The Arab Awakening, act II: Time to move more boldly on investment

Following the Arab Awakening in late 2010, the decline of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) from US$63 billion in 2010 to US$ 39 billion by the end of 2011, was significant, albeit with important differences among countries. FDI inflows continued to slow slightly in 2012 and are expected to remain flat in 2013. Although FDI inflows for the region as a whole were affected by a number of factors, including the crisis in global financial markets, the sharp decrease was also related to a loss of investor confidence and political instability that affected both oil importing and exporting countries. For example, in Egypt FDI inflows fell from US$6.4 billion in 2010 to a net disinvestment of US$ 483 million in 2011.Sectors in the region that were hardest hit included agribusiness, construction, light manufacturing, renewable energies, and tourism

阿拉伯的二次觉醒：抓住时机，促进投资

2010年末的“阿拉伯觉醒”之后，中东和北非地区（MENA）的外国直接投资（FDI）从2010年的630亿美元到2011年底的390亿美元发生了明显下降，即使各国间存在显著差异。FDI流入在2012年继续略微放缓，预计将在2013年持平。虽然该地区整体FDI流入受诸多因素包括全球金融市场危机的影响，但此次石油进出口国家FDI的急剧下降也与投资者信心不足和政治不稳定有关。例如，埃及FDI流入从2010年的64亿美元减缩到2011年的4.83亿美元。该地区受打击最大的行业涉及农业综合产业、建筑业、轻工业制造业、可再生能源和旅游业

Cosmological constant from quarks and torsion

We present a simple and natural way to derive the observed small, positive cosmological constant from the gravitational interaction of condensing fermions. In the Riemann-Cartan spacetime, torsion gives rise to the axial-axial four-fermion interaction term in the Dirac Lagrangian for spinor fields. We show that this nonlinear term acts like a cosmological constant if these fields have a nonzero vacuum expectation value. For quark fields in QCD, such a torsion-induced cosmological constant is positive and its energy scale is only about 8 times larger than the observed value. Adding leptons to this picture could lower this scale to the observed value.Comment: 4 pages; published versio

Impact of Adjuvant Ocular Interventions on the Quality of Life of Patients with Uveal Melanoma after Proton Beam Therapy

Introduction: Proton beam therapy is an established primary treatment for patients with nonmetastasized uveal melanoma. Adjuvant local interventions, like intravitreal injections or surgery, were shown to improve long-term eye preservation; however, their impact on the patient's quality of life (QOL) remains unknown. Methods: In a post-radiotherapeutic follow-up, we prospectively collected data on QOL, visual acuity, and interventional adjuvant procedures. QOL was measured with QOL-C30 questionnaire and quality of life questionnaire OPT30 at baseline, and at 3 and 12 months after proton therapy. Patients were grouped by the type of adjuvant treatment. The impact on QOL was analyzed by comparing changes in the mean score values and visual acuity for different interventional subgroups, with generalized linear mixed models and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. Results: We received 108 (100%) and 95 (88.0%) questionnaires at 3 and 12 months post-therapy, respectively. Adjuvant interventions included observation (n = 61, 56.5%), intravitreal injections (n = 17, 15.7%), and an intraocular surgical procedure (n = 30, 27.8%). In the latter group, several QOL items significantly declined after the 3-month adjuvant interval, but they partially recovered at the 12-month follow-up. In all adjuvant-intervention groups, global QOL scores returned to baseline levels at 12 months. Conclusion: Posttreatment adjuvant interventions had no long-lasting effects on QOL in patients with uveal melanoma

Intelligence Service

Ziel der PG ist das automatische Erstellen eines Pressespiegels für eine bestimmte Person (z.B. einen Politiker) oder eine bestimmte Firma aus dem Internet bzw. aus Datenbanken. Daraus sollen dann gezielt Antworten auf bestimmte Fragen extrahiert werden. Methoden zu einem solchen Intelligence Service werden untersucht und implementiert. Allerdings ist das Spektrum der Informationen für eine einzige Anfrage hierbei zu gross. Das Problem ist, die interessanten Daten zwischen den uninteressanten Daten herauszufinden. Dies ist das Problem des Information Retrieval. Der zu entwickelnde Intelligence Service soll natürlich über das Information Retrieval von Suchmaschinen hinausgehen. Das grundsätzliches Problem ist, dass Suchmaschinen nicht konkrete Antworten liefern. Vielmehr wird eine Auswahl an Dokumenten geliefert, die die Antwort zu gestellten Anfrage höchstwahrscheinlich enthält. Was man aber oft möchte, ist auf eine Frage wie: Welcher Bundeskanzler stellte als letztes das Misstrauensvotum? Antwort: Gerhard Schröder (zusammen mit der URL, auf der die Information gefunden wurde, zu erhalten.) Für solche Fragebeantwortung muss man nicht nur die relevanten Dokumente finden, sondern auch die relevanten Passagen,dies ist ein weiterer Punkt, der von Suchmaschinen nicht erbracht wird. Wenn die Dokumente durch eine Auszeichnungssprache (XML) annotiert sind, ist die Suche in den relevanten Dokumenten erleichtert, so dass gezielt etwa nach Investitionen, Erfolgen, neuen Produkten, Börsenzahlen gesucht werden kann. Die meisten Dokumente sind aber nicht annotiert. Man muss also algorithmisch nach Entitäten eines bestimmten Typs (z.B. Person, Ort, Firma) suchen. Das Gebiet, das sich mit der Erkennung der Entitäten eines inhaltlichen Typs in Texten befasst, ist die Named Entity Recognition (NER) und verwendet statistische Verfahren und solche des maschinellen Lernens bzw. Data Mining. Somit ist die NER ein weiterer Bereich, mit dem sich die PG befassen muss. Die Abfolge von Anfragen sollte jedoch automatisiert erfolgen, um ein allgemein nutzbares System zu scha en. Für Politiker bietet sich hierfür beispielsweise die Internetseite Bundestag.de an. Hier sind zu jedem Abgeordneten die jeweiligen Biographien hinterlegt. Zusätzlich zu diesen offensichtlichen Daten kann man jedoch auch noch die digital vorliegenden Drucksachen (z.B. Anträge) und Protokolle verarbeiten. Nach durchgeführter NER über diesen Dokumenten sollen dann konkrete Fragen beantwortet werden

Harmonized chronologies of a global late Quaternary pollen dataset (LegacyAge 1.0)

Although numerous pollen records are available worldwide in various databases, their use for synthesis works is limited as the chronologies are, as yet, not harmonized globally, and temporal uncertainties are unknown. We present a chronology framework named LegacyAge 1.0 that includes harmonized chronologies of 2831 palynological records (out of 3471 available records), downloaded from the Neotoma Paleoecology Database (last access: April 2021) and 324 additional Asian records. All chronologies use the Bayesian framework implemented in Bacon version 2.5.3. Optimal parameter settings of priors (accumulation.shape, memory.strength, memory.mean, accumulation.rate, thickness) were identified based on previous experiences or iteratively after preliminary model inspection. The most common control points for the chronologies are radiocarbon dates (86.1 %), calibrated by the latest calibration curves (IntCal20 and SHcal20 for the terrestrial radiocarbon dates in the northern and southern hemispheres; Marine20 for marine materials). The original literature was consulted when dealing with obvious outliers and inconsistencies. Several major challenges when setting up the chronologies included the waterline issue (18.8 % of records), reservoir effect (4.9 %), and sediment deposition discontinuity (4.4 %). Finally, we numerically compare the LegacyAge 1.0 chronologies to the original ones and show that the chronologies of 95.4 % of records could be improved according to our assessment. Our chronology framework and revised chronologies provide the opportunity to make use of the ages and age uncertainties in synthesis studies of, for example, pollen-based vegetation and climate change. The LegacyAge 1.0 dataset and R code used are open-access and available at PANGAEA (https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.933132) and Github (https://github.com/LongtermEcology/LegacyAge-1.0), respectively

Study of exclusive one-pion and one-eta production using hadron and dielectron channels in pp reactions at kinetic beam energies of 1.25 GeV and 2.2 GeV with HADES

We present measurements of exclusive ensuremathπ+,0 and η production in pp reactions at 1.25GeV and 2.2GeV beam kinetic energy in hadron and dielectron channels. In the case of π+ and π0 , high-statistics invariant-mass and angular distributions are obtained within the HADES acceptance as well as acceptance-corrected distributions, which are compared to a resonance model. The sensitivity of the data to the yield and production angular distribution of Δ (1232) and higher-lying baryon resonances is shown, and an improved parameterization is proposed. The extracted cross-sections are of special interest in the case of pp → pp η , since controversial data exist at 2.0GeV; we find \ensuremathσ=0.142±0.022 mb. Using the dielectron channels, the π0 and η Dalitz decay signals are reconstructed with yields fully consistent with the hadronic channels. The electron invariant masses and acceptance-corrected helicity angle distributions are found in good agreement with model predictions

Anomalous self-diffusion in the ferromagnetic Ising chain with Kawasaki dynamics

We investigate the motion of a tagged spin in a ferromagnetic Ising chain evolving under Kawasaki dynamics. At equilibrium, the displacement is Gaussian, with a variance growing as $A t^{1/2}$. The temperature dependence of the prefactor $A$ is derived exactly. At low temperature, where the static correlation length $\xi$ is large, the mean square displacement grows as $(t/\xi^2)^{2/3}$ in the coarsening regime, i.e., as a finite fraction of the mean square domain length. The case of totally asymmetric dynamics, where $(+)$ (resp. $(-)$) spins move only to the right (resp. to the left), is also considered. In the steady state, the displacement variance grows as $B t^{2/3}$. The temperature dependence of the prefactor $B$ is derived exactly, using the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang theory. At low temperature, the displacement variance grows as $t/\xi^2$ in the coarsening regime, again proportionally to the mean square domain length.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures. A few minor changes and update