Futures for farmers: hedging participation and the Mexican corn scheme

Administered commodity price schemes in developing countries have proved ineffective in raising farmers' incomes and price stabilisation through futures markets is increasingly advocated as the alternative policy objective. A potential difficulty is that farmers tend not to hedge extensively, even in developed countries where access to futures markets is long established. Explanations for this reticence are examined here with context provided by the Mexican hedging programme, which incorporates financial incentives to spur adoption. Applying representative data for corn to a well-known analysis of the hedging decision suggests that limited participation may reflect rational calculation rather than farmer 'inertia'. A policy implication is that permanent access subsidies are difficult to justify from the national perspective.

La evolución intelectual de la noción de materia en San Agustín de Hipona

El presente artículo estudia y analiza tanto el significado como la trayectoria intelectual de la noción de materia en el pensamiento de San Agustín, la cual, hallándose en un principio estrechamente unida a su interpretación del Génesis, termina por rebasar el ámbito estrictamente teológico para constituirse en una de las nociones claves para la comprensión de la metafísica agustiniana de la creación ex nihilo.The current article studies and analyzes both, the meaning and the matter-notion intellectual trajectory into St. Augustine’s thought, which –closely bound to the Genesis interpretation at the beginning- get to surpass the strictly theological scope to become a key notion to the comprehension of the augustinian metaphysics of the creation ex nihilo.Fil: Benavides G., Verónica. Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Santiago, Chile). Departamento de Filosofí

La Reconversión de la Vigilancia Epidemiológica en Vigilancia de Salud Pública

ResumenA pesar de que los procedimientos tradicionales de vigilancia epidemiológica incluyeran en su origen una función estratégica, más allá del control de las epidemias, en nuestro país el sistema de enfermedades de declaración obligatoria ha sido el único caso de vigilancia que ha merecido tal consideración. Este sistema sufre, desde hace unos años, una grave crisis, debido a la poca utilidad de unos resultados; sea como consecuencia de la falta de usuarios que los empleen para tomar decisiones sanitarias; bien porque se ocupa exclusivamente de enfermedades transmisibles o de brotes epidémicos agudos.Al margen de este sistema oficial de vigilancia, en los últimos años se han ido desarrollando fuentes y procedimientos informativos de gran interés sanitario como los registros de cáncer, las estadísticas de accidentes de tráfico o las de contaminación atmosférica. A su vez, la elaboración de políticas en las que se comprometen objetivos de salud, demandan también instrumentos informativos capaces de racionalizar tales objetivos y de permitir la evaluación de las intervenciones llevadas a cabo para corregirlos. Se describen, pues los principales sistemas de información útiles para la vigilancia.Concluimos que el término de vigilancia de la salud pública define mejor sus funciones de a) seguimiento y evaluación de las políticas de salud y b) detección e investigación de epidemias. Por último, identificamos algunos elementos de la reconversión, como son: a) completar las ausencias de información detectadas, especialmente en relación a los efectos adversos de las intervenciones sanitarias y los riesgos laborales y ambientales; b) facilitar el acceso a la información a través de la creación de bases de datos automatizadas; y c) homogeneizar las distintas fuentes de datos de interés sanitario.SummaryAlthough epidemiological surveillance include originaly a strategic function, beyond epidemic control, in Spain the communicable diseases control system has been the only surveillance scheme. This system suffer a severe crisis, probably due to the scarse uses of the information and/or because the system produce exclusively information about communicable diseases or outbreaks.In the lastfewyears, information sources and procedure have been developed out of the official surveillance, such as cancer register, traffic accidents or air contamination statistics and so on. Moreover, national and regional health plans which signify specific health objectives entail information tools with ability to rank and evaluate the interventions. The principal health information system useful to surveillance has been described.We conclude that the expression public health surveillance define much better the functions of a) monitoring and evaluation of the health policy and b) detection and research of epidemics. Finally, we identify some elements for the change, such as: a) to include information related to adverse effects of the sanitary interventions, and environmental and occupational hazards; b) to facilitate the access of information by means of self-operating database and c) to make comparable the different information sources

Investigación en innovación tecnológica: un estudio bibliométrico de Revista Europea de Dirección y Economía de la Empresa

ResumenEste trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar la evolución de las investigaciones relativas a los procesos de innovación tecnológica en las empresas. Para ello, hemos realizado un estudio bibliométrico de Revista Europea de Dirección y Economía de la Empresa, que es una de las principales publicaciones españolas sobre dirección de empresas. Se han analizado 63 artículos sobre innovación tecnológica publicados en la Revista en el periodo de estudio, que comprende los primeros 20 volúmenes (1992–2011). Se han aplicado diferentes métodos y técnicas bibliométricas (indicadores de actividad, relacionales de primera y segunda generación) que nos han permitido reflejar la evolución del nivel de publicaciones, identificar las universidades y los autores más productivos, determinar las metodologías empleadas, conocer las redes de cooperación existentes entre ellos y los principales temas de investigación tratados.AbstractThe aim of this paper is to analyze the evolution of research on technological innovation processes in companies. We have performed a bibliometric study of Revista Europea de Dirección y Economía de la Empresa, which is one of the leading Spanish journals on Company Management. We have analyzed 63 articles on technological innovation published in the mentioned journal for a study period covering the first 20 volumes of the journal (1992–2011). Different bibliometric methods and techniques have been applied (activity, first and second generation relational indicators) that have allowed us to describe the evolution of publication activity and to identify the most productive authors and universities, the most frequently used methodologies, the cooperation networks among them and the main subjects researched

A new clinical tool for assessing numerical abilities in neurological diseases: numerical activities of daily living

The aim of this study was to build an instrument, the numerical activities of daily living (NADL), designed to identify the specific impairments in numerical functions that may cause problems in everyday life. These impairments go beyond what can be inferred from the available scales evaluating activities of daily living in general, and are not adequately captured by measures of the general deterioration of cognitive functions as assessed by standard clinical instruments like the MMSE and MoCA. We assessed a control group (n = 148) and a patient group affected by a wide variety of neurological conditions (n = 175), with NADL along with IADL, MMSE, and MoCA. The NADL battery was found to have satisfactory construct validity and reliability, across a wide age range. This enabled us to calculate appropriate criteria for impairment that took into account age and education. It was found that neurological patients tended to overestimate their abilities as compared to the judgment made by their caregivers, assessed with objective tests of numerical abilities

The use of artificial neural networks to diagnose mastitis in dairy cattle

The use of milk sample categorization for diagnosing mastitis using Kohonen's self-organizing feature map (SOFM) is reported. Milk trait data of 14 weeks of milking from commercial dairy cows in New Zealand was used to train and test a SOFM network. The SOFM network was useful in discriminating data patterns into four separate mastitis categories. Several other artificial neural networks were tested to predict the missing data from the recorded milk traits. A multi-layer perceptron (MLP) network proved to be most accurate (R² = 0.84, r = 0.92) when compared to other MLP (R² = 0.83, r = 0.92), Elman (R² = 0.80, r = 0.92), Jordan (R² = 0.81, r = 0.92) or linear regression (R² = 0.72, r = 0.85) methods. It is concluded that the SOFM can be used as a decision tool for the dairy farmer to reduce the incidence of mastitis in the dairy herd

Immigrant populations, work and health—a systematic literature review

Objectives This paper summarizes the information on immigrant occupational health available from recent studies, incorporating varied study designs. Methods A systematic search was carried out in PubMed employing terms of interest to the study and related terms supplied by the same search engine. Articles were selected through the following process: (i) reading the title and abstract, in English or Spanish, for the period 1990–2005, (ii) reading of the entire text of selected articles; (iii) making a manual search of the relevant citations in the selected articles; (iv) eliminating articles without a focus on the themes of central interest (immigration, work, and health), and (v) reading and analyzing the definitive article set. No quality criteria were used in the article selection. Results The location of studies was not straightforward and required careful thought about the search terms. The included 48 papers were often multifaceted and difficult to categorize. They generally came from countries historically associated with immigration and described occupational risk factors, health consequences, and the social, economic, and cultural influences on worker health. They were also based on data, surveillance, training, and preventive measures that were inadequate. Conclusions Increased migration is a reality in industrialized countries all over the world, and it has social, political, and economic consequences for migrating groups, as well as for their sending and host societies. More reliable data, targeted appropriate interventions, and enforcement of existing regulations are necessary to improve the health of immigrant workers. Furthermore, studies in sending and developing countries should be encouraged to form a more complete understanding of this complex situation