Managerial Delegation in a Mixed Duopoly with a Foreign Competitor

We examine firms' decisions to hire managers in a duopoly where a public firm competes with a foreign private firm. In contrast with the case in which the public firm competes with a domestic private firm -where only the private firm decides to hire a manager- we find that both firms hire managers. This leads to a social welfare higher than the one obtained when neither firm hires a manager.Mixed oligopoly

The impact of location on housing prices: applying the Artificial Neural Network Model as an analytical tool.

The location of a residential property in a city directly affects its market price. Each location represents different values in variables such as accessibility, neighbourhood, traffic, socio-economic level and proximity to green areas, among others. In addition, that location has an influence on the choice and on the offer price of each residential property. The development of artificial intelligence, allows us to use alternative tools to the traditional methods of econometric modelling. This has led us to conduct a study of the residential property market in the city of Valencia (Spain). In this study, we will attempt to explain the aspects that determine the demand for housing and the behaviour of prices in the urban space. We used an artificial neutral network as a price forecasting tool, since this system shows a considerable improvement in the accuracy of ratings over traditional models. With the help of this system, we attempted to quantify the impact on residential property prices of issues such as accessibility, level of service standards of public utilities, quality of urban planning, environmental surroundings and other locational aspects.

Repositioning of the global epicentre of non-optimal cholesterol

High blood cholesterol is typically considered a feature of wealthy western countries1,2. However, dietary and behavioural determinants of blood cholesterol are changing rapidly throughout the world3 and countries are using lipid-lowering medications at varying rates. These changes can have distinct effects on the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol, which have different effects on human health4,5. However, the trends of HDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels over time have not been previously reported in a global analysis. Here we pooled 1,127 population-based studies that measured blood lipids in 102.6 million individuals aged 18 years and older to estimate trends from 1980 to 2018 in mean total, non-HDL and HDL cholesterol levels for 200 countries. Globally, there was little change in total or non-HDL cholesterol from 1980 to 2018. This was a net effect of increases in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreases in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe. As a result, countries with the highest level of non-HDL cholesterol�which is a marker of cardiovascular risk�changed from those in western Europe such as Belgium, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta in 1980 to those in Asia and the Pacific, such as Tokelau, Malaysia, The Philippines and Thailand. In 2017, high non-HDL cholesterol was responsible for an estimated 3.9 million (95 credible interval 3.7 million�4.2 million) worldwide deaths, half of which occurred in east, southeast and south Asia. The global repositioning of lipid-related risk, with non-optimal cholesterol shifting from a distinct feature of high-income countries in northwestern Europe, north America and Australasia to one that affects countries in east and southeast Asia and Oceania should motivate the use of population-based policies and personal interventions to improve nutrition and enhance access to treatment throughout the world. © 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited

Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities 1,2 . This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity 3�6 . Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55 of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017�and more than 80 in some low- and middle-income regions�was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing�and in some countries reversal�of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories. © 2019, The Author(s)

Ability of university-level education to prevent age-related decline in emotional intelligence

Numerous studies have suggested that educational history, as a proxy measure of active cognitive reserve, protects against age-related cognitive decline and risk of dementia. Whether educational history also protects against age-related decline in emotional intelligence (EI) is unclear. The present study examined ability EI in 310 healthy adults ranging in age from 18 to 76 years using the Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). We found that older people had lower scores than younger people for total EI and for the EI branches of perceiving, facilitating, and understanding emotions, whereas age was not associated with the EI branch of managing emotions. We also found that educational history protects against this age-related EI decline by mediating the relationship between age and EI. In particular, the EI scores of older adults with a university education were higher than those of older adults with primary or secondary education, and similar to those of younger adults of any education level. These findings suggest that the cognitive reserve hypothesis, which states that individual differences in cognitive processes as a function of lifetime intellectual activities explain differential susceptibility to functional impairment in the presence of age-related changes and brain pathology, applies also to EI, and that education can help preserve cognitive-emotional structures during aging. [This Document is Protected by copyright and was first published by Frontiers. All rights reserved. it is reproduced with permission.

Factores de riesgo desencadenantes de cetoacidosis diabética en pacientes con diabetes mellitus

Introducción: La cetoacidosis diabética (CAD) es la emergencia hiperglucémica aguda más común en pacientes diabéticos y junto con el estado hiperosmolar hiperglucémico son las complicaciones agudas más graves en pacientes diabéticos. Esto está condicionado por diversos factores de riesgo. Objetivo: Este estudio identificó los factores de riesgo principales asociados al desarrollo de CAD en pacientes con diabetes mellitus (DM) y se llevó a cabo en el área de urgencias del Hospital General de Chihuahua Dr. Salvador Zubirán Anchondo. Método: Estudio observacional, exploratorio y prospectivo que incluyó un total de 50 pacientes diabéticos tipo 1 o 2 que ingresaron con diagnóstico de CAD durante el periodo de julio a diciembre de 2020. Se aplicaron los cuestionarios DSMQ y MARS-5 para valorar automanejo y adherencia al tratamiento. Resultados: En cuanto a la etiología se observó que el mal apego al tratamiento es el principal factor de riesgo desencadenante para el desarrollo de la CAD en el 94% de los casos, seguido de infecciones, con un 64% (IVU 22%, SARS-CoV-2 18%, neumonía 14% y otras infecciones 10%), transgresión dietética (44%), ingesta aguda de alcohol (22%), DM de inicio (16%) y otras causas (5%). Conclusiones: No existe un apego al tratamiento en la población estudiada y este es el factor de riesgo principal para desencadenar una CAD

Endocarditis infecciosa sin dispositivos intracardiacos ni cardiopatía estructural subyacente

Objetivo: Describir aspectos clínicos, microbiológicos y ecocardiográficos de endocarditis en un grupo específico de pacientes sin dispositivos intracardiacos ni cardiopatía estructural subyacente. Método: Estudio retrospectivo en el que se revisaron expedientes clínicos y reportes ecocardiográficos durante el periodo de 1997 a 2020. Se aplicaron los criterios modificados de Duke. Se describió la muestra por edad, sexo, enfermedad sistémica, vegetaciones y agente microbiológico. Se excluyeron pacientes con cardiopatía estructural o Libman-Sacks. Análisis estadístico: univariado expresado en frecuencias, utilizando medidas de dispersión y tendencia central. Resultados: Se revisaron 30,000 reportes ecocardiográficos, de los cuales solo 1350 tenían como motivo de envío endocarditis infecciosa, y de estos se seleccionaron 248 casos. La edad promedio fue de 48.1 ± 16.7 años. Hubo 140 hombres (56%) y 108 mujeres (44%). El signo ecocardiográfico más frecuente fue la vegetación, en 278 (93.60%), y la ubicación más común fue mitral (35.55%), con un número mayor de casos en el ventrículo derecho de lo esperado. La enfermedad sistémica más común fue la enfermedad renal, en 135 (41.08%). Se identificó un caso de Streptococcus thoraltensis no reportado previamente en México. Conclusiones: La presencia de endocarditis infecciosa ha aumentado debido a procedimientos invasivos intrahospitalarios y fármacos. Por su complejidad, los equipos multidisciplinarios son indispensables

Peritonitis bacteriana espontánea: revisión

La peritonitis bacteriana espontánea (PBE) se define como una infección bacteriana del líquido ascítico que se produce en ausencia de una fuente de infección intraabdominal quirúrgica tratable. Tiene una gran importancia por ser una de las principales causas de ingreso hospitalario y de mortalidad en pacientes con cirrosis. Conduce a lesión renal aguda hasta en un 54% de los casos y a falla hepática aguda sobre crónica en el 35% al 60%. Los pacientes con cirrosis descompensada tienen el mayor riesgo de desarrollar PBE. La translocación bacteriana es un factor clave en el desarrollo de esta enfermedad. Siempre debe haber un alto nivel de sospecha de infección cuando se evalúa a pacientes con enfermedad hepática en clase C de Child-Pugh con fiebre y dolor abdominal, dado que la fiebre es la manifestación clínica más común de la PBE. En los pacientes con cirrosis, el choque séptico aumenta la mortalidad en un 10% por cada hora de retraso en el inicio del tratamiento antibiótico; por lo tanto, la piedra angular del manejo de la PBE es el uso temprano de la terapia antimicrobiana adecuada, así como el uso de albúmina humana en infusión intravenosa, ya que mejora la sobrevida de estos pacientes