Summary
Motivation
It is imperative to understand the factors affecting child labour and school attendance in order to develop policies aimed at improving children's lives. The need for such policies ...is because poor households may underinvest in human capital. Individual factors have been shown to affect child labour and school attendance, but we examine which factors cause the strongest effects by considering them simultaneously.
Purpose
We evaluate the factors that have led to the changes in child labour and school attendance of children aged 12–14 in Mexico during the 2000–2020 period. We consider income, the education of the household head, government cash transfers, access to public health institutions, remittances, and demographic characteristics as possible sources of the changes.
Methods and approach
We use a variant of the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition, which allows decomposition when the variables to be explained are dichotomous. The change in child labour and school attendance over time can then be decomposed into explained and unexplained portions, with each factor contributing a specific amount to the explained portion of the change.
Findings
The most important factor influencing improvements in child labour and school attendance was the improvement in the parents' human capital, measured as years of education. The result is not due to a high correlation between income and education, as significant explanatory power is lost as we exclude education from the analysis. The result is also robust to separating Mexican states into those with high and those with low incidence of poverty. The increase in government assistance and greater access to social health insurance also play an important role.
Policy implications
Public policies aimed at increasing school attendance and those aimed at reducing child labour should consider improved education as a major goal. In addition, important consideration should be given to the possible impact on children of poverty‐fighting policy changes. Our findings suggest that government policies aimed at reducing poverty in Mexico are important in influencing both child labour and school attendance, and policy changes have had undesirable effects on both.
Aims
Several novel low‐dose fluoroscopic systems (LDS) developed recently, but real practice information of the net benefit for the patient and professionals is scarce. We evaluated separately ...patient and operator radiation exposure during percutaneous interventions of chronic total occlusions (CTO).
Methods
A total of 116 consecutive CTOs were analyzed (60 in LDS and 56 in standard‐dose fluoroscopic system SDS). Digital dosimetry of patient and occupational (operator and scatter dose) exposure was prospectively recorded.
Results
Biometrics, demographics, CTO variables, and operators were distributed evenly. Patient radiation exposure was effectively decreased in LDS (dose area product DAP by 36%, Air Kerma AK by 47%). However, occupational data showed no statistical differences between LDS and SDS. The LDS uses less radiation amount but with higher energy (due to additional filtration) compared to SDS, therefore increasing the scatter dose. When comparing the C‐arm scatter dose to the DAP we found higher scatter dose with the LDS (0.0139 mSv/gray (Gy)*cm2 vs. 0.0082 mSv/Gy*cm2, p < .001). This was confirmed in a larger dataset comprising 5,221 coronary procedures.
Conclusions
LDS was safer for patients reducing DAP and AK compared to SDS. However, occupational doses were not lower and scatter dose higher. Radiological protection measures must be kept maximized even in LDS.
We study the relationship between differences in human capital and differences in output per worker of the federal entities of Mexico. We consider both quantity and quality of education in human ...capital formation. Our measure of quality of education is constructed using the OECD's programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) maths achievement test scores. Our results are consistent with different methodologies and data sources. We find that variations in human capital explain upwards of 40% of the variations in state GDP per hour worked. Our results indicate that Mexican states should place more emphasis both in the quantity as well as quality of schooling to support economic development of the states.
Haptic Performance Using Voltage-Mode Motor Control Gil, Jorge Juan; Diaz, Inaki
IEEE transactions on industrial electronics (1982),
2020-Jan., 2020-1-00, 20200101, Letnik:
67, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Haptic devices driven by dc motors are usually controlled in current mode due to the direct relationship between current and torque. This paper analyzes the performance of voltage-mode controllers ...whose main drawback is that the torque of the actuator depends on its electrical dynamics. However, the electrical dynamics of the motor add the viscosity generated by the back electromotive force. Since the motor damping seen from the handle of the interface is increased by the square of the transmission ratio, the physical damping of the mechanism can be very high, maintaining low inertia. As a result, very high performance in terms of critical stiffness can be achieved, even using cost-effective electronics. There is a tradeoff between the achievable virtual stiffness during the haptic interaction and the backdrivability in free movement, if the damping is set too high. To investigate the benefits of this motor control strategy, CEIT's haptic gearshift is used as a testbed. The experimental results confirm that a very high critical stiffness can be achieved using this strategy.
ABSTRACT
Niemann‐Pick disease type C (NPC) is a rare and fatal lysosomal storage disorder characterized by neurodegeneration and hepatic involvement. Mutations in either NPC1 or NPC2, two genes ...encoding lysosomal proteins, lead to an intracellular accumulation of unesterified cholesterol and sphingolipids in late endosomes/lysosomes. Early cholestatic disease is considered a hallmark of patients with early disease onset. This can potentially result in liver failure shortly after birth or subclinical hepatic inflammation. Previous reports suggest an association between NPC and hepatocellular carcinoma, a cancer that is rare during childhood. We present a 12‐year‐old male with a known diagnosis of NPC1 disease who was found to have a stage III hepatocellular carcinoma, underwent surgical resection with adjuvant chemotherapy, and subsequently died from metastatic disease. This report provides evidence of an increased risk of hepatocellular carcinoma in NPC patients, suggesting a need for screening in this patient population.
Evolutionary branching occurs when a population with a unimodal phenotype distribution diversifies into a multimodally distributed population consisting of two or more strains. Branching results from ...frequency-dependent selection, which is caused by interactions between individuals. For example, a population performing a social task may diversify into a cooperator strain and a defector strain. Branching can also occur in multi-dimensional phenotype spaces, such as when two tasks are performed simultaneously. In such cases, the strains may diverge in different directions: possible outcomes include division of labor (with each population performing one of the tasks) or the diversification into a strain that performs both tasks and another that performs neither. Here we show that the shape of the population's phenotypic distribution plays a role in determining the direction of branching. Furthermore, we show that the shape of the distribution is, in turn, contingent on the direction of approach to the evolutionary branching point. This results in a distribution-selection feedback that is not captured in analytical models of evolutionary branching, which assume monomorphic populations. Finally, we show that this feedback can influence long-term evolutionary dynamics and promote the evolution of division of labor.
Robotic rehabilitation for poststroke therapies is an emerging new domain of application for robotics with proven success stories and clinical studies. New robotic devices and software applications ...are hitting the market, with the aim of assisting specialists carrying out physical therapies and even patients exercising at home. Rehabilitation robots are designed to assist patients performing repetitive movements with their hemiparetic limbs to regain motion. A successful robotic device for rehabilitation demands high workspace and force feedback capabilities similar to a human physiotherapist. These desired features are usually achieved at the expense of other important requirements, such as transparency and backdrivability, degrading the overall human-machine interaction experience.
This paper presents a survey of existing robotic systems for lower-limb rehabilitation. It is a general assumption that robotics will play an important role in therapy activities within ...rehabilitation treatment. In the last decade, the interest in the field has grown exponentially mainly due to the initial success of the early systems and the growing demand caused by increasing numbers of stroke patients and their associate rehabilitation costs. As a result, robot therapy systems have been developed worldwide for training of both the upper and lower extremities. This work reviews all current robotic systems to date for lower-limb rehabilitation, as well as main clinical tests performed with them, with the aim of showing a clear starting point in the field. It also remarks some challenges that current systems still have to meet in order to obtain a broad clinical and market acceptance.
Iron electrodes were prepared by hot-pressing iron-polyethylene based formulations on nickel foam stripes. NiFe cells were tested by using commercial nickel electrodes and our iron electrodes. ...Post-hoc comparisons were used to identify meaningful differences between iron electrode formulations (based upon bismuth, bismuth sulphate, potassium sulphide and iron sulphide as additives). Our results confirm that both bismuth sulphide and iron sulphide favour the process of charge/discharge of a NiFe cell. In addition, we have found that the use of metallic bismuth only marginally influences coulombic efficiency; likewise, the presence of the soluble bisulfide anion is not sufficient to increase coulombic efficiency. Finally, NiFe cells prepared with bismuth sulphide outperformed their iron sulphide counterparts.
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•We investigate sulphur containing additives in the performance of NiFe cells.•We perform post-hoc comparisons among NiFe cell formulations.•The performance of a NiFe cell depends on the initial cycles of charge/discharge.
Allergy tests are routinely performed in most hospitals everyday. However, measuring the outcomes of these tests is still a very laborious manual task. Current methods and systems lack of precision ...and repeatability. This paper presents a novel mechatronic system that is able to scan a patient's entire arm and provide allergists with precise measures of wheals for diagnosis. The device is based on 3-D laser technology and specific algorithms have been developed to process the information gathered. This system aims to automate the reading of skin prick tests and make gains in speed, accuracy, and reliability. Several experiments have been performed to evaluate the performance of the system.
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