The Child is father of the man: implications for the demographic transition

We propose a new theory of the demographic transition based on the evidence that body development during childhood is an important predictor of adult life expectancy. This theory is embodied in an OLG framework where fertility, longevity and education all result from individual decisions. The model displays different regimes, allowing the economy to move slowly from an initial Malthusian regime towards the Modern era. The dynamics reproduces the key features of the demographic transition, including the permanent increase in life expectancy, resulting from improvements in body development, the hump in both population growth and fertility, and a late increase in secondary educational attainments.

Energy Management for Stand-Alone Renewable Energy Systems (E-MAN-RES). Simulacions de sistemes.

L’objecte del present informe és la descripció dels treballs duts a terme en l’Activitat 2 del projecte E-MAN-RES: models de simulació i càlcul per optimització i anàlisi de sensibilitat de la gestió de la demanda, per part de la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.

Man-bites-dog business cycles

The newsworthiness of an event is partly determined by how unusual it isand this paper investigates the business cycle implications of this fact. In particular, weanalyze the consequences of information structures in which some types of signals are morelikely to be observed after unusual events. Such signals may increase both uncertainty anddisagreement among agents and when embedded in a simple business cycle model, can helpus understand why we observe (i) occasional large changes in macro economic aggregatevariables without a correspondingly large change in underlying fundamentals (ii) persistentperiods of high macroeconomic volatility and (iii) a positive correlation between absolutechanges in macro variables and the cross-sectional dispersion of expectations as measuredby survey data. These results are consequences of optimal updating by agents when theavailability of some signals is positively correlated with tail-events. The model is estimatedby likelihood based methods using individual survey responses and a quarterly time seriesof total factor productivity along with standard aggregate time series. The estimated modelsuggests that there have been episodes in recent US history when the impact on outputof innovations to productivity of a given magnitude was more than eight times as largecompared to other times.

Model-based objects recognition in man-made environments

We describe a model-based objects recognition system which is part of an image interpretation system intended to assist autonomous vehicles navigation. The system is intended to operate in man-made environments. Behavior-based navigation of autonomous vehicles involves the recognition of navigable areas and the potential obstacles. The recognition system integrates color, shape and texture information together with the location of the vanishing point. The recognition process starts from some prior scene knowledge, that is, a generic model of the expected scene and the potential objects. The recognition system constitutes an approach where different low-level vision techniques extract a multitude of image descriptors which are then analyzed using a rule-based reasoning system to interpret the image content. This system has been implemented using CEES, the C++ embedded expert system shell developed in the Systems Engineering and Automatic Control Laboratory (University of Girona) as a specific rule-based problem solving tool. It has been especially conceived for supporting cooperative expert systems, and uses the object oriented programming paradigm

Streptococcus suis infection and malignancy in man, Spain

Streptococcus suis is an emerging zoonotic agent. Human infection is associated with occupational exposure to swine. Affected persons are usually, but not always, healthy (1,2). Immunosuppressive conditions can predispose persons to S. suis infection, and cancer has classically been associated as a risk factor for S. suis infection (1,2). Nevertheless, the actual number of reported cases is low (27). We describe a severe case of S. suis infection in a man who had not been exposed to swine but for whom disseminated cancer was diagnosed 5 months after the infection.

Streptococcus suis infection and malignancy in man, Spain

Streptococcus suis is an emerging zoonotic agent. Human infection is associated with occupational exposure to swine. Affected persons are usually, but not always, healthy (1,2). Immunosuppressive conditions can predispose persons to S. suis infection, and cancer has classically been associated as a risk factor for S. suis infection (1,2). Nevertheless, the actual number of reported cases is low (27). We describe a severe case of S. suis infection in a man who had not been exposed to swine but for whom disseminated cancer was diagnosed 5 months after the infection.