Real effects of the fiscal policy in Colombia: 1990-2007

La evidencia internacional muestra que la actividad económica se ve afectada por los choques de la política fiscal. En este trabajo se caracterizan los efectos dinámicos del gasto y los ingresos del Gobierno nacional colombiano sobre el producto interno bruto (PIB) y la demanda agregada para el periodo 1990-2007. Para ello se utiliza un modelo estructural de vectores autorregresivos (SVAR) con información trimestral. Los resultados evidencian los efectos keynesianos tanto de la tributación como del gasto gubernamental y de sus componentes (consumo e inversión), aunque sus efectos son de baja persistenciaInternational evidence shows that economic activity is affected by fiscal policy shocks. In this paper we characterize the dynamic effects of spending and the Colombian government revenues on GDP and aggregate demand for the period 1990-2007. This model uses a structural VAR (SVAR) with quarterly reporting. The results provide evidence of both Keynesian effects of taxation and government spending and its components (consumption and investment), although the effects are of low persistenc

Alma En Clave

For my Culminating Experience I decided to create a professional multimedia portfolio that would capture my identity as an artist, engineer, and producer.https://remix.berklee.edu/graduate-studies-production-technology/1017/thumbnail.jp

Reseña de M. Reina, G. Silva, L. Samper y M. Fernández, Juan Valdez: La estrategia detrás de la marca

El libro Juan Valdez, la estrategia detrás de la marca busca explicar la táctica de valorización del café colombiano desarrollada por la Federación Nacional de Cafeteros (FNC), que tiene como principal objetivo beneficiar a los caficultores colombianos a lo largo de la cadena de valor. Para ello, el texto hace un recuento del contexto del mercado cafetero mundial, haciendo énfasis en los principales proveedores y consumidores hasta finalmente centrarse en la construcción de la marca Café de Colombia® y Juan Valdez® como estrategias para darle competitividad al grano colombiano

Quantum percolation in complex networks

Treballs Finals de Grau de Física, Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2018, Tutor: Marián BoguñáComplex quantum networks will be essential in the future either for the distribution of quantum information (telecommunications) or for studying complex quantical linked systems among others. Complex networks have a wide variety of properties that will help us understand how complex quantum networks behave. Here we will study how this complex networks perform using local quantum transformations at the nodes. We will focus specifcally on the Internet network and we will study its behaviour from a current and quantum perspective

Creation and application of a comparative financial index for the Australian fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry

Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) are food and non-food daily consumer items that are exhausted when used once and thus have short lifespans. Purchase of these items is typically a result of small-scale consumer decisions. Research in this thesis explores the similarities between value sales volatility in the FMCG industry and that of commodities traded on financial markets. The research is based on the imminent need and opportunity to identify and quantify the value sales volatility of brands traded in retail stores in Australia and aims to gain an increased understanding of brands’ overall performance. Specifically, this thesis seeks to answer the question: What are the antecedents of brands’ sales volatility in the Australian retail sector and how do they influence brand performance overall? To this end, a “Brands Index”, analogous to financial market indices such as the S&P500 and All Ordinaries Indices, is created to test the conceptual framework. The importance of the creation of a Brands Index in the FMCG industry in Australia is absolute. The index itself represents an excellent contribution to the management and marketing disciplines as it allows any brand or set of brands to be compared against the overall market (represented by the Brands Index). This thesis theorises a market index for the FMCG industry in Australia and measures and captures its observed volatility clustering by using ARCH-GARCH models and CAPM theory to calculate brand betas. Two competing methodologies will be advanced to calculate returns; namely, with and without the presence of an equivalent risk-free rate of return. From these two methodologies, only returns including the risk-free rate are shown to successfully pass the CAPM test

Sodium MRI for Studying Ischemic Tissue in Acute Stroke

This thesis presents sodium magnetic resonance as an in vivo means for non-invasively visualizing the changes in cell sodium ion homeostasis that occur in ischemic tissue during acute stroke. Single quantum sodium magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to determine the time course of tissue sodium concentration (TSC) in a non-human primate model of reversible focal brain ischemia. In each animal, TSC increased slowly and linearly as a function of time after the onset of focal brain ischemia. Changes in the TSC accumulation were seen upon reperfusion. The results demonstrate that the increase in TSC in ischemic tissue is readily measurable using sodium MRI at clinical magnetic field strengths (3.0 T) in acceptable imaging times (5 minutes). The results also indicate that sodium MRI could predict the stroke onset time in patients that are unsure when their symptoms began, potentially extending the use of thrombolytic therapy to patients that would otherwise not receive treatment. Many studies have hypothesized that the best means for the in vivo study of the changes in cell sodium ion homeostasis that occur during brain ischemia is to use imaging schemes that isolate the sodium NMR signal from the intracellular compartment. This thesis investigates the contribution of the extracellular sodium pool to the brain's triple quantum (TQ) sodium MR signal in the rat using the thulium shift reagent, TmDOTP5-. Within the SNR of the experiment, there was no evidence of any contribution to the TQ sodium MR signal from the sodium in the extracellular brain, vascular, and muscle spaces in the head. Finally, TQ sodium MR images in the in vivo non-human primate are presented for the first time. Moreover, these images were obtained in clinically acceptable 18 minute data acquisition times. TQ sodium MRI during non-human primate focal brain ischemia identified large changes in the ischemic region as early as 34 minutes after the onset of ischemia. The increase in the TQ sodium MRI signal intensity observed in the ischemic hemisphere is hypothesized to be due to an increase in the intracellular sodium concentration as a result of impaired ion homeostasis during evolving brain ischemia

DNA Base Excision Repair Modulates DNA Repeat Instability and Non-B Form DNA Structures

The human genome is constantly attacked by endogenous and exogenous sources of DNA damage that generates DNA base lesions and strand breaks leading to genome instability, cell death, and diseases. To combat these adverse effects, cells have evolved a robust DNA repair mechanism called “the DNA base excision repair (BER),” which efficiently removes DNA lesions maintaining genome stability. However, its underlying molecular mechanisms remain to be elucidated. In my dissertation research, I explored the molecular mechanism by which BER modulates trinucleotide repeats (TNR) by processing non-B form structures such as hairpins and R-loops through the coordination among BER enzymes and cofactors and the proteins from other DNA repair pathways. For the first time, we discovered that Fanconi anemia-associated nuclease 1 (FAN1) coordinated with a key BER enzyme, flap endonuclease 1 (FEN1), to prevent repeat expansion by promoting CAG repeat deletion during BER of oxidative DNA damage. We further demonstrated that the BER cofactor, PCNA/ubPCNA, coordinated with FAN1 to attenuate CAG repeat expansion during BER in a CAG repeat hairpin. Exploring the mechanisms by which BER regulates TNR instability by processing bulky non-B form structures, R-loops. We found that an abasic lesion on the non-template strand of a CAG repeat R-loop was incised by AP endonuclease 1 (APE1), converting the R-loop into a double-flap intermediate containing an RNA:DNA hybrid. This inhibited DNA polymerase β (pol β) DNA synthesis and stimulated FEN1 cleavage of the repeats leading to repeat deletion. We showed that FEN1 partially cleaved the RNA strand on a CAG repeat R-loop to facilitate pol β skip-over of a hairpin leading to repeat deletion. We further identified a new role of FEN1 of resolving R-loops through the BER pathway. We found that FEN1 efficiently cleaved RNA during the processing of DNA lagging strand and R-loops and demonstrated that FEN1 also used its flap tracking to track down to the DNA region to make a cleavage removing the RNA leading to the lagging strand maturation and R-loop resolution via BER. Our study provides new insights into the molecular mechanism by which BER maintains genome stability and integrity