Search

Around 27,000 people were killed in the province of Asturias during the Spanish Civil War, with several thousands killed after the war ended. There are currently over 2,000 known mass burial locations throughout Spain, but many more are unknown. Geophysics is a useful tool employed to help in the active attempts to document and improve knowledge about victims from this conflict. This paper details a non-invasive study of the Cementerio de El Salvador, in the city of Oviedo, Northern Spain. Part of the cemetery contains a known mass burial with approximately 1,300 individuals from the Spanish Civil War and post-war repression eras. Multi-frequency near-surface geophysical techniques were undertaken, after permission, to enhance knowledge about which, if any, techniques should be used to detect, delineate and analyse such mass graves. Multi-frequency (250 MHz and 500 MHz) ground-penetrating radar surveys were acquired together with 2D and 3D Electrical Resistivity Tomography datasets. The results have established the limits of the mass grave and improve the knowledge of the internal mass grave structure. The paper also shows the importance of considering the climatic conditions during data acquisition. This has important implications for the successful detection of recent historical mass burials using near-surface geophysics.

In a two-sector economy, changes in intermediate input trade as reflected in cost share fluctuations are key to determining the amplification properties of investment-specific and neutral shocks. I document that the cost shares of intermediate inputs produced by the investment sector correlate positively with GDP, whereas those of inputs produced by the consumption sector correlate negatively with GDP. The two-sector model of Greenwood et al. (1988) is extended to allow for trade of intermediate goods and to show that the documented correlations discipline heterogeneous elasticities of substitution in intermediate inputs across sectors. Shock amplification — that is, the effect of a sectorial shock on aggregate value added — depends on the degree of heterogeneity in these elasticities of substitution. For a calibrated economy to that of the United States, I find that shock amplification is stronger than in a unitary elasticity economy. It is also stronger than in an economy with a common non-unitary elasticity that is either inferred from data via reduced-form estimates, or calibrated to match the same targets as our benchmark economy.

El dolor abdominal crónico afecta a un alto porcentaje de niños en edad escolar, lo que la convierte en una de las patologías más frecuentes en nuestro medio. El objetivo es valorar si la cápsula endoscópica (CE) permite identificar lesiones intestinales en estos pacientes. Se han incluido 16 pacientes (9 niños y 7 niñas) con edades comprendidas entre los 5 y 16 años con dolor abdominal crónico de más de 12 meses de evolución. Todos tenían realizados hemograma, bioquímica, sedimento de orina, test de aliento para Helicobacter pylori y serología para enfermedad celíaca, que eran negativos. A todos se les había realizado una gastroscopia, y una colonoscopia que resultaron negativas, así como un tránsito gastrointestinal y una ecografía abdominal, sin hallazgos de interés. En el 43,75 % de los pacientes estudiados (7/16) la CE mostró imágenes compatibles con hiperplasia folicular linfoide localizadas en el íleon. En una niña se observaron oxiuros en ciego y en otra, lesiones aftosas ileales compatibles con enfermedad de Crohn.La CE muestra en la mayoría de los casos imágenes compatibles con hiperplasia nodular linfoide intestinal, con dudosa significación clínica, por lo que podemos concluir que la CE no aporta nada específico en niños con dolor abdominal crónico. : Chronic abdominal pain is highly prevalent in school-aged children and is one of the most frequent disorders in our environment. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the usefulness of capsule endoscopy (CE) in patients with chronic abdominal pain. Sixteen patients (nine boys and seven girls), aged between 5 and 16 years old, with chronic abdominal pain for at least 12 months were studied. In all patients the results of hemograms, biochemical investigations, urine sediment test, Helicobacter pylori breath test and celiac serology were normal. In all children, gastroscopy, small bowel follow-through, abdominal ultrasound and colonoscopy were normal. All patients received CE by mouth. In 43.75 % of the patients studied (7/16), the capsule showed evidence of nodular lymphoid hyperplasia, mainly located in the ileum. In one girl, oxyuriasis was observed in the cecum and in another girl aphthous lesions were observed in the ileum. These lesions suggested small bowel Crohn's disease.CE mainly showed images compatible with nodular lymphoid hyperplasia, with unknown clinical significance. Consequently, we conclude that CE does not provide useful information in patients with abdominal pain without other symptoms.

El desarrollo reciente de la capsula endoscopica permite el estudio endoscopico de todo el intestino delgado de forma segura y no invasiva. La hemorragia digestiva de origen desconocido supone la principal indicacion de la tecnica (sensibilidad del 89%; especificidad del 95%), obteniendose un rendimiento diagnostico muy elevado en pacientes con hemorragia activa (92,3%), que desciende claramente en los casos de hemorragia previa no activa (12,9%). La capsuloendoscopia ha sido tambien propuesta en pacientes con sospecha clinica y analitica de enfermedad de Crohn de intestino delgado no confirmada mediante tecnicas convencionales, respecto a la cual se han publicado algunos estudios con resultados prometedores. Finalmente, el papel que la capsula puede desempenar en el diagnostico de pacientes con enfermedad celiaca, tumores intestinales, sindromes de poliposis gastrointestinal, dolor abdominal no filiado, pacientes pediatricos o en la afeccion intestinal de enfermedades sistemicas debera ser establecido por estudios amplios bien disenados.

We jointly test the rationality of the Federal Reserve’s Greenbook forecasts of inflation, unemployment, and output growth using a multivariate nonseparable asymmetric loss function. We find that the forecasts are rationalizable and exhibit directional asymmetry. The degree of asymmetry depends on the phase of the business cycle: The Greenbook forecasts of output growth are too pessimistic in recessions and too optimistic in expansions. The change in monetary policy that occurred in the late 1970s has been attributed in the literature to the Fed coming to terms with the difficulties in predicting real variables. Our results offer an alternative explanation: A combination of different preferences over expansions and recessions and less frequent recessions in the latter part of the sample.