Academic literature on the topic 'Variant à risque'

The passage or translatio between bodies of knowledge and geographic terrains prompted the transformation of the choreomania concept from mildly quaint to dangerously exotic, in a context of rising anti-colonial revolt. This chapter introduces part II of the book, which emphasizes the transformation of ‘choreomania’ on colonial shores. Considering the rise in comparative literature and medical geography, as well as performative reconstructions of ancient Greek attitudes, this chapter shows how travellers, translators, and anthropologists contributed to expanding the archival repertoire of choreomanias with cases and marginalia emphasizing the exotic South and East. Tarantellas, in particular, imagined as gateways to Greece and Africa via Sicily, appeared to reach back not only to medieval and ancient Europe but also across to present-day Abyssinia. The tigretier, an African ‘variant’, and further apparent variants in Nigeria, made of the ‘dancing disease’ a feminine and soon, too, a typically colonial figure of duplicity and deceit.

Through an in-depth analysis of bestselling “how-to-succeed” books along with popular television shows and well-trafficked “mommy” blogs, The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism demonstrates how the notion of a happy work-family balance has not only been incorporated into the popular imagination as a progressive feminist ideal but also lies at the heart of a new variant of feminism. Embraced by high-powered women, from Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg to Ivanka Trump, this variant of feminism abandons key terms, such as equal rights and liberation, advocating, instead, for a life of balance and happiness. What we are ultimately witnessing, Catherine Rottenberg argues, is the emergence of a neoliberal feminism that abandons the struggle to undo the unjust gendered distribution of labor and that helps to ensure that all responsibility for reproduction and care work falls squarely on the shoulders of individual women. Moreover, this increasingly dominant form of feminism simultaneously splits women into two distinct groups: worthy capital-enhancing women and the “unworthy” disposable female “other” who performs much of the domestic and care work. This split, not surprisingly, transpires along racial, class, and citizen-immigrant lines. The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism thus underscores the ways in which neoliberal feminism forsakes the vast majority of women, while it facilitates new and intensified forms of racialized and class-stratified gender exploitation. Given our frightening neoliberal reality, the monumental challenge, then, is how we can successfully reorient and reclaim feminism as a social justice movement.

Seeking to consolidate the state socialist framework of government, individual regimes developed, in dialogue with social scientific research, peculiar disciplines of state socialist governance and authoritarian socio-technics. With the help of political economy, socialist jurisprudence, political sociology, or “prognostics,” late socialist regimes tried hard to stabilize their rule. At the same time, knowledge production catalyzed from above gave rise to a critical potential that caused a majority of the experts to endorse wholeheartedly first perestroika and glasnost coming from the Soviet Union and later also the radical break with the state socialist political system. Another effort to boost the failing legitimacy of the regime was a reconfiguration of national communism. Whereas the earlier, “liberalizing” variant was turning to the liberal nationalist tradition for inspiration, linking the cause of individual and national liberty, the later, “homogenizing” version drew more on the romantic nationalist identification of the ethnic Other as the oppressor.

As one of the few resources to thoroughly examine the critical problem of over-diagnosis in psychiatry today, this title covers how over-diagnosis in psychiatric practice may lead to over-treatment. It considers the complications of the DSM-5 classification system, with particular reference to major depression, bipolar disorder, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). While each of these conditions have given rise to diagnostic fads and epidemics, the classification of mental disorders remains provisional without any biomarkers for mental disorders. It then covers the importance of conservative diagnoses, recognizing that normal variants are not necessarily disorder, and that in many cases, under-, rather than over-diagnosing may be best practice.

In this chapter, we deal with polaritons as a “quantum fluid of light”, described by variants of the Gross–Pitaevskii equation. We discuss how interactions between flowing polaritons and a defect allow to study their superfluid regime and generate topological defects. Including spin gives rise to an effective magnetic field (polariton spin-orbit coupling) that acts on the topological defects—half-solitons and half-vortices—behaving as effective magnetic monopoles. We describe various techniques to create periodic potentials, that can lead to the formation of polaritonic bands and gaps with a unique flexibility. Special focus is given to topologically nontrivial bands, leading to a polariton topological insulator, based on a polariton graphene analog.

The monograph is a study of main trends of emergence and evolution of the national historical writing in Western Europe in the XVIIth century. Based on a complex analysis of several phenomena which defined the development of the Early Modern historical writing, it provides a comparative analysis of the regional schools of historical writing (particularly those of the English antiquaries and French érudits) in the process of their respective growth and formation accomplished by the end of XVIIth century with the advent of the national historiography. The conceptual unity of the book is verified within the context of the rise of the national states in England and France, which stipulated a consistent demand for reinforcing the nationally orientated discourses not only in a historical writing but also in legal and political thought. The perception of England as an empire, entrenched in the insular historical and legal consciousness, recurring during the reigns of the Stuarts and extending to the whole British archipelago, determined the establishment of chorography as a prevalent form characteristic of the English historiography. Chorographic structure of the narrative unfolding the space of the territorial “empire” to the reader corresponded to the method of “intellectual appropriation” of the British Isles by the English antiquarians which could be defined as “cultural-historical”. A considerable role was devoted to reactualization of ethnogenetic myths at different levels: while some of them (primarily – the Galfridian myth) were regarded as relevant to the pan-British cultural and historical past, others emphasized autonomous dimensions of the past and present of distinct composites (Scotland, Ireland, Wales) The continental French variant of proto-national historiography also utilized the idea of empire but in a different mode defined by the formula “rex in regno suo imperator est”. The emerging school of érudits modelled principles of its narratives on patrimonial structures rooted in the feudal medieval society (dynasty; royal family; aristocratic lineages; seigneurial rights and vassal obligations; the system of offices created by the monarch stemming from the royal household etc.). The unity of the subjects of the French kingdom was ensured not by the shared territorial commonality but by their loyalty to the king. Therefore, the French variant of “intellectual appropriation” was developed in a socio-political direction in contrast to the territorial.

Non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHL) are a heterogeneous group of malignancies originating from B- or T-lymphocytes and engaging lymphoid tissue. Clinically, NHL subtypes range from chronic indolent to aggressive life-threatening diseases. The incidence of NHL overall increased dramatically worldwide during the latter half of the twentieth century but has now leveled off in many countries. Although some etiologic factors have been identified, most newly diagnosed cases of NHL as well as the previous rise in incidence remain largely unexplained. Well-established risk factors include severe immune suppression following HIV/AIDS and organ transplantation, autoimmune and inflammatory disorders, some infectious agents, and family history. More recently, lifestyle factors have also been linked with certain subtypes of NHL. Through the work of the international InterLymph consortium, several subtype-specific genetic susceptibility variants have also been revealed, promising to shed further light on mechanisms of lymphomagenesis.

Using a variety of old and new archival sources to examine the emergence of the Soviet system (1917-1937), this combined approach offers chronologically coherent and original construction of some crucial stages and problems in Soviet history. The past two centuries have produced an extraordinary number of new states—more than 30 in 20th-century Europe alone. It is within this turbulent context that one must analyze the rise of the Soviet state, an entity that would prove fragile in the long run despite its all-powerful facade. An examination of the extreme features and peculiarities of the Soviet variant offers revealing insights into this exceptional historical process and contributes to a wider understanding of the European Forty Year War (1912-1953). Graziosi devotes particular attention to Soviet solutions to the peasant and nationality problems, as well as to the pre-eminent role of ideology, the rise of personal despotism, and the unusual degree of penetration between state and economy. Using a variety of interpretations, he applies concepts from political, economic, and social history to the Soviet phenomenon without losing sight of its connections with more general European developments. The life of a Bolshevik leader is used to provide an overview of the whole period from six points of view: psychology, ideology, despotism, nationality, relations with the West, and economic building. Also, an analysis of industrialization based on the accounts of foreign workers who often met a tragic fate in the great purges contributes significantly to an assessment of the role that myth building played in the Stalinist repression of the Soviet working class.

AbstractLifted (family-based) static analysis by abstract interpretation is capable of analyzing all variants of a program family simultaneously, in a single run without generating any of the variants explicitly. The elements of the underlying lifted analysis domain are tuples, which maintain one property per variant. Still, explicit property enumeration in tuples, one by one for all variants, immediately yields combinatorial explosion. This is particularly apparent in the case of program families that, apart from Boolean features, contain also numerical features with large domains, thus giving rise to astronomical configuration spaces.The key for an efficient lifted analysis is a proper handling of variability-specific constructs of the language (e.g., feature-based runtime tests and $$\texttt {\#if}$$ # if directives). In this work, we introduce a new symbolic representation of the lifted abstract domain that can efficiently analyze program families with numerical features. This makes sharing between property elements corresponding to different variants explicitly possible. The elements of the new lifted domain are constraint-based decision trees, where decision nodes are labeled with linear constraints defined over numerical features and the leaf nodes belong to an existing single-program analysis domain. To illustrate the potential of this representation, we have implemented an experimental lifted static analyzer, called SPLNum$$^2$$ 2 Analyzer, for inferring invariants of C programs. An empirical evaluation on BusyBox and on benchmarks from SV-COMP yields promising preliminary results indicating that our decision trees-based approach is effective and outperforms the baseline tuple-based approach.

Research on Spanish future-time expression has revealed a diachronic rise for the periphrastic future. However, future-in-the-past expression remains understudied. Two common variants are the periphrastic future in the imperfect (e.g., iba a bailar ‘I was going to dance’) and the conditional (e.g., bailaría ‘I would dance’). Our study is unique in assessing future-in-the-past expression through a controlled task able to elicit greater token counts and its consideration of data beyond Spain. In this exploratory study, we analyzed residents of Seville, Spain and Caracas, Venezuela via a written contextualized task, examining linguistic predictors (temporal distance, polarity, and verb type). Results echo research on future-time expression: the periphrastic form has gained traction and has developed through analogous predictors. Moreover, findings reveal notable cross-variety similarity.

AbstractRealism is generally seen as one of the most influential theories of international politics. Military and foreign policy officials adhere to the apparent timeless insights of realism. They stress the importance of power, especially military power, and the need to ensure the survival and security of the state. Ontologically, realism depicts a hostile world of power-seeking states. Some realists explain this in terms of human nature while others emphasize the anarchical structure of international politics. The chapter begins with a brief overview of the development of realist theory from Thucydides, who was an Athenian military official, to the present day. The next section explains the various epistemological, methodological, and ontological positions that realists hold. Next, the common elements that comprise the essence of realism will be identified: rationality, statism, survival, and self-help (the three S’s). In the third section, the differences between two variants of realist theory, classical and structural realism, are explained. In the conclusion the timeless wisdom of realism is revisited by considering the rise of China and the implications this has for international order.

AbstractGiven the versatility of timed automata a huge body of work has evolved that considers extensions of timed automata. One extension that has received a lot of interest is timed automata with a, possibly unbounded, stack, also called pushdown timed automata (PDTA). While different algorithms have been given for reachability in different variants of this model, most of these results are purely theoretical and do not give rise to efficient implementations. One main reason for this is that none of these algorithms (and the implementations that exist) use the so-called zone-based abstraction, but rely either on the region-abstraction or other approaches, which are significantly harder to implement.In this paper, we show that a naive extension, using simulations, of the zone based reachability algorithm for the control state reachability problem of timed automata is not sound in the presence of a stack. To understand this better we give an inductive rule based view of the zone reachability algorithm for timed automata. This alternate view allows us to analyze and adapt the rules to also work for pushdown timed automata. We obtain the first zone-based algorithm for PDTA which is terminating, sound and complete. We implement our algorithm in the tool TChecker and perform experiments to show its efficacy, thus leading the way for more practical approaches to the verification of timed pushdown systems.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are designed to find associations between genomic variants and a phenotype, usually a complex multifactorial disease. The idea for association studies in a large cohort was floated after linkage analysis, which proved extremely successful in the identification of causative genes for rare disorders, but it did not come up to expectations in the case of common complex disorders where causative alleles are less frequently aggregated in families. Ever since their advent in 2005, GWAS have transformed gene identification ventures in complex disease genetics over the past fifteen years, giving rise to several powerful associations for complex traits and disorders. Association studies are based on the “common disease common variant” hypothesis which assumes that genomic variation with low penetrance and high population frequency are involved in the causation of common complex disorders. Although GWAS, complemented with the downstream functional assessment of the variants, have been successful in identifying novel disease-causing genes and biological mechanisms, the field has also received intense criticism over the years, especially its failure in tracing the so-called ‘missing heritability’. Therefore, further functional studies are mandatory to precisely establish a link between risk alleles and a phenotype. This chapter broadly covers an introduction of GWAS, their successes and limitations, and various important factors affecting the design and results, followed by challenges in the post-GWAS era.

The increased demand for product variety has implied that many manufacturing companies are struggling with managing product complexity. This article suggests a framework for combined modeling of product variants and the process flow in production and assembly for customized products. The aim of the framework is to create a visual model that illustrates the product variety relative to the process flow and provides transparency of product variety in the different process steps. Literature has suggested various methods and techniques. These provide means for reducing complexity based on analysis of the end product, but do not pay much attention to understanding where in the production and assembly processes, this variance occurs. The suggested models form a basis for analyzing and reducing product complexity based on a visual model of the product variety in each process step. The models gave rise to a reduction of the SKUs with 33% without losing product variety offered to the end customer. The initial test of the framework and models in the case company showed that the models can provide new insight into the product variety, which forms a solid basis for making decisions on reducing product portfolio variety and adjusting the order decoupling point.

Abstract Over the last decade a number of authors, including ourselves, have attempted to understand human cultural variation using Darwinian methods. This work is unified by the idea that culture is a system of inheritance: individuals vary in their skills, habits, beliefs, values, and attitudes, and these variations are transmitted to others through time by teaching, imitation, and other forms of social learning. To understand cultural change, we must account for the microevolutionary processes that increase the numbers of some cultural variants and reduce the numbers of others.

Abstract Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a primary respiratory disorder, to which obese persons are more susceptible than those who are lean. It gives rise to nocturnal hypertension and, in a proportion of subjects, also to daytime hypertension. In this chapter, some of the features of OSA and its clinical physiology are considered briefly, followed by a discussion of the mechanisms that contribute to the autonomic cardiovascular changes. The responses have features of the diving response of marine mammals and to arterial hypoxia of some terrestrial species. Both conserve O2 and represent distinctive variants of the defense response from the “ready-for-action” variants of exercise and mental stress. The daytime rise in BP depends on repeated nocturnal arousals with unpleasant associations, not unlike the response to mental stress. However, the rise in BP is smaller than in stress-related EH, and the synaptic strengthening also appears to be of a different kind. Moreover, the diurnal elevation of BP affects both lean and obese people, whose BP may be normal or raised.

Two of the most central algorithmic paradigms implemented in practical solvers for maximum satisfiability (MaxSAT) and other related declarative paradigms for NP-hard combinatorial optimization are the core-guided (CG) and implicit hitting set (IHS) approaches. We develop a general unifying algorithmic framework, based on the recent notion of abstract cores, that captures both CG and IHS computations. The framework offers a unified way of establishing the correctness of variants of the approaches, and can be instantiated in novel ways giving rise to new algorithmic variants of the core-guided and IHS approaches. We illustrate the latter aspect by developing a prototype implementation of an algorithm variant for MaxSAT based on the framework.

In this paper are presented comparisons of SPH variants on academic test cases classically used to validate numerical fluid dynamics software. These comparisons are extracted from NextMuSE FP7 project activities which will be published more extensively in the near future. One of the goals of this project was to better understand the SPH method and to leave the path to its establishment within CFD methods. An important work load was thus dedicated to benchmark SPH variants on selected test cases. A number of results and conclusions of this comparative study are presented in this paper. The studied variants are: standard weekly-compressible SPH, δ-SPH, Riemann-SPH, incompressible SPH, and FVPM. The majority of the test cases also present a reference solution, either experimental or computed using a mesh-based solver. Test cases include: wave propagation, flow past a cylinder, jet impact, floating body, bubble rise, dam break on obstacle, floating body dynamics, etc. Conclusions may help SPH practitioners to choose one variant or another and shall give detailed understanding necessary to derive further improvements of the method.

Under conditions of East Siberia, the positive effect of sainfoin on the fertility of gray forest soil and the introduction of this crop into fodder five-course rotations have been studied. In Siberia the Hungarian sainfoin (Onobrychis arenaria) is well-spread. As a control variant the crop rotation without perennial legume crops (sainfoin-free) was taken. Our research on the introduction of a new legume crop — sainfoin has shown that the content of mobile phosphorus, on the average in crop rotations, varies from 15.3 to 17.1 mg per 100 g of soil, the value of the nitrate nitrogen indicator — from 21.5 to 25.3 mg/kg. The intake of organic matter into the soil, due to a green manure — sainfoin — increases the humus content to 4.8–4.9 %. The rise in the yield of cultivated grain-forage crops after perennial legumes has been proved. Thus, the yield of pea-oats amounted 2.0–2.4 t/ha feed units. Among the crops harvested for green mass corn was more productive. It provided 1.8–2.2 t/ha of feed units. Pea-oats gave less productivity — from 1.5 t/ha of feed units in a control variant to 1.8 t/ha of feed units in the variants with sainfoin. The yielding capacity of sainfoin was 2.1–2.2 t/ha of feed units. The average yield for crop rotations with sainfoin was higher than the control by 16.6 %. Taking the obtained data into account, it may be concluded that all three five-course crop rotations are productive, the best, according to all criteria, is the variant with two fields of sainfoin providing the decline in cost price up to 3529.9 rub. one feed unit, the high level of pure income 11848 rub./ha and the biggest coefficient of energy efficiency — 3.0

Background & Objective: The SARS-COV-2 virus has mutated frequently, giving rise to multiple variants with more threatening characteristics. Our study aims to assess knowledge and attitude among university students regarding the emergent variants. Method: A descriptive, cross-sectional design was utilized in this study where knowledge, attitude, and worry towards the emergent variants were tested using an online self-administered questionnaire distributed among 417 Jordanian public university students on an interactive social media platform. Results: 60% of participants believed that new COVID-19 strains can be potentially dangerous and should be dealt with, while 16% of participants believed that they weren’t an important threat. Knowledge scores among participants were low as the mean score out of 18 was x̄ = 9.14/18 (SD = ± 5.22). Worry scores among participants were moderate, as the mean score out of 35 was x̄ = 22.6 (SD = ± 5,53). Finally, we found a significant and positive correlation between knowledge and worry. (r = 0.218, p < 0.001). Conclusion: The relatively low knowledge and moderately worry scores found among a Jordanian public university students regarding COVID-19 variants shows the urgency of implementing educational programs aimed at enriching awareness in this regard. Keywords: COVID-19; Public Health; Knowledge; Worry

A coherently illuminated diffuse scatterer (object) gives rise to ensemble field statistics at spatial locations in the Fraunhofer plane of the object modeled by circularly complex Gaussian random variables [ref 1]. The joint probability density function for the phase is used to determine the ensemble phase correlation function at two arbitrary spatial locations in the object’s Fraunhofer plane (the entrance pupil plane of a telescope imaging the object). The phase correlation function is used in conjunction with a minimum variance technique to obtain an optimum solution matrix mapping phase difference measurements to phase estimates at arbitrary points in the pupil. Expressions for the expected mean squared phase error are developed for the minimum variance technique and compared with conventional Least Mean Squared reconstructors. Phase estimates using the minimum variance technique and known amplitudes are used to reconstruct the image for simple targets.

<p>The studies of building structures accounting construction stages considered the optimization of embedded materials both at the design stage and at the construction stage. Axial shortening of the vertical load-bearing elements under the effect of gravitational loads and due to the characteristics of the building materials is an important point of structural analysis of tall buildings that should be considered. The present study analyzes the influence of the floor structure stiffness and the vertical load-bearing element / floor structure connection over the axial shortening of walls and columns which affects the distribution of normal forces in them. A computational model of a building structure with simplified geometry and loads is considered to emphasize the impact of the stiffness of the floor structure. The results of the solution of several variants of calculation models are compared. Generalized conclusions are given in the end.</p>

<p>The studies of building structures accounting construction stages considered the optimization of embedded materials both at the design stage and at the construction stage. Axial shortening of the vertical load-bearing elements under the effect of gravitational loads and due to the characteristics of the building materials is an important point of structural analysis of tall buildings that should be considered. The present study analyzes the influence of the floor structure stiffness and the vertical load-bearing element / floor structure connection over the axial shortening of walls and columns which affects the distribution of normal forces in them. A computational model of a building structure with simplified geometry and loads is considered to emphasize the impact of the stiffness of the floor structure. The results of the solution of several variants of calculation models are compared. Generalized conclusions are given in the end.</p>

Microstructural engineering to obtain 100% shear area in DWTT at low temperature requires target parameters to suppress brittle fracture. In-depth characterization of benchmarked steels has confirmed that %age shear area is decreased by high number density of ultra-fine precipitates (<10nm) that contribute to precipitation strengthening, high intensity of rotated cube texture and coarse brittle constituents like M/A or carbides. The control of these parameters by nano-scale precipitate engineering of TiN-NbC was covered in a previous presentation in IPC 2016 [1]. The present paper focuses on crystallographic variants selection that controls the density and dispersion of high angle boundaries, which arrest microcracks to suppress brittle fracture, thereby increasing %age shear area in DWTT at low temperature. Studies on crystallographic variants selection in single undeformed austenite grain have clarified crystallographic variants configuration which gives rise to high angle boundaries is influenced by hardenability parameters, i.e., alloying, cooling rate and austenite grain size. The profound effect of carbon and solute niobium on density and dispersion of high angle boundaries in CGHAZ is demonstrated by analyzing EBSD data to reconstruct the shear transformation of undeformed austenite using K-S relationship. Moreover, pancaking of austenite influences crystallographic variants through Sv factor and dislocation density. Experimental results on nano-scale TiN-NbC composite precipitate engineered steel confirm that adequate solute niobium (>0.03wt%) is retained in the matrix, which is aided by the suppression of delayed strain induced precipitation of ultra-fine precipitates of NbC. The hardenability from solute niobium is found to be adequate to give high density of high angle boundaries to give about 95% shear area in DWTT at −40°C in 32 mm gage K-60 plate and 100% shear area in 16.3 mm X-90 strip. Both steels were processed by nano-scale precipitate engineering of TiN-NbC composite to control size and uniformity of distribution of austenite grains before pancaking.

In this paper, we present the design, fabrication and characterization of fully soft pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) with low threshold pressures that are intended for direct cardiac compression (DCC). McKibben type PAMs typically have a threshold pressure of at least 100 kPa and require rigid end fittings which may damage soft tissue and cause local stress concentrations, and thus failure points in the actuator. The actuator design we present is a variant on the McKibben PAM with the following key differences: the nylon mesh is embedded in the elastomeric tube, and closure of the end of the tube is achieved without rigid ends. The actuators were tested to investigate the effects of mesh geometry and elastomer material on force output, contraction, and rise time. Lower initial mean braid angles and softer elastomer materials provided the best force, contraction, and rise times; Up to 50 N of force, 24% contraction, and response times of 0.05 s were achieved at 100 kPa. The actuators exhibited low threshold pressures (<5 kPa) and high rupture pressures (138 kPa – 720 kPa) which suggest safe operation for the DCC application. These results demonstrate that the actuators can achieve forces, displacements, and rise times suitable to assist with cardiac function.

Human fibrinogen has repeatedly been shown to occur in a great number of different molecular forms. Some types of heterogeneity are evident already from variations in solubility properties and in ion-exchange-chromatographic as well as gel-electrophoretic behaviour of the total molecule and of its peptide chain components. The reason for these variations are partly known.Thus, degradation of the C-terminal parts and phosphorylation of two serine residues gives rise to heterogeneity in the Aα-chain. Differences in the sialylation of the carbohydrate side chain causes heterogeneity both in the Bβ- and the γ-chain. Differences in chain length at the C-terminus of the γ-chain are responsible for additional variation. All these variants are expected to exist in each human being. An other category of human fibrinogen variants may be due to genetic polymorphism within the population, i.e. the presence of inherited, common, normal variants. Seven sites of microheterogeneity have so far been tentatively identified, mainly by disagreements between protein and DNA sequence analyses. Three of the sites are located in the Aα-chain (positions 47, 296 and 312), three in the Bβ-chain (positions 162, 296 and 44-8) and one in the γ-chain (position 88). The aim of the present study was to identify these sites on the proteinchemical level in pooled plasma as well as in plasma from single individuals, especially various members of the same family. For this purpose suitable fibrinogen fragments containing the tentatively microheterogeneous sites were isolated after cleavage of fibrinogen with cyanogen bromide, trypsin and/or chymotrypsin by repeated fractionations by means of conventional and reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography and counter-current distribution. The components were characterized by N-terminal sequence and amino acid composition. Polymorphism in human fibrinogen has previously only once been identified by restriction fragment length analysis in a non-transcribed region of the Aα-chain locus but never in the transcribed regions, i.e. the peptide chains.The present investigation will allow the estimation of the number of peptide chain haplotypes and their possible correlation to other genetic variants of fibrinogen.

El Niño peut être considéré comme un phénomène climatique à risques multiples, et les considérations relatives aux besoins en matière d’information varient selon les populations et les risques, y compris les risques directs liés aux conditions météorologiques, la réduction de la production agricole, une insécurité alimentaire et une malnutrition plus importantes, une transmission accrue des maladies infectieuses et des conséquences sur l’accès aux soins de santé. Les communications d’avertissement de danger à long et à court terme sont susceptibles de devoir contenir différents appels à l’action, et il y aura probablement différents niveaux d’urgence à ces appels. Cette synthèse des considérations clés décrit les implications d’El Niño dans la région Afrique de l’Est et Afrique australe (ESAR) pour les initiatives de Communication des Risques et d’Engagement Communautaire (CREC), basées sur des événements météorologiques comparables antérieurs. Les enseignements tirés proviennent principalement de la littérature sur la communication des prévisions et des informations météorologiques, mais ont des implications pour la riposte CREC à risques multiples. Certains enseignements sont également tirés au-delà de l’Afrique de l’Est et de l’Afrique australe, mais sont pris en considération dans le cadre des effets anticipés d’El Niño dans la région ESAR en particulier. La première section de la note stratégique porte sur les besoins en matière d’information, la deuxième section porte sur la façon de garantir et de renforcer la confiance dans l’information, et la dernière section porte sur les stratégies de communication et d’engagement communautaire. Cette note stratégique a été commandée par le Service Collectif en tant que ressource destinée aux organisations travaillant sur la stratégie de CREC liée à El Niño dans la région ESAR.

This article explores how China’s rise as a ‘civilization state’ encourages some European states to challenge US political dominance. While countries like Russia and Turkey have also employed civilizational populist rhetoric in domestic and foreign policy issues, this article focuses on Xi Jinping’s recent visits to France, Hungary, and Serbia and examines how European leaders like Emmanuel Macron, Viktor Orbán, and Aleksandar Vučić find inspiration in China’s civilizational model. Further research is needed on the growing civilizational competition between these states and the West, particularly in Africa, where China, Russia, and Turkey project all variants (soft, smart, sharp and hard) of power to assert influence and challenge Western dominance in international relations and global politics.

“Are private schools better than public schools?” This ubiquitous debate in low- and middle-income countries is the wrong one to have. The foreword and three essays collected in this Forum each explore how to move past the stuck “public vs. private” binary. Jason Silberstein is a Research Fellow at RISE. His foreword is titled “A Shift in Perspective: Zooming Out from School Type and Bringing Neighborhood Education Systems into Focus.” It summarizes the current state of the “public vs. private” debate, outlines an alternative approach focused on neighborhood education systems, and then synthesizes key findings from the other essays. Jishnu Das has conducted decades of research on school systems in low-income countries, including in Zambia, India, and Pakistan. His essay is titled “The Emergence and Consequence of Schooling Markets.” It describes exactly what schooling markets look like in Pakistan, including the incredible variance in school quality in both public and private schools within the same village. Das then reviews the evidence on how to engineer local education markets to improve learning in all schools, including polices that have underdelivered (e.g., vouchers) and more promising policies (e.g., finance and information structured to take advantage of inter-school competition, and a focus on the lowest performing public schools). Das’ research on Pakistan is available through leaps.hks.harvard.edu, which also houses the data and documentation for the project. Lant Pritchett writes from a global lens grounded in his work on systems thinking in education. His essay is titled “Schooling Ain’t Just Learning: Controlling the Means of Producing Citizens.” It observes that governments supply, and families demand, education for many reasons. The academic emphasis on one of these reasons, producing student learning, has underweighted the critical importance of other features of education, in particular the socialization function of schooling, which more persuasively explain patterns of provision of both public school and different kinds of private schools. With this key fact in mind, Pritchett argues that there is a strong liberty case for allowing private schools, but that calls for governments to fund them are either uncompelling or “aggressively missing the point”. Joanna Härmä has done mixed-methods research on private schools across many cities and rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa and India, and has also founded a heavily-subsidized private school in Uttar Pradesh, India. Her essay responds to both Das and Pritchett and is titled “Why We Need to Stop Worrying About People’s Coping Mechanism for the ‘Global Learning Crisis’—Their Preference for Low-Fee Private Schools”. It outlines the different forces behind the rise of low-fee private schools and asserts that both the international development sector and governments have failed to usefully respond. Policy toward these private schools is sometimes overzealous, as seen in regulatory regimes that in practice are mostly used to extract bribes, and at other times overly solicitous, as seen in government subsidies that would usually be better spent improving the worst government schools. Perhaps, Härmä concludes, “we should leave well enough alone.”

Macroeconomic summary Several factors contributed to an increase in projected inflation on the forecast horizon, keeping it above the target rate. These included inflation in December that surpassed expectations (5.62%), indexation to higher inflation rates for various baskets in the consumer price index (CPI), a significant real increase in the legal minimum wage, persistent external and domestic inflationary supply shocks, and heightened exchange rate pressures. The CPI for foods was affected by the persistence of external and domestic supply shocks and was the most significant contributor to unexpectedly high inflation in the fourth quarter. Price adjustments for fuels and certain utilities can explain the acceleration in inflation for regulated items, which was more significant than anticipated. Prices in the CPI for goods excluding food and regulated items also rose more than expected. This was partly due to a smaller effect on prices from the national government’s VAT-free day than anticipated by the technical staff and more persistent external pressures, including via peso depreciation. By contrast, the CPI for services excluding food and regulated items accelerated less than expected, partly reflecting strong competition in the communications sector. This was the only major CPI basket for which prices increased below the target inflation rate. The technical staff revised its inflation forecast upward in response to certain external shocks (prices, costs, and depreciation) and domestic shocks (e.g., on meat products) that were stronger and more persistent than anticipated in the previous report. Observed inflation and a real increase in the legal minimum wage also exceeded expectations, which would boost inflation by affecting price indexation, labor costs, and inflation expectations. The technical staff now expects year-end headline inflation of 4.3% in 2022 and 3.4% in 2023; core inflation is projected to be 4.5% and 3.6%, respectively. These forecasts consider the lapse of certain price relief measures associated with the COVID-19 health emergency, which would contribute to temporarily keeping inflation above the target on the forecast horizon. It is important to note that these estimates continue to contain a significant degree of uncertainty, mainly related to the development of external and domestic supply shocks and their ultimate effects on prices. Other contributing factors include high price volatility and measurement uncertainty related to the extension of Colombia’s health emergency and tax relief measures (such as the VAT-free days) associated with the Social Investment Law (Ley de Inversión Social). The as-yet uncertain magnitude of the effects of a recent real increase in the legal minimum wage (that was high by historical standards) and high observed and expected inflation, are additional factors weighing on the overall uncertainty of the estimates in this report. The size of excess productive capacity remaining in the economy and the degree to which it is closing are also uncertain, as the evolution of the pandemic continues to represent a significant forecast risk. margin, could be less dynamic than expected. And the normalization of monetary policy in the United States could come more quickly than projected in this report, which could negatively affect international financing costs. Finally, there remains a significant degree of uncertainty related to the duration of supply chocks and the degree to which macroeconomic and political conditions could negatively affect the recovery in investment. The technical staff revised its GDP growth projection for 2022 from 4.7% to 4.3% (Graph 1.3). This revision accounts for the likelihood that a larger portion of the recent positive dynamic in private consumption would be transitory than previously expected. This estimate also contemplates less dynamic investment behavior than forecast in the previous report amid less favorable financial conditions and a highly uncertain investment environment. Third-quarter GDP growth (12.9%), which was similar to projections from the October report, and the fourth-quarter growth forecast (8.7%) reflect a positive consumption trend, which has been revised upward. This dynamic has been driven by both public and private spending. Investment growth, meanwhile, has been weaker than forecast. Available fourth-quarter data suggest that consumption spending for the period would have exceeded estimates from October, thanks to three consecutive months that included VAT-free days, a relatively low COVID-19 caseload, and mobility indicators similar to their pre-pandemic levels. By contrast, the most recently available figures on new housing developments and machinery and equipment imports suggest that investment, while continuing to rise, is growing at a slower rate than anticipated in the previous report. The trade deficit is expected to have widened, as imports would have grown at a high level and outpaced exports. Given the above, the technical staff now expects fourth-quarter economic growth of 8.7%, with overall growth for 2021 of 9.9%. Several factors should continue to contribute to output recovery in 2022, though some of these may be less significant than previously forecast. International financial conditions are expected to be less favorable, though external demand should continue to recover and terms of trade continue to increase amid higher projected oil prices. Lower unemployment rates and subsequent positive effects on household income, despite increased inflation, would also boost output recovery, as would progress in the national vaccination campaign. The technical staff expects that the conditions that have favored recent high levels of consumption would be, in large part, transitory. Consumption spending is expected to grow at a slower rate in 2022. Gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) would continue to recover, approaching its pre-pandemic level, though at a slower rate than anticipated in the previous report. This would be due to lower observed GFCF levels and the potential impact of political and fiscal uncertainty. Meanwhile, the policy interest rate would be less expansionary as the process of monetary policy normalization continues. Given the above, growth in 2022 is forecast to decelerate to 4.3% (previously 4.7%). In 2023, that figure (3.1%) is projected to converge to levels closer to the potential growth rate. In this case, excess productive capacity would be expected to tighten at a similar rate as projected in the previous report. The trade deficit would tighten more than previously projected on the forecast horizon, due to expectations of an improved export dynamic and moderation in imports. The growth forecast for 2022 considers a low basis of comparison from the first half of 2021. However, there remain significant downside risks to this forecast. The current projection does not, for example, account for any additional effects on economic activity resulting from further waves of COVID-19. High private consumption levels, which have already surpassed pre-pandemic levels by a large margin, could be less dynamic than expected. And the normalization of monetary policy in the United States could come more quickly than projected in this report, which could negatively affect international financing costs. Finally, there remains a significant degree of uncertainty related to the duration of supply chocks and the degree to which macroeconomic and political conditions could negatively affect the recovery in investment. External demand for Colombian goods and services should continue to recover amid significant global inflation pressures, high oil prices, and less favorable international financial conditions than those estimated in October. Economic activity among Colombia’s major trade partners recovered in 2021 amid countries reopening and ample international liquidity. However, that growth has been somewhat restricted by global supply chain disruptions and new outbreaks of COVID-19. The technical staff has revised its growth forecast for Colombia’s main trade partners from 6.3% to 6.9% for 2021, and from 3.4% to 3.3% for 2022; trade partner economies are expected to grow 2.6% in 2023. Colombia’s annual terms of trade increased in 2021, largely on higher oil, coffee, and coal prices. This improvement came despite increased prices for goods and services imports. The expected oil price trajectory has been revised upward, partly to supply restrictions and lagging investment in the sector that would offset reduced growth forecasts in some major economies. Elevated freight and raw materials costs and supply chain disruptions continue to affect global goods production, and have led to increases in global prices. Coupled with the recovery in global demand, this has put upward pressure on external inflation. Several emerging market economies have continued to normalize monetary policy in this context. Meanwhile, in the United States, the Federal Reserve has anticipated an end to its asset buying program. U.S. inflation in December (7.0%) was again surprisingly high and market average inflation forecasts for 2022 have increased. The Fed is expected to increase its policy rate during the first quarter of 2022, with quarterly increases anticipated over the rest of the year. For its part, Colombia’s sovereign risk premium has increased and is forecast to remain on a higher path, to levels above the 15-year-average, on the forecast horizon. This would be partly due to the effects of a less expansionary monetary policy in the United States and the accumulation of macroeconomic imbalances in Colombia. Given the above, international financial conditions are projected to be less favorable than anticipated in the October report. The increase in Colombia’s external financing costs could be more significant if upward pressures on inflation in the United States persist and monetary policy is normalized more quickly than contemplated in this report. As detailed in Section 2.3, uncertainty surrounding international financial conditions continues to be unusually high. Along with other considerations, recent concerns over the potential effects of new COVID-19 variants, the persistence of global supply chain disruptions, energy crises in certain countries, growing geopolitical tensions, and a more significant deceleration in China are all factors underlying this uncertainty. The changing macroeconomic environment toward greater inflation and unanchoring risks on inflation expectations imply a reduction in the space available for monetary policy stimulus. Recovery in domestic demand and a reduction in excess productive capacity have come in line with the technical staff’s expectations from the October report. Some upside risks to inflation have materialized, while medium-term inflation expectations have increased and are above the 3% target. Monetary policy remains expansionary. Significant global inflationary pressures and the unexpected increase in the CPI in December point to more persistent effects from recent supply shocks. Core inflation is trending upward, but remains below the 3% target. Headline and core inflation projections have increased on the forecast horizon and are above the target rate through the end of 2023. Meanwhile, the expected dynamism of domestic demand would be in line with low levels of excess productive capacity. An accumulation of macroeconomic imbalances in Colombia and the increased likelihood of a faster normalization of monetary policy in the United States would put upward pressure on sovereign risk perceptions in a more persistent manner, with implications for the exchange rate and the natural rate of interest. Persistent disruptions to international supply chains, a high real increase in the legal minimum wage, and the indexation of various baskets in the CPI to higher inflation rates could affect price expectations and push inflation above the target more persistently. These factors suggest that the space to maintain monetary stimulus has continued to diminish, though monetary policy remains expansionary. 1.2 Monetary policy decision Banco de la República’s board of directors (BDBR) in its meetings in December 2021 and January 2022 voted to continue normalizing monetary policy. The BDBR voted by a majority in these two meetings to increase the benchmark interest rate by 50 and 100 basis points, respectively, bringing the policy rate to 4.0%.