Non-performing loans sensitivity to macro variables: panel evidence from Malaysian commercial banks

Credit risk is one of the most important kinds of risk in banking sector. The relationship between business cycle and banks’ loan losses was one of the hot debates in recent economic literature especially with respect to financial stability analysis. The quality of loans can be one of the factors that limit the banks' loan supply and affect on investment spending. Although banks have a significant role in transmission of monetary policy; in the meantime their performance is strongly influenced by monetary and fiscal policies that are effective in recession and prosperity and thereby affect bank performance; in other words, macroeconomic variables can effect in/directly on banks loans quality and their transitional role. Thus policy makers and bankers are always concerned with the financial stability and are always looking for tools to better manage banks’ credit risk. One of the risk indicators that are used in literature of banks’ credit risk is Non-Performing Loans (NPL). Hence themain objective of thisstudy is to analyze relationship between banks loans quality and macroeconomic variables by using a dynamic panel data model on Malaysian commercial banking system for the 1997-2012 periods. The results show that there is a strong evidence of cyclical sensitivity of loan quality in Malaysia’s commercial banking system. Based on the results lending interest rate and FDI-net outflow (% GDP) are the most effective factors on NPL ratio with simultaneous positive effects and a reverse effect with one-year delay. It can be said that the impact of external shocks on the domestic banking system is more than internal shocks. The result of this study can be helpful to bank supervisory and economists to adjust banking system stability and economic policies

Extreme Activation of Androgen Receptor for Prostate Cancer Therapy

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the second most common cancer worldwide in men and one of the major causes of cancer-related death among men in Australia. In PCa cells, the androgen receptor (AR) is the key driver of cell proliferation, cell cycle progression, and metabolism; thus, blocking AR activity with androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is a standard-of-care treatment for metastatic PCa. However, ADT is never curative, with all patients eventually relapsing with lethal castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). In a paradoxical phenomenon, potent activation of AR with high doses of androgens can also inhibit the growth of PCa tumours. However, the exact mechanism(s) by which activation of AR can block PCa growth is poorly understood. Therefore, in my PhD project, I explored the mechanisms underlying PCa growth suppression in response to extreme activation of AR using a potent androgen, methyltestosterone (MeT). I have found that methyl-testosterone (MeT), a synthetic androgen, can potently transactivate AR and suppress the proliferation of AR-positive prostate cancer cells (LNCaP, C42B, MR49F, and 22RV1) but not an AR-negative cell line (PC3) or a PCa model expressing a version of the AR lacking the ligand-binding domain (R1-D567), suggesting that the growth-inhibitory effects of MeT are AR-dependent. Mechanistically, MeT acts much like high-dose dihydrotestosterone (DHT) in terms of genome-wide AR binding (evaluated by ChIP-seq) and the transcriptional program activated via AR (evaluated by RNA-seq). However, these analyses showed that MeT only extends the AR cistrome and enables AR to act as a potent transcriptional repressor of genes associated with cell cycle, DNA replication, and DNA damage responses. Unexpectedly, our RNA-seq data revealed that MeT dysregulates the expression of transposable elements, including endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). Mechanistically, we found that MeT suppresses the expression of DNA methyl-transferases (DNMTs) and EZH2, which are considered to be key factors repressing the expression of transposable elements. Consistent with the proposed hypothesis, my PhD work showed that MeT caused global hypomethylation of DNA and re-distribution of H3K27me3. More specifically, my research supports a model whereby DNA hypomethylation was linked to the induction of endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). Interestingly, I found that ERV induction was associated with a “viral mimicry” response characterised by activation of pattern recognition receptors RIG-I and STING and subsequent activation of interferon (IFN) signalling. Importantly, I also observed increased expression of MHC class I genes with MeT treatment, suggesting that it can enhance tumour immunogenicity. Validating this finding, co-culture of a murine model of PCa (RM1) with tumour-specific CD8+ T cells revealed that MeT promoted enhanced recognition and functional cytokine production by T cells. Collectively, my work has provided a greater understanding of growth-inhibitory effects of androgens on PCa tumours and uncovers a potential new role for high-dose androgen therapy as an immunosensitisation agent.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Adelaide Medical School, 202

Macroeconomics shocks and stability in Malaysian banking system; a structural VAR model

Negative effects of 1997 financial crisis in Malaysia, such as other emerging countries, led to the development and restructuring of financial system in this country. Hence many big firms and corporations to provide their required funds shift towards newly established markets like stock and bond markets. Under these conditions, many banks maintained their profitability by attracting new customers especially Small and Medium size Entrepreneurs (SMEs) and increased their loans and credits to the household sector. Now a significant share of loans has been given to the household sector and SMEs and this feature caused the banking system to become more vulnerable against external and internal shock. So, increasing unemployment and reducing income for any reason will be a threat for banks by Default risk. Thus, anticipated effects of macro-economic shocks on banks’ operation are more important to policy makers and bankers. Hence in this study, a Structural Vector Autoregressive (SVAR) model is employed to show how a macroeconomic shock effects on Non-Performing Loan changes (NLP) as a credit risk indictor in Malaysian commercial banking system for period of 1997-2012. The designed Model is called AB model that is limited based on IS-LM theory. According to results the demand and supply shock have negative and monetary shock has positive effects on NPL ratio. Mean while simultaneous effects of monetary and demand shocks are more than supply shocks effects but the supply shocks’ impact is more persistent. Comparison response of NPL ratio with capital ratio shows that the commercial banks against domestic shocks are safe and adequate capital to deal with the risks arising from internal shocks in the economy are considered. The results of this study can help policy makers to pursue suitable monetary policies and decrease banks failing in front of any macroeconomic shocks

Cliffhanger: Scaling Performance Cliffs in Web Memory Caches

Web-scale applications are heavily reliant on memory cache systems such as Memcached to improve throughput and reduce user latency. Small performance improvements in these systems can result in large end-to-end gains. For example, a marginal increase in hit rate of 1% can reduce the application layer latency by over 35%. However, existing web cache resource allocation policies are workload oblivious and first-come-first-serve. By analyzing measurements from a widely used caching service, Memcachier, we demonstrate that existing cache allocation techniques leave significant room for improvement. We develop Cliffhanger, a lightweight iterative algorithm that runs on memory cache servers, which incrementally optimizes the resource allocations across and within applications based on dynamically changing workloads. It has been shown that cache allocation algorithms underperform when there are performance cliffs, in which minor changes in cache allocation cause large changes in the hit rate. We design a novel technique for dealing with performance cliffs incrementally and locally. We demonstrate that for the Memcachier applications, on average, Cliffhanger increases the overall hit rate 1.2%, reduces the total number of cache misses by 36.7% and achieves the same hit rate with 45% less memory capacity

Nasal packing, periorbital edema and ecchymosis after septorhinoplasty

Introduction:Edema and ecchymosis after septorhinoplasty is an unpleasant manifestation for both the patient and surgeon. Although routine nasal packing is frequently done after septorhinoplasty, assessing the relevancy of post-surgical periorbital edema and ecchymosis with nasal packing eventually may helps to clarifying more prohibitable causes of these complications that are unintentionally perform. Materials and Methods: In an interval of 1.5 years, 124 patients whom were candidates of septorhinoplasty by one surgeon in a center of plastic and reconstructive surgery in Tehran participated in our study. Patients were randomly divided in two groups. For half of them at the end of operation bilateral routine nasal packing was done and for the rest a light dressing limited to the nostril was performed. Thereafter, sequentially in the 1st, 3rd, 7th and 30th postoperative day severity of periorbital edema and ecchymosis were recorded based on a scaling system by a third person who was not informed about the study. Results: Conventional nasal packing is relevant to an increasing number of cases with periorbital edema and ecchymosis after septorhinoplasty. The difference between patients whom were nasally packed or not was not significant at the first postoperative day but in the 3rd and 7th day it was meaningfully less in number and severity in the unpacked group. Discussion: This shows that it is not necessary to do pack in every patient after septorhinoplasty and performing a light dressing may suffice.

Relationship Between Personality Dimensions and Hopelessness: A Study on College Students

AbstractAim: the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between personality dimensions and hopelessness.Method: in this descriptive and cross-sectional study, 120 college students from Kermanshah University were selected by convenience sampling method as research sample. NEO-FFM Questionnaire and Beck's Hopelessness Scale were used to collect data. Descriptive statistical indicators (statistics), such as frequency, mean, standard deviation and Pearson's correlation test were utilized to analyze the data.Results: the findings showed that there is significant relationship between hopelessness and extraversion (r= -0/58, p> 0/01), conscientiousness (r= 0/60, p> 0/01), neuroticism (r= 0/54, p> 0/01) and agreeableness (r= -0/50, p> 0/01). The relationship between hopelessness and openness was not significant.Conclusion: these results suggests that personality dimensions of conscientiousness, neuroticism, extraversion and agreeableness have essential roles in hopelessness of college student

Tacrolimus and mycophenolate mofetil as second-line treatment in autoimmune hepatitis:Is the evidence of sufficient quality to develop recommendations?

BACKGROUND The standard management of autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) is based on corticosteroids, alone or in combination with azathioprine. Second-line treatments are needed for patients who have refractory disease. However, high-quality data on the alternative management of AIH are scarce. AIM To evaluate the efficacy and safety of tacrolimus and mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) and the quality of evidence by using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation approach (GRADE). METHODS A systematic review and meta-analysis of the available data were performed. We calculated pooled event rates for three outcome measures: Biochemical remission, adverse events, and mortality, with their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI). RESULTS The pooled biochemical remission rate was 68.9% (95%CI: 60.4-76.2) for tacrolimus, and 59.6% (95%CI: 54.8-64.2) for MMF, and rates of adverse events were 25.5% (95%CI: 12.4-45.3) for tacrolimus and 24.1% (95%CI: 15.4-35.7) for MMF. The pooled mortality rate was estimated at 11.5% (95%CI: 7.1-18.1) for tacrolimus and 9.01% (95%CI: 6.2-12.8) for MMF. Pooled biochemical remission rates for tacrolimus and MMF in patients with intolerance to standard therapy were 56.6% (CI: 43.4-56.6) vs 73.5% (CI: 58.1-84.7), and among non-responders were 59.1% (CI: 48.7-68.8) vs 40.8% (CI: 32.3-50.0), respectively. Moreover, the overall quality assessments using GRADE proved to be very low for all our outcomes in both treatment groups. CONCLUSION Tacrolimus and MMF are in practice considered effective for patients with AIH who are non-responders or intolerant to first-line treatment, but we found no high-quality evidence to support this statement

A bizarre presentation of Peutz – jegher’s syndrome in a 2 year old

Peutz - jegher’s syndrome (PJS) is a rare autosomal dominant disorder with gastro intestinal and mucosal pigmentations. We present a 2 y/o boy with a lesion prolapsing from his rectum that could not be reducted. We found him to have PJS and a familial history of PJS in his parents

The comparison of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder and Traits in mothers of 4 -11 years children having OCD Vs control group

Objectives: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)   begins in childhood and adolescence and progresses along with aging .This  survy is conducted to compare temperament and character and Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) and OCPD traits in parents of children with OCD and parents of healthy controls.Materials and Methods: In each group, 30 patients were studied. There were 11 boys (%36.7) in the study group (children with obsessive compulsive disorder), and 12 ones in control group (%40.0). In case group, four mothers (%13.3) had obsessive compulsive personality disorder, while the frequency in control group was one (%3.3) and the frequency difference was not considered statistically significant. There was also a case of borderline personality disorder in mothers of children with obsessive-compulsive disorder, but those in control group were not diagnosed with this disorder which showed thta there was still no significant difference between the two groups. No other personality disorders (including mixed personality disorder or NOS)  was detected in two groups.Results:The results indicated that the frequency of preoccupation with details was %46.7 in the case group (children with obsessive-compulsive disorder), and %10.0 in the control group that means no significant difference between the two groups (0.002). The frequency of perfectionism was %43.3 in the treatment group and %20.0 in the control group which again had no significant difference (0.052).Conclusions: The existence of the some symptomsof OCPD according to SCID in parents of children withOCD in comparison to parents of healthy children confirm the necessity of considering the role of personality factors in familial OCD.The results of this study showed that the four dimensions of temperament based on TCI-125 and triple dimensions of attitudes between mothers in the two groups was not statistically different