The (Ir)relevance of the NRU for Policy Making: The Case of Denmark

We reconsider the central role of the natural rate of unemployment (NRU) in forming policy decisions. We show that the unemployment rate does not gravitate towards the NRU due to frictional growth, a phenomenon that encapsulates the interplay between lagged adjustment processes and growth in dynamic labour market systems. We choose Denmark as the focal point of our empirical analysis and find that the NRU explains only 33% of the unemployment variation, while frictional growth accounts for the remaining 67%. Therefore, our theoretical and empirical findings raise serious doubts as to whether the NRU should play a key instrumental role in policy making.Unemployment, Natural rate of unemployment, Labour market dynamics, Frictional growth, Chain reaction theory

Capital Accumulation and Unemployment: New Insights on the Nordic Experience

This paper takes a fresh look at the analysis of labour market dynamics and argues that capital accumulation plays a fundamental role in shaping unemployment movements. This role has generally been examined by considering indirect transmission channels of the capital stock effects, i.e. using variables like interest rates or investment ratios in the estimation of single-equation unemployment rate models. Here we advocate a different approach. We directly estimate the effects of capital stock in the labour market by applying the chain reaction theory of unemployment, and we find that capital stock is a major determinant of unemployment in the Nordic countries. In particular, the different unemployment experiences of these economies derive from the temporary (albeit prolonged) negative shocks to capital stock growth in Denmark and Sweden, and the permanent downturn of capital stock growth in Finland. We are thus able to explain why the crisis of the early 1990s had a more accute impact in Finland than in its twin economy, Sweden.Unemployment dynamics, Chain reaction theory, Capital accumulation, Nordic countries

Role of loop 9 on the function of neuronal nicotinic receptors

AbstractWe have studied the role of loop 9 in the function of neuronal nicotinic receptors. By systematically mutating the residues in the loop we have determined that the most important amino acids determining the coupling of binding to gating are the ones closer to the transmembrane region. Single mutations at location E173 in homomeric α7 receptors destroyed their function by completely abolishing the current while preserving the expression at the membrane. In contrast, heteromeric receptor α3β4 with the same mutations retained some function. We conclude that loop 9 has a different role in the function of homomeric and heteromeric receptors

The (ir)relevance of the NRU for policy making: the case of Denmark

We reconsider the central role of the natural rate of unemployment (NRU) in forming policy decisions. We show that the unemployment rate does not gravitate towards the NRU due to frictional growth, a phenomenon that encapsulates the interplay between lagged adjustment processes and growth in dynamic labour market systems. We choose Denmark as the focal point of our empirical analysis and find that the NRU explains only 33% of the unemployment variation, while frictional growth accounts for the remaining 67%. Therefore, our theoretical and empirical findings raise serious doubts as to whether the NRU should play a key instrumental role in policy making

Capital accumulation and unemployment: new insights on the Nordic experience

This paper takes a fresh look at the analysis of labour market dynamics and argues that capital accumulation plays a fundamental role in shaping unemployment movements. This role has generally been examined by considering indirect transmission channels of the capital stock effects, i.e. using variables like interest rates or investment ratios in the estimation of single-equation unemployment rate models. Here we advocate a different approach. We directly estimate the effects of capital stock in the labour market by applying the chain reaction theory of unemployment, and we find that capital stock is a major determinant of unemployment in the Nordic countries. In particular, the different unemployment experiences of these economies derive from the temporary (albeit prolonged) negative shocks to capital stock growth in Denmark and Sweden, and the permanent downturn of capital stock growth in Finland. We are thus able to explain why the crisis of the early 1990s had a more acute impact in Finland than in its twin economy, Sweden

Improved gating of a chimeric α7-5HT3A receptor upon mutations at the M2–M3 extracellular loop

AbstractAcetylcholine-evoked currents of the receptor chimera α7-5HT3A V201 expressed in Xenopus oocytes are strikingly small when compared to the amount of α-bungarotoxin binding sites detected at the oocyte membrane. Since the chimeric receptor is made of the extracellular N-terminal region of the rat α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor and the C-terminal region of the mouse 5-HT3A receptor, which includes the ion channel, we hypothesized that communication between these two regions was not optimal. Here, we show that mutating to aspartate several adjacent positions in the M2–M3 extracellular linker increases current amplitudes to different extents, thus confirming the important role of this region on receptor gating

On relative isodiametric inequalities

We consider subdivisions of convex bodies G in two subsets E and G\E. We obtain several inequalities comparing the relative volume 1) with the minimum relative diameter and 2) with the maximum relative diameter. In the second case we obtain the best upper estimate only for subdivisions determined by straight lines in planar sets

Física y Química: 1º Bachillerato

La existencia de materiales de trabajo valorados positivamente por quienes han de usarlos, contribuye a que el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje pueda desarrollarse de una manera más eficaz. Ésta ha sido la intención que nos ha guiado al escribir: diseñar un libro de texto de física y química que pueda ser útil a la mayor parte posible de profesores y alumnos. Para conseguir el objetivo anterior, hemos partido del convencimiento de que todo conocimiento y aprendizaje científico es la respuesta a problemas de interés, lo que nos ha llevado a plantear los contenidos y su secuenciación en base a unos cuantos grandes problemas estructurantes como: ¿Qué son y cómo se producen los cambios materiales? ¿A qué se debe la gran diversidad de sustancias existentes? ¿Cómo pueden cambiar unas sustancias en otras de propiedades diferentes

History of Swimming II: Since Reinassence to the appearence and consolidation of current competitive strokes

Con el Renacimiento resurge el arte de nadar en Europa y se publican los primeros textos dedicados a la Natación, destacando Colymbetes (1538) de Wynman, De Arte Natandi (1587) de Digby y, con posterioridad, L´Art de Nager (1696) de Thevenot. En el s.XVII surgirán dos escuelas antagónicas: la seguidora de G. Muts que preconizaba una fase inicial de ejercicios en seco y la Natación natural de O. de Bernardi y H. Ladebeck. En el s.XIX tres grandes motivos popularizan la Natación a todos los estratos sociales: (a) las grandes travesías a nado, especialmente la del canal de la Mancha, (b) la importancia que los militares vuelven a darle a la Natación en la formación de los soldados y (c) la aparición de los primeros clubs, piscinas y primeras competiciones. Con el espaldarazo definitivo que supuso la reaparición de los J.J.O.O., se llega a la situación actual, con cuatro estilos de competición que evolucionaron notablemente durante el s.XX. En las últimas décadas de dicho siglo, quedaron establecidos los modelos técnicos de nado de los cuatro estilos de competición.With the Renaissance, the art of swimming revived in Europe and the first texts dedicated to swimming were published, highlighting Colymbetes (1538) of Wynman, De Arte Natandi (1587) of Digby, and thereafter, L'Art de Nager (1696) of Thevenot. In the eighteenth century two opposig methods emerge: G. Muts method advocated an initial phase with dry land exercises and natural swimming method of O. de Bernardi and H. Ladebeck. In the nineteenth century three major reasons popularized swimming to all social strata: (a) large swimming trips, especially the English Channel, (b) the military significance of swimming and (c) the emergence of clubs, swimming pools and firsts championships. With the return of the Olympic Games, we get to the current situation, with four racing styles that evolved significantly over the twentieth century. In the last decades of this century were established the technical models of the four racing swimming stroke

Leveraging task-parallelism in message-passing dense matrix factorizations using SMPSs

In this paper, we investigate how to exploit task-parallelism during the execution of the Cholesky factorization on clusters of multicore processors with the SMPSs programming model. Our analysis reveals that the major difficulties in adapting the code for this operation in ScaLAPACK to SMPSs lie in algorithmic restrictions and the semantics of the SMPSs programming model, but also that they both can be overcome with a limited programming effort. The experimental results report considerable gains in performance and scalability of the routine parallelized with SMPSs when compared with conventional approaches to execute the original ScaLAPACK implementation in parallel as well as two recent message-passing routines for this operation. In summary, our study opens the door to the possibility of reusing message-passing legacy codes/libraries for linear algebra, by introducing up-to-date techniques like dynamic out-of-order scheduling that significantly upgrade their performance, while avoiding a costly rewrite/reimplementation.This research was supported by Project EU INFRA-2010-1.2.2 \TEXT:Towards EXa op applicaTions". The researcher at BSC-CNS was supported by the HiPEAC-2 Network of Excellence (FP7/ICT 217068), the Spanish Ministry of Education (CICYT TIN2011-23283, TIN2007-60625 and CSD2007- 00050), and the Generalitat de Catalunya (2009-SGR-980). The researcher at CIMNE was partially funded by the UPC postdoctoral grants under the programme \BKC5-Atracció i Fidelització de talent al BKC". The researcher at UJI was supported by project CICYT TIN2008-06570-C04-01 and FEDER. We thank Jesus Labarta, from BSC-CNS, for helpful discussions on SMPSs and his help with the performance analysis of the codes with Paraver. We thank Vladimir Marjanovic, also from BSC-CNS, for his help in the set-up and tuning of the MPI/SMPSs tools on JuRoPa. Finally, we thank Rafael Mayo, from UJI, for his support in the preliminary stages of this work. The authors gratefully acknowledge the computing time granted on the supercomputer JuRoPa at Jülich Supercomputing Centrer.Peer ReviewedPreprin