Financial Regulation and Supervision in Emerging Markets. The Experience of Latin America since the Tequila Crisis

regulation, banking, Latin America

Employment in Latin America: cornerstone of social policy

Includes bibliograph

Crescimento, emprego e eqüidade: o impacto das reformas econômicas na América Latina e Caribe

Incluye BibliografíaNos últimos dez a quinze anos, as reformas estruturais implementadas na América Latina e no Caribe transformaram as economias da região. Estas, que antes eram fechadas e com grande intervenção estatal, passaram a ser mais voltadas para o mercado, com maior abertura ao resto do mundo. A expectativa das autoridades era de que estas mudanças, juntamente com uma maior estabilidade macroeconômica e um incremento dos gastos destinados ao setor social, acelerassem o crescimento, elevassem a produtividade e levassem à criação de mais empregos e a uma maior eqüidade. Não obstante, quando se considera as médias regionais agregadas, as reformas apresentam efeitos muito limitados, o que não deixa de ser surpreendente. Por outro lado, quando a análise passa aos planos nacional, setorial e microeconômico, observa-se que os efeitos foram muito maiores. As reformas fomentaram o investimento e a modernização, além de terem se traduzido em uma importante heterogeneidade em termos de desempenho. A partir deste diagnóstico e de suas conseqüências sociais, os autores propõem uma agenda de políticas para melhorar o desempenho produtivo e social das economias da região para os próximos anos

Bone Health in a Nonjaundiced Population of Children with Biliary Atresia

Objectives. To assess bone health in a cohort of nonjaundiced children with biliary atresia (BA) and the effect of growth and development on bone outcomes. Methods. Children ages one to eighteen years receiving care from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia were recruited. Each child was seen once and assessed for growth, pubertal development, concurrent medications, bilirubin, ALT, albumin, vitamin D status, bone mineral density (BMD), and bone mineral content (BMC) of the lumbar spine and whole body. Results. BMD declined significantly with age, and upon further analysis with a well-phenotyped control cohort, it was found that BMC was significantly decreased for both lumbar spine and whole body, even after adjustment for confounding variables. An age interaction was identified, with older subjects having a significantly greater impairment in BMC. Conclusions. These preliminary results demonstrate that children with BA, including those without jaundice, are likely to have compromised bone health even when accounting for height and puberty, which are common confounding factors in chronic disease. Further investigation is needed to identify the determinants of poor bone mineral status and to develop strategies to prevent osteoporosis later in life

Design and Implementation of Degenerate Microsatellite Primers for the Mammalian Clade

Microsatellites are popular genetic markers in molecular ecology, genetic mapping and forensics. Unfortunately, despite recent advances, the isolation of de novo polymorphic microsatellite loci often requires expensive and intensive groundwork. Primers developed for a focal species are commonly tested in a related, non-focal species of interest for the amplification of orthologous polymorphic loci; when successful, this approach significantly reduces cost and time of microsatellite development. However, transferability of polymorphic microsatellite loci decreases rapidly with increasing evolutionary distance, and this approach has shown its limits. Whole genome sequences represent an under-exploited resource to develop cross-species primers for microsatellites. Here we describe a three-step method that combines a novel in silico pipeline that we use to (1) identify conserved microsatellite loci from a multiple genome alignments, (2) design degenerate primer pairs, with (3) a simple PCR protocol used to implement these primers across species. Using this approach we developed a set of primers for the mammalian clade. We found 126,306 human microsatellites conserved in mammalian aligned sequences, and isolated 5,596 loci using criteria based on wide conservation. From a random subset of ∼1000 dinucleotide repeats, we designed degenerate primer pairs for 19 loci, of which five produced polymorphic fragments in up to 18 mammalian species, including the distinctly related marsupials and monotremes, groups that diverged from other mammals 120–160 million years ago. Using our method, many more cross-clade microsatellite loci can be harvested from the currently available genomic data, and this ability is set to improve exponentially as further genomes are sequenced