Ineffective Controls on Capital Inflows Under Sophisticated Financial Markets: Brazil in the Nineties

We analyze the Brazilian experience in the 1990s to assess the effectiveness of controls on capital inflows in restricting financial inflows and changing their composition towards long term flows. Econometric exercises (VARs) showed that controls on capital inflows were effective in deterring financial inflows for only a brief period, from two to six months. The hypothesis to explain the ineffectiveness of the controls is that financial institutions performed several operations aimed at avoiding capital controls. To check this hypothesis, we conducted interviews with market players. We collected several examples of the financial strategies engineered to avoid the capital controls and invest in the Brazilian fixed income market. The main conclusion is that controls on capital inflows, while they may be desirable, are of very limited effectiveness under sophisticated financial markets.

Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state generation with linear optical elements

We propose a scheme to probabilistically generate Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states encoded on the path degree of freedom of three photons. These photons are totally independent from each other, having no direct interaction during the whole evolution of the protocol, which remarkably requires only linear optical devices to work, and two extra ancillary photons to mediate the correlation. The efficacy of the method, which has potential application in distribited quantum computation and multiparty quantum communication, is analyzed in comparison with similar proposals reported in the recent literature. We also discuss the main error sources that limit the efficiency of the protocol in a real experiment and some interesting aspects about the mediator photons in connection with the concept of spatial nonlocality

Campaign Advertising and Election Outcomes: Quasi-Natural Experiment Evidence from Gubernatorial Elections in Brazil

Whether campaign advertising influences election outcomes is an open question; a paradox given the amount spent on campaigning in general and TV advertising in particular. We argue that such “absence of documentation” is due to the focus of the empirical literature on the United States, in which the allocation of campaign spending and advertising is decentralized. We explore a quasinatural experiment that enables us to mitigate the omitted variables and reverse causality problems caused by decentralized allocation. In Brazil, gubernatorial elections work in a two-round system. In the first round, candidates’ TV time shares are determined by their coalitions’ share of seats in the National Parliament. In the second round, TV time is split equally between the first-round winner and runner-up. Using differences between rounds as a source of variation, we find a large causal effect of TV advertising on election outcomes.TV Advertising; Campaign Spending; Election Outcomes; Endogeneity; Quasi-Natural Experiments

Bioenergy and Food Security: Markets, Institutions and Regulation

The discussion about bioenergy solutions and respective interaction with food security concerns continues to be a difficult subject in the international arena. The academic efforts to address the issue should be based on facts and models that allow a sound decision process. However, beyond theoretical considerations and model implications, the facts based on case studies provide, probably, the most powerful arguments, mainly when they are supported by some rationalization and a chosen reference model. The research we want to discuss is based on the study of the two major countries and “players” in the bioenergy initiatives and related agricultural changes driven by that process, USA and Brazil. The key factors to study the subject are markets, institutions and regulation needs, within a systematic approach, beginning with sustainability considerations (environment impacts), market behaviour and food prices and opportunities “versus” risks at local and global levels. For agribusiness opportunities it seems evident that bioenergy alternative is a powerful area for intervention mainly in less developed countries with available land resources. On the other hand, markets and mainly food markets need to be under consideration which might require institutional innovation and different forms of regulation, both public and private regulation.  More regulation does not mean, necessarily, less markets and more state intervention. In some cases it can be a decisive factor for better markets and more market economic driven changes. The actual research also provides examples of private regulation with good results

A 22-Week-Old Fetus with Nager Syndrome and Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia due to a Novel SF3B4 Mutation.

Nager syndrome, or acrofacial dysostosis type 1 (AFD1), is a rare multiple malformation syndrome characterized by hypoplasia of first and second branchial arches derivatives and appendicular anomalies with variable involvement of the radial/axial ray. In 2012, AFD1 has been associated with dominant mutations in SF3B4. We report a 22-week-old fetus with AFD1 associated with diaphragmatic hernia due to a previously unreported SF3B4 mutation (c.35-2A>G). Defective diaphragmatic development is a rare manifestation in AFD1 as it is described in only 2 previous cases, with molecular confirmation in 1 of them. Our molecular finding adds a novel pathogenic splicing variant to the SF3B4 mutational spectrum and contributes to defining its prenatal/fetal phenotype

Lymphangiogenesis and angiogenesis during human fetal pancreas development

Background: The complex endocrine and exocrine functionality of the human pancreas depends on an efficient fluid transport through the blood and the lymphatic vascular systems. The lymphatic vasculature has key roles in the physiology of the pancreas and in regulating the immune response, both important for developing successful transplantation and cell-replacement therapies to treat diabetes. However, little is known about how the lymphatic and blood systems develop in humans. Here, we investigated the establishment of these two vascular systems in human pancreas organogenesis in order to understand neovascularization in the context of emerging regenerative therapies. Methods: We examined angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis during human pancreas development between 9 and 22 weeks of gestation (W9-W22) by immunohistochemistry. Results: As early as W9, the peri-pancreatic mesenchyme was populated by CD31-expressing blood vessels as well as LYVE1- and PDPN-expressing lymphatic vessels. The appearance of smooth muscle cell-coated blood vessels in the intra-pancreatic mesenchyme occurred only several weeks later and from W14.5 onwards the islets of Langerhans also became heavily irrigated by blood vessels. In contrast to blood vessels, LYVE1- and PDPN-expressing lymphatic vessels were restricted to the peri-pancreatic mesenchyme until later in development (W14.5-W17), and some of these invading lymphatic vessels contained smooth muscle cells at W17. Interestingly, between W11-W22, most large caliber lymphatic vessels were lined with a characteristic, discontinuous, collagen type IV-rich basement membrane. Whilst lymphatic vessels did not directly intrude the islets of Langerhans, three-dimensional reconstruction revealed that they were present in the vicinity of islets of Langerhans between W17-W22. Conclusion: Our data suggest that the blood and lymphatic machinery in the human pancreas is in place to support endocrine function from W17-W22 onwards. Our study provides the first systematic assessment of the progression of lymphangiogenesis during human pancreatic development

Towards a compact representation of temporal rasters

Big research efforts have been devoted to efficiently manage spatio-temporal data. However, most works focused on vectorial data, and much less, on raster data. This work presents a new representation for raster data that evolve along time named Temporal k^2 raster. It faces the two main issues that arise when dealing with spatio-temporal data: the space consumption and the query response times. It extends a compact data structure for raster data in order to manage time and thus, it is possible to query it directly in compressed form, instead of the classical approach that requires a complete decompression before any manipulation. In addition, in the same compressed space, the new data structure includes two indexes: a spatial index and an index on the values of the cells, thus becoming a self-index for raster data.Comment: This research has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions H2020-MSCA-RISE-2015 BIRDS GA No. 690941. Published in SPIRE 201