Cost-Benefit Estimation of Cadaveric Kidney Transplantation, the Case of a Developing Country

In this paper we estimate cost savings for the health-care system and quality of life improvement for patients from an increase in the number of kidney transplants in Chile. To do so, we compare the present value of dialysis and transplantation costs and quality of life in a 20-year horizon. We used Markov models and, in addition, introduce some degree of uncertainty in the value of some of the parameters that build up the model and, using Montecarlo simulations, estimate confidence intervals for our results. Our estimates suggest that an additional kidney transplant has an expected savings value of US$28,000 for the health-care system. If quality of life improvement is also considered, expected savings rise to US$ 102,000. These results imply that, increasing donation rate by one donor per million people would turn into an estimated cost saving of US$827,000 per year, or near US$ 3 million per year if the effect in the quality of life is considered. These results demonstrate that kidney transplants, along with a better quality of life for patients are a cost saving decision in developing countries.Cost-benefit analysis, kidney transplantation, quality adjusted life years, markov models

Effectiveness of Different Kidney Exchange Mechanisms on Improving Living Donor Transplantation in Chile

Chile has a very low cadaveric organ donation rate; at the same time, living donor transplantation activity is low. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact on the number and quality of transplants of the potential application of different mechanisms for kidney exchange from living donors to patients on Chile’s waiting list.Organ Donation Rate, living kidney donation, kidney exchange mechanisms

Cinética de imbibición e isotermas de adsorción de humedad de la semilla de jamaica (Hibiscus sabdariffa L.)

La jamaica es un arbusto que se cultiva para comercializar el cáliz de sus flores, pero como subproducto se obtienen las semillas, que por su valor nutritivo y alto rendimiento representan un potencial económico considerable. El objetivo de este trabajo fue describir la cinética de imbibición y las isotermas de adsorción de humedad a 25, 35 y 45ºC en tres variedades cultivadas en México ("Criolla", "China" y "Sudán"). Los resultados mostraron que el proceso de imbibición describe una curva que se ajusta al modelo de Weibull, con coeficientes α de 12.99, 8.81 y 2.21 horas y β de 0.83, 1.70 y 0.72 para las variedades Criolla, China y Sudán, respectivamente. Los modelos de GAB, y de Chung-Pfost describieron adecuadamente las isotermas de adsorción. La humedad de la capa monomolecular (coeficiente a del modelo de GAB) resultó entre 3.97 y 5.71% b.s., lo cual representa una actividad de agua entre 0.1 y 0.30. Los calores isostéricos totales de adsorción obtenidos en el intervalo de humedades de equilibrio de 6 a 22% b.s., oscilaron entre 52.85 y 42.90 .90 kJmּol-1, 60.99 y 43.41 kJmּol-1 y 51.23 y 43.20 kJmּol-1para las variedades Criolla, China y Sudán, respectivamente. A humedades de equilibrio iguales o superiores a 12 % b.s., el calor isostérico fue similar a la entalpía de vaporización del agua, pero a humedades inferiores a 6% b.s., éste alcanzó los valores más elevados

Mesoscopic Theory of Critical Fluctuations in Isolated Granular Gases

Fluctuating hydrodynamics is used to describe the total energy fluctuations of a freely evolving gas of inelastic hard spheres near the threshold of the clustering instability. They are shown to be governed by vorticity fluctuations only, that also lead to a renormalization of the average total energy. The theory predicts a power-law divergent behavior of the scaled second moment of the fluctuations, and a scaling property of their probability distribution, both in agreement with simulations results. A more quantitative comparison between theory and simulation for the critical amplitudes and the form of the scaling function is also carried out

A Sharpe-ratio-based measure for currencies

The Sharpe Ratio offers an excellent summary of the excess return required per unit of risk invested. This work presents an adaptation of the ex-ante Sharpe Ratio for currencies where we consider a random walk approach for the currency behavior and implied volatility as a proxy for market expectations of future realized volatility. The outcome of the proposed measure seems to gauge some information on the expected required return attached to the “peso problemâ€