Efeitos heterogêneos da intensidade do tratamento: uma análise do Fundo Constitucional de Financiamento do Nordeste (FNE)

The main aim of budgeting by the government is to create plans on how to source, allocate and spend public resources prudently to meet allocation, development and stabilization objectives. All government expenditure should be controlled if both development and recurrent objectives are to be met. This is however not the case with the public sector wage bill in Kenya since it has been at a spiraling level in the recent past. The wage bill to GDP ratio was 12.1% in the year 2012/13 as compared to the internationally accepted level of 7%. The wage bill to revenue ratio was 47% in the year 2012/13 as compared to the internationally accepted levels of between 30% and 40%. The wage bill to expenditure ratio was 57% in the year 2012/13 as compared to the conventionally accepted levels of utmost 40%. This implies fiscal unsustainability of public expenditure. Public sector wage bill reforms like retrenchments, salary cuts and introduction of Salaries and Remuneration Commission to bring fiscal guidelines in wage Bill has not worked in managing the public sector wage bill in Kenya. This study aimed at assessing the effect of budgeting on public sector wage bill management in Kenya as another intervention in wage sanity. The study relied on Principal agent theory of budgeting, Top Down theory of budgeting, Bottom up theory of budgeting and incrementalism theory of budgeting which postulate that budgeting is a tool for control of expenditure. The specific objectives of the study were to establish whether the revenue forecast, recurrent expenditure budgetary projections, capital expenditure budgetary projections and expected growth in GDP have effects on public sector wage bill management. Causal research design was used to establish the cause and effect relationship between the independent and dependent variables. Purposive sampling was employed in selecting 13 fiscal year budget data. Step-wise multiple linear regression models were employed in establishing the degree and magnitude of the relationship between the variables. Student’s t-test and F-ratio were respectively applied to test hypotheses and overall significance of the regression models at 5% level of significance. The findings of this study indicates significant effect of revenue forecast, development expenditure projection and GDP on wage bill to revenue ratio and wage bill to GDP ratio and no significant effect on wage bill to recurrent expenditure ratio. It therefore implies a budget can be a control tool for expenditure. This study recommends the need for the government of Kenya to adopt program based budgeting system that factors output factor to control the wage bill.

The Kenyan government has been working towards achieving fiscal sustainability in wage bill expenditure since independence. Fiscal sustainability is key to achieving economic growth and progress as most resources would be channeled to development expenditure. The international recognized level of wage bill to revenue ratio is between 30%-40%. However, this key ratio is not being achieved in Kenya as the Salaries and Remuneration Commission and Parliamentary Budget Office of Kenya reports indicates that in the fiscal year 2012/13, it was 47%. The reports further indicate that the ratio has been within the range 47%-49% since the fiscal year 2009/2010 to 2012/13. Notable is that revenue forecasts essentially exist to help in budget formulation. Why then would the public wage bill management be a huge task to the government since independence? This study sought to establish whether revenue forecast has an effect on wage bill management in Kenya. Causal research design was used to establish the cause and effect relationship between the independent and dependent variable. Purposive sampling was employed in choosing 13 fiscal year budget data from the fiscal year 2000/01 to 2012/13.Simple linear regression model was employed in establishing the degree and magnitude of the relationship between the variables. A t-test and F-ratio were applied to test hypothesis and overall significance of the regression model at 5% significance level. Findings of this study indicates that revenue forecast within the 13 fiscal year period under study has significant effect on wage bill management in the context of wage bill to revenue ratio. This is an implication that revenue forecasts can help in managing the wage bill.

Purpose: To develop a set of human skeletal neutron absorbed dose response functions for an inhomogeneous, multi-region bone model and neutron energies ranging from 10 eV to 150 MeV for use in neutron dose assessment in proton therapy. Method and Materials: The neutron absorbed dose response function equation was formulated after reviewing ICRU Report 63 and a previously-published photon absorbed dose response function formulation. The neutron absorbed dose response function equation is a function of the neutron energy, the isotope with which the neutron interacts, the emission particle considered, and the source and target bone regions. The first reaction considered was neutron scattering on hydrogen. The neutron angular distribution and elastic scatter cross-section were retrieved from the Evaluated Nuclear Data File. After optimization for numerical integration, proton specific absorbed fraction data was used to calculate the neutron absorbed dose response function for 13 skeletal sites. The neutron kerma response function was also calculated for comparison. This procedure will be extended to neutron-induced proton production in the remaining elements present in the human skeleton. Results: The relative error of the neutron kerma response function with respect to the neutron dose response function is heavily dependent upon skeletal site. It ranges from 0.07 for the sacrum to 0.52 for the femur and the humerus. The hydrogen component of the neutron dose response function is small at low neutron energies due to thermal neutron proton production in nitrogen, comprises nearly all of the neutron dose response function at medium neutron energies, and decreases for high neutron energies. Conclusion: The neutron kerma dose response function is a good approximation for the neutron dose response function at low neutron energies, as the emitted protons do not travel far before they deposit all of their energy, and at high energy, as charged particle equilibrium is approached.

The causal dose–response curve is commonly selected as the statistical parameter of interest in studies where the goal is to understand the effect of a continuous exposure on an outcome. Most of the available methodology for statistical inference on the dose-response function in the continuous exposure setting requires strong parametric assumptions on the probability distribution. Such parametric assumptions are typically untenable in practice and lead to invalid inference. It is often preferable to instead use nonparametric methods for inference, which only make mild assumptions about the data-generating mechanism. We propose a nonparametric test of the null hypothesis that the dose-response function is equal to a constant function. We argue that when the null hypothesis holds, the dose-response function has zero variance. Thus, one can test the null hypothesis by assessing whether there is sufficient evidence to claim that the variance is positive. We construct a novel estimator for the variance of the dose-response function, for which we can fully characterize the null limiting distribution and thus perform well-calibrated tests of the null hypothesis. We also present an approach for constructing simultaneous confidence bands for the dose-response function by inverting our proposed hypothesis test. We assess the validity of our proposal in a simulation study. In a data example, we study, in a population of patients who have initiated treatment for HIV, how the distance required to travel to an HIV clinic affects retention in care.

Treatment Intensity in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services and Health Care Reform in Norway, 1998–2006

Proliferative diabetic retinopathy is treated with panretinal photocoagulation, which improves the visual prognosis in this complication considerably. The visual acuity (VA) and grade of retinopathy before treatment are known indicators of the visual prognosis after treatment, but the prognostic value of other clinical background and treatment parameters is unknown. The study reports predictors for visual outcome identified among retrospective clinical background data and treatment parameters from 4422 panretinal photocoagulation sessions for proliferative diabetic retinopathy in 1013 eyes of 601 patients performed at the Department of Ophthalmology, Arhus University Hospital between 1985 and 2002. High pretreatment VA and low age were strong positive predictors of post-treatment VA (p < 0.0001). However, diabetes type, diabetes duration and calendar year of treatment showed no influence on post-treatment VA (p = 0.7829, 0.1782, and 0.3747, respectively). The visual prognosis was inversely related to the number of treatment sessions (p = 0.0259) and the number of vitrectomies (OR = 2.66 [1.24; 5.69], p = 0.0117, for more than two operations). However, the visual prognosis was unrelated to any of the other parameters studied. Pretreatment VA, age and the number of panretinal photocoagulation treatment sessions and vitrectomies necessary to halt the disease are indicators of the visual prognosis after panretinal laser photocoagulation for proliferative diabetic retinopathy.

This paper considers employment growth and unemployment from 1990-2010 in a cross-section of cities in light of practical tools that city governments have at their disposal to provide relief. In particular, I test educational attainment (both initial levels and growth over time) and public capital investment as influences on job growth and changes in unemployment rates in 83 central cities in the United States. Change in educational attainment over time is suggestive of causing higher job growth and lower unemployment. The implication is that initiatives to attract and retain college-educated professionals and investments in increasing college attainment among incumbent residents have the potential to reduce joblessness and improve social welfare. Despite some evidence that public capital outlays led to employment growth and reduced unemployment in the 1990s, the overall association between capital outlays and labor market health is weak. Intergovernmental spending as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), however, was found to have a positive effect on unemployment rates in 2009 and 2010. A relatively weak correlation between the two dependent variables used in the analysis — employment growth and unemployment rates — underscores the mitigating roles of migration and labor force participation in translating job creation into employment growth for members of the unemployed population.

Theories of human interactions suggest population growth is influenced by the extent of knowledge. Examining the population (and employment) growth rates of all 254 Texas counties over the 1990–2000 and 1980–1990 decades as dependent variables, the share of population with college degree or higher has a greater impact on growth more recently. The instrumental variables treatment of human capital with age and race characteristics leads to differences at the top end of education explaining population growth across Texas. These results are very robust to several control variables including demographic, migration, and regional factors.

Two effects of high-fat diets on the satiating potency of cholecystokinin-8

Spongiosa in the adult human skeleton consists of three tissues—active marrow (AM), inactive marrow (IM) and trabecularized mineral bone (TB). AM is considered to be the target tissue for assessment of both long-term leukemia risk and acute marrow toxicity following radiation exposure. The total shallow marrow (TM50), defined as all tissues lying within the first 50 µm of the bone surfaces, is considered to be the radiation target tissue of relevance for radiogenic bone cancer induction. For irradiation by sources external to the body, kerma to homogeneous spongiosa has been used as a surrogate for absorbed dose to both of these tissues, as direct dose calculations are not possible using computational phantoms with homogenized spongiosa. Recent micro-CT imaging of a 40 year old male cadaver has allowed for the accurate modeling of the fine microscopic structure of spongiosa in many regions of the adult skeleton (Hough et al 2011 Phys. Med. Biol. 56 2309–46). This microstructure, along with associated masses and tissue compositions, was used to compute specific absorbed fraction (SAF) values for protons originating in axial and appendicular bone sites (Jokisch et al 2011 Phys. Med. Biol. 56 6857–72). These proton SAFs, bone masses, tissue compositions and proton production cross sections, were subsequently used to construct neutron dose-response functions (DRFs) for both AM and TM50 targets in each bone of the reference adult male. Kerma conditions were assumed for other resultant charged particles. For comparison, AM, TM50 and spongiosa kerma coefficients were also calculated. At low incident neutron energies, AM kerma coefficients for neutrons correlate well with values of the AM DRF, while total marrow (TM) kerma coefficients correlate well with values of the TM50 DRF. At high incident neutron energies, all kerma coefficients and DRFs tend to converge as charged-particle equilibrium is established across the bone site. In the range of 10 eV to 100 MeV, substantial differences are observed among the kerma coefficients and DRF. As a result, it is recommended that the AM kerma coefficient be used to estimate the AM DRF, and that the TM kerma coefficient be used to estimate the TM50 DRF below 10 eV. Between 10 eV and 100 MeV, the appropriate DRF should be used as presented in this study. Above 100 MeV, spongiosa kerma coefficients apply well for estimating skeletal tissue doses. DRF values for each bone site as a function of energy are provided in an electronic annex to this article available at http://stacks.iop.org/0031-9155/56/6873/mmedia.

Nigeria has been best with the incidence of concurrent unemployment and a good run of economic growth thus calling to question the efficacy of economic growth to create jobs in the country. In this paper, we examine first whether there exists any relationship between economic growth and employment in the manner espoused by Okun’s law and then interpret the coefficient of the relationship as indicative of the capacity of the economy to translate growth into employment. Due to the unreliability of unemployment data in many developing countries we use the growth rate of employment as the dependent variable and thus expect to find a positive relationship with economic growth. A second model was specified with the growth rate of employment-to-population ratio as the dependent variable. Data were extracted from World Development Indicators and Penn’s World Table for 1961 to 2017. All the variables were level stationary from two different tests of their statistical properties. We thus estimate the Ordinary Least Squares for the short-run coefficients and explore the robustness of the ARDL to different orders of integration for the long-run form. Both establish the application of Okun’s law to Nigeria with the employment elasticity of GDP growth too small to generate discernible growth in employment. We estimated an average GDP growth of 16.22% over the long-run for the economy to keep a steady growth in employment.

This paper considers employment growth and unemployment from 1990-2010 in a cross-section of cities in light of practical tools that city governments have at their disposal to provide relief. In particular, I test educational attainment (both initial levels and growth over time) and public capital investment as influences on job growth and changes in unemployment rates in 83 central cities in the United States. Change in educational attainment over time is suggestive of causing higher job growth and lower unemployment. The implication is that initiatives to attract and retain college-educated professionals and investments in increasing college attainment among incumbent residents have the potential to reduce joblessness and improve social welfare. Despite some evidence that public capital outlays led to employment growth and reduced unemployment in the 1990s, the overall association between capital outlays and labor market health is weak. Intergovernmental spending as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), however, was found to have a positive effect on unemployment rates in 2009 and 2010. A relatively weak correlation between the two dependent variables used in the analysis—employment growth and unemployment rates—underscores the mitigating roles of migration and labor force participation in translating job creation into employment growth for members of the unemployed population.

Treatment Intensity, Timing of Relapse and Outcome of 713 Relapsed/Refractory Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL) in a Population-Based Setting in Sweden

The dose response functions of ionization chambers in photon dosimetry – Gaussian or non-Gaussian?

Estimating the number of animals impacted by a stressor typically involves combining a dose–response function with information about the distribution of animals and of the stressor.Regulators often prefer a single threshold to a full dose–response function, but much of the variability observed in the threshold at which different individuals respond to a stressor is an inherent characteristic of populations that needs to be taken into account to predict the effects of stressors. When selecting an exposure threshold, regulators need information on the proportion of the population that will be protected.Regulatory processes that calculate the number of animals impacted must draw from the dose–response function, the actual distribution of the animals, and a model mapping how the stressor intensity declines with distance from the source. Ignoring any of these factors can lead to significant errors in estimates of the area and numbers of animals affected.This paper focuses on behavioural responses of marine mammals to anthropogenic sound and demonstrates that a common approach of selecting the threshold at which half of the animals respond (RLp50) grossly underestimates the number of animals affected. We present an example, using a published dose–response function, where the number affected is underestimated by a factor of 280. Results would be similar for any stressor whose strength decreases following an inverse‐square function as it dilutes into the environment.This paper presents a method to use a dose–response function to derive a more accurate estimate of animals affected and to set a threshold (the Effective Response Level) that corrects the problem with the RLp50 estimate.Estimates of effects of stressors should include estimates of uncertainty, which can be used to adapt thresholds to different policy contexts and conservation problems.