Remittances, Institutions, and Inequality in Developing Countries

The private transfers sent by immigrant workers back to their home countries, or remittances, can improve the development of recipient countries through poverty reduction, higher education, and new business formation. However, the effect of remittances on income inequality is still debatable. While some studies suggest that these transfers are sent to the poor, other investigations find that remittances are directed toward higher-income cohorts, widening the gap between rich and poor. This study provides new evidence about potential income inequality reduction driven by remittances and quality of institutions. For instance, weak institutions discourage the usage of remittances toward productive ventures, more so among poor families. Middle- and high-income groups tend to be better prepared to reduce their exposure to the damages of weak institutions. We constructed instrumental variables and completed two-stage least square (2SLS) analysis to address possible causality bias, a problem so pervasive in this type of empirical studies. Using a set of 25 institutional indicators, we find that remittance recipient countries with better institutions have more meaningful reduction in income inequality. This effect is stronger among heavy remittance-recipient countries

Hepatitis C virus seroprevalence in pregnant women delivering live-born infants in North Thames, England in 2012

To estimate HCV seroprevalence in subpopulations of women delivering live-born infants in the North Thames region in England in 2012, an unlinked anonymous (UA) cross-sectional survey of neonatal dried blood spot samples was conducted. Data were available from 31467 samples from live-born infants received by the North Thames screening laboratory. Thirty neonatal samples had HCV antibodies, corresponding to a maternal seroprevalence of 0·095% (95% confidence interval 0·067-0·136). Estimated HCV seroprevalences in women born in Eastern Europe, Southern Asia and the UK were 0·366%, 0·162% and 0·019%, respectively. For women born in Eastern Europe seroprevalence was highest in those aged around 27 years, while in women born in the UK and Asia-Pacific region, seroprevalence increased significantly with age. HCV seroprevalence in UK-born women whose infant's father was also UK-born was 0·016%. One of the 30 HCV-seropositive women was HIV-1 seropositive. Estimated HCV seroprevalence for women delivering live-born infants in North Thames in 2012 (0·095%) was significantly lower than that reported in an earlier UA survey in 1997-1998 (0·191%). Data indicate that the cohort of UK-born HCV-seropositive women is ageing and that, in this area of England, most perinatally HCV-exposed infants were born to women themselves born in Southern Asia or Eastern Europe

Estudio de factibilidad para el montaje de una empresa helicicola para carne en el Municipio del Rosal Cundinamarca

Tablas, figuras, imágenes, mapaEl presente estudio tiene como finalidad demostrar la factibilidad para la creación de un proyecto helicicola en el municipio de El Rosal Cundinamarca, para lo cual se tendrá presente las condiciones medio ambientales optimas de la región y los parámetros establecidos en la producción helicicola. El caracol de tierra (Helix aspersa muller) desconocido en el medio como alimento, es un gasterópodo de gran valor nutricional, rico en proteínas y bajo en grasas, es muy apetecido en la Unión Europea, principalmente en Francia, donde se le conoce como escargot. La producción helicicola en Colombia, en los últimos años ha tenido un creciente desarrollo en la industria. La idea central del proyecto de helicicultura específicamente del caracol Helix aspersa como alternativa de producción. Se tendrá en cuenta aspectos como localización, tamaño procesos de infraestructura física y distribución de planta para un proceso de comercialización al mercado como producto de consumo.No Abstrac

What are the costs and benefits of biodiversity recovery in a highly polluted estuary?

Biodiversity recovery measures have often been ignored when dealing with the restoration of degraded aquatic systems. Furthermore, biological valuation methods have been applied only spatially in previous studies, and not jointly on a temporal and spatial scale. The intense monitoring efforts carried out in a highly polluted estuary, in northern Spain (Nervión estuary), allowed for the economic valuation of the costs and the biological valuation of the benefits associated with a 21 years sewage scheme application. The analysis show that the total amount of money invested into the sewage scheme has contributed to the estuary's improvement of both environmental and biological features, as well as to an increase in the uses and services provided by the estuary. However, the inner and outer parts of the estuary showed different responses. An understanding of the costs and trajectories of the environmental recovery of degraded aquatic systems is increasingly necessary to allow policy makers and regulators to formulate robust, cost-efficient and feasible management decisions

Real-time activity-dependent drug microinjection

From Eighteenth Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting: CNS*2009 Berlin, Germany. 18–23 July 2009This work was supported by MEC PHB2007-0013TA, BFU2006-07902/BFI, TIN 2007-65989, CAM S-SEM-0255-2006. RDP was supported by the Brazilian agencies: CAPES, CNPq and FAPESP

Pesticide Exposure Alters Follicle-Stimulating Hormone Levels in Mexican Agricultural Workers

Organophosphorous pesticides (OPs) are suspected of altering reproductive function by reducing brain acetylcholinesterase activity and monoamine levels, thus impairing hypothalamic and/or pituitary endocrine functions and gonadal processes. Our objective was to evaluate in a longitudinal study the association between OP exposure and serum levels of pituitary and sex hormones. Urinary OP metabolite levels were measured by gas–liquid chromatography, and serum pituitary and sex hormone levels by enzymatic immunoassay and radioimmunoassay in 64 men. A total of 147 urine and blood samples were analyzed for each parameter. More than 80% of the participants had at least one OP metabolite in their urine samples. The most frequent metabolite found was diethylthiophosphate (DETP; 55%), followed by diethylphosphate (DEP; 46%), dimethylthiophosphate (DMTP; 32%), and dimethyldithiophosphate (DMDTP; 31%). However, the metabolites detected at higher concentrations were DMTP, DEP, DMDTP, and dimethylphosphate. There was a high proportion of individuals with follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) concentrations outside the range of normality (48%). The average FSH serum levels were higher during the heavy pesticide spraying season. However, a multivariate analysis of data collected in all periods showed that serum FSH levels were negatively associated with urinary concentrations of both DMTP and DMDTP, whereas luteinizing hormone (LH) was negatively associated with DMTP. We observed no significant associations between estradiol or testosterone serum levels with OP metabolites. The hormonal disruption in agricultural workers presented here, together with results from experimental animal studies, suggests that OP exposure disrupts the hypothalamic–pituitary endocrine function and also indicates that FSH and LH are the hormones most affected

RECUPERACIÓN DE PERCLORETILENO EN INDUCALSA

A recovery system for perchlorine ethylene from hazardous liquid waste (Ministry Agreement 026 MAE) which stems from shoe making polyurethane sole washing has been designed (Brito H. / Rodríguez B., 2014). Such waste is directly disposed into the environment, causing losses in flora and fauna (GUARIN, O. / RUEDA, G. / PEREZ, H. 2010). Besides contributing with environmental liabilities, the recovered perchlorine ethylene complies the requirements of the DIRSA safety card, because of what it is reutilized in the manufacture process, which contributes to the decrease of production costs and the conservation of the ecosystem. This hazardous waste should be delivered to an environmental manager before paying for its transportation and final disposal (90 USD per kg of waste). For this reason, INDUCALSA along with ESPOCH researchers carried out a scaling of the recovery system by working with 20 samples of perchlorine ethylene – silicone during a lapse of four weeks. An initial characterization was followed by in – lab recovery to measure the variables (temperature, time, input and output flow) with whom the process was scaled for 45,73 Kg/h of waste. The pH, density, viscosity and IR spectrum of the obtained product were analyzed. They showed the purity of the solvent (Disolventes Reunidas, S.A., 2003), which is acceptable because of its high economic value in the market as well as the contribution to the change of the productive matrix in Ecuador (SENPLADES, 2012)