Socio-economic determinants of efficiency in reducing child mortality in developing countries

Efficiency issues in health investments have received increasing attention, mainly as a result of the growing amount of resources invested in developing countries and their mixed impacts on outcomes. The empirical literature has suggested that, although government spending on health care improves the health status of the population, society can potentially gain more through the more efficient assignment of health resources. In this context, this paper aims to: firstly, to analyse whether developing countries can further reduce child mortality by using the available resources more parsimoniously; and secondly, to identify the (non-discretionary) socio-economic factors that could be affecting this process. More specifically, this paper aims to explain why some countries are more efficient than others in converting inputs (physician density and relative total health expenditure) into a health outcome: the under-five mortality rate (U5MR). The database used in the estimations comprised 47 developing countries with data for the periods 2000- 2004, 2005-2009, and 2010-2012. The findings suggest that greater efficiency in the provision of immunization, better quality government, and lower income inequality are directly related to efficiency in the use of inputs to reduce the U5MR.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Abastecimiento de agua potable para pequeñas comunidades rurales por medio de un sistema de colección de lluvia-planta potabilizadora

In this paper is showed the design of a system of drinking water supply for small rural communities trough rainfall collection-treatment plant. The design of the developed treatment plant considers a consumption of 60 1/h/d. In this work the following characteristics have been retained as the representatives for a rural comunity: £ 200 inhabitants; lack of potable water and electrical energy; to count on the possibility of supplying themselves of surface water under specific topographical conditions that they diminish the requirements of energy in the purification process. The rainwater harvesting represents a frequent scene in Latin America, and the proposed process of purification considers devices of low cost and easily operation.In this paper is showed the design of a system of drinking water supply for small rural communities trough rainfall collection-treatment plant. The design of the developed treatment plant considers a consumption of 60 1/h/d. In this work the following characteristics have been retained as the representatives for a rural comunity: ≤ 200 inhabitants; lack of potable water and electrical energy; to count on the possibility of supplying themselves of surface water under specific topographical conditions that they diminish the requirements of energy in the purification process. The rainwater harvesting represents a frequent scene in Latin America, and the proposed process of purification considers devices of low cost and easily operation

Convolutional neural network for breathing phase detection in lung sounds

We applied deep learning to create an algorithm for breathing phase detection in lung sound recordings, and we compared the breathing phases detected by the algorithm and manually annotated by two experienced lung sound researchers. Our algorithm uses a convolutional neural network with spectrograms as the features, removing the need to specify features explicitly. We trained and evaluated the algorithm using three subsets that are larger than previously seen in the literature. We evaluated the performance of the method using two methods. First, discrete count of agreed breathing phases (using 50% overlap between a pair of boxes), shows a mean agreement with lung sound experts of 97% for inspiration and 87% for expiration. Second, the fraction of time of agreement (in seconds) gives higher pseudo-kappa values for inspiration (0.73-0.88) than expiration (0.63-0.84), showing an average sensitivity of 97% and an average specificity of 84%. With both evaluation methods, the agreement between the annotators and the algorithm shows human level performance for the algorithm. The developed algorithm is valid for detecting breathing phases in lung sound recordings

A measure of the economic dependence of countries on tourism

El principal objetivo de este estudio fue construir un índice de dependencia económica del turismo para una muestra de 144 países y el período comprendido entre 1995 y 2019. A continuación, analizamos la convergencia en los niveles del índice. El índice calculado muestra una leve tendencia hacia mayores niveles de dependencia del turismo de las economías desde el final de la crisis financiera mundial. Sin embargo, no observamos una clara reducción de la dispersión entre países en sus niveles. Además, los resultados de la estimación sugieren que se puede rechazar la hipótesis de convergencia absoluta y que hay cuatro clubes de convergencia final. Análisis adicionales indican que los factores geográficos desempeñan un papel importante en la determinación de la correspondiente probabilidad de pertenencia a un club. Además, las economías grandes y las más dependientes de los recursos tienen una menor probabilidad de pertenecer al club de países más dinámicos y con mayor nivel de dependencia económica del turismo.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech