Latvian pension reform

In 1995, Latvia became the first country in Central and Eastern Europe to implement parametric reform of the Soviet-style PAYGO pension system, and the first in the world to implement the"notional defined contribution (NDC) system"originally designed for Sweden. The Government's intention was to follow the overhaul of the PAYGO system with the creation of a funded second tier by 1998, but the reform has lagged. Public acceptance of the new system has been poor, and pressures for rollback of the reforms have grown. After such a splashy beginning why did the Latvian reform stall? What has been the net effect of the reforms after the roll backs? How did Latvia balance the difficult issues of system incentives, fairness, and affordability? What are the lessons of the Latvian experience with the NDC system for other reforming countries? These questions are the subject of this paper. It includes a description of pre-reform situation, describes the key provisions of the original reform, and discusses the subsequent amendments. The impact of the reform is assessed on the basis of macroeconomic and microeconomic simulations. On the basis of those, the reforms are evaluated and conclusions for other countries are drawn.Pensions&Retirement Systems,Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Gender and Law

Analysis of air flow and heat dissipation from a high performance passenger car front brake rotor

The increasing demand from the consumer for higher levels of refinement from their passenger vehicles has put considerable pressure on the automotive industry to produce ever quieter cars. In order to prevent the occurrence of many forms of brake noise, especially judder and drone, excessive heating of the brake disc must be avoided, whilst minimising temperature variations across the rotor. In order for this to be achieved the brake rotor must be designed such that it ensures sufficient uniform heat dissipation and thermal capacity. In high demand braking applications vented discs consisting of two rubbing surfaces separated by straight radial vanes are normally employed as they utilise a greater surface area to dissipate heat. Within this paper the convective heat dissipation from a high performance passenger car front brake disc has been investigated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The results obtained have been validated by those obtained in preliminary vehicle testing at Millbrook test facility. The computational model shows adequate correlation to the test results; overpredicting the average heat transfer coefficient by 18%. The CFD analysis enabled a detailed insight into the air flow and heat transfer distributions, that was not possible during the vehicle test regim

The Secondary Use of Longitudinal Critical Care Data

Aims To examine the strengths and limitations of a novel United Kingdom (UK) critical care data resource that repurposes routinely collected physiological data for research. Exemplar clinical research studies will be developed to explore the unique longitudinal nature of the resource. Objectives - To evaluate the suitability of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Critical Care theme of the Health Informatics Collaborative (CCHIC) data model as a representation of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) for secondary research use. - To conduct a data quality evaluation of data stored within the CC-HIC research database. - To use the CC-HIC research database to conduct two clinical research studies that make use of the longitudinal data supported by the CC-HIC: - The association between cumulative exposure to excess oxygen and outcomes in the critically ill. - The association between different morphologies of longitudinal physiology—in particular organ dysfunction—and outcomes in sepsis. The CC-HIC The EHR is now routinely used for the delivery of patient care throughout the United Kingdom (UK). This has presented the opportunity to learn from a large volume of routinely collected data. The CC-HIC data model represents 255 distinct clinical concepts including demographics, outcomes and granular longitudinal physiology. This model is used to harmonise EHR data of 12 contributing Intensive Care Units (ICUs). This thesis evaluates the suitability of the CC-HIC data model in this role and the quality of data within. While representing an important first step in this field, the CC-HIC data model lacks the necessary normalisation and semantic expressivity to excel in this role. The quality of the CC-HIC research database was variable between contributing sites. High levels of missing data, missing meta-data, non-standardised units and temporal drop out of submitted data are amongst the most challenging features to tackle. It is the principal finding of this thesis that the CC-HIC should transition towards implementing internationally agreed standards for interoperability. Exemplar Clinical Studies Two exemplar studies are presented, each designed to make use of the longitudinal data made available by the CC-HIC and address domains that are both contemporaneous and of importance to the critical care community. Exposure to Excess Oxygen Longitudinal data from the CC-HIC cohort were used to explore the association between the cumulative exposure to excess oxygen and outcomes in the critically ill. A small (likely less than 1% absolute risk reduction) dose-independent association was found between exposure to excess oxygen and mortality. The lack of dosedependency challenges a causal interpretation of these findings. Physiological Morphologies in Sepsis The joint modelling paradigm was applied to explore the different longitudinal profiles of organ failure in sepsis, while accounting for informative censoring from patient death. The rate of change of organ failure was found to play a more significan't role in outcomes than the absolute value of organ failure at a given moment. This has important implications for how the critical care community views the evolution of physiology in sepsis. DECOVID The Decoding COVID-19 (DECOVID) project is presented as future work. DECOVID is a collaborative data sharing project that pools clinical data from two large NHS trusts in England. Many of the lessons learnt from the prior work with the CC-HIC fed into the development of the DECOVID data model and its quality evaluation

Investigations into the use of maize streak virus as a gene vector

Bibliography: pages 190-214.This thesis describes investigations into the potential use of the Subgroup I geminivirus, maize streak virus (MSV), as a gene vector. These involved testing MSV-based replicons in transgenic cell lines, in transient expression assays in maize cells and in an infectious gene expression system in plants. MSV vectors which contained three different versions of a bar (bialaphos resistance) expression cassette in place of the viral movement and coat protein genes were used to generate transformed maize cell lines. A high proportion of these contained MSV-based episomes at high copy number. However, embryogenic maize tissue of the Hill line was not regenerable when an MSV-based replicon was present, possibly due to toxicity of the viral replication associated protein. In non-regenerable Black Mexican sweetcorn cell lines some of the MSV-bar episomes, which ranged in size from 3.15 kb to 4.78 kb, replicated for periods of over two years, and appeared structurally stable. The cellular levels of the bar gene product, phosphinothricin acetyl transferase (PAT), were significantly enhanced in lines where the gene was amplified by linkage to an MSV replicon in comparison with lines where the same gene was not amplified. Northern blot analysis also showed that higher levels of bar mRNA were produced in lines where the gene was amplified. However, the 3- to 5-fold enhancement in gene expression was less than was anticipated, based on results from similar Subgroup ill geminivirus-based transgene amplification systems. Several mutants of the MSV genome were generated to investigate the extent to which genome amplification contributes to the expression of the viral coat protein gene. The introduction of an Ncol restriction site at the start of the coat protein gene facilitated fusion of the gus marker gene with the coat protein upstream transcription and translation regulatory sequences. In one viral construct the plus strand origin of replication was inactivated by insertion of a short oligonucleotide; in another, the viral rep gene was inactivated by a frameshift mutation. These constructs were used to show that the MSV coat protein promoter has low, but measurable constitutive activity in the absence of genome amplification, but that viral replication enhances coat protein expression about 45-fold. I found no evidence for Rep-mediated transactivation of the coat protein promoter

Some geological and magnetic characteristics of buried and resurrected precambrian hills of Southeastern Missouri

PURPOSE AND SCOPE OF INVESTIGATION The major purpose of this investigation was to determine by a comprehensive study various geological and magnetic characteristics of buried and resurrected Precambrian hills of the Central Ozarks. A second important objective was the determination of characteristics which might aid in the location of buried Precambrian hills. A final objective was the testing of the magnetic surface integration method for identification and determination of depth of buried Precambrian hills. This investigation is limited to buried and resurrected Precambrian hills of the Central Ozarks. It is concerned primarily with the structure and stratigraphy of sediments adjacent to buried and resurrected Precambrian hills, and magnetic anomalies associated with the hills. Other geological characteristics are considered in less detail. Six areas within the Central Ozarks were selected for detailed mapping and study. The structure and stratigraphy of Upper Cambrian and Lower Ordovician sediments were examined in order to determine environments of deposition, the origin of peripheral dips, and the origin of tangential and radial jointing noted during the study. Magnetic characteristics were surveyed at several localities, and efforts were made to reproduce the magnetic fields associated with the Precambrian hills by use of the surface integration method. Configuration of the Precambrian topography and its relationship to overlying and surrounding sediments was also considered. The petrology and structure of Precambrian igneous rocks of which the hills are composed are not considered in detail in this dissertation. In addition geochemical and other geophysical aspects remain to be examined in greater detail by future workers --Introduction, pages 1-2