Towards Environmental Retrofitting of Egyptian Transitional Spaces: Courtyard-Building in Alexandria University, Egypt

Consuming huge amount of energy and emitting large amount of heat can be assumed as one of the main problems facing urban environment in the world today. These problems associated with current high urban density and less of vegetation within urban fabric. For instance, in Egypt, Universities are today facing rising problem of offering more educational spaces especially in large cities such as Cairo and Alexandria. The study thus focuses on Revival Egyptian buildings in Alexandria University based on hierarchical transitional spaces. As Egyptian transitional spaces, such as courtyards historically were essential outdoor spaces for multiple uses and purposes. As part of retrofitting research project of existed transitional spaces in Alexandria University, this paper focused on one parameter which is building height. This is by targeting to find the maximum height of courtyard building with minimum negative effect on air and thermal flow. This simulation is done with consideration to the surrounding urban context in Alexandria University. The simulation approach is based on two years of field measurement of thermal conditions and air velocity in the Universityrsquos transitional spaces. The study is usingfield-measurement data for nurturing the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model, and for validating the simulation results. The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) study is done by introducing four cases of different building heights to investigating the changing air and thermal flow inside the existed courtyard. nbs

Liberating Supply: Fiscal Policy and Technological Innovation in a Multicountry Model

This paper examines how endogenizing technological progress in a multicountry macroeconometric model affects the analysis of fiscal policies. It uses an expanded version of the IMF's multicountry model, MULTIMOD, in which total factor productivity (TFP) is endogenized as a function of domestic research and development (R&D) expenditures, R&D expenditures of trading partners, and trade. Compared with the standard version of the model with exogenous TFP, fiscal policies have much larger and long-lived effects on the domestic economy and on other countries

Liberating Supply: Fiscal Policy and Technological Innovation in a Multicountry Model

This paper examines how endogenizing technological progress in a multicountry macroeconometric model affects the analysis of fiscal policies. It uses an expanded version of the IMF's multicountry model, MULTIMOD, in which total factor productivity (TFP) is endogenized as a function of domestic research and development (R&D) expenditures, R&D expenditures of trading partners, and trade. Compared with the standard version of the model with exogenous TFP, fiscal policies have much larger and long-lived effects on the domestic economy and on other countries.Technological progress; research and development; econometric models

Can Europe recover without credit?

Data from 135 countries covering five decades suggests that creditless recoveries, in which the stock of real credit does not return to the pre-crisis level for three years after the GDP trough, are not rare and are characterised by remarkable real GDP growth rates: 4.7 percent per year in middle-income countries and 3.2 percent per year in high-income countries. However, the implications of these historical episodes for the current European situation are limited, for two main reasons. First, creditless recoveries are much less common in highincome countries, than in low-income countries which are financially undeveloped. European economies heavily depend on bank loans and research suggests that loan supply played a major role in the recent weak credit performance of Europe. There are reasons to believe that, despite various efforts, normal lending has not yet been restored. Limited loan supply could be disruptive for the European economic recovery and there has been only a minor substitution of bank loans with debt securities. Second, creditless recoveries were associated with significant real exchange rate depreciation, which has hardly occurred so far in most of Europe. This stylised fact suggests that it might be difficult to re-establish economic growth in the absence of sizeable real exchange rate depreciation, if credit growth does not return

Mapping MOS-HIV to HUI3 and EQ-5D-3L in Patients With HIV

Objectives: The Medical Outcomes Study HIV Health Survey (MOS-HIV) is frequently used in HIV clinical trials; however, scores generated from the MOS-HIV are not suited for cost-effectiveness analyses as they do not assign utility values to health states. Our objective was to estimate and externally validate several mapping algorithms to predict Health Utilities Index Mark 3 (HUI3) and EQ-5D-3L utility values from the MOS-HIV. Methods: We developed and validated mapping algorithms using data from two HIV clinical trials. Data from the first trial (n = 367) formed the estimation data set for the HUI3 (4,610 observations) and EQ-5D-3L (4,662 observations) mapping algorithms; data from the second trial (n = 168) formed the HUI3 (1,135 observations) and EQ-5D-3L (1,152 observations) external validation data set. We compared ordinary least squares (OLS) models of increasing complexity with the more flexible two-part, beta regression, and finite mixture models. We assessed model performance using mean absolute error (MAE) and mean squared error (MSE). Results: The OLS model that used MOS-HIV dimension scores along with squared terms gave the best HUI3 predictions (mean observed 0.84; mean predicted 0.80; MAE 0.0961); the finite mixture model gave the best EQ-5D-3L predictions (mean observed 0.90; mean predicted 0.88; MAE 0.0567). All models produced higher prediction errors at the lower end of the HUI3 and EQ-5D-3L score ranges

Genetic variation in the TLL1 gene is not associated with fibrosis in patients with metabolic associated fatty liver disease

Metabolic associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) is the most prevalent liver disease in Western nations, with high heritability. A recent study of Japanese patients with the disease suggested that TLL1 rs17047200 is associated with fibrosis; whether a similar association is observed in Caucasian patients with MAFLD is unknown. We investigated the association of the TLL1 rs17047200 polymorphism with liver fibrosis in a cohort of Caucasian patients with MAFLD (n = 728). We also investigated whether TLL1 expression is altered during liver injury in humans, in murine models of fibrosis, and in in-vitro. While TLL1 expression is upregulated in the liver of humans with MAFLD and in mice, the rs17047200 variant was not associated with fibrosis or any other histological features, or with hepatic TLL1 expression. In conclusion, the TLL1 rs17047200 variant is not a risk variant for fibrosis in Caucasian patients with MAFLD. However, TLL1 could be involved in the pathogenesis of liver fibrosis

Is there a Common European Business Cycle? New Insights from a Frequency Domain Analysis

To assess the synchronization of business cycles in Europe we extract the cyclical component of industrial production in five European countries using the filter of Baxter and King (1999). The hypothesis of a joint business cycle is tested by using the frequency domain common cycle test suggested by Breitung and Candelon (2000). The common cycle hypothesis is clearly rejected for U.K. data whereas some weak evidence for a joint cyclical pattern is found for France, The Netherlands, Austria and Germany. Zusammenfassung Gibt es einen gemeinsamen europäischen Konjunkturzyklus? Neue Erkenntnisse durch eine Spektralanalyse Um die Synchronität der Konjunkturzyklen in Europa zu bewerten, wird die Zykluskomponente der Industrieproduktion in fünf europäischen Ländern identifiziert, indem der Baxter-King-Filter (1999) angewendet wird. Die Hypothese eines gemeinsamen Konjunkturzyklus wird durch einen Test auf einen gemeinsamen Zyklus im Frequenzbereich nach Breitung und Candelon (2000) überprüft. Ein gemeinsamer Konjunkturzyklus muss demnach für Großbritannien klar zurückgewiesen werden, wohingegen einige schwache Anzeichen für ein gemeinsames Konjunkturmuster für Frankreich, die Niederlande, Österreich und Deutschland gefunden werden konnten