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Showing posts with the label trade balance

Metastability and Eye Movements: A Dynamical‑Systems Interpretation

  1. Why metastability is a natural language for gaze behavior The idea that perception, attention, and neural activity evolve through transiently stable states has deep roots in cognitive science and neuroscience. Concepts such as attractors , basins , noise‑induced transitions , and escape times appear in work on perceptual switching, decision‑making, and neural population dynamics (Kelso, 1995; Rabinovich et al., 2008; Deco & Jirsa, 2012). Eye movements, especially the alternation between fixations and saccades ,   fit remarkably well into this metastable picture. The Freidlin–Wentzell theory of rare events (Freidlin & Wentzell, 2012) provides a rigorous mathematical language for these intuitions. 2. Fixations as metastable states  Consider the gaze position X t as the state of a stochastic dynamical system. During a fixation the  gaze remains confined to a small region, microsaccades and noise generate small fluctuations, and the gaze tends to return...

ITALY'S FOREIGN TRADE 2012

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The performance of the foreign trade of Italy during the last part of year 2012 has been exhibited in positive   terms  by the majority of the mass media and politicians in Italy. In particular the  alleged "good" performance has been attributed (at least indirectly) to the financial measures adopted by the government led by Mr. Monti.  But the value of the trade expressed in monetary units can be better understood if we consider the two factors that compose them: the amount ( volume )  the average unit value ( AUV ) which is an estimate of the average prices of products exported (imported) in a certain period. By looking at the data presented by the  Istat ( Italian  National Institute of Statistics ) on Italy's foreign trade as well as unit value and volume indices (base year 2005=100) referring to October 2012 results in a useful argument for analyzing the foreign trade.  In the following plots there are shown the results of so...

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