111 research outputs found
European fiscal rules require a major overhaul. Bruegel Policy Contribution Issue nËš18 | October 2018
In this Policy Contribution prepared for the French Conseil d’Analyse Économique, the authors assess current European fiscal rules and propose a major simplification. They recommend substituting the numerous rules with a new simple one, which would help reconcile fiscal prudence and macroeconomic stabilisation of the economy
Réformer les règles budgétaires européennes : simplification, stabilisation et soutenabilité
La réforme de la zone euro est à nouveau à l’ordre
du jour. Parmi les pistes envisagées, l’évolution des
règles budgétaires devrait figurer en tête de liste.
Celles-ci ont en effet engendré une austérité budgétaire
excessive pendant la crise, aggravant et prolongeant ses
conséquences économiques, sociales et politiques. Inversement, la réduction de la dette a été insuffisante dans
de nombreux pays en période de conjoncture favorable
dans les années 2000, les règles n’étant pas respectées
ou insuffisamment rigoureuses. Ces règles souffrent en
outre de graves problèmes de mesure : elles sont basées
sur un concept légitime, le solde public structurel, mais
celui-ci n’est pas observable et fait l’objet d’importantes
erreurs d’estimation.
Les erreurs de politique économique générées par les
règles budgétaires ont conduit à reporter sur la Banque
centrale européenne l’essentiel du rôle de stabilisation de
l’activité. L’application du cadre budgétaire européen extrêmement complexe, peu transparent et sujet à erreurs a,
par ailleurs, exposé la Commission européenne à des
critiques des États membres, que la situation de leurs
finances publiques soit solide ou dégradée. Les règles européennes, perçues comme du micro-management bruxellois
portant atteinte à la souveraineté nationale, servent ainsi
de bouc émissaire aux populistes antieuropéens.
Les règles budgétaires sont cependant indispensables
dans une union monétaire, afin d’assurer la soutenabilité de la dette publique et parce que la clause de nonrenflouement en cas de crise n’est pas crédible. Elles ne
sont pas une solution miracle et ne peuvent se substituer
au débat démocratique national sur les choix budgétaires
et la soutenabilité de la dette, mais elles devraient aider
à encadrer ce débat. Elles devraient être aussi transparentes et simples que possible en fixant des objectifs
directement pilotables par le gouvernement (simplification), permettre de conduire une politique budgétaire
contracyclique (stabilisation) et inciter à réduire la dette
publique excessive (soutenabilité).
L’objectif de cette Note est d’évaluer le cadre actuel et
de proposer une profonde simplification. Nous recommandons de substituer aux nombreuses règles actuelles une
règle simple : les dépenses nominales ne devraient pas
croître plus rapidement que le PIB potentiel à long terme et
plus lentement dans les pays oĂą la dette est excessive. Les
simulations effectuées pour cette Note suggèrent qu’une
telle règle permettrait de concilier prudence budgétaire et
stabilisation macroéconomique de l’économie. Dans un
cadre institutionnel national et européen renforcé, nous
recommandons d’élargir le mandat du Haut Conseil des
finances publiques et de mieux l’intégrer dans le processus
budgétaire national en lui confiant l’analyse des prévisions budgétaires et de la soutenabilité de la dette et en
renforçant sa capacité à produire des prévisions macroéconomiques. Enfin, pour une application crédible et non
bureaucratique des règles budgétaires, nous préconisons
la combinaison de plusieurs instruments : surveillance,
incitations positives, discipline de marché et responsabilisation politique
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Multiple value signals in dopaminergic midbrain and their role in avoidance contexts
The role of dopaminergic brain regions in avoidance behaviour is unclear. Active avoidance requires motivation, and the latter is linked to increased activity in dopaminergic regions. However, avoidance is also often tethered to the prospect of punishment, a state typically characterized by below baseline levels of dopaminergic function. Avoidance has been considered from the perspective of two-factor theories where the prospect of safety is considered to act as a surrogate for reward, leading to dopamine release and enhanced motivational drive. Using fMRI we investigated predictions from two-factor theory by separating the neural representation of a conventional net expected value, which is negative in the case of avoidance, from an adjusted expected value which factors in a possibility of punishment and is larger for both big rewards and big (predictably avoidable) punishments. We show that neural responses in ventral striatum and ventral tegmental area/substantial nigra (VTA/SN) covaried with net expected value. Activity in VTA/SN also covaried with an adjusted expected value, as did activity in anterior insula. Consistent with two-factor theory models, the findings indicate that VTA/SN and insula process an adjusted expected value during avoidance behaviour
Morphological and physiological changes in tetrahymena pyriformis for the in vitro cytotoxicity assessment of triton X-100
Non-ionic surfactants such as Triton X-100 have been widely used in industrial processing and in cleaning products for almost 50
years, being effective and economic emulsifying, wetting agents, dispersants and solubilizers. Cleaning products containing these
surfactants are disposed of mainly by discharge into wastewater, which receives biological treatment in wastewater treatment systems.
However, surface-active agents interact with eukaryotic cell membranes leading to biological damage at high concentrations.
Tetrahymena pyriformis was used here as model organism to assess the effects of Triton X-100 through a series of in vitro cytotoxicity
tests. Growth rates and morphological changes were, by their simplicity and reproducibility, the simplest toxicological
assays. Cytoskeleton analysis seemed to be related with phagocytosis rate. Viability was evaluated by two different tests. Calcein
AM/EthD-1 was used to assess T. pyriformis membrane damage during the 48-h experiment. The colorimetric MTT assay proved
to be highly sensitive even at very short periods of Triton X-100 exposure. Tests performed in this study included simple and fast
bioassays that provide overall information on the morphological and physiological state of cells exposed to different non-lytic and
lytic concentrations of Triton X-100.Fundação para a CiĂŞncia e a Tecnologia (FCT) - PRAXIS XXI/BD/20328/99 - Instituto de Biotecnologia e QuĂmica Fina (IBQF).
Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de SP (FAPESP).
Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento CientĂfico e TecnolĂłgico (CNPq).
Revista de Atualização Médica ( RAM)
Long-Term Memory for Pavlovian Fear Conditioning Requires Dopamine in the Nucleus Accumbens and Basolateral Amygdala
The neurotransmitter dopamine (DA) is essential for learning in a Pavlovian fear conditioning paradigm known as fear-potentiated startle (FPS). Mice lacking the ability to synthesize DA fail to learn the association between the conditioned stimulus and the fear-inducing footshock. Previously, we demonstrated that restoration of DA synthesis to neurons of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) was sufficient to restore FPS. Here, we used a target-selective viral restoration approach to determine which mesocorticolimbic brain regions receiving DA signaling from the VTA require DA for FPS. We demonstrate that restoration of DA synthesis to both the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and nucleus accumbens (NAc) is required for long-term memory of FPS. These data provide crucial insight into the dopamine-dependent circuitry involved in the formation of fear-related memory
Properties of the Liquid-Vapor Interface of Acetone-Water Mixtures. A Computer Simulation and ITIM Analysis Study
Molecular dynamics simulations of the liquid-vapor interface of acetone-water mixtures of different compositions, covering the entire composition range have been performed on the canonical (N, V, T) ensemble at 298 K, using a model combination that excellently describes the mixing properties of these compounds. The properties of the intrinsic liquid surfaces have been analyzed in terms of the Identification of the Truly Interfacial Molecules (ITIM) method. Thus, the composition, width, roughness, and separation of the subsurface molecular layers, as well as self-association, orientation, and dynamics of exchange with the bulk phase of the surface molecules have been analyzed in detail. Our results show that acetone molecules are strongly adsorbed at the liquid surface, and this adsorption extends to several molecular layers. Like molecules in the surface layer are found to form relatively large lateral self-associates. The effect of the vicinity of the vapor phase on a number of properties of the liquid phase vanishes beyond the first molecular layer, with the second subsurface layer already part of the bulk liquid phase in these respects. The orientational preferences of the surface molecules are governed primarily by the dipole-dipole interaction of the neighboring acetone molecules, and hydrogen bonding interaction of the neighboring acetone-water pairs. (Figure Presented). © 2015 American Chemical Society
The Relative Contribution of High-Gamma Linguistic Processing Stages of Word Production, and Motor Imagery of Articulation in Class Separability of Covert Speech Tasks in EEG Data
Word production begins with high-Gamma automatic linguistic processing functions followed by speech motor planning and articulation. Phonetic properties are processed in both linguistic and motor stages of word production. Four phonetically dissimilar phonemic structures “BA”, “FO”, “LE”, and “RY” were chosen as covert speech tasks. Ten neurologically healthy volunteers with the age range of 21–33 participated in this experiment. Participants were asked to covertly speak a phonemic structure when they heard an auditory cue. EEG was recorded with 64 electrodes at 2048 samples/s. Initially, one-second trials were used, which contained linguistic and motor imagery activities. The four-class true positive rate was calculated. In the next stage, 312 ms trials were used to exclude covert articulation from analysis. By eliminating the covert articulation stage, the four-class grand average classification accuracy dropped from 96.4% to 94.5%. The most valuable features emerge after Auditory cue recognition (~100 ms post onset), and within the 70–128 Hz frequency range. The most significant identified brain regions were the Prefrontal Cortex (linked to stimulus driven executive control), Wernicke’s area (linked to Phonological code retrieval), the right IFG, and Broca’s area (linked to syllabification). Alpha and Beta band oscillations associated with motor imagery do not contain enough information to fully reflect the complexity of speech movements. Over 90% of the most class-dependent features were in the 30-128 Hz range, even during the covert articulation stage. As a result, compared to linguistic functions, the contribution of motor imagery of articulation in class separability of covert speech tasks from EEG data is negligible
Goal-directed and habitual control in the basal ganglia: implications for Parkinson's disease
Progressive loss of the ascending dopaminergic projection in the basal ganglia is a fundamental pathological feature of Parkinson's disease. Studies in animals and humans have identified spatially segregated functional territories in the basal ganglia for the control of goal-directed and habitual actions. In patients with Parkinson's disease the loss of dopamine is predominantly in the posterior putamen, a region of the basal ganglia associated with the control of habitual behaviour. These patients may therefore be forced into a progressive reliance on the goal-directed mode of action control that is mediated by comparatively preserved processing in the rostromedial striatum. Thus, many of their behavioural difficulties may reflect a loss of normal automatic control owing to distorting output signals from habitual control circuits, which impede the expression of goal-directed action. © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
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Endophytes vs tree pathogens and pests: can they be used as biological control agents to improve tree health?
Like all other plants, trees are vulnerable to attack by a multitude of pests and pathogens. Current control measures for many of these diseases are limited and relatively ineffective. Several methods, including the use of conventional synthetic agro-chemicals, are employed to reduce the impact of pests and diseases. However, because of mounting concerns about adverse effects on the environment and a variety of economic reasons, this limited management of tree diseases by chemical methods is losing ground. The use of biological control, as a more environmentally friendly alternative, is becoming increasingly popular in plant protection. This can include the deployment of soil inoculants and foliar sprays, but the increased knowledge of microbial ecology in the phytosphere, in particular phylloplane microbes and endophytes, has stimulated new thinking for biocontrol approaches. Endophytes are microbes that live within plant tissues. As such, they hold potential as biocontrol agents against plant diseases because they are able to colonize the same ecological niche favoured by many invading pathogens. However, the development and exploitation of endophytes as biocontrol agents will have to overcome numerous challenges. The optimization and improvement of strategies employed in endophyte research can contribute towards discovering effective and competent biocontrol agents. The impact of environment and plant genotype on selecting potentially beneficial and exploitable endophytes for biocontrol is poorly understood. How endophytes synergise or antagonise one another is also an important factor. This review focusses on recent research addressing the biocontrol of plant diseases and pests using endophytic fungi and bacteria, alongside the challenges and limitations encountered and how these can be overcome. We frame this review in the context of tree pests and diseases, since trees are arguably the most difficult plant species to study, work on and manage, yet they represent one of the most important organisms on Earth
Endophytes vs tree pathogens and pests: can they be used as biological control agents to improve tree health?
Like all other plants, trees are vulnerable to attack by a multitude of pests and pathogens. Current control measures for many of these diseases are limited and relatively ineffective. Several methods, including the use of conventional synthetic agro-chemicals, are employed to reduce the impact of pests and diseases. However, because of mounting concerns about adverse effects on the environment and a variety of economic reasons, this limited management of tree diseases by chemical methods is losing ground. The use of biological control, as a more environmentally friendly alternative, is becoming increasingly popular in plant protection. This can include the deployment of soil inoculants and foliar sprays, but the increased knowledge of microbial ecology in the phytosphere, in particular phylloplane microbes and endophytes, has stimulated new thinking for biocontrol approaches. Endophytes are microbes that live within plant tissues. As such, they hold potential as biocontrol agents against plant diseases because they are able to colonize the same ecological niche favoured by many invading pathogens. However, the development and exploitation of endophytes as biocontrol agents will have to overcome numerous challenges. The optimization and improvement of strategies employed in endophyte research can contribute towards discovering effective and competent biocontrol agents. The impact of environment and plant genotype on selecting potentially beneficial and exploitable endophytes for biocontrol is poorly understood. How endophytes synergise or antagonise one another is also an important factor. This review focusses on recent research addressing the biocontrol of plant diseases and pests using endophytic fungi and bacteria, alongside the challenges and limitations encountered and how these can be overcome. We frame this review in the context of tree pests and diseases, since trees are arguably the most difficult plant species to study, work on and manage, yet they represent one of the most important organisms on Earth
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