1,420 research outputs found
Firms, International Money and Prices. a Survey of the Literature
Sluggish price adjustments with respect to exchange rate shocks take essentially two forms. Firstly, prices do not adjust completely to neutralize the effects of nominal exchange rate shocks. Secondiy, price adjustments after exchange rate shocks only take place in discrete time intervals, in other words they are discontinuous. These two features of price adjustments form our definition of international price rigidities. In this paper we shall present a survey of thc empirical and theoretica literature on international price rigidities. We provide the underlying intuition of the theoretical research and present a brief summary of the empirical findings.
Further analysis of burkholderia pseudomallei mf2 and identification of putative dehalogenase gene by pcr
Halogenated organic compounds are extensively and widely used as pesticides, herbicides, and antibiotics that contribute to the pollution. This research was aimed to further analyze and characterize a bacterium that has the ability to utilize 2,2-dichloropropionic acid (2,2-DCP) as a model to study dehalogenase enzyme production. Microscopic observation, biochemical tests and PCR technique were carried out in order to characterize the isolated bacterium. Strain MF2 showed its ability to grow on 10 mM 2,2-DCP liquid minimal medium with doubling time of 13 h with maximum chloride ion released of 19.8 μmolCl–/mL. The 16S rDNA analysis suggested that strain MF2 belongs to the genus Burkholderia. This was supported by the microscopic observation and biochemical tests. Dehalogenase gene was observed when using only primers dehIfor1 and dehIrev2 derived from group I deh PCR primer sequences, whereas no amplification using dhlB-314-forward and dhlB-637-reverse (group II dehalogenase) and haloacetate dehalogenase (H2-1157-forward and H2-1662-reverse) PCR primer sequences. The results suggested that, possibly, dehalogenase from MF2 was related to group I deh. In conclusion, strain MF2 showed the ability to utilize 2,2-DCP as sole source of carbon and energy. Further analysis revealed the MF2 strain consisted of dehalogenase gene that could be used for degradation of man-made halogenated compounds present in the environment. Using existing dehalogenase PCR primers, it was possible to amplify the dehalogenase genes sequence
Antenatal screening and its possible meaning from unborn baby's perspective
In recent decades antenatal screening has become one of the most routine procedure of pregnancy-follow up and the subject of hot debate in bioethics circles. In this paper the rationale behind doing antenatal screening and the actual and potential problems that it may cause will be discussed. The paper will examine the issue from the point of wiew of parents, health care professionals and, most importantly, the child-to-be. It will show how unthoughtfully antenatal screening is performed and how pregnancy is treated almost as a disease just since the emergence of antenatal screening. Genetic screening and ethical problems caused by the procedure will also be addressed and I will suggest that screening is more to do with the interests of others rather than those of the child-to be
Drought intensity–duration–frequency curves based on deficit in precipitation and streamflow for water resources management
Drought estimates in terms of physically measurable variables such as precipitation deficit or streamflow deficit are key knowledge for an effective
water management. How these deficits vary with the drought event severity indicated by commonly used standardized indices is often unclear. Drought
severity calculated from the drought index does not necessarily correspond to the same amount of deficit in precipitation or streamflow at different
regions, and it is different for each month in the same region. We investigate drought to remove this disadvantage of the index-based drought intensity–duration–frequency (IDF) curves and develop IDF curves in terms of the associated deficit. In order to study the variation of deficits, we
use the link between precipitation and streamflow and the associated indices, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardized Streamflow
Index (SSI). More specifically, the analysis relies on frequency analysis combined with the total probability theorem applied to the critical
drought severity. The critical drought has varying durations, and it is extracted from dry periods. IDF curves in terms of precipitation and
streamflow deficits for the most severe drought of each drought duration in each year are then subject to comparison of statistical characteristics
of droughts for different return periods. Precipitation and streamflow data from two catchments, the Seyhan River (Türkiye) and the Kocher River
(Germany), provide examples for two climatically and hydrologically different cases. A comparison of the two cases allows a similar method to be tested in
different hydrological conditions. We found that precipitation and streamflow deficits vary systematically, reflecting seasonality and the magnitude
of precipitation and streamflow characteristics of the catchments. Deficits change from one month to another at a given station. Higher
precipitation deficits were observed in winter months compared to summer months. Additionally, we assessed observed past major droughts experienced
in both catchments on the IDF curves, which show that the major droughts have return periods at the order of 100 years at short durations. This
coincides with the observation in the catchments and shows the applicability of the IDF curves. The IDF curves can be considered a tool for using in
a range of specific activities of agriculture, ecology, industry, energy and water supply, etc. This is particularly important to end users and
decision-makers to act against the drought quickly and precisely in a more physically understandable manner.</p
Bilkent University at TRECVID 2007
We describe our fourth participation, that includes two high-level feature extraction runs, and one manual search run, to the TRECVID video retrieval evaluation. All of these runs have used a system trained on the common development collection. Only visual information, consisting of color, texture and edge-based low-level features, was used
On the Relationships between Decision Management and Performance Measurement
Decision management is of utmost importance for the achievement of strategic and operational goals in any organisational context. Therefore, decisions should be considered as first-class citizens that need to be modelled, analysed, monitored to track their performance, and redesigned if necessary. Up to now, existing literature that studies decisions in the context of business processes has focused on the analysis of the definition of decisions themselves, in terms of accuracy, certainty, consistency, covering and correctness. However, to the best of our knowledge, no prior work exists that analyses the relationship between decisions and performance measurement. This paper identifies and analyses this relationship from three different perspectives, namely: the impact of decisions on process performance, the performance measurement of decisions, and the use of performance indicators in the definition of decisions. Furthermore, we also introduce solutions for the representation of these relationships based, amongst others, on the DMN standard.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad BELI (TIN2015-70560-R)Junta de Andalucía P12-TIC-1867Junta de Andalucía P10-TIC-590
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