The intervention of local public authorities and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Romania: a subnational analysis.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a strong territorial dimension, with a highly asymmetric impact among Romanian counties, depending on pre-existing vulnerabilities, regions' economic structure, exposure to global value chains, specialization, and overall ability to shift a large share of employees to remote working. The aim of this paper is to assess the role of Romanian local authorities during this unprecedented global medical emergency by capturing the changes of public spending at the local level between 2010 and 2021 and amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and to identify clusters of Romanian counties that shared similar characteristics in this period, using a panel data quantitative model and hierarchical cluster analysis. Our empirical analysis shows that between 2010-2021, the impact of social assistance expenditures was higher than public investment (capital spending and EU funds) on the GDP per capita at county level.

Investigating the association between anxiety symptoms and mood disorder in high-risk offspring of bipolar parents: a comparison of Joint and Cox models.

Background: Anxiety is associated with mood disorders including bipolar disorder. Two statistical modelling frameworks were compared to investigate the longitudinal relationship between repeatedly measured anxiety symptoms and the onset of depression and bipolar disorder in youth at confirmed familial risk.

Methods: Prospectively collected data on 156 offspring of a parent with confirmed bipolar disorder participating in the Canadian Flourish high-risk offspring longitudinal cohort study were used for this analysis.

The effect of electrode positioning on the ocular vestibular evoked myogenic potential to air-conducted sound.

Objective: To assess the effect of electrode position on the amplitude and latency of ocular vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (oVEMPs) produced by air-conducted (AC) sound with a view to optimisation of the recording paradigm.

Methods: Eight otologically normal subjects (16 ears) were stimulated by 500 Hz AC tone bursts at 95 dBnHL; oVEMP traces were recorded below the eye contralateral to the acoustic stimulation. Five independent oVEMP measurements were recorded with the active electrode in equally spaced positions in the infra-orbital plane relative to a reference electrode positioned 2 cm below the lower lid in the orbital midline.