Learning the monetary/fiscal interaction under trend inflation

How does a higher inflation target affect determinacy and learnability of rational expectations equilibria under alternative monetary/fiscal policy mixes in new Keynesian models? What is the role of central bank transparency? This article proves that in a non-Ricardian regime, determinacy and learnability conditions are insensitive to changes in trend inflation and to transparency issues: expectations stabilization requires taxes to react weakly to government debt. Conversely, a higher inflation target always destabilizes expectations under active monetary regimes. In a Ricardian regime, raising the inflation target requires a more hawkish central bank to attain determinacy. However, determinacy implies learnability only when agents are aware of both the inflation target and the central bank reaction function. If agents need to learn a positive inflation target, active monetary regimes are unstable. Therefore, fully disclosing the reaction function, including the target inflation rate, greatly increases the central bank\u2019s effectiveness in stabilizing expectations

Controlling inflation with timid monetary-fiscal regime changes

Can monetary policy control inflation when both monetary and fiscal policies change over time? When monetary policy is active, a long-run fiscal principle entails flexibility in fiscal policy that preserves determinacy even when deviating from passive fiscal, substantially for brief periods or timidly for prolonged periods. To guarantee a unique equilibrium, monetary and fiscal policies must coordinate not only within but also across regimes, and not simply on being active or passive, but also on their extent. The amplitude of deviations from the active monetary/passive fiscal benchmark determines whether a regime is Ricardian: timid deviations do not imply wealth effects

Multi-fidelity surrogate-based optimal design of road vehicle suspension systems

Ride comfort is a relevant performance for road vehicles. The suspension system can filter vibration caused by the uneven road to improve ride comfort. Optimization of the road vehicle suspension system has been extensively studied. As detailed models require significant computational effort, it becomes increasingly important to develop an efficient optimization framework. In this work, a multi-fidelity surrogate-based optimization framework based on the Approximate Normal Constraint method and Extended Kernel Regression surrogate modeling method is proposed and applied. An analytical model and a multi-body model of the suspension system are used as the low-fidelity and high-fidelity models, respectively. Compared with other well-known methods, the proposed method can provide good accuracy and high efficiency. In addition, the proposed method is applied to different types of vehicle suspension optimization problems and shows good robustness and efficiency

Flavonoid-inspired vascular disrupting agents: Exploring flavone-8-acetic acid and derivatives in the new century

Naturally occurring flavonoids are found as secondary metabolites in a wide number of plants exploited for both medicine and food and have long been known to be endowed with multiple biological activities, making them useful tools for the treatment of different pathologies. Due to the versatility of the scaffolds and the vast possibilities of appropriate decoration, they have also been regarded as fruitful sources of lead compounds and excellent chemical platforms for the development of bioactive synthetic compounds. Flavone-8-acetic acid (FAA) and 5,6-dimethylxanthone acetic acid (DMXAA) emerged for their antitumour potential due to the induction of cytokines and consequent rapid haemorrhagic necrosis of murine tumour vasculature, and different series of derivatives have been designed thereafter. Although the promising DMXAA failed in phase III clinical trials because of strict species-specificity, a boost in research came from the recent identification of the stimulator of interferon genes (STING), responsible for supporting tumoural innate immune responses, as a possible biological target. Consequently, in the last decade a renewal of interest for these flavonoid-based structures was noticed, and novel derivatives have been synthesised and evaluated for a deeper understanding of the molecular features needed for affecting human cells. Un-doubtedly, these natural-derived molecules deserve further investigation and still appear attractive in an anticancer perspective

Resistive plate chambers for time-of-flight measurements

The applications of Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) have recently been extended by the development of counters with time resolution below 100 ps sigma for minimum ionising particles. Applications to HEP experiments have already taken place and many further applications are under study. In this work we address the operating principles of such counters along with some present challenges, with emphasis on counter aging.Comment: Presented at "PSD6 - 6th International Conference on Position Sensitive Detectors", 9-13 September 2002, Leicester, UK. Submitted to Nuclear Instruments and Methods

14-Bromo-12-chloro-2,16-dioxapentacyclohenicosa-3(8),10,12,14-tetraene-7,20-dione

In the title compound, C19H16BrClO4, both the fused xanthene rings and one of the cyclohexane rings adopt envelope conformations, while the other cyclohexane ring is in a chair conformation. In the crystal, molecules are linked by C-H...O hydrogen bonds, forming infinite chains running along [10-1] incorporating R22(16) ring motifs. In addition, C-H...[pi] interactions and weak [pi]-[pi] stacking interactions [centroid-centroid distance = 3.768 (3) Å] help to consolidate the packing

Risk factors for obstructive sleep apnea syndrome in children: state of the art

The obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) represents only part of a large group of pathologies of variable entity called respiratory sleep disorders (RSD) which include simple snoring and increased upper airway resistance syndrome (UARS). Although the etiopathogenesis of adult OSAS is well known, many aspects of this syndrome in children are still debated. Its prevalence is about 2% in children from 2 to 8 years of age, mostly related to the size of the upper airways adenoid tissue. Several risk factors linked to the development of OSAS are typical of the pediatric age. The object of this paper is to analyze the state of the art on this specific topic, discussing its implications in terms of diagnosis and management