Social scientists identify two core functions of modern welfare states as redistribution across (a) socio-economic status groups (Robin Hood) and (b) 'the lifecycle' (the piggy bank). But what is the ...relative importance of these functions? The answer has been elusive, as the piggy bank is metaphorical. The intra-personal time-travel of resources it implies is based on non-quid-pro-quo transfers. In practice, 'lifecycle redistribution' must operate through inter-age-group resource reallocation in cross-section. Since at any time different birth cohorts live together, 'resource-productive' working-aged people are taxed to finance consumption of 'resource-dependent' younger and older people. In a novel decomposition analysis, we study the joint distribution of socio-economic status, age, and respectively (a) all cash and in-kind transfers ('benefits'), (b) financing contributions ('taxes'), and (c) resulting 'net benefits,' on a sample of over 400,000 Europeans from 22 EU countries. European welfare states, often maligned as ineffective Robin Hood vehicles riddled with Matthew effects, are better characterized as inter-age redistribution machines performing a more important second task rather well: lifecycle consumption smoothing. Social policies serve multiple goals in Europe, but empirically they are neither primarily nor solely responsible for poverty relief and inequality reduction.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The purpose of the current research was to test the psychological impact of learning how to use computers and the Internet in old age, hypothesizing that such activities would contribute to seniors' ...well-being and personal sense of empowerment. Employing a quasi-experimental research design, we offered a course, conducted in small groups, in computer operation and Internet browsing to 22 older adults (mean age of 80) who went to day-care centers for the elderly or resided in nursing homes. A comparison group of 26 participants (similar in all major respects) was engaged in other activities. Both groups were administered measures of physical functioning, life satisfaction, depression, loneliness and self-control at pre- and post-intervention four months later. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants who finished the computer course. ANCOVA was employed for controlling the effects of control variables and pre-intervention differences on participants who completed the activities. Results showed a significant improvement among participants in the intervention group in all measures except physical functioning, whereas deterioration in all measures was detected in the comparison group. Computer and Internet use seems to contribute to older adults' well-being and sense of empowerment by affecting their interpersonal interactions, promoting their cognitive functioning and contributing to their experience of control and independence.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VSZLJ
This paper proposes a machine learning application to identify mobile phone users suspected of involvement in criminal activities. The application characterizes the behavioral patterns of suspect ...users versus non-suspect users based on usage metadata such as call duration, call distribution, interaction time preferences and text-to-call ratios while avoiding any access to the content of calls or messages. The application is based on targeted Bayesian network learning method. It generates a graphical network that can be used by domain experts to gain intuitive insights about the key features that can help identify suspect users. The method enables experts to manage the trade-off between model complexity and accuracy using information theory metrics. Unlike other graphical Bayesian classifiers, the proposed application accomplishes the task required of a security company, namely an accurate suspect identification rate (recall) of at least 50% with no more than a 1% false identification rate. The targeted Bayesian network learning method is also used for additional tasks such as anomaly detection, distinction between “relevant” and “irrelevant” anomalies, and for associating anonymous telephone numbers with existing users by matching behavioral patterns.
In line with the previous research, we confirm that welfare programmes in Hungary are poorly targeted in terms of socio‐economic status (SES). However, by adding age to our models, we demonstrate ...that even if the status is irrelevant in explaining access to social benefits and services, age is not. Applying simple regression techniques, we compare both the theoretical importance (based on regression coefficients) and the dispersion importance (using Shapley‐value decomposition of the R2) of age and SES in explaining the receipt of and contributions to both in‐kind and in‐cash benefits at the level of the general government in Hungary. We conclude that what appears to be a dysfunctional instrument in alleviating poverty and inequality in a univariate model is actually a channel of resource reallocation that connects working‐age people to children and to the elderly when the model includes two predictors.
Purpose
For deepening trochleoplasty, a procedure used worldwide to correct trochlear dysplasia, only few surgical steps are described precisely. Important surgical landmarks, such as optimal ...cartilaginous trochlear depth and percentages of the new lateral and medial facet, remain unanswered.
Methods
A cross-sectional study (January 2011–August 2012) was carried out in adult patients (16–35 years) without trochlear dysplasia, who underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The main outcome was trochlear depth. The secondary outcome was the lateral/medial facet ratio. Measurements were made on the first axial cut from proximal with complete cartilage coverage of the trochlea. Differences between men and women were assessed.
Results
Fifty-three patients (70 % men) were included. Mean age was 24.6 years (SD ± 5.5). Overall mean trochlear depth was found to be as 4.0 mm (95 % CI 3.6–4.3). Values differed significantly by gender (
p
= 0.0271) with a mean of 3.4 mm (95 % CI 3.0–3.8) for women and a mean of 4.2 mm (95 % CI 3.8–4.7) for men. The mean ratio between the lateral and medial facet was 1.71 (95 % CI 1.62–1.80), the lateral facet contributing 62.6 % (95 % CI 61.3–63.8) and the medial facet contributing 37.4 % (95 % CI 36.2–38.7) to the total cartilage length. For the facet ratio, there was no statistically significant gender difference (n.s.).
Conclusions
This study provides data on important landmarks for deepening trochleoplasty based on average MRI measurements in the general population. The difference between the MRI measurement and actual cartilage surface measurement is likely to be minimal, but is yet to be evaluated. Further evaluation of these landmarks by prospectively performing deepening trochleoplasty will determine the value of the clinical implication.
Level of evidence
II.
Abstract The three-dimensional (3D) image of the articular surface topography of the normal and the dysplastic trochlea has not been defined. The aim of this study was to represent both the normal ...and dysplastic trochlear geometry in 3D using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Using the segmentation software program Amira (Mercury Computer Systems, Inc., Chelmsford, USA) we created 3D reconstructions of the distal femur bone and cartilage using MRI scans. Bone and cartilage of the distal femur were traced slice by slice in the acquisitioned dimension while the Amira program reconstructed the 3D model. This model was then transferred to the Rhinoceros 4.0 software (Robert McNeel & Associates, Seattle, USA) for measuring. Using this system a non-invasive 3D representation of the articular cartilage and bone of the normal trochlea and depiction of different types of trochlear dysplasia were possible. Potential advantages of these MRI measurements are assessment of the 3D articular cartilage of the whole trochlea and the bony contours on the same image, no imaging errors from joint malpositioning, no ionizing radiation, precise preoperative planning according to the documented pathomorphology, and comparison between the preoperative and the postoperative shapes. The disadvantages include higher costs compared to radiography or CT scans, and time consuming reconstruction, making them currently a research tool.
Motivation: We propose a new class of variable-order Bayesian network (VOBN) models for the identification of transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs). The proposed models generalize the widely ...used position weight matrix (PWM) models, Markov models and Bayesian network models. In contrast to these models, where for each position a fixed subset of the remaining positions is used to model dependencies, in VOBN models, these subsets may vary based on the specific nucleotides observed, which are called the context. This flexibility turns out to be of advantage for the classification and analysis of TFBSs, as statistical dependencies between nucleotides in different TFBS positions (not necessarily adjacent) may be taken into account efficiently—in a position-specific and context-specific manner. Results: We apply the VOBN model to a set of 238 experimentally verified sigma-70 binding sites in Escherichia coli. We find that the VOBN model can distinguish these 238 sites from a set of 472 intergenic ‘non-promoter’ sequences with a higher accuracy than fixed-order Markov models or Bayesian trees. We use a replicated stratified-holdout experiment having a fixed true-negative rate of 99.9%. We find that for a foreground inhomogeneous VOBN model of order 1 and a background homogeneous variable-order Markov (VOM) model of order 5, the obtained mean true-positive (TP) rate is 47.56%. In comparison, the best TP rate for the conventional models is 44.39%, obtained from a foreground PWM model and a background 2nd-order Markov model. As the standard deviation of the estimated TP rate is ≃0.01%, this improvement is highly significant. Availability: All datasets are available upon request from the authors. A web server for utilizing the VOBN and VOM models is available at http://www.eng.tau.ac.il/~bengal/ Contact: bengal@eng.tau.ac.il
The past fifteen years have witnessed the rise of the New Keynesian model as a framework of reference for the analysis of fluctuations and stabilization policies. That framework, which combines the ...rigor and internal consistency of dynamic general equilibrium models with such typically Keynesian assumptions as monopolistic competition and nominal rigidities, makes possible a meaningful, welfare-based analysis of the effects of monetary policy rules. But the conspicuous absence of unemployment from the standard New Keynesian model has given rise to both criticism and attempts to rectify this anomaly. In this book, Jordi Galí, one of the major contributors to the New Keynesian literature, offers a new approach to introducing unemployment into that framework. Galí's approach involves a reinterpretation of the labor market in the standard New Keynesian model with staggered wage setting (rather than a modification or extension of the model, as has been proposed by others). The resulting framework preserves the convenience of the representative household paradigm and allows one to determine the equilibrium levels of employment, the labor force, and hence the unemployment rate conditional on the monetary policy in place. Galí develops the basic model, embedding it in a standard New Keynesian framework with staggered price and wage setting; revisits the relationship between economic fluctuations and efficiency through the lens of the new model, developing a measure of the output gap; and analyzes the relation between unemployment and the design of monetary policy.
This article deals with the engagement of social workers in the policy arena. It offers a conceptual framework for the examination of why social workers engage in policy practice and how they ...actually do so. Drawing upon examples from a cross-national study comprising eight countries, the Policy Practice Engagement (PPE) conceptual framework presented in the article comprises three legs—Opportunity, Facilitation and Motivation. It is asserted that social worker involvement in the policy arena and the form that this takes will depend upon the degree to which political institutions are accessible to social workers and the degree to which the organisational culture of their workplace facilitates this type of activity. It will also be related to the degree to which social workers are motivated to engage in policy practice. This will be linked to the professional socialisation process as well as to individual characteristics and values.
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