Política cambiaria y la fijación de metas inflacionarias en Colombia

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) En este trabajo se analiza la experiencia de Colombia con una política monetaria con metas inflacionarias tras el abandono del mecanismo de bandas cambiarias en 1999, así como durante dos episodios, en 2003 y 2004, que se desviaron de este comportamiento general. En esos episodios, el Banco Central intervino en el mercado cambiario de una manera relativamente considerable, para influir en la tendencia del tipo de cambio (flotación controlada). Esos episodios se analizan para extraer enseñanzas y resaltar los principales desafíos que encaran las políticas monetaria y cambiaria. A continuación se analiza la justificación de la intervención del Banco Central en el mercado cambiario colombiano. Por último, el trabajo presenta varias cuestiones que aparecen en el debate sobre la política monetaria y cambiaria de Colombia y se propone una idea del contexto político en el que se toman las decisiones de la política monetaria.

Earthen construction: structural vulnerabilities and retrofit solutions for seismic actions

Earthen structures present very appealing characteristics regarding a more sustainable practice with the preservation of our natural resources. However, when subjected to earthquake ground motions, this type of construction may present a deficient performance, which may cause significant human losses and important structural damage. The seismic response of earthen structures is typically characterized by fragile failures. There are several examples of recent earthquakes that affected earthen buildings in a severe way, evidencing the vulnerability of this type of construction, like the El Salvador earthquake, in 2001, the Bam, Iran earthquake, in 2003, the Pisco, Peru earthquake, in 2007 and the Maule, Chile earthquake, in 2010. The construction of earth structures on earthquake-prone areas must be carefully studied and should include seismic reinforcement solutions in order to improve their seismic performance. In this paper, the performance of earthen structures in recent earthquakes will be examined, analyzing failure modes inherent to these particular construction materials and associated construction techniques. Also, seismic reinforcement approaches and techniques will be presented in a comprehensive manner. Examples of tests conducted for the assessment of retrofitting solutions efficiency will be presented, and the results obtained will be discussed

What is the Impact of Duplicate Coverage on the Demand for Health Care in Germany?

Duplicate coverage involves those individuals who hold compulsory health insurance with the public sector and have additional coverage with the private sector. The additional insurance covers costs for outpatient and inpatient care, income loss and hospital daily allowances. The number of persons who took out additional coverage has been steadily increased. This increase can be linked to two main factors: the shortage in the benefits package and the introduction of the reform act (January the 1st 2004). Basically, members of the public insurance sector have to make co-payment of 10 percent for all health care services and drug prescription (maximum 2 percent of the annual pre-tax income). Costs of transportation and dental prosthesis have been also excluded from the benefits package. It uses the SOEP German database for estimate an demand model for health services, given the simultaneity of the choices to take duplicate coverage and the level of health services (measured like number of visits), we estimate a negative binomial model to measure the impact of the duplicate coverage on the health service demand, we also estimate a a Full Information Maximun Loglikelihood (FIML) known in this case as an Endogenous Switching Poisson Count Model and we compare this results with the standard maximum log likelihood (ML) estimators of the negative binomial model. The Results show that there is a positive difference on the level of health services demanded when there is a duplicate coverage. We found also that there is evidence to think that in Germany there is a feedback between duplicate coverage and the demand of health services.Health care, insurance, Germany

Universal dS vacua in STU-models

Stable de Sitter solutions in minimal F-term supergravity are known to lie close to Minkowski critical points. We consider a class of STU-models arising from type IIB compactifications with generalised fluxes. There, we apply an analytical method for solving the equations of motion for the moduli fields based on the idea of treating derivatives of the superpotential of different orders up to third as independent objects. In particular, supersymmetric and no-scale Minkowski solutions are singled out by physical reasons. Focusing on the study of dS vacua close to supersymmetric Minkowski points, we are able to elaborate a complete analytical treatment of the mass matrix based on the sGoldstino bound. This leads to a class of interesting universal dS vacua. We finally explore a similar possibility around no-scale Minkowski points and discuss some examples.Comment: 31 pages, 4 figures and 7 table

Automated glycan assembly of arabinomannan oligosaccharides from Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Arabinomannan (AM) polysaccharides are clinical biomarkers for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) infections due to their roles in the interaction with host cells and interference with macrophage activation. Collections of defined AM oligosaccharides can help to improve the understanding of these polysaccharides and the development of novel therapeutical and diagnostic agents. Automated glycan assembly (AGA) was employed to prepare the core structure of AM from MTB, containing α-(1,6)-Man, α-(1,5)-Ara, and α-(1,2)-Man linkages. The introduction of a capping step after each glycosylation and further optimized reaction conditions allowed for the synthesis of a series of oligosaccharides, ranging from hexa- to branched dodecasaccharides