The Impact of Transitory Income on Birth Weights: Evidence from a Blackout in Zanzibar

Do transitory income shocks affect infant health? I find evidence that birth weights fell following a temporary income reduction caused by an unexpected, month-long blackout in Zanzibar. Relying on 350 household surveys collected during field work, I show that the 2008 blackout reduced labor supply of workers in electricity-dependent jobs by an average of 25%, with no effect on workers in other sectors. The income shock was temporary. Using over 20,000 birth records from a maternity ward, I document a reduction in the average birth weight of children exposed to the blackout while in utero, and an increase in the probability of low birth weight. Supporting a causal interpretation of these results, the reduction in weights is correlated with measures of maternal exposure to the blackout. In particular, reductions in birth weights were largest among children from wards with intermediate levels of employment in electrified sectors. The two causes that are most consistent with these results are a blackout-induced decline in maternal nutrition, and maternal stress. Alternative explanations are examined, including the possible effects of a temporary fertility shift. It is shown that the blackout increased births, but that selection into pregnancy cannot explain the drop in birth weights.Neonatal health, Birthweights, Nutrition, Fertility, Transitory income, Blackouts, Africa

The spirit, the groove of the self in St. Augustine

En el universo griego antiguo de Aristóteles hay “un conjunto especial de sustancias materiales: el éter, el pneuma y el principio de la transparencia y la luz, todos ellos cálidos o brillantes, todos activos y no son sometidos al cambio cualitativo, cuya función consiste enactuar como vehículos e intermediarios a través de los cuales lo inmaterial comunica con todas las demás cosas materiales y actúa sobre ellas. De ese modo, el motor inmóvil actúa sobre la totalidad de las cosas mediante el hecho de poner en movimiento los cielos compuestos de éter, y el alma actúa sobre el cuerpo y comunica con él por medio del pneuma. Armstrong notó que esta idea tiene una gran importancia histórica: procede del pensamiento presocrático y constituye la fuente inmediata de la doctrina estoica del pneuma, que es una de las fuentes esenciales de donde provienen las ideas del fuego o de la luz como el principio material formativo y activo que encontramos luego en Plotino y que por su influencia persistirá en la filosofía medieval. En esta ocasión nos interesa destacar cómo esta corriente generada en el mundo griego persiste en la filosofía de San Agustín, aunque con un giro de énfasis en el modo del yo interior y la subjetividad.En el universo griego antiguo de Aristóteles hay “un conjunto especial de sustancias materiales: el éter, el pneuma y el principio de la transparencia y la luz, todos ellos cálidos o brillantes, todos activos y no son sometidos al cambio cualitativo, cuya función consiste enactuar como vehículos e intermediarios a través de los cuales lo inmaterial comunica con todas las demás cosas materiales y actúa sobre ellas. De ese modo, el motor inmóvil actúa sobre la totalidad de las cosas mediante el hecho de poner en movimiento los cielos compuestos de éter, y el alma actúa sobre el cuerpo y comunica con él por medio del pneuma. Armstrong notó que esta idea tiene una gran importancia histórica: procede del pensamiento presocrático y constituye la fuente inmediata de la doctrina estoica del pneuma, que es una de las fuentes esenciales de donde provienen las ideas del fuego o de la luz como el principio material formativo y activo que encontramos luego en Plotino y que por su influencia persistirá en la filosofía medieval. En esta ocasión nos interesa destacar cómo esta corriente generada en el mundo griego persiste en la filosofía de San Agustín, aunque con un giro de énfasis en el modo del yo interior y la subjetividad.En el universo griego antiguo de Aristóteles hay “un conjunto especial de sustancias materiales: el éter, el pneuma y el principio de la transparencia y la luz, todos ellos cálidos o brillantes, todos activos y no son sometidos al cambio cualitativo, cuya función consiste enactuar como vehículos e intermediarios a través de los cuales lo inmaterial comunica con todas las demás cosas materiales y actúa sobre ellas. De ese modo, el motor inmóvil actúa sobre la totalidad de las cosas mediante el hecho de poner en movimiento los cielos compuestos de éter, y el alma actúa sobre el cuerpo y comunica con él por medio del pneuma. Armstrong notó que esta idea tiene una gran importancia histórica: procede del pensamiento presocrático y constituye la fuente inmediata de la doctrina estoica del pneuma, que es una de las fuentes esenciales de donde provienen las ideas del fuego o de la luz como el principio material formativo y activo que encontramos luego en Plotino y que por su influencia persistirá en la filosofía medieval. En esta ocasión nos interesa destacar cómo esta corriente generada en el mundo griego persiste en la filosofía de San Agustín, aunque con un giro de énfasis en el modo del yo interior y la subjetividad.In Aristotle’s Greek ancient universe it is “a special set of material substances: the ether, the pneuma and the beginning of the  transparency and the light, hot or brilliant all of them, all assets and they are not submitted to the qualitative change, which functionconsists of acting as vehicles and intermediaries across which the immaterial thing relates with all other material things and acts on them. Thereby, the immobile engine acts on the totality of the things by means of the fact of putting in movement the skies consisted ofether, and the soul acts on the body and reports with it by means of the pneuma.” Armstrong noticed that this idea has a great historical importance: it comes from the preSocratic thought and constitutes the immediate source of the stoic doctrine of the pneuma, which is one of the essential sources wherefrom there come the ideas of the fire or of the light as the material formative and active principle that we find then in Plotinus, and that for his influence, it will persist in the medieval philosophy. In this occasion we are interested in emphasizing how this current generated in the Greek world will persist in San Augustine’s philosophy, although with a difference of emphasis, namely, the way of the self and subjectivity

A general hypothesis of multistable systems in pathophysiology

Despite intensive investigations numerous diseases remain etiologically puzzling and recalcitrant to treatments. A hypothesis is proposed here assuming that these difficulties are due to an unsuitable approach to the mechanisms of life, which is subjugated by an apparent complexity and fails to grasp the uniformity that lays behind. The stability of metabolism, despite the enormous complex of chemical reactions, suggests that reciprocal control is a prerequisite of life. Negative feedback loops have been known for a long time to maintain homeostasis, while more recently, different life processes involved in transitions or changes have been modeled by positive loops giving rise to bistable switches, also including various diseases. The present hypothesis makes a generalization, by assuming that any functional element of a biological system is involved in a positive or a negative feedback loop. Consequently, the hypothesis holds that the starting mechanism of any disease that affects a healthy human can be conceptually reduced to a bistable or multistationary loop system, thus providing a unifying model leading to the discovery of critical therapeutic targets

Un analisis interno del dasein ontológico de Heidegger: críticas externas de Edith Stein

Accordingly with Walter Biemel, when he asserts that “We can either view this thinking [Heidegger’s philosophy] from outside and seek to analize and critize it or we can endeavor to understand it from within”, my own aim in this paper, nontheless, shall not choose any of these exclusive approaches, but rather attempts to do both. Thus, I would like to enter into Heidegger’s philosophy to undertand and appretiate the positive dimention, perhaps hidden, of his view about the Dasein, to show in turn that the wishful ascent of Dasein in his path to being, as Heidegger proposed suffers from a lack of practicality. In other words, we shall emphasize first the novelty of Heidegger’s research on the self: as an ontological self par excellence, and secondly, we shall review insufficient or impractical aspects of his view, which follow from Edith Stein’s critique.De acuerdo con Walter Biemel, cuando él dice que “Podemos mirar la filosofía de Heidegger ya sea desde fuera, para así llegar a analizarla y verla criticamente, o podemos lograr entenderla desde dentro”, el presente estudio, sin embargo, no tiene preferencia por alguna de esas alternativas excluyentes, sino más bien intenta considerar ambas. Por tanto, nos gustaría entrar en la filosofía de Heidegger para entender y apreciar la dimensión positiva, tal vez oculta, de su visión del Dasein, para mostrar, a la vez, que el ascenso deseado del Dasein en su sendero al ser, tal como propone Heidegger, adolece de una falta de practicidad. Dicho de otro modo, primero destacaremos la novedad de la investigación de Heidegger sobre el tema del sí mismo: como un sí mismo ontológico por excelencia, y en segundo lugar, revisaremos aspectos insuficientes o imprácticos de su visión, los cuales se siguen de la crítica de Edith Stein

A Simple Explanation for Taxon Abundance Patterns

For taxonomic levels higher than species, the abundance distributions of number of subtaxa per taxon tend to approximate power laws, but often show strong deviationns from such a law. Previously, these deviations were attributed to finite-time effects in a continuous time branching process at the generic level. Instead, we describe here a simple discrete branching process which generates the observed distributions and find that the distribution's deviation from power-law form is not caused by disequilibration, but rather that it is time-independent and determined by the evolutionary properties of the taxa of interest. Our model predicts-with no free parameters-the rank-frequency distribution of number of families in fossil marine animal orders obtained from the fossil record. We find that near power-law distributions are statistically almost inevitable for taxa higher than species. The branching model also sheds light on species abundance patterns, as well as on links between evolutionary processes, self-organized criticality and fractals.Comment: 10 pages, 4 Fig

New scenarios for the Palmaria island (Porto Venere- Ligurian Sea)

The Palmaria island in the municipality of Porto Venere between the Gulf of La Spezia and the Cinque Terre (Italy) is a complex and integrated system, consisting of several cultural heritage. The way to arrive at a vision of global landscape, understood as the network connection of all the other elements of great historical value begins in 1939 (law no 1497) when the site was declared of great public interest and the landscape has been protected as a single asset with a landscape bond. In 1997, after being recognised as a World Heritage Site, the aims of the active management of this area were: public reuse of the historical and cultural buildings, revaluation of the landscape as an integrated system composed by many singular and peculiar elements and promotion of an alternative cultural tourism compatible with the conservation of the landscape. In 2016 the State Property Agency signed a understanding memorandum with the Ministry of Defence, the Navy, the Liguria Region and the Municipality of Porto Venere for the enhancement of more than 100 public property, including buildings and land, present in the Palmaria Island. How will change the landscape of the island after these agreements between public authorities? The intent of this study is to propose guidelines for an integrated and sustainable management of this unique coastal landscape with the aim of promoting cultural tourism without harming the local population. The landscape is understood as 'a sheet without seams' and becomes the connection of the historical, cultural and natural elements of both land and sea. Within this network some pilot projects are proposed, that contribute to the development of a sustainable tourism model, responding to different needs of different social categories that frequent the area. Among the topics studied: the regeneration of the landscape, the revaluation of the history, traditions and cuisine, the recovery of the relationship with the sea as a landscape value, intelligent reuse of public buildings with existing cultural and historic value