This study updates Pereira and Pereira by revisiting the macroeconomic and budgetary effects of infrastructure investment in Portugal using a dataset from the Portuguese Ministry of the Economy covering 1980–2019, thereby capturing a period of austerity and decreased investment in the 2010s. A vector-autoregressive approach re-estimates the elasticity and marginal product of twelve infrastructure types on private investment, employment, and output. The most significant long-term accumulated effects on output accrue from investments in airports, ports, health, highways, water, and railroads. In contrast, those in municipal roads, electricity and gas, and refineries are statistically insignificant. All statistically significant infrastructure investments pay for themselves over time through additional tax revenues. Compared to the previous study, highways, water, and ports have more than doubled their estimated marginal products due to a significant increase in relative scarcity over the last decade. In addition, our analysis reveals an important shift in the impacts of infrastructure investment, now producing more substantial immediate effects but weaker long-term impacts. This change offers policymakers a powerful tool for short-term economic stimulus and is particularly useful in addressing immediate economic challenges.
National unity is a matter of great concern for many countries around the world today. The study of policy evaluation is an important aspect of the study of national unity. The evaluation of policy implementation effects can help policymakers analyze whether there are problems in the formulation and implementation of the policy, thereby promoting further policy adjustments to better achieve national unity. This article adopts thematic searches and a systematic literature review as research methods. Through the systematic review, it summarizes and analyzes the research on national unity policies across different regions and countries. The article has two objectives: First, to explore the current perspectives in the research on national unity policies, and second, to analyze the state of research regarding the effectiveness of national unity policies. Among the 35 papers analyzed, 7 were on integration policy, 6 were on education policy and 4 were on language policy. To a certain extent, this reflects the perspectives of some countries in Europe, Asia and Africa, including France, Greece, Russia, Turkey, China, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and other countries on the governance of national unity. Research on policy effectiveness is mainly conducted from the perspectives of policy content and policy implementation. However, there is little analysis of successful cases that achieved the desired goals. The main contributions of this article are as follows: first, it summarizes and identifies the characteristics of national solidarity-related policies in different continents and countries. Secondly, the experience of the success and failure of the national unity policy is studied and summarized. In addition, this article also found that there are still gaps in the research on successful experiences and causes.
This study focused on the formulation and characterization of silver nanoparticles (AgNP) functionalized with d-limonene. The nanoparticles were functionalized by phase inversion and the synthesis of the nanoparticles was performed in situ; particle size was determined by laser diffraction, zeta potential and optical colloidal stability using Multiscan 20 for a period of 24 hours at 37 °C; the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) of the formulated material on Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 29213, Klebsiella oxytoca ATCC 700324, Enterococcus casseliflavus ATCC 700327, Escherichia coli BLEE, carbapenem-resistant Pseudomona aeruginosa were determined. The nanoparticles showed colloidal stability at a d-limonene concentration of 3.93%, silver ions at 1.61 × 10−3%, non-ionic adjuvant at 24% and ascorbic acid at 5.88%; citric acid/citrate (1:1) 0.48M for a pH of 4.5 was used as a buffer system. The formulation was classified as a polydisperse system (PD = 0.0851), with a zeta potential of −11.6 mV and average particle size of 81.5 ± 0.9 nm. A particle migration velocity of −0.199 ± 0.006 mm∙h−1, a constant transmission profile and backscattering profile with variations of 10% were evidenced, which represents a stable formulation. The nanoparticles presented an MIC and an MBC of 28 μg∙mL−1 (5.6 × 10−2% d-limonene and 4.7 × 10−5% AgNP) against all tested bacteria.
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