Impact assessment of interregional government transfers in Brazil: an input-output approach

Redistributive policies carried out by the central government through interregional government transfers is a relevant feature of the Brazilian federal fiscal system. Regional shares of the central government revenues in the poorer regions have been recurrently smaller than the shares of central government expenditures in those regions. Appeal to core-periphery outcomes could be made, as São Paulo, the wealthiest state in the country, concentrated, in 2005, over 40% of total Federal tax revenue, receiving less than 35% of Federal expenditures. These figures suggest a redistribution of public funds from the spatial economic core of the economy to the peripheral areas. This paper investigates the role interregional transfers play in the redistribution of activities in the country, using an interregional input-output approach. Counterfactual simulations allow us to estimate some costs and benefits, for the core and periphery respectively, from such fiscal mechanisms.Interregional government transfers, input-output analysis, impact analysis, Brazilian economy

A machine learning based framework to identify and classify long terminal repeat retrotransposons

Transposable elements (TEs) are repetitive nucleotide sequences that make up a large portion of eukaryotic genomes. They can move and duplicate within a genome, increasing genome size and contributing to genetic diversity within and across species. Accurate identification and classification of TEs present in a genome is an important step towards understanding their effects on genes and their role in genome evolution. We introduce TE-LEARNER, a framework based on machine learning that automatically identifies TEs in a given genome and assigns a classification to them. We present an implementation of our framework towards LTR retrotransposons, a particular type of TEs characterized by having long terminal repeats (LTRs) at their boundaries. We evaluate the predictive performance of our framework on the well-annotated genomes of Drosophila melanogaster and Arabidopsis thaliana and we compare our results for three LTR retrotransposon superfamilies with the results of three widely used methods for TE identification or classification: REPEATMASKER, CENSOR and LTRDIGEST. In contrast to these methods, TE-LEARNER is the first to incorporate machine learning techniques, outperforming these methods in terms of predictive performance , while able to learn models and make predictions efficiently. Moreover, we show that our method was able to identify TEs that none of the above method could find, and we investigated TE-LEARNER'S predictions which did not correspond to an official annotation. It turns out that many of these predictions are in fact strongly homologous to a known TE

Impact of Routine Use of Drug-eluting Stents in Contemporary Interventional Cardiology at a Tertiary Center: One-decade Experience of the DESIRE Registry

ABSTRACTBackgroundDrug-eluting stents (DES) have changed contemporary interventional cardiology practice, enabling the approach of increasingly more complex clinical and angiographic scenarios. The objective of this study was to demonstrate the changes observed in the last 10 years in the indication and practice of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) at a tertiary private hospital in the State of São Paulo.MethodsDESIRE is a single-center prospective registry aiming at following the acute and late outcomes of consecutive patients treated by DES.ResultsFrom 2002 to 2011, 4,299 patients were included, with mean age of 64.3±11.2years, 23% were female and 30.5 were diabetic. The total number of lesions treated was 6,518 of which 61.5% were type B2/C. During the course of the study, DES were progressively more used, reaching a penetration of 88.4% in 2011. The complexity of PCIs has increased and in the past year 1.76 lesions per patient were treated with an average of 1.89 DES. The SYNTAX score increased from 12.3±4.4 (2002-2006) to 15.7±4.7 (2007-2011). Clinical follow-up was obtained in 98.2% of the patients, with a median of 5.2years, and during this period target-lesion revascularization rate was 5%, myocardial infarction was 6.7% and cardiovascular death was 4.1%. Stent thrombosis was observed in 2.4% of the cases.ConclusionsOur results showed a marked increment in the complexity profile of patients treated in the last 10 years and at the same time confirm the long-term effectiveness of DES, despite the clinical and angiographic profile of patients

Monitoring The Integrity Of Massive Aluminum Structures Using Pzt Transducers And The Technique Of Impedance

Safety, performance, economy and durability are essential items to qualify materials for the manufacturing of structures used in different areas. Generally, the materials used for this purpose are formed by composites and sometimes they can present failure during the manufacturing process. Such failures can also occur during use due to fatigue and wear, causing damage often difficult to be visually detected. In these cases, the use of non destructive testing (NDT) has proven to be a good choice for assessing the materials quality. The objective of this work was the electromechanical impedance evaluation of massive aluminum structures using ultrasonic transducers to detect discontinuities in the material. The tests have been done using an impedance analyzer (Agilent 4294A), an ultrasound transducer (1.6 MHz of central frequency), two types of PZT ceramics (0.267 mm and 1 mm thickness) and four aluminum samples (250 x 50 x 50 mm) with the transducer placed at three different regions. One sample was kept intact (reference) and the others were drilled in three positions with different sizes of holes (5 mm. 8 mm and 11 mm). The electromechanical impedance was recorded for each sample. The root mean square deviation index (RMSD) between the impedance magnitude of the reference and damaged samples was calculated and it was observed an increase in the RMSD due to the increase of the diameter of the holes (failures) in the samples completely drilled. The results show that the proposed methodology is suitable for monitoring the integrity of aluminum samples. The technique may be evaluated in characterizing other materials to be used in the construction of prostheses and orthoses.943

Permeability coefficients and vapor pressure determination for fragrance materials

Objective This study aims to correlate new experimental data relevant to the description of the combined evaporation/permeation process of a perfume applied onto the skin. Methods The vapor pressure data was measured by thermogravimetric analysis (TG‐DTA). The Antoine constants and the Clarke & Glew parameters were determined for the same set of fragrance molecules to describe its low vapor pressures at new temperature ranges. The permeability coefficient of a set of 14 fragrance molecules in ethanolic solution was determined by Franz diffusion cell experiments, using porcine skin. The samples were analyzed by gas chromatography with a flame ionization detector (GC/FID) and high‐performance liquid chromatography with UV visible detector (HPLC/UV). A QSAR model was proposed to correlate the experimental data. Results The Antoine constants were determined and presented low standard deviations. The Clarke & Glew physically significant parameters were obtained along with its statistical analysis. The fitting is good since the magnitude order is in accordance with the literature, associated with the low correlation between the estimated parameters and low standard deviations. The presented correlation, based on a mixture using only ethanol as solvent, showed better results than previous QSAR models with a standard relative deviation (σr) of 0.190, a standard error (SE) of 0.397, and a determination coefficient (R2) of 0.7786. Conclusion The dataset is still small compared to larger and more general QSAR models; however, it is much more specific as to the type of solvent and class of materials studied. This work represents an advance for the modeling of the perfume diffusion process since it specifies important properties that until then had been treated in a more general way.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Aspectos psicossociais e estigmatizantes da leishmaniose cutâneo-mucosa

Os autores selecionaram 15 pacientes portadores de leishmaniose cutâneo- mucosa (LCM) forma grave, onde buscaram, através de entrevista psicológica, conhecer aspectos da vida de cada um, antes de contrair a doença, no decorrer e após o tratamento. Concomitantemente, realizaram 25 entrevistas com a comunidade onde residem os pacientes, com a intenção de avaliar as reações da mesma ao doente com leishmaniose. Constataram que entre os pacientes entrevistados: 14(93,3%) referiram algum tipo de modificação no decorrer da doença; 11(73,3%) perceberam-se marginalizados; 9(60%) sentiram-se afastados do convívio da sociedade; 10(66,6%) tiveram dificuldade de retomar ao trabalho. Na comunidade, 11(44%) associam o portador da LCM a indivíduos que apresentam deformações no corpo, 8(32%) têm receio de contrair a doença pelo caráter destrutivo das lesões, 24(96%) referiram que os pacientes têm problemas de relacionamento social.The authors selected 15 patients with severe mucocutaneous leishmaniasis. By means of an interview concentrating on sociopsychological aspects they sought to understand aspects of the life of each patient before, during and after treatment of the disease. At the same time similar interviews were recorded on 25 healthy members of the same community to gauge their reaction to subjects with leishmaniasis. Among the patients interviewed, in 14(93.3%) their lives were affected by the disease and (73.3%) were suffering from discrimination. Nine (60%) felt di vorced from society and 10(66.6%) had difficulty in returning to work. Of the healthy community members interviewed 11(44%) associated the disease with bodily deformities and 8(32%) were afraid of catching the disease due its destructive nature. Twenty-four (96%) thought patients had social problems

Detecting retinal nerve fibre layer segmentation errors on spectral domain-optical coherence tomography with a deep learning algorithm

In this study we developed a deep learning (DL) algorithm that detects errors in retinal never fibre layer (RNFL) segmentation on spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SDOCT) B-scans using human grades as the reference standard. A dataset of 25,250 SDOCT B-scans reviewed for segmentation errors by human graders was randomly divided into validation plus training (50%) and test (50%) sets. The performance of the DL algorithm was evaluated in the test sample by outputting a probability of having a segmentation error for each B-scan. The ability of the algorithm to detect segmentation errors was evaluated with the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Mean DL probabilities of segmentation error in the test sample were 0.90 +/- 0.17 vs. 0.12 +/- 0.22 (P < 0.001) for scans with and without segmentation errors, respectively. The DL algorithm had an area under the ROC curve of 0.979 (95%CI: 0.974 to 0.984) and an overall accuracy of 92.4%. For the B-scans with severe segmentation errors in the test sample, the DL algorithm was 98.9% sensitive. This algorithm can help clinicians and researchers review images for artifacts in SDOCT tests in a timely manner and avoid inaccurate diagnostic interpretations9COORDENAÇÃO DE APERFEIÇOAMENTO DE PESSOAL DE NÍVEL SUPERIOR - CAPESSem informaçã

The tidal tails of NGC 2298

We present an implementation of the matched-filter technique to detect tidal tails of globular clusters. The method was tested using SDSS data for the globular cluster Palomar 5 revealing its well known tidal tails. We also ran a simulation of a globular cluster with a tidal tail where we successfully recover the tails for a cluster at the same position and with the same characteristics of NGC 2298. Based on the simulation we estimate that the matched-filter increases the contrast of the tail relative to the background of stars by a factor of 2.5 for the case of NGC 2298. We also present the photometry of the globular cluster NGC 2298 using the MOSAIC2 camera installed on the CTIO 4m telescope. The photometry covers ~ 3deg2 reaching V ~ 23. A fit of a King profile to the radial density profile of NGC 2298 shows that this cluster has a tidal radius of 15.91' \pm 1.07' which is twice as in the literature. The application of the matched-filter to NGC 2298 reveals several extra-tidal structures, including a leading and trailing tail. We also find that NGC 2298 has extra-tidal structures stretching towards and against the Galactic disk, suggesting strong tidal interaction. Finally, we assess how the matched-filter performs when applied to a globular cluster with and without mass segregation taken into account. We find that disregarding the effects of mass segregation may significantly reduce the detection limit of the matched-filter.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication on MNRAS main journa