384 research outputs found
Leontief Meets Markov: Sectoral Vulnerabilities Through Circular Connectivity
Economists have been aware of the mapping between an Input-Output (I-O, hereinafter) table and the adjacency matrix of a weighted digraph for several decades (Solow, Econometrica 20(1):29–46, 1952). An I-O table may be interpreted as a network in which edges measure money flows to purchase inputs that go into production, whilst vertices represent economic industries. However, only recently the language and concepts of complex networks (Newman 2010) have been more intensively applied to the study of interindustry relations (McNerney et al. Physica A Stat Mech Appl, 392(24):6427–6441, 2013). The aim of this paper is to study sectoral vulnerabilities in I-O networks, by connecting the formal structure of a closed I-O model (Leontief, Rev Econ Stat, 19(3):109–132, 1937) to the constituent elements of an ergodic, regular Markov chain (Kemeny and Snell 1976) and its chance process specification as a random walk on a graph. We provide an economic interpretation to a local, sector-specific vulnerability index based on mean first passage times, computed by means of the Moore-Penrose inverse of the asymmetric graph Laplacian (Boley et al. Linear Algebra Appl, 435(2):224–242, 2011). Traversing from the most central to the most peripheral sector of the economy in 60 countries between 2005 and 2015, we uncover cross-country salient roles for certain industries, pervasive features of structural change and (dis)similarities between national economies, in terms of their sectoral vulnerabilities
Diagnosis of primary headache in children younger than 6 years: A clinical challenge
Background: Criteria defined by the International headache Society are commonly used for the diagnosis of the different headache types in both adults and children. However, some authors have stressed some limits of these criteria when applied to preschool age.
Objective: Our study aimed to describe the characteristics of primary headaches in children younger than 6 years and investigate how often the International Classification of Headache Disorders (ICHD) criteria allow a definitive diagnosis.
Methods: This retrospective study analysed the clinical feature of 368 children younger than 6 years with primary headache.
Results: We found that in our patients the percentage of undefined diagnosis was high when either the ICHD-II or the ICHD-III criteria were used. More than 70% of our children showed a duration of their attacks shorter than 1 hour. The absence of photophobia/phonophobia and nausea/vomiting significantly correlate with tension-type headache (TTH) and probable TTH. The number of first-degree relatives with migraine was positively correlated to the diagnosis of migraine in the patients (p<0.001).
Conclusions: Our study showed that the ICHD-III criteria are difficult to use in children younger than 6 years. The problem is not solved by the reduction of the lowest duration limit for the diagnosis of migraine to 1 hour, as was done in the ICHD-II
Banks' noninterest income and securities holdings in a low interest rate environment: The case of Italy
Using a sample of 440 Italian banks over the period 2007\u20132016, we find that low interest rates motivate banks to expand their fee and commission income and to restructure their securities portfolios. A granular breakdown suggests that banks grow noninterest income in various ways, including portfolio management, brokerage and consultancy services and increase fee income from current account and payment services. In addition, banks rebalance securities portfolios away from those \u201cheld for trading\u201d to securities \u201cavailable for sale\u201d and \u201cheld to maturity.\u201d Our findings allude to different behavior between large and small banks: while larger banks increase brokerage, consultancy and portfolio management services, smaller banks generate fees from customer current accounts
Upper and lower bounds for the mixed degree-Kirchhoff index
We introduce the mixed degree-Kirchhoff index, a new molecular descriptor
defined by R^(G) = ?i<j(di/dj+dj/di)Rij, where di is the degree of the vertex
i and Rij is the effective resistance between vertices i and j. We give
general upper and lower bounds for bR(G) and show that, unlike other related
descriptors, it attains its largest asymptotic value (order n4), among
barbell graphs, for the highly asymmetric lollipop graph. We also give more
refined lower (order n2) and upper (order n3) bounds for c-cyclic graphs in
the cases 0 ? c ? 6. For this latter purpose we use a close relationship
between our new mixed degree-Kirchhoff index and the inverse degree, prior
bounds we found for the inverse degree of c-cyclic graphs, and suitable
expressions for the largest and smallest effective resistances of c-cyclic
graphs
A majorization method for localizing graph topological indices
This paper presents a unified approach for localizing some relevant graph
topological indices via majorization techniques. Through this method, old and
new bounds are derived and numerical examples are provided, showing how former
results in the literature could be improved.Comment: 11 page
Social Cognition Individualized Activities Lab for Social Cognition Training and Narrative Enhancement in Patients With Schizophrenia: A Randomized Controlled Study to Assess Efficacy and Generalization to Real-Life Functioning (Prot. n°: NCT05130853)
Subjects affected by schizophrenia present significant deficits in various aspects of
social cognition, such as emotion processing, social perception and theory of mind
(ToM). These deficits have a greater impact than symptoms on occupational and
social functioning. Therefore, social cognition represents an important therapeutic target
in people with schizophrenia. Recent meta-analyses showed that social cognition
training (SCT) is effective in improving social cognition in subjects with schizophrenia;
however, real-life functioning is not always ameliorated. Integration of SCT with an
intervention targeting metacognitive abilities might improve the integration of social
cognitive skills to daily life functioning. Our research group has implemented a new
individualized rehabilitation program: the Social Cognition Individualized Activities Lab,
SoCIAL, which integrates SCT with a module for narrative enhancement, an intervention
targeting metacognitive abilities. The present multi-center randomized controlled study
will compare the efficacy of SoCIAL and treatment as usual (TAU) in subjects diagnosed
with a schizophrenia-spectrum disorder. The primary outcome will be the improvement
of social cognition and real-life functioning; while the secondary outcome will be the
improvement of symptoms, functional capacity and neurocognition. The results of this
study will add empirical evidence to the benefits and feasibility of SCT and narrative
enhancement in people with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders
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