Why Brazil has not Grown: A Comparative Analysis of Brazilian, Indian, and Chinese Economic Management

This paper does not aim to dispute that Brazil would benefit from reforms in any or all of these areas. Rather, the paper offers a skeptical perspective on reform menus and proposes an alternative explanation for the faster growth of Brazil’s peers India and China2. The paper begins by introducing (section 1) the idea of the BRICs countries, to establish the basis for comparisons of most similar cases. It then surveys the results of a generation of Washington Consensus era growth (section 2). Although there is a considerable amount of divergence over what causes growth, it seems that something approaching a consensus holds that universally applicable holistic reform programs have been largely discredited by economic performance in developing countries over the last two decades. Section 3 argues that post-Keynesian approaches, which focus on the maintenance of monetary and fiscal policy autonomy, offer a compelling explanation for the difference in growth results of Brazil, India, and China. That is, the inflation targeting system in Brazil has failed to adequately control inflation and contributed to slow start-stop growth while the more managed approaches favored by China and India have done the reverse

Comparison of the effect of topology type and linker composition of zeolitic imidazolate framework fillers on the performance of mixed matrix membranes in CO2/N2 separation

The authors acknowledge EPSRC Grant SynHiSel (EP/V047078/1). QJ acknowledges funding from the Chinese Scholarship Council CSC scheme from the Chinese Government (201908140117). The authors also acknowledge the EPSRC Strategic Equipment Resource Grant EP/R023751/1 for the use of the Jeol JSM–IT800 electron microscope at University of St Andrews.Mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) combine the high separation performance of porous materials with the processibility of polymers and so possess potential for carbon capture from CO2-containing gas streams. Zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) are promising candidates as molecular-sieve fillers in MMMs due to their tunability and ease of synthesis. We have compared four ZIFs, all as nanoparticles of similar sizes (ca. 400 nm), as MMM fillers, to investigate the effects of ZIF structure and chemistry on MMM performance of pure gas (CO2, N2) permeation under the same conditions. The chosen ZIFs include two that exhibit strong CO2 adsorption (hybrid ZIF-7/COK-17 and ZIF-94) and two that have higher pore volumes but weaker CO2 interactions (ZIF-8 and a hybrid ZIF-11/ZIF-71). The hybrid ZIF-7/COK-17 and ZIF-94 are structurally related to ZIF-7 (rhombohedral sod topology) and ZIF-8 (cubic sod), respectively, via partial or complete substitution of benzimidazole or 2-methylimidazole by 4,5-dichloroimidazole or 4-methyl-5-imidazolecarboxaldehyde, while the hybrid ZIF-11/ZIF-71 has the rho topology but the same composition as the ZIF-7/COK-17 hybrid. In the first part of the comparative study, MMMs based on two types of commercial polymers, Matrimid®5218 and PEBAX-MH1657, were prepared containing the ZIF-7/COK-17 hybrid and also with ZIF-94. ZIF-94 shows much better compatibility with the polymers, forming homogeneous dispersions at all loadings attempted (≤35 % wt%) whereas the hybrid shows inhomogeneity above 12 wt% in each case. At 12 wt% loading, both fillers show an increase in CO2 permeability at 1.2 bar and 293 K compared to the pure membrane (in PEBAX, this increases from 49.5 to 60 and 68 Barrer) which is the result of increased solubility compensating for decreased diffusivity, and this improvement in permeability continues to increase at the higher levels of loading possible with ZIF-94. ZIF-7/COK-17 in PEBAX show higher selectivity, achieving a calculated CO2/N2 selectivity up to 70. Further investigation of CO2 and N2 permeation on MMMs with the four ZIFs at 12 wt% in PEBAX-MH1657 showed a clear distinction between the ZIF-94 and ZIF-7/COK-17 MMMs (which show higher membrane solubilities but lower diffusivities) compared to ZIF-8 and ZIF-11/ZIF-71 MMMs. At the loading chosen, the CO2 permeability increase achieved by the four ZIFs over PEBAX-MH1657 increases in the order ZIF-11/-71, ZIF-7-COK-17 (ca. 60 Barrer) < ZIF-94 (68) < ZIF-8 (81), reflecting the complex interplay between CO2 solubility (increasing with interaction strength) and diffusivity (increasing with available cage and window size). The calculated CO2/N2 selectivity is highest for the hybrid ZIF-7/COK-17 membrane (70), which is attributed to molecular sieving effects in the rhombohedral sod structure.Peer reviewe

Why brazil has not grown: a comparative analysis of brazilian and chinese economic management.

El objetivo de este artículo es responder una pregunta básica que no sólo se hacen los brasileros, sino también personas en otros países en desarrollo en los cuales se sobrevaluaron las agendas de reforma liberales, la pregunta es: ¿por qué China ha crecido tan rápidamente y Brasil no? En la primera sección se establecen las bases para comparar Brasil y China contextualizando estos países dentro del concepto del BRIC. La segunda sección tiene como objetivo una explicación parcial, midiendo los resultados de crecimiento de una generación hija del Consenso de Washington. Dado el agnosticismo sobre los paquetes totalmente liberales y el enigma de por qué los reformadores incompletos crecieron más, el artículo se sumerge en un análisis comparativo de las reformas brasileras y chinas enfocándose únicamente en el tema de política macroeconómica, especialmente los regímenes monetario y cambiarlo, y sus efectos en el crecimiento en la tercera sección. Es decir, la experiencia brasilera con los regímenes de inflación objetivo y tipo de cambio flexible, desde 1999 ha contribuido a un crecimiento lento de pare y siga además de una inflación relativamente alta, mientras que el enfoque favorecido por China, más controlado, ha producido lo contrario. Finalmente, el artículo concluye ofreciendo consejos de política económica a otros países en desarrollo, los del BRIC, el N-11, u otros

Heuristic Satisficing Inferential Decision Making in Human and Robot Active Perception

Inferential decision-making algorithms typically assume that an underlying probabilistic model of decision alternatives and outcomes may be learned a priori or online. Furthermore, when applied to robots in real-world settings they often perform unsatisfactorily or fail to accomplish the necessary tasks because this assumption is violated and/or they experience unanticipated external pressures and constraints. Cognitive studies presented in this and other papers show that humans cope with complex and unknown settings by modulating between near-optimal and satisficing solutions, including heuristics, by leveraging information value of available environmental cues that are possibly redundant. Using the benchmark inferential decision problem known as ``treasure hunt", this paper develops a general approach for investigating and modeling active perception solutions under pressure. By simulating treasure hunt problems in virtual worlds, our approach learns generalizable strategies from high performers that, when applied to robots, allow them to modulate between optimal and heuristic solutions on the basis of external pressures and probabilistic models, if and when available. The result is a suite of active perception algorithms for camera-equipped robots that outperform treasure-hunt solutions obtained via cell decomposition, information roadmap, and information potential algorithms, in both high-fidelity numerical simulations and physical experiments. The effectiveness of the new active perception strategies is demonstrated under a broad range of unanticipated conditions that cause existing algorithms to fail to complete the search for treasures, such as unmodelled time constraints, resource constraints, and adverse weather (fog)

HBV-Specific Adaptive Immunity

The successful control of HBV infection requires an efficient expansion of distinct elements of the adaptive immune system (B cells, helper and cytotoxic T cells) that, due to the hepatotropic nature of HBV, need to operate in the liver parenchyma. In this respect, we will discuss broad features of HBV immunity in patients with resolved or chronic HBV infection and analyze how the liver environment can directly modulate HBV-immunity

8q24 Cancer Risk Allele Associated with Major Metastatic Risk in Inflammatory Breast Cancer

BACKGROUND: Association studies have identified low penetrance alleles that participate to the risk of cancer development. The 8q24 chromosomal region contains several such loci involved in various cancers that have been recently studied for their propensity to influence the clinical outcome of prostate cancer. We investigated here two 8q24 breast and colon cancer risk alleles in the close vicinity of the MYC gene for their role in the occurrence of distant metastases. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A retrospective series of 449 patients affected with breast or colon adenocarcinoma was genotyped for the rs13281615 and/or rs6983267 SNPs. Statistical analyses were done using the survival package v2.30 in the R software v2.9.1. The two SNPs did not influence the development of distant metastases of colon cancer; rs6983267 showed a mild effect on breast cancer. However, this effect was greatly emphasized when considering inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) solely. Replicated on a larger and independent series of IBC the contribution of the genotype to the metastatic risk of IBC was found an independent predictor of outcome (p = 2e-4; OR 8.3, CI95:2.6-33). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our study shows first that the monitoring of this specific germline variation may add a substantial tool for IBC prognostication, an aggressive disease that evolves towards distant metastases much more frequently than non-IBC and for which no reliable prognostic factor is available in medical practice. Second, it more generally suggests that risk alleles, while associated with low susceptibility, could correlate with a high risk of metastasis

Apport et défis des Big Data en cancérologie

International audienceDepuis le premier séquençage du génome humain en 2001, le développement de nouvelles technologies à haut débit, ainsi que la diminution considérable du coût du séquençage ont permis des avancées importantes en oncologie. La caractérisation moléculaire des cancers a notamment permis d’identifier des anomalies oncogéniques clés au cours du processus tumoral, permettant le développement de stratégies thérapeutiques personnalisées. Cependant, la quantité d’information considérable ainsi générée a créé de nouveaux défis à relever comme le stockage, le traitement ou encore l’exploitation de l’information. Dans cet article, nous décrivons l’apport et les défis représentés par les Big Data en cancérologie