”; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin