Macroeconomic Policies to Increase Social Mobility and Growth in Bolivia

Poverty in Bolivia continues to be among the highest in Latin America despite decades of concerted national and international efforts to reduce it. Bolivia has meticulously followed the recommendations of the Washington consensus at the same time as external aid has been generous and foreign direct investment has boomed. Nevertheless, average productivity and incomes remain at the same low level as they were 50 years ago. This paper suggests that the failure of previous development policies is due to a lack of social mobility in the country. Without social mobility, there is little incentive for people to invest in human and physical capital, and without investment there cannot be productivity growth. In addition, the lack of social mobility implies an inefficient use of human capital, and it hinders the construction of efficient social mechanisms for redistribution and consumption smoothing over the life-cycle.Social Mobility, Development, Public Policy, Bolivia

Educational paper: Syndromic forms of primary immunodeficiency

The syndromic primary immunodeficiencies are disorders in which not only the immune system but also other organ systems are affected. Other features most commonly involve the ectodermal, skeletal, nervous, and gastrointestinal systems. Key in identifying syndromic immunodeficiencies is the awareness that increased susceptibility to infections or immune dysregulation in a patient known to have other symptoms or special features may hint at an underlying genetic syndrome. Because the extraimmune clinical features can be highly variable, it is more difficult establishing the correct diagnosis. Nevertheless, correct diagnosis at an early age is important because of the possible treatment options. Therefore, diagnostic work-up is best performed in a center with extensive expertise in this field, having immunologists and clinical geneticists, as well as adequate support from a specialized laboratory at hand. This paper provides the general pediatrician with the main clinical features that are crucial for the recognition of these syndromes

Fluid mechanics of bubble capture by the diving bell spider

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-56).The water spider, a unique member of its species, is used as inspiration for a bubble capture mechanism. Bubble mechanics are studied in the pursuit of a biomimetic solution for transporting air bubbles underwater. Careful experimentation is performed to understand the mechanics of bubble formation and capture. Investigation of bubble formation through an underwater nozzle shows that bubble volume increases by 15% when parallel rods are spaced above the nozzle at the same width as the inner diameter of the nozzle. Bubble volume decreases linearly with increasing air injection rate. Decreasing surface tension by approximately 40% decreases bubble volume by approximately 20%. Changing the angle the nozzle from parallel to perpendicular with the bottom of the tank increases bubble volume 40%. Based on trends observed in the nozzle experiments and using the spider's mechanisms for bubble capture as inspiration, a bubble capture device is manufactured. Decreasing the surface tension of the fluid by 25% decreases captured bubble volume by 50%. Below a device submersion speed of approximately 2.4 mm/s, bubble formation was at a maximum for the device, regardless of fluid surface tension. This research elucidates the limitations on bubble capture by the water spider. For future applications, these limitations can be pinpointed and adjusted for more efficient bubble capture and plastron maintenance.by Alice Brooks.S.B

Genetics of Syndromic and Non-Syndromic Hirschsprung Disease

Hirschsprung disease, mental retardation, microcephaly, and specific craniofacial dysmorphism were observed in three children from a large, consanguineous, Moroccan family. A fourth child showed similar clinical features, with the exception of Hirschsprung disease. The association of these abnormalities in these children represents the Goldberg-Shprintzen syndrome (OMIM 235730). Mutation scanning of genes potentially involved in Hirschsprung disease, RET, GDNF, EDN3, and EDNRB, showed a sequence variant, Ser305Asn, in exon 4 of the EDNRB gene in the index patient of this family. The Ser305Asn substitution present in two of the four patients and four healthy relatives and absent in one of the remaining two patients illustrates the difficulties in interpreting the presence of mutations in families with Hirschsprung disease. It is unlikely that the EDNRB variant contributes to the phenotype. This consanguineous family might be useful for the identification of a Goldberg-Shprintzen locus

Reflection and Cognitive Strategy Instruction: Modeling Active Learning for Pre-service Teachers

Reading methodology courses, like other courses in college, are often one-dimensional when it comes to instructional delivery systems. Too often, teacher talk that elicits far too little reflection prevails. This practice can be changed with activities calling for students to construct knowledge from their experiences, thus following basic tenets of constructivism. The purpose of this article is to discuss how pre-service teachers can be taught to think beyond strategies in methodology and reflect upon language itself Three instructional strategies - semantic feature analysis, fictitious writing systems activities, and nonsense story analysis - are examples of ways college professors can get students to reflect upon the intricacies of language and thought processes relating to reading and language arts. We discuss how these strategies can help move classes away from lecture-oriented formats that call for too little reflection and integration of students\u27 experiences and knowledge to formats that actively engage students in learning

Telephone transfer reduction

This project's goal is that Within six months, the South Carolina State Housing Finance and Development Authority will reduce the number of telephone transfers to an average of one required to route an incoming caller from the Authority's main telephone number to the appropriate source of information for the agency's housing programs. This might be accomplished by proactive questioning by the initial operator and the availability of a comprehensive information database so that many telephone calls could be handled without a transfer

The Legal Framework for Language Access in Healthcare Settings: Title VI and Beyond

Over the past few decades, the number and diversity of limited English speakers in the USA has burgeoned. With this increased diversity has come increased pressure—including new legal requirements—on healthcare systems and clinicians to ensure equal treatment of limited English speakers. Healthcare providers are often unclear about their legal obligations to provide language services. In this article, we describe the federal mandates for language rights in health care, provide a broad overview of existing state laws and describe recent legal developments in addressing language barriers. We conclude with an analysis of key policy initiatives that would substantively improve health care for LEP patients

The ACII 2022 Affective Vocal Bursts Workshop & Competition: understanding a critically understudied modality of emotional expression

The ACII Affective Vocal Bursts Workshop & Competition is focused on understanding multiple affective dimensions of vocal bursts: laughs, gasps, cries, screams, and many other non-linguistic vocalizations central to the expression of emotion and to human communication more generally. This year's competition comprises four tracks using a large-scale and in-the-wild dataset of 59,299 vocalizations from 1,702 speakers. The first, the A-VB-High task, requires competition participants to perform a multi-label regression on a novel model for emotion, utilizing ten classes of richly annotated emotional expression intensities, including; Awe, Fear, and Surprise. The second, the A-VB-Two task, utilizes the more conventional 2-dimensional model for emotion, arousal, and valence. The third, the A-VB-Culture task, requires participants to explore the cultural aspects of the dataset, training native-country dependent models. Finally, for the fourth task, A-VB-Type, participants should recognize the type of vocal burst (e.g., laughter, cry, grunt) as an 8-class classification. This paper describes the four tracks and baseline systems, which use state-of-the-art machine learning methods. The baseline performance for each track is obtained by utilizing an end-to-end deep learning model and is as follows: for A-VB-High, a mean (over the 10-dimensions) Concordance Correlation Coefficient (CCC) of 0.5687 CCC is obtained; for A-VB-Two, a mean (over the 2-dimensions) CCC of 0.5084 is obtained; for A-VB-Culture, a mean CCC from the four cultures of 0.4401 is obtained; and for A-VB-Type, the baseline Unweighted Average Recall (UAR) from the 8-classes is 0.4172 UAR