Temporal variability of benthic macrofauna on Cassino beach, southernmost Brazil

The temporal variability of benthic macrofauna on Cassino beach, southernmost Brazil, was studied for a period of one year (June 2004 to May 2005) based on monthly sampling. Three sites were selected distant 50m from each other. At each site, 3 transects were established, 2m equidistant from one another. Each transect extended from the base of the primary dunes to the inner surf zone at approximately 1m in depth, with 7 or 8 sampling levels. Within transects, the distance between the levels was 20m until the upper swash zone, from which distance was 10m until the 1-meter isobath. The temporal variation in the abundance of benthic macrofauna observed in the present study can be attributed to (1) the positive effects of the recruitment peaks and migration of particular species to the swash zone and (2) negative effects of the migration of some species to deeper waters, as well (3) as mortality through natural causes (stranding and action of predators) and (4) human causes (harvesting and vehicle transit). We attribute the expressive abundance increase of benthic macrofauna to recruitment. The stranding, that is, the trapping of the organisms on the upper parts of the beach, is likely the main cause of abrupt drops in benthic macrofauna abundance.

Access as a motivational device: implications for human resource management

This paper analyzes the employment relationship on the basis of the notion of access. We argue that the degree of access provided by a job is an incentive to activate the employee’s self-actualization needs. We investigate the effect of access on the workers’ performance through an agency model and provide a number of propositions with practical implications for personnel policies. Our results are consistent with the intuition emerged from the real business practice as well as with many of the arguments on the substitutive role between monetary and non-monetary incentives frequently reported in the literature.

A Retail benchmarking approach to eficient two-way access pricing

We study a retail benchmarking approach to determine access prices for interconnected networks. Instead of considering fixed access charges as in the existing literature, we study access pricing rules that determine the access price that network i pays to network j as a linear function of the marginal costs and the retail prices set by both networks. In the case of competition in linear prices, we show that there is a unique linear rule that implements the Ramsey outcome as the unique equilibrium, independently of the underlying demand conditions. In the case of competition in two-part tariffs, we consider a class of access pricing rules, similar to the optimal one under linear prices but based on average retail prices. We show that firms choose the variable price equal to the marginal cost under this class of rules. Therefore, the regulator (or the competition authority) can choose one among the rules to pursue additional objectives such as consumer surplus, network covera.

Transcatheter stent-valve implantation in a stenotic pulmonary conduit via a sub-xyphoidian access

Patients who develop a severe stenosis in biological pulmonary conduits previously implanted for pulmonary outflow trunk reconstructions are treated either by surgical re-replacement, or by transcatheter stent-valve implantation through a femoral vein access. A catheter-based sub-xyphoidian access through the right ventricle for stent-valve positioning in a pulmonary conduit has rarely been proposed. We describe the case of a 20-year-old man who underwent a pulmonary trunk reconstruction for a congenital pulmonary valve dysplasia and a few years later developed a stenosis in the pulmonary conduit. He was successfully treated with a 23 mm Edwards Sapien stent-valve implantation in pulmonary position, through an unusual right ventricular, sub-xyphoidian access and without contrast medium injections and pleura opening.

Car ownership and access to jobs in Spain

This study analyses the impact that job accessibility in public transport has on car ownership. An ordered probit explaining the number of cars per household is estimated as a function of head of household characteristics, household characteristics and job accessibility. The data used in the analysis come from the Microcensus of year 2001 of the Spanish Institute of Statistics for the areas of Barcelona and Madrid. Our results show a significant effect of accessibility on car ownership. Additionally, we carried out simulation exercises in which the expected number of vehicles decreases as accessibility improves. For instance, in the case of households living outside the central city, an improvement of accessibility up to the average level of the central city would offset the effect of the number of working adults on the expected number of vehicles.

Engorgement des centres d'urgences: une raison légitime de refuser l'accès aux patients non urgents [Emergency department overcrowding: a legitimate reason to refuse access to urgent care for non-urgent patients?].

Non-urgent cases represent 30-40% of all ED consults; they contribute to overcrowding of emergency departments (ED), which could be reduced if they were denied emergency care. However, no triage instrument has demonstrated a high enough degree of accuracy to safely rule out serious medical conditions: patients suffering from life-threatening emergencies have been inappropriately denied care. Insurance companies have instituted financial penalties to discourage the use of ED as a source of non-urgent care, but this practice mainly restricts access for the underprivileged. More recent data suggest that in fact most patients consult for appropriate urgent reasons, or have no alternate access to urgent care. The safe reduction of overcrowding requires a reform of the healthcare system based on patients' needs rather than access barriers.

Policy initiatives and firms’ access to external finance: Evidence from a panel of emerging Asian economies

This paper analyses the impact of policy initiatives co-ordinated by Asian national governments on firms' access to external finance, using a unique firm-level database of eight Asian countries- Hong Kong SAR, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand over the period of 1996-2012. Using a difference-indifferences approach and controlling for firm-level and macroeconomic factors, the results show a significant impact of policy on firms' access to external finance. After splitting firms into constrained and unconstrained, using several criteria, the results document that unconstrained firms benefited significantly in obtaining external finance, compared to their constrained counterparts. Finally, we show that the increase in access to external finance after the policy initiative helped firms to raise their investment spending, especially for unconstrained firms.

CAT (Curator Archiving Tool): improving access to web archives

PADICAT is the web archive created in 2005 in Catalonia (Spain ) by the Library of Catalonia (BC ) , the National Library of Catalonia , with the aim of collecting , processing and providing permanent access to the digital heritage of Catalonia . Its harvesting strategy is based on the hybrid model ( of massive harvesting . SPA top level domain ; selective compilation of the web site output of Catalan organizations; focused harvesting of public events) . The system provides open access to the whole collection , on the Internet . We consider necessary to complement the current search for new and visualization software with open source software tool, CAT ( Curator Archiving Tool) , composed by three modules aimed to effectively managing the processes of human cataloguing ; to publish directories where the digital resources and special collections ; and to offer statistical information of added value to end users. Within the framework of the International Internet Preservation Consortium meeting ( Vienna 2010) , the progress in the development of this new tool, and the philosophy that has motivated his design, are presented to the international community.

Access to information in Switzerland : From secrecy to transparency

Access to information legislations are now present in over 50 countries world-wide. Lagging behind some of its own Cantons, the Swiss Federal government was until recently one of the few hold outs in Europe. But, in December 2004, the Confederation voted the 'Loi sur la Transparence de l'administration' or Law on Transparency (LTrans) a Law that came into effect in July 2006. This paper presents an overview of the new Law and underlines the main institutional challenges to its introduction in Switzerland.

trEST, trGEN and Hits: access to databases of predicted protein sequences.

High throughput genome (HTG) and expressed sequence tag (EST) sequences are currently the most abundant nucleotide sequence classes in the public database. The large volume, high degree of fragmentation and lack of gene structure annotations prevent efficient and effective searches of HTG and EST data for protein sequence homologies by standard search methods. Here, we briefly describe three newly developed resources that should make discovery of interesting genes in these sequence classes easier in the future, especially to biologists not having access to a powerful local bioinformatics environment. trEST and trGEN are regularly regenerated databases of hypothetical protein sequences predicted from EST and HTG sequences, respectively. Hits is a web-based data retrieval and analysis system providing access to precomputed matches between protein sequences (including sequences from trEST and trGEN) and patterns and profiles from Prosite and Pfam. The three resources can be accessed via the Hits home page (http://hits. isb-sib.ch).