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Background: The automated screening of patients at risk of developing diabetic retinopathy represents an opportunity to improve their midterm outcome and lower the public expenditure associated with direct and indirect costs of common sight-threatening complications of diabetes. Objective: This study aimed to develop and evaluate the performance of an automated deep learning-based system to classify retinal fundus images as referable and nonreferable diabetic retinopathy cases, from international and Mexican patients. In particular, we aimed to evaluate the performance of the automated retina image analysis (ARIA) system under an independent scheme (ie, only ARIA screening) and 2 assistive schemes (ie, hybrid ARIA plus ophthalmologist screening), using a web-based platform for remote image analysis to determine and compare the sensibility and specificity of the 3 schemes. Methods: A randomized controlled experiment was performed where 17 ophthalmologists were asked to classify a series of retinal fundus images under 3 different conditions. The conditions were to (1) screen the fundus image by themselves (solo); (2) screen the fundus image after exposure to the retina image classification of the ARIA system (ARIA answer); and (3) screen the fundus image after exposure to the classification of the ARIA system, as well as its level of confidence and an attention map highlighting the most important areas of interest in the image according to the ARIA system (ARIA explanation). The ophthalmologists' classification in each condition and the result from the ARIA system were compared against a gold standard generated by consulting and aggregating the opinion of 3 retina specialists for each fundus image. Results: The ARIA system was able to classify referable vs nonreferable cases with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 98%, a sensitivity of 95.1%, and a specificity of 91.5% for international patient cases. There was an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 98.3%, a sensitivity of 95.2%, and a specificity of 90% for Mexican patient cases. The ARIA system performance was more successful than the average performance of the 17 ophthalmologists enrolled in the study. Additionally, the results suggest that the ARIA system can be useful as an assistive tool, as sensitivity was significantly higher in the experimental condition where ophthalmologists were exposed to the ARIA system's answer prior to their own classification (93.3%), compared with the sensitivity of the condition where participants assessed the images independently (87.3%; P=.05). Conclusions: These results demonstrate that both independent and assistive use cases of the ARIA system present, for Latin American countries such as Mexico, a substantial opportunity toward expanding the monitoring capacity for the early detection of diabetes-related blindness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses political and economic issues concerning Queensland from July to December 2018. Topics explored include the economic outlook for the region with regard to government spending, credit rating, and unemployment, the business performance of government-owned energy and water companies, and the disaster recovery funding allotted by state and federal governments to address damages brought by natural disasters.

Highlights • Charter schools change the costs and efficiency of providing education in school districts. • Cost increases are driven by increases in share of poor students in traditional public schools. • Charter school increases the efficiency of providing education. The effects are larger in the long than in the short-run. • The cost increases are larger in the short-run than the efficiency gains, but in the long run efficiency gains offset cost increases. Abstract Charter schools can influence a school district's costs by reducing economies of scale and by changing the share of high cost students a district serves, but might also increase the district's efficiency through competition. Utilizing data for New York State school districts from 1998/99 to 2013/14, we estimate difference-in-differences models to assess the effect of charter schools on enrollment and student composition. Then, we estimate an expenditure function, using data prior to the charter school program, to measure the costs associated with reaching a given performance standard for students in various need categories and different enrollments. Next, using the entire data set, we run a second expenditure function to determine changes in efficiency associated with charter school entry. We find that charter schools increase the cost of providing education, and that these cost increases are larger than short-run efficiency gains, but are offset by efficiency gains in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the impact of government expenditure on economic growth in Nigeria. Time series data for twenty-two years' period were sourced from secondary sources and Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model was used in estimating relationship exists among variables of interest. Real Gross Domestic Product, a proxy for economic growth was adopted as the dependent variable while Total Recurrent Expenditure and Total Capital Expenditure constituted the independent variables. The result of the study shows that the public expenditure has a positive relationship but insignificant impact on the economic growth of Nigeria for the period under study. The study recommends amongst others that government should allocate more of its resources to the priority sectors of the economy such as economic services in the form of agriculture, education, construction as well as to infrastructural development, in order to encourage the growth of the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few prediction schemes have been more accurate, and at the same time more perplexing, than the Super Bowl Stock Market Predictor, which asserts that the league affiliation of the Super Bowl winner predicts stock market direction. In this study, we examine the record and statistical significance of this anomaly and demonstrate that an investor would have clearly outperformed the market by reacting to Super Bowl game outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors analyze employment and economic trends associated with the aerospace industry in California as of 1968, focusing mostly on Los Angeles county. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), especially the manned space flight program, has increased the U.S. federal government's spending in the aerospace industry, keeping the industry stable. However, the state of California foresees a drop in spending by the federal government and has initiated public contracts in transportation, crime prevention, education, and pollution control in an effort to promote companies in the aerospace industry to diversify.

The authors present an economic forecasting model which they use to predict the annual growth of Southern California for 1967 using information from 1953 through 1961. Some of the assumptions used include a further escalation of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, strong inflationary pressure, and that U.S. defense expenditures and defense department payrolls in the area will remain unchanged. The econometric model predicts that the economy of Southern California will grow faster than that of the U.S. for 1967.

Vast growth of consumer markets in the 1960s is now clearly seen, but what special risks and opportunities face the marketing man? How fast will he have to run just to stay even with his competition? And what new competitive forces will he meet? Mr. Keener, President of The B. F. Goodrich Company, suggests that complacent expectation of a steadily expanding economy is not enough. Profitable operation during the next decade will depend on how a company meets a specific list of challenges, and the author discusses these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to examine the influence of variance of region own source revenue (or Pendapatan Asli Daerah), variance of regional fiscal balance fund (or Dana Perimbangan), and financial surplus from previous year (sisa lebih perhitungan anggaran/SiLPA) for capital expenditures. The samples of this study are 345 local governments in Indonesia. Data were obtained from the local government budget and the budget realization reports (between 2010 and 2014). Multiple regression analysis was applied to analysis the collected data. This study demonstrated that the variance of region owns source revenue, the variance of regional fiscal balance and financial surplus from previous year affected significantly both individually and collectively capital expenditures. Thus, it is suggested that local govements need to carefully estimate and budget their revenues in order to enhance the allocation and realization of capital expenditures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

General economic theory acknowledges the existence of two main arguments that explains the difference in size of the public sector in different countries. A first category of arguments is based on the Wagners law, according to which the share of government spending in GDP will increase by a degree of proportionality greater than one if GDP growth (elasticity above par). As states increase their incomes, becoming richer, the demand for public goods increases in the same direction with increasing capacity to collect revenues. The second argument is the political nature and focus on that for reelection, government policy makers, especially those related to government spending, tend to be inconsistent over time with the economic evolution, geared towards large deficits a comprehensive public sectors. The prevention of pollution and restoring damage caused in the past is an important issue considered in managing the revenues and expenditures budgets of central and local public authorities and other categories of private operators in the economy. Thus, Government which has made a number of strong international obligations targeting environmental protection, should provide funds to cover expenses resulting from the implementation of environmental programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decentralisation envisages the public contributing to decision-making and governance in state institutions. The decentralised state is not complete without actors like ordinary people contributing to decision-making in local government institutions. Evidence of decentralisation in Africa reveals that there are very few cases of successful public participation in local government institutions. This paper focuses on the effectiveness of public participation in the decision-making process in decentralised local government institutions in Zimbabwe. It contributes to the broad literature on transitioning from traditional representation in democracies to citizen-centred and citizen-driven decision-making. The paper explores how the residents of the City of Harare (COH) contribute to decision-making through the city's budget formulating process. The decision-making process is examined under the key elements of public participation which are inclusiveness, openness, accountability and responsiveness. This study is based on the interviews and observations made during the 2015 budget formulation process in the COH. The study findings reveal that public participation is not effective, and there are serious issues which need to be addressed to improve public participation in the COH. There is very little public participation to the extent that the residents do not have control of what happens in the COH except for voting for councillors. It is proper to argue that in the COH, there are no proper community participation platforms. This leads to a lack of accountability, openness, responsiveness and effectiveness of the system of public participation in the COH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the new strategy and threats in the 1972 Military Budget of the U.S. The U.S. President Richard Milhous Nixon submitted a $80.2 billion military budget to Congress and his Secretary of Defense attempted to justify the figure in the annual Defense Report. A chart comprised of selected U.S. military programs with its corresponding fund allotment, estimated cost, status and a comparison in the 1971 fiscal year funding is presented in the article. As reflected by the press, general feeling in Washington is that military spending for 1972 will fare better. Some factors remain constant regardless of some Congressional actions.

The main purpose of the present study is to develop a statistical analysis of the government expenditure for Macedonia during the period January 2006- September 2013 The source of the official data is the Macedonian Institute of Statistics. The Kolmogorov's Central Limit Theorem, "fair game" concept in the sense of Stein-Vorobiev, Kolmogorov-Smirnov-Lilliefors test and Shapiro-Wilk test are applied. The government expenditure is estimated based on current price or as a percentage of GDP. Some results of the present study include: * The official data of quarterly government expenditure for Macedonia during the period January 2006-September 2013 contradicts the CLT at the confidence level 95%. * The official data of quarterly government expenditure expressed as a fraction of GDP for Macedonia during the period January 2006-September 2013 satisfies CLT at the confidence level 95%. * The government expenditure process in Macedonia during the period January 2006-September 2013 is an unfair game at the confidence level 95%. * The government expenditure as a fraction of GDP in Macedonia during the period January 2006-September 2013 is a fair game at the confidence level 95%. * The official data of quarterly GDP for Macedonia during the period January 2006-September 2013 satisfies CLT at the confidence level 95%. * The quarterly GDP in Macedonia during the period January 2006-September 2013 is an unfair game at the confidence level 95%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate the interaction of main expenditures groups of CPI with the fluctuations taking place at the level of general prices and calculate the relative weights of theirs uncertainties within inflation uncertainty. Since there might be structural breaks in the investigated variables, Bai-Perron test, GARCH-type models are constructed by including the breaks in the fluctuation measurement and ARDL approach has been used to determine the long-term relationship between the variables. Contrary to expectations, it was revealed that the expenditure group having the greatest impact on inflation uncertainty is not "food, beverage and tobacco" expenditure group but "transportation". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to link 'who governs' in Romania with 'what they do when governing'. It utilizes time series analysis of actual expenditures since the revolution, and examines the division of outlays between national budgets and local authority budgets; between capital, current, and transfer allocations; and across the various substantive purposes for state expenditure. The main hypotheses are that the government in power, the political party of the Prime Minister who heads that government, the incentives of electoral law, and the timing of the election cycle should all prove statistically relevant, causing visible deflections from long-term expenditure trends. Most often, however, no systematic variation is observed, raising questions about the degree of actual representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the tax levels, government expenditures, and financial crimes, which have to be dealt by the finance ministers in the governments.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on the determinant factors of government budget balance forecast errors for Eurozone countries based on four different database sources from 1998 to 2011. Design/methodology/approach – Besides the analysis on quality and efficiency of government budget balance projections, panel data analysis is made from different methods taking into account economic, political, institutional and governance factors, and lagged forecast errors for estimations of budget balance forecast errors. Findings – The results show that even with the concern and pressure due to the fiscal crisis in the Eurozone, the bias in fiscal forecasts remains. Originality/value – One contribution of this paper, in comparison to other studies, is the use of longer time periods for the analysis of forecast errors as well as the employment of different data sources for detecting systematic patterns of errors, and the use of various estimation methods for the fiscal forecast error determinants, which gives insights into the reliability and robustness of results obtained in earlier studies. In particular, the introduction of variables such as fiscal council and fiscal rules allows one to check whether institutional behavior may change the effect from debt on fiscal forecast errors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information related to the politics and government of Manitoba, a province in Canada. Topics discussed include the operating expenditure of provincial government, the move of politician Heather Stefanson during an opposition day motion about his request to conduct a comprehensive audit of the Investors Group Field construction project, and the changes adopted by the Legislative Assembly to its rules, orders and forms of proceeding.

We test if remoteness of a county is one of the environmental factors that contribute to obesity. First, we employ geographically weighted regressions ( GWRs) that allow us to observe local or regional patterns. We find that county obesity rate is spatially non-stationary, remoteness affects county obesity rates, and there are spatial heterogeneities in how distance affects county obesity rates. Next, we refine our estimates of the effect of remoteness on county obesity rate using a random effect model that accounts for county-level unobserved heterogeneity. Even after accounting for these heterogeneities and state fixed effects, we find measurable impact of remoteness on county obesity rate. Splitting the sample into metro and non-metro counties, we find that remoteness matters more for the obesity rates in the metro counties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper looks back to time when budgeting was easier and budget outcomes were superior. Although it is impossible to replicate the past exactly, there are certain characteristics of past budgets that might be emulated. The paper focuses on Eisenhower's battles to balance the 1960 budget. The task was not easy and the result had to be bipartisan since Democrats had significant majorities in the House and Senate. But budgeting was less difficult than it is today, because almost all spending was controlled by annual appropriations, and popular, rapidly growing entitlements for the elderly were very much less important. The president's budget was also much more prestigious and influential. Approaches to gaining more control over entitlements are explored as is the more difficult task of restoring the influence of the president's budget. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]