Body Size, Activity, Employment and Wages in Europe: A First Approach

In this article we present the first empirical analysis on the associations between body size, activity, employment and wages for several European countries. The main advantage of the present work with respect to the previous literature is offered by the comparability of the data and its large geographical coverage. According to our results, for Spanish women, being obese is associated with both a 9% lower wage and probability of being employed, while for Swedish and Danish, obesity is associated with a 12% lower probability of being employed, and a 10% lower wage respectively. In Belgium, obesity is associated with a 19% lower probability of being employed for men. These robust estimates are strongly informative and may be used as a simple statistical rule of thumb to decide the countries in which lab and field experiments should be run.

Latissimus dorsi muscle-flap over Gore-Tex patch for coverage of large thoracic defects in paediatric Ewing sarcoma.

Primary rib involvement accounts for 16% of paediatric Ewing sarcoma (ES). Neo-adjuvant chemotherapy and surgical tumor resection may leave large thoracic wall defects requiring complex reconstruction in a growing individual. We report our experience in three children aged 3, 10, and 12 years, in whom single-stage resection and reconstruction were performed using a Gore-Tex Dualmesh patch, covered by a latissimus dorsi rotation flap harvested in continuity with the thoracolumbar fascia. The youngest patient also had a vertical expandable prosthetic titanium rib (VEPTR) anchored to help prevent subsequent scoliosis throughout growth.

Get a GRIP: Should Area Revenue Coverage Be Offered through the Farm Bill or as a Crop Insurance Program? 2007

The successful expansion of the U.S. crop insurance program has not eliminated ad hoc disaster assistance. An alternative currently being explored by members of Congress and others in preparation of the 2007 farm bill is to simply remove the “ad hoc” part of disaster assistance programs by creating a standing program that would automatically funnel aid to hard-hit regions and crops. One form such a program could take can be found in the area yield and area revenue insurance programs currently offered by the U.S. crop insurance program. The Group Risk Plan (GRP) and Group Risk Income Protection (GRIP) programs automatically trigger payments when county yields or revenues, respectively, fall below a producer-elected coverage level. The per-acre taxpayer costs of offering GRIP in Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa for corn and soybeans through the crop insurance program are estimated. These results are used to determine the amount of area revenue coverage that could be offered to farmers as part of a standing farm bill disaster program. Approximately 55% of taxpayer support for GRIP flows to the crop insurance industry. A significant portion of this support comes in the form of net underwriting gains. The expected rate of return on money put at risk by private crop insurance companies under the current Standard Reinsurance Agreement is approximately 100%. Taking this industry support and adding in the taxpayer support for GRIP that flows to producers would fund a county target revenue program at the 93% coverage level.

Aitchison Geometry for Probability and Likelihood as a new approach to mathematical statistics

The Aitchison vector space structure for the simplex is generalized to a Hilbert space structure A2(P) for distributions and likelihoods on arbitrary spaces. Centralnotations of statistics, such as Information or Likelihood, can be identified in the algebraical structure of A2(P) and their corresponding notions in compositional data analysis, such as Aitchison distance or centered log ratio transform.In this way very elaborated aspects of mathematical statistics can be understoodeasily in the light of a simple vector space structure and of compositional data analysis. E.g. combination of statistical information such as Bayesian updating,combination of likelihood and robust M-estimation functions are simple additions/perturbations in A2(Pprior). Weighting observations corresponds to a weightedaddition of the corresponding evidence.Likelihood based statistics for general exponential families turns out to have aparticularly easy interpretation in terms of A2(P). Regular exponential families formfinite dimensional linear subspaces of A2(P) and they correspond to finite dimensionalsubspaces formed by their posterior in the dual information space A2(Pprior).The Aitchison norm can identified with mean Fisher information. The closing constant itself is identified with a generalization of the cummulant function and shown to be Kullback Leiblers directed information. Fisher information is the local geometry of the manifold induced by the A2(P) derivative of the Kullback Leibler information and the space A2(P) can therefore be seen as the tangential geometry of statistical inference at the distribution P.The discussion of A2(P) valued random variables, such as estimation functionsor likelihoods, give a further interpretation of Fisher information as the expected squared norm of evidence and a scale free understanding of unbiased reasoning

Estimating the probability of leaving unemployment using uncompleted spells from repeated cross-section data

We propose a new econometric estimation method for analyzing the probabilityof leaving unemployment using uncompleted spells from repeated cross-sectiondata, which can be especially useful when panel data are not available. Theproposed method-of-moments-based estimator has two important features:(1) it estimates the exit probability at the individual level and(2) it does not rely on the stationarity assumption of the inflowcomposition. We illustrate and gauge the performance of the proposedestimator using the Spanish Labor Force Survey data, and analyze the changesin distribution of unemployment between the 1980s and 1990s during a periodof labor market reform. We find that the relative probability of leavingunemployment of the short-term unemployed versus the long-term unemployedbecomes significantly higher in the 1990s.

Optimal magnitude and probability of fines

The economic literature on crime and punishment focuses on the trade-off between probability and severity of punishment, and suggests that detection probability and fines are substitutes. In this paper it is shown that, in presence of substantial underdeterrence caused by costly detection and punishment, these instruments may become complements. When offenders are poor, the deterrent value of monetary sanctions is low. Thus, the government does not invest a lot in detection. If offenders are rich, however, the deterrent value of monetary sanctions is high, so it is more profitable to prosecute them.

The influence of environmental conditions on immune responses, morphology and recapture probability of nestling house martins (Delichon urbica)

Nestling birds produced later in the season are hypothesized to be of poor quality with a low probability of survival and recruitment. In a Spanish population of house martins (Delichon urbica), we first compared reproductive success, immune responses and morphological traits between the first and the second broods. Second, we investigated the effects of an ectoparasite treatment and breeding date on the recapture rate the following year. Due probably to a reverse situation in weather conditions during the experiment, with more rain during rearing of the first brood, nestlings reared during the second brood were in better condition and had stronger immune responses compared with nestlings from the first brood. Contrary to other findings on house martins, we found a similar recapture rate for chicks reared during the first and the second brood. Furthermore, ectoparasitic house martin bugs had no significant effect on the recapture rate. Recaptured birds had similar morphology but higher immunoglobulin levels when nestlings compared with non-recaptured birds. This result implies that a measure of immune function is a better predictor of survival than body condition per se.

Sports and journalism ethics: the coverage of 2012 London Olympics in the British, North-American and Spanish press

Sports and journalism ethics: the coverage of 2012 London Olympics in the British, North-American and Spanish press is a research focused on analysing the treatment that the quality press of three countries (United Kingdom, United States of America and Spain) will carry out in the London Olympic Games. Through a solid methodological approach based on the combination of the qualitative content analysis and qualitative indepth interviews, the investigation will study if the media provide a quality coverage,that is, if they adequate their pieces to the fundamental principles of journalistic deontology (truth, justice, freedom and social responsibility). Furthermore, the research will assess if the selected media comply with the prescriptions established in the ethical codes, stylebooks, newsroom statutes and national and international recommendations about journalism ethics, ranging from each media’s guidelines to key transnational codes established by the UNESCO, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) orthe Council of Europe.

Schedule of Debt Service and Coverage for Iowa State University of Science and Technology for the Academic Building Revenue Bond Funds for the year ended June 30, 2009

Schedule of Debt Service and Coverage for Iowa State University of Science and Technology for the Academic Building Revenue Bond Funds for the year ended June 30, 2009

Dispersal probability distributions and the wave-front speed problem

The speed and width of front solutions to reaction-dispersal models are analyzed both analytically and numerically. We perform our analysis for Laplace and Gaussian distribution kernels, both for delayed and nondelayed models. The results are discussed in terms of the characteristic parameters of the models

Calculation of radio electrical coverage in Medium-Wave Frequencies

The aim of this project is to accomplish an application software based on Matlab to calculate the radioelectrical coverage by surface wave of broadcast radiostations in the band of Medium Wave (WM) all around the world. Also, given the location of a transmitting and a receiving station, the software should be able to calculate the electric field that the receiver should receive at that specific site. In case of several transmitters, the program should search for the existence of Inter-Symbol Interference, and calculate the field strenght accordingly. The application should ask for the configuration parameters of the transmitter radiostation within a Graphical User Interface (GUI), and bring back the resulting coverage above a map of the area under study. For the development of this project, it has been used several conductivity databases of different countries, and a high-resolution elevation database (GLOBE). Also, to calculate the field strenght due to groundwave propagation, it has been used ITU GRWAVE program, which must be integrated into a Matlab interface to be used by the application developed.

Using graphical probability analysis (Bayes Nets) to evaluate a conditional DNA inclusion

This paper discusses the analysis of cases in which the inclusion or exclusion of a particular suspect, as a possible contributor to a DNA mixture, depends on the value of a variable (the number of contributors) that cannot be determined with certainty. It offers alternative ways to deal with such cases, including sensitivity analysis and object-oriented Bayesian networks, that separate uncertainty about the inclusion of the suspect from uncertainty about other variables. The paper presents a case study in which the value of DNA evidence varies radically depending on the number of contributors to a DNA mixture: if there are two contributors, the suspect is excluded; if there are three or more, the suspect is included; but the number of contributors cannot be determined with certainty. It shows how an object-oriented Bayesian network can accommodate and integrate varying perspectives on the unknown variable and how it can reduce the potential for bias by directing attention to relevant considerations and distinguishing different sources of uncertainty. It also discusses the challenge of presenting such evidence to lay audiences.