Макроекономіка: ефект позитивних очікувань

Нобелівську премію з економіки отримали американські економісти Томас Сарджент (Thomas Sargent) і Крістофер Сімс (Christopher Sims). Вони розробили методи, що дають змогу розрахувати зв’язок між економічною політикою і такими макроекономічними параметрами, як ВВП, інфляція, безробіття, інвестиції. Відзначенням престижною нагородою дослідників «причин і наслідків у макроекономіці» Нобелівський комітет підкреслив актуальність їхньої теорії про те, що настрої приватного сектору і позитивні очікування важливі для успіху як в економіці, так і в політиці

Implementation of a shared care guideline for back pain: effect on unnecessary referrals

Objective: To determine the effect of the implementation of a shared care guideline for the lumbosacral radicular syndrome (LRS) on unnecessary early referrals and the duration of the total diagnostic procedure. Design: Introduction of shared care guideline in November 2005. Pre-test in 2005 (April to October), a first post-test in 2006 (April to October) and a second post-test in 2007 (April to October). Setting and Intervention: The introduction of a shared care guideline derived from national guidelines for GPs and several medical/paramedical specialists in two Dutch regions. Three hundred and sixty GPs, 550 physiotherapists and two hospitals (9 neurologists and 18 radiologists) were involved. The essential component of the guideline was a trade-off: if the GP complied with the conservative management approach in the first 6 weeks, the hospital guaranteed a priority appointment with the neurologist after 6 weeks, if still required. Main Outcome Measures: The neurologists in both hospitals registered whether a patient had been unnecessarily referred during the first 6 weeks. The duration of the total diagnostic procedure was defined as the number of days between referral by the GP and the consultation when the neurologist made the final diagnosis. Results: The percentage of patients being unnecessarily referred within 6 weeks fell significantly from 15% in 2005 to 9% in 2006 and 8% in 2007. The duration of the total diagnostic procedure also fell significantly in both the long and short terms. Conclusions: The introduction of a shared care guideline for all care providers in a region reduces the number of unnecessary early referrals for patients with LRS. © The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press in association with the International Society for Quality in Health Care

A proposed checklist for climate-friendly sport and exercise programmes

Background: Fighting the climate crisis is the greatest challenge of our time and will touch all aspects of people's lives. In this context, the United Nations (UN) have called on the sport sector to reduce its negative impacts on the environment and show 'climate leadership'. While some efforts have already been made with regards to mega sport events, there is still a dearth of approaches on limiting the climate impact of recreational sport and exercise programmes. Methods: Based on the UN-Framework 'Sports for Climate Action', literature reviews and additional desk research, a checklist to support local level stakeholders in providing climate-friendly sport and exercise programmes was developed. Results: The proposed checklist consists of five dimensions that need to be considered when designing and offering a climate-friendly sport and exercise programme: (i) active transport to exercise programmes, (ii) the carbon footprint of different types of exercises, (iii) low carbon sport clothing and equipment, (iv) instructors as champions for climate action and (v) advertising and communication. These five dimensions result in a 16-item checklist that supports the planning, advertising, implementation and evaluation of climate-friendly sport and exercise programmes. Conclusions: The proposed checklist intends to facilitate the development of climate-friendly sport and exercise programmes. However, additional work is needed to test the implementation of the checklist at the local level. While the sport sector can make its own contributions to reduce its climate impact, intersectoral action is needed to improve infrastructure for active transport and to build sustainable sport facilities. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Public Health Association.This research was conducted as part of a project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Health (ZMVI1-2521WHO001). The ministry was neither involved in writing this manuscript nor in the decision to submit the article for publication

Mining the Herschel-astrophysical terahertz large area survey : Submillimetre-selected blazars in equatorial fields

The Herschel-Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey (H-ATLAS) provides an unprecedented opportunity to search for blazars at sub-mm wavelengths. We cross-matched the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-cm (FIRST) radio source catalogue with the 11 655 sources brighter than 35 mJy at 500 μm in the ∼135 deg2 of the sky covered by the H-ATLAS equatorial fields at 9h and 15h, plus half of the field at 12h. We found that 379 of the H-ATLAS sources have a FIRST counterpart within 10 arcsec, including eight catalogued blazars (plus one known blazar that was found at the edge of one of the H-ATLAS maps). To search for additional blazar candidates we have devised new diagnostic diagrams and found that known blazars occupy a region of the log(S500μm/S350μm) versus log(S500μm/S1.4 GHz) plane separated from that of sub-mm sources with radio emission powered by star formation, but shared with radio galaxies and steep-spectrum radio quasars. Using this diagnostic we have selected 12 further possible candidates that turn out to be scattered in the (r-z) versus (u-r) plane or in the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer colour-colour diagram, where known blazars are concentrated in well defined strips. This suggests that the majority of them are not blazars. Based on an inspection of all the available photometric data, including unpublished VISTA Kilo-degree Infrared Galaxy survey photometry and new radio observations, we found that the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of only one out of the 12 newly selected sources are compatible with being synchrotron dominated at least up to 500 μm, i.e. with being a blazar. Another object may consist of a faint blazar nucleus inside a bright star-forming galaxy. The possibility that some blazar hosts are endowed with active star formation is supported by our analysis of the SEDs of Planck Early Release Compact Source Catalogue blazars detected at both 545 and 857 GHz. The estimated rest-frame synchrotron peak frequencies of H-ATLAS blazars are in the range 11.5 ≤ log (νpeak, Hz) ≤ 13.7, implying that these objects are low synchrotron peak. Six of them also show evidence of an ultraviolet excess that can be attributed to emission from the accretion disc. Allowing for the possibility of misidentifications and of contamination of the 500 μm flux density by the dusty torus or by the host galaxy, we estimate that there are seven or eight pure synchrotron sources brighter than S500μm = 35 mJy over the studied area, a result that sets important constraints on blazar evolutionary models.Peer reviewe

Combined array-comparative genomic hybridization and single-nucleotide polymorphism-loss of heterozygosity analysis reveals complex genetic alterations in cervical cancer

BACKGROUND: Cervical carcinoma develops as a result of multiple genetic alterations. Different studies investigated genomic alterations in cervical cancer mainly by means of metaphase comparative genomic hybridization (mCGH) and microsatellite marker analysis for the detection of loss of heterozygosity (LOH). Currently, high throughput methods such as array comparative genomic hybridization (array CGH), single nucleotide polymorphism array (SNP array) and gene expression arrays are available to study genome-wide alterations. Integration of these 3 platforms allows detection of genomic alterations at high resolution and investigation of an association between copy number changes and expression. RESULTS: Genome-wide copy number and genotype analysis of 10 cervical cancer cell lines by array CGH and SNP array showed highly complex large-scale alterations. A comparison between array CGH and SNP array revealed that the overall concordance in detection of the same areas with copy number alterations (CNA) was above 90%. The use of SNP arrays demonstrated that about 75% of LOH events would not have been found by methods which screen for copy number changes, such as array CGH, since these were LOH events without CNA. Regions frequently targeted by CNA, as determined by array CGH, such as amplification of 5p and 20q, and loss of 8p were confirmed by fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH). Genome-wide, we did not find a correlation between copy-number and gene expression. At chromosome arm 5p however, 22% of the genes were significantly upregulated in cell lines with amplifications as compared to cell lines without amplifications, as measured by gene expression arrays. For 3 genes, SKP2, ANKH and TRIO, expression differences were confirmed by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). CONCLUSION: This study showed that copy number data retrieved from either array CGH or SNP array are comparable and that the integration of genome-wide LOH, copy number and gene expression is useful for the identification of gene specific targets that could be relevant for the development and progression in cervical cancer

Using Neural Networks for Relation Extraction from Biomedical Literature

Using different sources of information to support automated extracting of relations between biomedical concepts contributes to the development of our understanding of biological systems. The primary comprehensive source of these relations is biomedical literature. Several relation extraction approaches have been proposed to identify relations between concepts in biomedical literature, namely, using neural networks algorithms. The use of multichannel architectures composed of multiple data representations, as in deep neural networks, is leading to state-of-the-art results. The right combination of data representations can eventually lead us to even higher evaluation scores in relation extraction tasks. Thus, biomedical ontologies play a fundamental role by providing semantic and ancestry information about an entity. The incorporation of biomedical ontologies has already been proved to enhance previous state-of-the-art results.Comment: Artificial Neural Networks book (Springer) - Chapter 1