The Gulf Cooperation Council countries – economic structures, recent developments and role in the global economy

In the wake of high and rising oil prices since 2003, the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have seen dynamic economic development, enhancing their role in the global economy as investors and trade partners. Real GDP growth has been buoyant, with non-oil activity expanding faster than oil GDP. Macroeconomic developments have also been characterised by large fiscal and current account surpluses as a result of rising oil revenues, notwithstanding fiscal expansion and rapid import growth. The most significant macroeconomic challenge faced by GCC countries is rising inflation in an environment in which the contribution of monetary policy to containing inflationary pressure is constrained by the exchange rate regimes. The overall favourable macroeconomic backdrop of recent years has provided GCC countries with an opportunity to tackle long-standing structural challenges, such as the diversification of oil-centred economies and reform of the labour markets. In a global context, apart from developing into a pole of global economic growth, GCC countries – together with other oil-exporting countries – have become a major net supplier of capital in global markets, second only to East Asia. As a result, they have become part of the international policy debate on global imbalances. Furthermore, GCC countries are home to some of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, which raises several financial stability issues. Their role as trade partners has also increased, with the European Union being the only major region in the world maintaining a significant surplus in bilateral trade with the GCC. GCC countries are also key players in global energy markets in terms of production, exports and the availability of spare capacity. Their role is likely to become even more pivotal in the future as they command vast oil and gas reserves and benefit from relatively low costs in exploiting oil reserves. JEL Classification: F40, F30, F14, E60, N15, O53, Q40.Gulf Cooperation Council, global imbalances, sovereign wealth funds, financial stability, oil markets.

Weightless: Lossy Weight Encoding For Deep Neural Network Compression

The large memory requirements of deep neural networks limit their deployment and adoption on many devices. Model compression methods effectively reduce the memory requirements of these models, usually through applying transformations such as weight pruning or quantization. In this paper, we present a novel scheme for lossy weight encoding which complements conventional compression techniques. The encoding is based on the Bloomier filter, a probabilistic data structure that can save space at the cost of introducing random errors. Leveraging the ability of neural networks to tolerate these imperfections and by re-training around the errors, the proposed technique, Weightless, can compress DNN weights by up to 496x with the same model accuracy. This results in up to a 1.51x improvement over the state-of-the-art

Studies in the pathology of the respiratory system of the dog in virus infections

The viral involvements of the respiratory system in animals and man from a morphologically distinct group of pathological conditions. The changes produced in the lung tissue by the action of viruses present a remarkable picture and have attracted much attention in the last three decades. Among the canine viral infections, distemper appears to be the only disease entity which consistently shows its effects on the respiratory tract and displays pulmonary lesions characteristic of all viral pneumonias. The present study was undertaken with the intent of supplementing and enlarging upon the available but scanty information on the pathology of the respiratory system, in distemper. It embodies the results of observations on the morbid anatomy and histopathology of the entire tract and bacteriology of the lung. The material on which the findings are based comprises thirty naturally occurring and twenty experimental cases of the disease. In the course of the investigations, special attention has been paid to the HISTO-pathological aspect of pneumonia. Some of the changes observed involve the long debated issue of the ultimate nature of the alveolar lining and required for their interpretation additional, electron microscopic studies on the normal structure of the pulmonary alveolar wall. Clinical signs of the disease and lesions in the respiratory tract were considerably more severe in the naturally occurring than in the experimental cases of distemper. Only mild malaise and slight changes were seen in the dogs suffering from experimental infection. These observations are in accord with those of previous workers. The gross lesions encountered in the clinical cases were generally most prominent between the third and fifth weeks of illness. The abnormalities observed in the pulmonary tissue included (a) congestion, often focal in distribution; (b) oedema; and (c) occasional subpleural consolidation. No oedema of the lung was found in the experimental dogs. Bacterial involvements of the lung were much more frequent in "street" distemper. Of the twenty experimental cases, only five yielded positive cultures, whereas most of the naturally infected dogs showed some degree of secondary infection. The strains of bacteria isolated from these cases included Escherichia coli, Proteus vulgaris, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, staphylococci, streptococci and, in one dog, Brucella bronchiseptica. One of the salient features of pneumonia was the interstitial cellular reaction. It manifested itself as a mononuclear infiltration of the bronchiolar walls, the adjacent interalveolar septa and, often, of the perivascular connective tissue. Other changes intimately associated with the disease process included hyperplasia of the alveolar epithelium, accumulation of a chiefly mononuclear exudate in the region of gaseous exchange, and oedema of alveolar and, not infrequently, of perivascular spaces. The combined observations on the clinical and experimental cases of pneumonia revealed that the first tissue changes took place at the time of the initial rise in body temperature. The early signs of viral activity were shown not only by the cellular exudative phenomena but also by the appearance of cytoplasmic inclusion bodies in the bronchiolar epithelium. A few of these bodies were seen on the first day of illness. Quite early in the disease process the oedema fluid started to collect in alveoli and around smaller vessels. Epithelial cells of some of the bronchioles showed a degree of glycogenic infiltration which in later stages resulted in partial denudation of the mucous membrane. With the progress of the d3.sease, many mononuclear cells accumulated in the affected areas, and occasional polymorphonuclear leucocytes appeared in the alveolar spaces. Some of the intra-alveolar macrophages enlarged considerably and displayed multiple nuclei. At the end of the first week, the lining of the alveoli showed signs of proliferative activity. As a result of this process, many peribronchiolar and subpleural alveoli become lined by a pavement of usually flat cells. Such "epithelialisation" was evidently due to hyperplasia of the alveolar epithelium. This observation is supported by the electron Microscopic study of the normal lung which revealed that the pulmonary alveolar wall is lined by an uninterrupted although very tenuous epithelial membrane. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)

Minimum-width graph layering revisited

The minimum-width layering problem tackles one step of a layout pipeline to create top-down drawings of directed acyclic graphs. Thereby, it aims at keeping the overall width of the drawing small. We study layering heuristics for this problem as presented by Nikolov et al. as well as traditional layering methods with respect to the questions how close they are to the true minimal width and how well they perform in practice, especially, if a particular drawing area is prescribed. We find that when applied carefully and at the right moment the layering heuristics can, compared to traditional layering methods, produce better layerings for prescribed drawing areas and for graphs with varying node dimensions. Still, we also find that there is room for improvement

Reform des sozialen Wohnungsbaus

Die Bundesregierung hat dieser Tage einen Gesetzentwurf zur Reform des Wohnungsbaurechts vorgelegt. Welche Änderungen der staatlichen Wohnungsbaupolitik sind darin vorgesehen? Wie sind sie zu beurteilen? --

Evaluation of Oxalate Content of Some Indigenous and Produced Spices and Seasonings in Ghana

In this paper, six indigenous (LS) and fifteen industry produced spices and seasonings (IPS)  available to consumer have been examined for its oxalate content using Ultra Violet –Visible spectroscopy with a view to provide useful information towards their effective use. The oxalate content of the LS was found to be between 0.74±0.04 –4.99±0.26 mg/g whereas that of the IPS was between 0.05±0.0-7.5±0.0 mg/g. Although the LS recorded a higher average oxalate content than the IPS, the difference was not statistically significant (p<0.05). Among the IPS samples curry based spices had higher oxalate content. Keywords: anti-nutritional factors, oxalate, seasonings, spices, Ghan

Entwicklung von Phytophthora-resistentem Zuchtmaterial für den ökologischen Landbau

Die Ansprüche des ökologischen Landbaus an Kartoffelsorten unterscheiden sich zum Teil erheblich von denen des konventionellen Anbaus. Dies ist bedingt durch den alternativen Pflanzenschutz mit mechanischer Unkrautbekämpfung sowie durch eine in der Regel geringere Stickstoffversorgung der Pflanzen. Darum benötigt der ökologische Landbau spezielle Sorten, die neben den vom Verbraucher gewünschten Qualitätsmerkmalen auch eine hohe Widerstandsfähigkeit gegenüber Krankheiten und Schädlingen besitzen, durch schnelle Jugendentwicklung das Unkrautwachstum unterdrücken und eine hohe Nährstoffeffizienz aufweisen. Um neue Zuchtstämme zu schaffen, in denen die im Biolandbau gewünschten Eigenschaften kombiniert vorliegen, etablierte das seit 2012 im „Bundesprogramm Ökologischer Landbau und andere Formen nachhaltiger Landwirtschaft“ geförderte Projekt „Entwicklung von Phytophthora-resistentem Zuchtmaterial für den ökologischen Landbau“ ein Zuchtprogramm speziell für den ökologischen Kartoffelanbau. Für die Züchtung auf geringe Anfälligkeit gegenüber der Kraut- und Knollenfäule, die durch den Oomyceten Phytophthora infestans hervorgerufen wird, wurde auf resistente Kartoffelklone aus der Vorzüchtung des Julius-Kühn Institutes zurückgegriffen. Die untersuchten Zuchtstämme und Vergleichssorten wurden parallel in einem Beobachtungsanbau hinsichtlich weiterer agronomischer und qualitativer Eigenschaften wie Ertragsleistung, Wuchsform, Stärkegehalt, Speise- und Veredelungseignung und Abreifeverhalten untersucht. Weitere Resistenzen sowie gewünschte Qualitätsmerkmale wurden aus modernen Hochleistungssorten deutscher Züchtungsunternehmen und historischen Sorten der IPK Genbank während des Projektverlaufs ins Zuchtmaterial eingebracht. Neben der Evaluierung der Prüfglieder hinsichtlich der Resistenzeigenschaften wurden zur Erweiterung des Basiszuchtmaterials zahlreiche Kreuzungen durchgeführt. Hierbei wurden die Kreuzungseltern gezielt aus den im Projekt geprüften Sorten und Zuchtstämmen ausgewählt. Für die Bewertung und die Selektion der Klone wurde ein partizipativer Züchtungsansatz gewählt und dafür drei ökologisch wirtschaftende, landwirtschaftliche Betriebe ins Projekt eingebunden. Die Betriebsleiter wurden intensiv geschult und führten die Bewertung der Klone und die Selektion der Knollen in enger Zusammenarbeit mit den wissenschaftlichen Mitarbeitern der Institute durch. Ein solches Modell ist bislang in der der deutschen Kartoffelzüchtung einzigartig. Wissenschaftlich begleitet wurden die Züchtungsarbeiten durch eine phänotypische und genotypische Charakterisierung des Ausgangsmaterials und der Zuchtklone. Ziel hierbei war es, Grundlagen für eine molekulare Selektion KF-resistenter Nachkommen zu schaffen. Hierzu wurden an einem Prüfgliedsortiment Assoziationsstudien mit DArT- und SNP-Markern durchgeführt und ausgewertet. Im Projekt wurden am IPK erstmalig zwei Sortimente umfassend genetisch mittels zwei verschiedener Markersysteme zu charakterisiert. Mit den erzielten Ergebnisse konnten Duplikatgruppen innerhalb der Genbankakzessionen aufgedeckt sowie Unstimmigkeiten erkannt und bereinigt werden. Damit wurde das Genbankmanagement verbessert und nutzerorientiert gestaltet. Somit hat das Projekt eine nachhaltigere und intensivere Nutzung pflanzengenetischer Ressourcen ermöglicht. Dadurch ist es Züchtern wie auch Forschungsinstitutionen zukünftig möglich, zielgerichteter auf genetische Ressourcen der Kartoffel zuzugreifen und diese in die eigenen Zuchtprogramme und Forschungsprojekte einzubringen