4,728 research outputs found
How does monetary policy affect investment in the euro area?
We set out to analyze the monetary policy transmission mechanism by documenting how the annual investment of more than one million firms in Germany, Spain, France and Italy responded to monetary policy shocks between 2000 and 2016. We show that euro area firms react differently depending on their age and the industry they operate in: young firms and those producing durable goods react more strongly than the average firm. This confirms that monetary policy is affecting firms’ investment through two different channels. On the one hand, the interest rate channel affects demand for durable goods more than demand for services, which in turn affects investment demand from the producers of those goods. On the other hand, as young firms are more likely to face financing constraints, their stronger than average reaction can be explained by the balance sheet channel of monetary policy transmission
Development of a 4-DoF Active Upper Limb Orthosis
In this paper, the designs and manufacturing process of a powered upper limb orthosis are presented. The orthosis is an exoskeleton worn on one arm by the user and fixed to the trunk. The orthosis’ architecture, design, and manufacturing process are presented and discussed. Estimations of the ranges of movement related to daily living activities are presented. The preliminary tests to verify the functionality of the design show encouraging results
2-Increasing binary aggregation operators
In this work we investigate the class of binary aggregation operators (=agops) satisfying the 2-increasing property,
obtaining some characterizations for agops having other special properties (e.g., quasi-arithmetic mean, Choquet-integral
based, modularity) and presenting some construction methods. In particular, the notion of P-increasing function is used in
order to characterize the composition of 2-increasing agops. The lattice structure (with respect to the pointwise order) of
some subclasses of 2-increasing agops is presented. Finally, a method is given for constructing copulas beginning from 2-
increasing and 1-Lipschitz agops
Conjunctors and their residual implicators: characterizations and construction methods
In many practical applications of fuzzy logic it seems clear that one needs more flexibility
in the choice of the conjunction: in particular, the associativity and the commutativity of
a conjunction may be removed. Motivated by these considerations, we present several classes
of conjunctors, i.e. binary operations on that are used to extend the boolean conjunction
from to , and characterize their respective residual implicators. We establish
hence a one-to-one correspondence between construction methods for conjunctors and construction
methods for residual implicators. Moreover, we introduce some construction methods directly in the class
of residual implicators, and, by using a deresiduation procedure, we obtain new conjunctors
Distorted Copulas: Constructions and Tail Dependence
Given a copula C, we examine under which conditions on an order isomorphism ψ of [0, 1] the distortion C ψ: [0, 1]2 → [0, 1], C ψ(x, y) = ψ{C[ψ−1(x), ψ−1(y)]} is again a copula. In particular, when the copula C is totally positive of order 2, we give a sufficient condition on ψ that ensures that any distortion of C by means of ψ is again a copula. The presented results allow us to introduce in a more flexible way families of copulas exhibiting different behavior in the tails
Descriptions of unknown sexes, new geographical records, and host associations for two South American species of Megachile (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae)
The cosmopolitan genus Megachile include many species described on the basis of only one sex. Sexual dimorphism is very pronounced in these taxa and therefore sexes are often difficult to associate, thus making species identification nearly impossible. The females of M. (Chrysosarus) concava and M. (Pseudocentron) variplantis are described and illustrated. Additional geographical and host records are provided as well as comments on their diagnostic features and identification based on existing keys.Fil: Durante, Silvana P.. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. División Entomología; ArgentinaFil: Torretta, Juan Pablo. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomia. Cátedra de Botanica General; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Colombo, María Guadalupe. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. División Entomología; Argentin
Human embryonic stem cells: an ideal model for the risk assessment of ionizing radiation during early embryo development
Expression of housekeeping markers in pluripotent or differentiating mouse embryonic stem cells (ESC) in response to ionising radiation (IR)
Impact of non-invasive follicular thyroid neoplasms with papillary-like nuclear features (NIFTP) on risk of malignancy in patients undergoing lobectomy/thyroidectomy for suspected malignancy or malignant fine-needle aspiration cytology findings: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
The second version of The Bethesda System for Reporting Thyroid Cytopathology endorsed the introduction of non-invasive follicular thyroid neoplasms with papillary-like nuclear features (NIFTP) as a distinct entity with low malignant potential into clinical practice. Consequently, the risk of malignancy (ROM) of cytological diagnoses has changed, but the magnitude of the change remains uncertain. The present systematic review was undertaken to obtain more robust information about the true impact of NIFTP on the ROM among patients undergoing surgery following a fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) diagnosis of suspicious for malignancy (Bethesda V) or malignant (Bethesda VI). As they are managed surgically, these two diagnostic categories are the primary entities that are clinically impacted by the advent of NIFTP.
Systematic review and meta-analysis.
A comprehensive literature search of online databases was performed in November 2018. The search was conducted looking for data of histologically proven NIFTP with preoperative FNAC.
One-hundred fifty-seven articles were identified and nine were included in the study. Overall, there were 13,752 thyroidectomies with a cancer prevalence of 45.7%. When NIFTP was considered non-malignant, the pooled risk difference for ROM was 5.5%. Applying meta-analysis, the pooled prevalence of NIFTP among nodules with FNAC of Bethesda V or Bethesda VI was 14 and 3%, respectively.
This meta-analysis shows that the inclusion of NIFTP leads to a reduction in the ROM for the Bethesda V and Bethesda VI FNAC diagnostic categories by 14 and 3%, respectively. Clinicians should be aware of these data to avoid overtreatment
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