Banks and development: Jewish communities in the Italian Renaissance and current economic performance

Are differences in local banking development long-lasting? Do they affect long-term economic performance?I answer these questions by relying on an historical development that occurred in Italian cities during the 15thcentury. A sudden change in the Catholic doctrine had driven the Jews toward money lending. Cities thatwere hosting Jewish communities developed complex banking institutions for two reasons: first, the Jews werethe only people in Italy who were allowed to lend for a profit and, second, the Franciscan reaction to Jewishusury led to the creation of charity lending institutions, the Monti di Pietà, that have survived until today andhave become the basis of the Italian banking system. Using Jewish demography in 1500 as an instrument, Iprovide evidence of (1) an extraordinary persistence in the level of banking development across Italian cities (2)large effects of current local banking development on per-capita income. Additional firm-level analyses suggestthat well-functioning local banks exert large effects on aggregate productivity by reallocating resources towardmore efficient firms. I exploit the expulsion of the Jews from the Spanish territories in Italy in 1541 to arguethat my results are not driven by omitted institutional, cultural and geographical characteristics. In particular,I show that, in Central Italy, the difference in current income between cities that hosted Jewish communitiesand cities that did not exists only in those regions that were not Spanish territories in the 16th century.

Exercise and nonspecific low back pain: a literature review.

We reviewed the literature to clarify the effects of exercise in preventing and treating nonspecific low back pain. We evaluated several characteristics of exercise programs including specificity, individual tailoring, supervision, motivation enhancement, volume, and intensity. The results show that exercise is effective in the primary and secondary prevention of low back pain. When used for curative treatment, exercise diminishes disability and pain severity while improving fitness and occupational status in patients who have subacute, recurrent, or chronic low back pain. Patients with acute low back pain are usually advised to continue their everyday activities to the greatest extent possible rather than to start an exercise program. Supervision is crucial to the efficacy of exercise programs. Whether general or specific exercises are preferable is unclear, and neither is there clear evidence that one-on-one sessions are superior to group sessions. Further studies are needed to determine which patient subsets respond to specific characteristics of exercise programs and which exercise volumes and intensities are optimal.

Girls’ Education: Keeping Girls in School. ( A Literature Review with Implications for Girls’ School Attendence in Cape Verde)

Education plays a very important role in society’s development in order to promote good citizenship and individual rights and freedom. To this end, it is fundamental that girls be included in the education process. Inmost developed and developing countries, theoretically, both males and females have access to education. Cape Verde is no exception; however, the reality is that even in Cape Verde, promoting girls’ education and creating conditions to motivate girls to stay in school remains a challenge. Whereas girls have access to education many girls drop out for gender-related reasons. This paper will investigate girls’ education initiatives in general, and Cape Verde specific to offer recommendations and strategies to keep girls in school.

Review of the literature on reference pricing

This paper reviews the literature on reference pricing (RP) in pharmaceutical markets. The RP strategy for cost containment of expenditure on drugs is analyzed as part of the procurement mechanism. We review the existing literature and the state-of-the-art regarding RP by focusing on its economic effects. In particular, we consider: (1) the institutional context and problem-related factors which appear to underline the need to implement an RP strategy; i.e., its nature, characteristics and the sort of health care problems commonly addressed; (2) how RP operates in practice; that is, how third party-payers (the insurers/buyers) have established the RP systems existing on the international scene (i.e., information methods, monitoring procedures and legislative provisions); (3)the range of effects resulting from particular RP strategies (including effects on choice of appropriate pharmaceuticals, insurer savings, total drug expenditures, prices of referenced and non-referenced products and dynamic efficiency; (4) the market failures which an RP policy is supposed to address and the main advantages and drawbacks which emerge from an analysis of its effects. Results suggest that RP systems achieve better their postulated goals (1) if cost inflation in pharmaceuticals is due to high prices rather than to the excess of prescription rates, (2) when the larger is the existing difference in prices among equivalent drugs, and (3) more important is the actual market for generics.

General trends in world biogeographic literature: a preliminary bibliometric analysis

Records with the search string biogeograph* were collected from the Science Citation Index (SCI). A total of 3456 records were downloaded for the 1945-2006 period from titles of articles and reviews, and 10,543 records were downloaded for 1991-2006, taking into consideration also abstracts and keywords. Temporal trends of publications, geographical and institutional distribution of the research output, authorship, and core journals were evaluated. There were as many as 122 countries carrying out biogeographic research; in the most recent period, USA is the top producing country, followed by the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, and Canada. There were 17,493 authors contributing to the field. During 1991-2006 there were 4098 organizations with authors involved in biogeographic research; institutions with higher number of papers are the Natural History Museum (United Kingdom), the University of California, Berkeley (USA), the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (France), the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico), the American Museum of Natural History (USA) and the Russian Academy of Sciences (Russia). Research articles are spread over a variety of journals, with the Journal of Biogeography, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Molecular Ecology, and Biological Journal of the Linnean Society being the core journals. From 28,759 keywords retrieved those with the highest frequency were evolution, phylogeny, diversity, mitochondrial DNA, pattern(s), systematics, and population(s). We conclude that publications on biogeography have increased substantially during the last years, especially since 1998. The preferred journal for biogeographic papers is the Journal of Biogeography. Most frequent keywords seem to indicate that biogeography fits well within both evolutionary biology and ecology, with molecular biology and phylogenetics being important factors that drive their current development.

Finasteride-related Leydig cell tumour: report of a case and literature review.

Leydig cell tumours (LCTs) of the testis are rare. Their origin is still unknown. This case report describes a potential relationship between LCT and prolonged exposure to Finasteride.

Effects of employment protection and product market regulations on the Italian labor market

Labor market regulations have often being blamed for high and persistentunemployment in Europe, but evidence on their impact remains mixed. Morerecently, attention has turned to the impact of product market regulationson employment growth. This paper analyzes how labor and product marketregulations interact to affect turnover and employment. We present a matchingmodel which illustrates how barriers to entry in the product market mitigatethe impact of labor market deregulation. We, then, use the Italian SocialSecurity employer-employee panel to study the interaction between barriersto entry and dismissal costs. We exploit the fact that costs for unjustdismissals in Italy increased for firms below 15 employees relative to biggerfirms after 1990. We find that the increase in dismissal costs after 1990decreased accessions and separations in small relative to big firms,especially for women. Moreover, consistent with our model, we find evidencethat the increase in dismissal costs had smaller effects on turnover for womenin sectors faced with strict product market regulations.

Rein et tabac : revue de la littérature et mise au point [Kidney and smoking: literature review and focus].

Smoking remains a major public health problem. It is associated with a considerable number of deaths in the world's population. Smoking is just like high blood pressure, an independent predictor of progression to any primary renal disease and renal transplant patients. It seems that smoking cessation slows the progression of kidney disease in smokers. The literature data are sometimes contradictory about it because of some methodological weaknesses. However, experimental models highlight the harmful effects of tobacco by hemodynamic and non-hemodynamic factors. The conclusion is that a major effort should be further produced by the nephrology community to motivate our patients to stop smoking.

Methodological assessment of HCC literature.

Despite the fact that the hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) represents a major health problem, very few interventions are available for this disease, and only sorafenib is approved for the treatment of advanced disease. Of note, only very few interventions have been thoroughly evaluated over time for HCC patients compared with several hundreds in other, equally highly lethal, tumours. Additionally, clinical trials in HCC have often been questioned for poor design and methodological issues. As a consequence, a gap between what is measured in clinical trials and what clinicians have to face in daily practice often occurs. As a result of this scenario, even the most recent guidelines for treatment of HCC patients use low strength evidence to make recommendations. In this review, we will discuss some of the potential methodological issues hindering a rational development of new treatments for HCC patients.

Ant species (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) from the seasonally dry tropical forest of northeastern Brazil: a compilation from field surveys in Bahia and literature records

Ant species (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) from the seasonally dry tropical forest of northeastern Brazil: a compilation from field surveys in Bahia and literature records. The Caatingas occur predominantly in northeastern Brazil and comparatively it is the biome that received less attention than any other ecosystem in Brazil, representing the region where invertebrate groups are less known. We present here the first list of ant species of the Caatingas, compiling information from the literature, from a study of samples preserved in alcohol in the Laboratory of Entomology (Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana), and from a field survey conducted in Milagres, Bahia, submitting standardized 1-m² samples of the leaf-litter to Winkler extractors. Summing all information, 11 subfamilies, 61 genera and 173 species (plus one subspecies) of ants are recognized in the biome. This species number does not consider morphospecies that could not be named due to the lack of reliable recent taxonomic information for some Neotropical ant genera. The list presented here for ant species of the Caatingas is therefore underestimated, but it is relevant because it allows the identification of areas to be sampled in order to improve our knowledge of the diversity of ants in this biome.

Breaking down the barriers between literature and language in the EFL classroom

Aquest treball gira entorn la qüestió de l’ús que es fa de la literatura com a medi per a l’ensenyament de l’anglès com a segona llengua. En primer lloc, dibuixa el marc de la situació actual on hi ha una clara separació entre llengua i literatura com a assignatures diferenciades i fa un repàs de les diferents metodologies que al llarg de la historia han utilitzat la literatura com a eina d’aprenentatge de la llengua. Segonament, el treball explica el desenvolupament i posada en pràctica d’una unitat didàctica completa per a alumnes de segon de batxillerat, que te la literatura con a punt de sortida. El treball mira de concloure com la utilització de la literatura exerceix un poder de motivació clau en els alumnes i aporta un context que dona sentit i riquesa a l’ensenyament de la llengua. Per últim, el treball fa un recull de les opinions de professors d’anglès de Catalunya al respecte d’aquest tema, a través d’un qüestionari que 66 professors associats a l’APAC (Associació de Professors d’Anglès de Catalunya) van respondre de manera desinteressada.