Brazil's Tropical Plan

This paper highlights the institutional features of the inflation process and contrasts two stabilization efforts in 1964-66 and in 1986.The inflation process in Brazil is highly institutional. It does not resemble hyperinflations where pricing and wage setting are geared to the exchange rate by the hour, making it possible to stop inflation by simply containing money creation and fixing the exchange rate. The two stabilization programs demonstrate that an incomes policy is an essential ingredient to non-recessionary stabilization. But they also show that demand restraint is inevitable if disinflation is to be viable. The 1964 program was gradualist and two-handed, relying on the supply side on wage repression. The 1986 plan was a heterodox shock treatment centered around an uncompromising price freeze and paying insufficient attention to the need for fiscal restraint.

The Flexible Exchange Rate System: Experience and Alternatives

We review ten aspects of how floating exchange rates have worked in practice, contrasted with ten characteristics that the system was supposed to have in theory. We conclude that the foreign exchange market is characterized by high transactions-volume, short-term horizons, and an absence of stabilizing speculation. As a result, the exchange rate at times strays from the equilibrium level dictated by fundamentals, contrary to theory. We then look at ten proposed alternatives to the current system. Four entail decentralized policy rules: new classical macroeconomics, a gold standard, monetarism, and nominal income targeting. Four foresee enhanced international coordination: G-7 "objective indicators," Williamson target zones, McKinnon "world monetarism," and a "Hosomi Fund." Two propose enhanced independence: a "Tobin tax" on transactions, and a dual exchange rate. We conclude that one might build a case for intervention from the observed failure of international financial markets to behave as in the theoretical ideal, but that government intervention in practice is just as likely to fall short of the theoretical ideal

Experience with daptomycin daily dosing in ICU patients undergoing continuous renal replacement therapy

Purpose: For critically ill patients undergoing continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT), daptomycin dosing recommendations are scarce. We, therefore, retrospectively assessed routinely measured daptomycin plasma concentrations, daptomycin dose administered and microbiological data in 11 critically ill patients with Gram-positive infections that had received daptomycin once daily. Methods: The retrospective analysis included critically ill patients treated at the intensive care unit (ICU) who had daptomycin plasma concentrations measured. Results: Daptomycin dose ranged from 3 to 8mg/kg/q24h in patients undergoing CRRT (n=7) and 6 to 10mg/kg/q24h in patients without CRRT (n=4). Peak and trough concentrations showed a high intra- and inter-patient variability in both groups, independent of the dosage per kg body weight. No drug accumulation was detected in CRRT patients with once-daily daptomycin dosing. Causative pathogens were Enterococcus faecium (n=6), coagulase-negative Staphylococcus (n=2), Staphylococcus aureus (n=2) and unknown in one patient. Microbiological eradication was successful in 8 of 11 patients. Two of three patients with unsuccessful microbiological eradication and fatal outcome had an Enterococcus faecium infection. Conclusion: In critically ill patients undergoing CRRT, daptomycin exposure with once-daily dosing was similar to ICU patients with normal renal function, but lower compared to healthy volunteers. Our data suggest that daptomycin once-daily dosing is appropriate in patients undergoing CRR

BILIPROTEINS FROM THE BUTTERFLY Pieris brassicae STUDIED BY TIME-RESOLVED FLUORESCENCE AND COHERENT ANTI-STOKES RAMAN SPECTROSCOPY

The fluorescence decay time of the biliverdin IX7 chromophore present in biliproteins isolated from Pieris brassicae is determined to be 44 ± 3 ps. This value suggests a cyclic helical chromophore structure. The vibrational frequencies determined by CARS-spectroscopy are compared with those of model compounds. The data confirm that the chromophore in the protein-bound state adopts a cyclic-helical, flexible conformation

Matched filters for coalescing binaries detection on massively parallel computers

We discuss some computational problems associated to matched filtering of experimental signals from gravitational wave interferometric detectors in a parallel-processing environment. We then specialize our discussion to the use of the APEmille and apeNEXT processors for this task. Finally, we accurately estimate the performance of an APEmille system on a computational load appropriate for the LIGO and VIRGO experiments, and extrapolate our results to apeNEXT.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figure

The Accretion Rates and Spectral Energy Distributions of BL Lacertae Objects

We investigate the relationship between accretion rates and the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of BL Lac objects, using a sample of objects for which published information on the host galaxies, emission-line luminosities, and peak frequencies and luminosities of their SEDs are available. The sample is composed of 43 BL Lac objects which have a relatively continuous distribution of peak frequencies. Under the assumption that the observed emission lines are photoionized by the central accretion disk, we use the line luminosities to estimate the accretion luminosities and hence accretion rates. We find that low frequency-peaked BL Lac objects (LBLs) span a wide range of accretion rates, whereas high frequency-peaked BL Lac objects (HBLs) cover a more restricted range of lower values. There appears to be a continuous distribution of accretion rates between the two subclasses of BL Lac objects. We find that the peak frequency of the SED, \pknu, correlates with the accretion rate, approximately with the form \pknu\propto \Lambda^{-3} in HBLs and \pknu \propto \Lambda^{-0.25} in LBLs, where $\Lambda \equiv L_{\rm lines}/c^2$. The peak luminosity of the SED is also correlated with $\Lambda$. These results suggest that the accretion rate influences the shape of the SED in BL Lac objects. They also support models which couple the jet and the accretion disk. We present a physical scenario to account for the empirical trends.Comment: 6 pages in emulateapj.sty, 3 figures 1 table. The Astrophysical Journal (in press