Privatizing Retirement: The Case of the Female Chilean Worker

Chile has been called the “promised land” of Latin America, a First World country, and an economic miracle. Privatizing social security in Chile has often been hailed by economists as the key for their unprecedented economic growth and success within the past few decades—so much so that other countries have adopted similar pension models within their own countries. Somewhere along this path of astonishing economic growth, Chile, like other developed nations, has arrived at a point where it can no longer assume that the typical worker is a man. Yet as the gap continues to decrease between female and male labor force participation, the gap between female and male retirees remains ever present. In other words, the typical retiree is still a man. Because the calculation of retirement benefits is based on the idea of individual insurance, the uncontrollable economic, cultural, and demographic characteristics that shape the present reality of the Chilean woman are also shaping her future. Chile’s transition from a pay-as-you-go system to a system of individual accounts was economically sound and macroeconomically successful, yet I argue that it wasn’t pareto optimal, as the variable of gender was lost in the calculation of transition costs. Through constructing the economic profile of the average female Chilean worker—observing female wages, fertility, life expectancy, education, and retirement age—this study aims to replicate and demonstrate the gender pension differential that has existed under the privatized model of retirement in Chile since 1981 by means of simulation. Additionally, the results of this study of Chile’s past and present will bridge significant discussion into Chile’s future. Hypothetically having the ear of the Chilean Constitutional Congress, my research will foster suggestions for system design and policy changes, such as an increase in the female retirement age or expanding the benefits of maternity leave and childcare that could significantly improve the position of the average Chilean female retiree under a system of privatized retirement. This study is structured as follows; Section I provides relevant historical background on Chile’s systems of retirement, Section II is the literature review, Section III details the theoretical framework, Section IV explicates the empirical framework and analysis, Section V describes the data and summary statistics, and Section VI concludes with the results and discussion

Linear collider test facility: ATF2 final focus active stabilisation pertinence

International audienceBeam motion at the Interaction Point (IP) of ATF2 has to be less than 10nm relative to the instrumentation used for measurements. Due to ground motion (GM), the beam can pass off-axis through the quadrupoles of the beam line and hence be deflected. It was shown in previous studies that good spatial coherence of the GM over a few meters makes the relative motion of the Final Doublets (FD) small enough for the tolerance not to be exceeded. However, since the coherence drops rapidly with distance, other quadrupoles further upstream can be expected to induce significant effects. In this paper, an evaluation taking into account all ATF2 quadrupoles is presented, using a GM generator with parameters tuned to dedicated measurements done recently along the ATF2 beam line and propagating to the IP with the optical transfer matrices. It was shown that although large IP beam motion can indeed be induced by some specific upstream quadrupoles, the combined effect of all is small because of compensations. The tolerance can thus be achieved without specially stabilising these quadrupoles

Diagnostic reference frames for seizures: a validation study

Introduction We developed structured descriptions of signs and symptoms for specific seizure types (called Diagnostic Reference Frames—DRFs—by us) that can serve as a frame of reference in the process of classifying patients with epileptic seizures. In this study the validity of the DRFs for clinical use is evaluated and described. Material and methods In this study we use a decision support system based on the DRFs and using Bayes's rule for the validation of the DRFs. Patient's manifestations are entered in the decision support system and by successively applying Bayes's rule posterior probabilities are calculated. The DRFs with the highest posterior probability gives an indication of the classification of the seizure. The validation of the DRFs was performed by comparing the seizure type with the highest posterior probability with the classification of experienced epileptologists on a series of test cases with known epileptic seizures. In this way we assessed the accuracy of the DRFs in classifying patients with epileptic seizures. Results We included sixty–six patients in this efficacy study. The patients and/or their relatives described the manifestations occurring during a seizure. Sixty cases (91%) were correctly classified using the decision support system. Discussion The accuracy of 91 % indicates that the knowledge encoded in the DRFs for the included seizure types is valid. The next step is to test the DRFs in a clinical setting to evaluate the applicability in daily practice

Recent Improvements in the Tracking Code Placet

The tracking code Placet has recently undergone several improvements. A redesign of its internal data structures and a new user interface based on the mathematical toolbox Octave considerably expanded its simulation capabilities. Several new lattice elements, optimization algorithms and physics processes were added to allow for more complete start-to-end simulations. Finally, the use of the AML language and the Universal Parser Library have extended its interfacing capability. A review of these new features is presented in this paper

Pétrographie et paléontologie de la formation houillère de la Campine

Extrait des Annales de la Société géologique de Belgique. t. XX

Label-free isolation of prostate circulating tumor cells using Vortex microfluidic technology.

There has been increased interest in utilizing non-invasive "liquid biopsies" to identify biomarkers for cancer prognosis and monitoring, and to isolate genetic material that can predict response to targeted therapies. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have emerged as such a biomarker providing both genetic and phenotypic information about tumor evolution, potentially from both primary and metastatic sites. Currently, available CTC isolation approaches, including immunoaffinity and size-based filtration, have focused on high capture efficiency but with lower purity and often long and manual sample preparation, which limits the use of captured CTCs for downstream analyses. Here, we describe the use of the microfluidic Vortex Chip for size-based isolation of CTCs from 22 patients with advanced prostate cancer and, from an enumeration study on 18 of these patients, find that we can capture CTCs with high purity (from 1.74 to 37.59%) and efficiency (from 1.88 to 93.75 CTCs/7.5 mL) in less than 1 h. Interestingly, more atypical large circulating cells were identified in five age-matched healthy donors (46-77 years old; 1.25-2.50 CTCs/7.5 mL) than in five healthy donors <30 years old (21-27 years old; 0.00 CTC/7.5 mL). Using a threshold calculated from the five age-matched healthy donors (3.37 CTCs/mL), we identified CTCs in 80% of the prostate cancer patients. We also found that a fraction of the cells collected (11.5%) did not express epithelial prostate markers (cytokeratin and/or prostate-specific antigen) and that some instead expressed markers of epithelial-mesenchymal transition, i.e., vimentin and N-cadherin. We also show that the purity and DNA yield of isolated cells is amenable to targeted amplification and next-generation sequencing, without whole genome amplification, identifying unique mutations in 10 of 15 samples and 0 of 4 healthy samples

Immersive virtual reality helps to promote pro-environmental norms, attitudes and behavioural strategies

Our study focuses on the promotion of sustainable actions that individuals can adopt at home. We tested the effectiveness of different formats of conducting promotional campaigns providing pro-environmental knowledge. Specifically, we assessed whether the same message delivered in print, in a video or in an immersive virtual environment, via a virtual human that resembles the participant or not, affects norms, attitudes and behavioural strategies in relation to energy saving gestures. Results revealed that receiving pro-environmental knowledge while being immersed in virtual reality led to greater energy saving attitudes and a different use of products and appliances at home as compared to receiving the same information via more traditional means. The present work aims to sensitise governmental and pro-environmental organisations about the effectiveness of using immersive virtual reality to conduct such campaigns