Home OALib Journal OALib PrePrints Submit Ranking News My Lib FAQ About Us Follow Us+
 Title Keywords Abstract Author All
Search Results: 1 - 10 of 100 matches for " "
 Page 1 /100 Display every page 5 10 20 Item
 International Journal of Economics and Finance , 2012, DOI: 10.5539/ijef.v4n12p214 Abstract: In the present research article, we outline the distinction between the demographic dependency ratio and the economic dependency ratio and present its evolution in Romania within the European Union, but not restrictive to the EU27. The evolution of demographic dependency ratio changed dramatically in Romania in the last 15 years comparing to the UE27. On the other hand, the evolution of economic dependency ratios is much more relevant because it also reflects the problems the economy is facing and should be brought to the fore in the political debates and to decision makers. In the paper we present the factors that are leading to the increase of the economic dependency ratio and we conclude with the solutions which a state has to adopt in order to prevent excessive public debt and structural gaps due to long term rise in economic dependency ratio. Moreover, policy-makers must face up the painful inter-temporal transfer choices that have to be done. Our concern about Eastern-European Countries is strengthened by the global results reached by OECD through Minilink Model Study, IMF Study of G7 and QUEST II Model that suggest the fall of the living standards over the next 50 years due to economic dependency ratio. For Romania we considered two main solution to this problem: increasing birth rate (long term solution) and lowering the unemployment rate through investment and a high rate of EU funds absorption (medium term solution).
 Statistics , 2015, Abstract: Modeling a temporal process as if it is Markovian assumes the present encodes all of the process's history. When this occurs, the present captures all of the dependency between past and future. We recently showed that if one randomly samples in the space of structured processes, this is almost never the case. So, how does the Markov failure come about? That is, how do individual measurements fail to encode the past? And, how many are needed to capture dependencies between the past and future? Here, we investigate how much information can be shared between the past and future, but not be reflected in the present. We quantify this elusive information, give explicit calculational methods, and draw out the consequences. The most important of which is that when the present hides past-future dependency we must move beyond sequence-based statistics and build state-based models.
 Journal of Anthropology , 2012, DOI: 10.1155/2012/752521 Abstract: Bangladesh is not an exception from the global phenomenon of demographic aging. It is a relatively new issue in the country as its demographic transition started recently. An important issue on aging study is the support facility to the elderly. The support system to the elderly is gradually decreasing in this country though the burden does not reach the alarming situation. This paper tries to show the future path of demographic support capacity for the elderly based on secondary (1981–2001) and projected (2011–2071) data. The study shows a future gloomy picture of the elderly support facility in terms of both economic and caring aspects. This dimension of future inevitable aging problem needs proper attention to the policy makers for taking sustainable aging policies. Introduction of this agenda to the nation’s five-year planning will be effective to face the problem phase by phase. 1. Introduction Global population aging is a by-product of the demographic transition in which both mortality and fertility decline from high level to low levels. As the twentieth century drew to a close, population aging and its social and economic consequences were drawing increased attention from policy makers’ worldwide. The twenty-first century will witness even more rapid population aging than did the century just past. In many cases, more rapid population aging will be taking place in countries where the level of economic development is still low [1]. The topic of the elderly support was not an issue for discussion in most of the developing countries so long ago. Only a small proportion of population lived beyond middle ages; therefore, those few that actually survived into old age were also deified, solidly entrenched into the family support system. Decline in fertility has not only increased the proportion of people surviving to the old age but has also eroded the traditional support base in old age, that is, the family. The reduction in the size of successive birth cohort not only signifies the diminishing availability of youngster to support the older people but the shrinking of family size itself [2]. Measures of societal dependency in the form of age ratios tend largely to be used as surrogates for measures of economic support even though they should be seen merely as representing the contribution of age composition of the population to the economic support problem. While the rising dependency of the aged has been more than offset by the falling dependency of the children, the economic support problem of the elderly is the greater one when one considers public
 BMC Geriatrics , 2011, DOI: 10.1186/1471-2318-11-21 Abstract: Structured interviews at age 85 with 841 people born in 1921 and living in Newcastle and North Tyneside, UK who were permanently registered with participating general practices. Measures of capability included were self-reported activities of daily living (ADL), timed up and go test (TUG), standardised mini-mental state examination (SMMSE), and assessment of urinary continence in order to classify interval-need dependency. To project future demand for care the proportion needing 24-hour care was applied to the 2008 England and Wales population projections of those aged 80 years and over by gender.Of participants, 62% (522/841) were women, 77% (651/841) lived in standard housing, 13% (106/841) in sheltered housing and 10% (84/841) in a care home. Overall, 20% (165/841) reported no difficulty with any of the ADLs. Men were more capable in performing ADLs and more independent than women. TUG validated self-reported ADLs. When classified by 'interval of need' 41% (332/810) were independent, 39% (317/810) required help less often than daily, 12% (94/810) required help at regular times of the day and 8% (67/810) required 24-hour care. Of care-home residents, 94% (77/82) required daily help or 24-hour care. Future need for 24-hour care for people aged 80 years or over in England and Wales is projected to increase by 82% from 2010 to 2030 with a demand for 630,000 care-home places by 2030.This analysis highlights the diversity of capability and levels of dependency in this cohort. A remarkably high proportion remain independent, particularly men. However a significant proportion of this population require 24-hour care at home or in care homes. Projections for the next 20 years suggest substantial increases in the number requiring 24-hour care due to population ageing and a proportionate increase in demand for care-home places unless innovative health and social care interventions are found.People aged 85 years or over (the so-called oldest-old) constitute the fastest growin
 Sarah Guri-Rosenblit EduAction : Electronic Education Magazine , 2012, Abstract: This article examines the current challenges faced by open/distance teaching universities worldwide. The challenges relate to: the change of technological and instructional infrastructures; the move from national systems to a global landscape; the need to find appropriate parties for collaboration in the academic and corporate worlds; the search for quality assurance mechanisms; and the digital divide between developing and developed countries, and between poor and rich. The article concludes with highlighting the leading prospects for open/ distance teaching universities.
 Computer Science , 2012, Abstract: In this paper, we propose an analytical method to model the dependency between configuration parameters and total execution time of Map-Reduce applications. Our approach has three key phases: profiling, modeling, and prediction. In profiling, an application is run several times with different sets of MapReduce configuration parameters to profile the execution time of the application on a given platform. Then in modeling, the relation between these parameters and total execution time is modeled by multivariate linear regression. Among the possible configuration parameters, two main parameters have been used in this study: the number of Mappers, and the number of Reducers. For evaluation, two standard applications (WordCount, and Exim Mainlog parsing) are utilized to evaluate our technique on a 4-node MapReduce platform.
 Ecology and Society , 2005, Abstract: Four quantitative scenarios are presented that describe changes in worldwide ecosystem services up to 2050–2100. A set of soft-linked global models of human demography, economic development, climate, and biospheric processes are used to quantify these scenarios. The global demand for ecosystem services substantially increases up to 2050: cereal consumption by a factor of 1.5 to 1.7, fish consumption (up to the 2020s) by a factor of 1.3 to 1.4, water withdrawals by a factor of 1.3 to 2.0, and biofuel production by a factor of 5.1 to 11.3. The ranges for these estimates reflect differences between the socio-economic assumptions of the scenarios. In all simulations, Sub-Saharan Africa continues to lag behind other parts of the world. Although the demand side of these scenarios presents an overall optimistic view of the future, the supply side is less optimistic: the risk of higher soil erosion (especially in Sub-Saharan Africa) and lower water availability (especially in the Middle East) could slow down an increase in food production. Meanwhile, increasing wastewater discharges during the same period, especially in Latin America (factor of 2 to 4) and Sub-Saharan Africa (factor of 3.6 to 5.6) could interfere with the delivery of freshwater services. Marine fisheries (despite the growth of aquaculture) may not have the ecological capacity to provide for the increased global demand for fish. Our simulations also show an intensification of present tradeoffs between ecosystem services, e.g., expansion of agricultural land (between 2000 and 2050) may be one of the main causes of a 10%–20% loss of total current grassland and forest land and the ecosystem services associated with this land (e.g., genetic resources, wood production, habitat for terrestrial biota and fauna). The scenarios also show that certain hot-spot regions may experience especially rapid changes in ecosystem services: the central part of Africa, southern Asia, and the Middle East. In general, the scenarios show a positive balance of increasing services, especially in developing countries, and a negative balance of increasing risks and tradeoffs of services. The challenge, then, is dealing with these risks so as to avoid a future curtailment of ecosystem services.
 Physics , 2002, DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20021631 Abstract: We present evolutionary synthesis models for both components and add their spectra in various proportions to obtain the full range of local galaxies' B-band bulge-to-total light ratios. Bulge star formation is assumed to occur on a short timescale of $10^9$ yr, disk star formation proceeds at a constant rate. Models are presented for three scenarios: bulges and disks of equal age, old bulges and delayed disk star formation, and old disks with subsequent bulge star formation. We quantitatively show that bulge-to-total ($=$ B/T) light ratios for local galaxies increase significantly from U through I-bands with the rate of increase slightly depending on the relative ages of the two components. Hence, simultaneous decomposition of galaxy profiles in several bands can give direct information about the relative ages of bulges and disks and help constrain galaxy formation scenarios. The redshift evolution of B/T-ratios in various bands U, B, V, I, H is calculated accounting both for cosmological and evolutionary corrections. I- and H-bands show the smoothest redshift evolution and, hence, are best suited for a first order comparison of galaxies over the redshift range from ${\rm z=0}$ to ${\rm z \gta 1}$ but still are shown to increasingly overestimate B/T ratios at higher redshifts. This is a robust result irrespective of the respective ages of the bulge and disk stellar components and implies that the scarcity of bulge-strong systems at ${\rm z \geq 0.8}$ reported for HDF and Hawaiian Deep Field galaxies is further enhanced.
 Physics , 2012, Abstract: Using the very deep Subaru images of the GOODS-N region, from the MOIRCS Deep Survey and images from the HST/ACS, we have measured the Luminosity Ratio (LR) of the outer to the central regions of massive (M>10^{10.5}M_{Sun}) galaxies at fixed radii in a single rest-frame for z<3.5 as a new approach to the problem of size evolution. We didn't observe any evolution in the median LR. Had a significant size growth occurred, the outer to central luminosity ratios would have demonstrated a corresponding increase with a decrease in redshift.
 Breast Cancer: Basic and Clinical Research , 2008, Abstract: Affordability of healthcare is highly limited by its skyrocketing cost. Access to screening and diagnostic medical equipment and medicine in developing countries is inadequate for the majority of the population. There is a tremendous worldwide need to detect breast cancer at its earliest stage. These needs must be balanced by the ability of countries to provide breast cancer screening technology to their populations. We reviewed the diagnostic accuracy, procedure cost and cost-effectiveness of currently available technique for breast screening and diagnosis including clinical breast examination, mammography, ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging, biopsy and a new modality for cancer diagnostics termed elasticity imaging that has emerged in the last decade. Clinical results demonstrate that elasticity imaging even in its simplest and least sophisticated versions, like tactile imaging, has significant diagnostic potential comparable and exceeding that of conventional imaging techniques. In view of many countries with limited resources, effective yet less expensive modes of screening must be considered worldwide. The tactile imaging is one method that has the potential to provide cost-effective breast cancer screening and diagnostics.
 Page 1 /100 Display every page 5 10 20 Item