Financial aggregates as conditioning information for Australian output and inflation

This paper examines whether financial aggregates provide information useful for predicting real output growth and inflation, extending the inquiry conducted in Tallman and Chandra (1996). First, we investigate whether perfect knowledge of the future values of financial aggregates helps improve significantly the forecasting accuracy of output and inflation in a simple vector autoregression framework. The results display only one notable improvement to the forecasts with the addition of perfect information on the financial aggregates—future information on credit growth helps improve the prediction accuracy of real output growth. The improvement is most noticeable during the early 1990s recession. Second, we test whether the financial aggregates are important explanators within single-equation models that are more rigorously fitted to the data. We find only one instance in which an aggregate helps explain the variation in either real output growth or inflation—that is, the growth in credit helps explain the growth in real output in a particular specification of the output model. This finding, though, is sensitive to the choice of foreign output proxy. In sum, we conclude that while credit may have some useful information in times of financial restructuring it is unlikely that there is information in financial aggregates that is exploitable systematically for predicting either real output growth or inflation.Australia ; Credit ; Financial markets ; Vector autoregression

Gapless points of dimerized quantum spin chains: analytical and numerical studies

We study the locations of the gapless points which occur for quantum spin chains of finite length (with a twisted boundary condition) at particular values of the nearest neighbor dimerization, as a function of the spin S and the number of sites. For strong dimerization and large values of S, a tunneling calculation reproduces the same results as those obtained from more involved field theoretic methods using the non-linear sigma-model approach. A different analytical calculation of the matrix element between the two Neel states gives a set of gapless points; for strong dimerization, these differ significantly from the tunneling values. Finally, the exact diagonalization method for a finite number of sites yields a set of gapless points which are in good agreement with the Neel state calculations for all values of the dimerization, but the agreement with the tunneling values is not very good even for large S. This raises questions about possible corrections to the tunneling results.Comment: Revtex4, 10 pages including 5 figure

Factors Involved in the Successful Transition to and Subsequent use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) Systems by Individual and Group-Practice Physicians

The use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) by healthcare professionals has been recommended as a way of improving healthcare quality, patient safety, and workflow efficiency, and lowering costs in the long run. While large hospital systems integrate EHRs into their services, individual and group practice-owning physicians, especially those of specialties and subspecialties, are often left wondering whether they should follow the trend and whether the transition from traditional, paper-chart systems or older EHRs to newer, commercial ones will truly benefit their patients and their practice as a whole. These physicians also often wonder whether benefits such as electronic-prescribing, clinical decision support, and patient results tracking outweigh obstacles such as initial costs, reliability, and user adaptability. This investigation sought to provide a more informed perspective in considering the decision to either transition to an Electronic Health Records system or maintain a traditional paper-chart style system. A number of studies examining care quality improvement and physician satisfaction in regards to transitions to EHRs under various conditions, such as specialty type, previous EHR-experience, and difficulty of transition, among others, were investigated to form this perspective. The improvement of care quality and physician satisfaction as a result of adopting EHRs relies heavily on both the efficiency and completeness of the transition and the EHR\u27s degree of customization towards a practice’s specific needs. Since EHRs are continuously being developed and improved, the transition to an EHR system and its subsequent use can be successful with proper preparation for the transition, extended clinician training, and choosing one that is well-tailored to the needs of the specialty and its patients’ medical conditions.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/1169/thumbnail.jp

Laser Pulse Propagation in Plasmas and its Implication on Frequency Up-shift and Electron Acceleration

This thesis documents the study of elementary processes in interaction of intense, ultrashort laser pulses with underdense plasmas. Main objective of this thesis is to understand the basic phenomena resulting from the interaction of ultra-short ultra-intense laser pulses with matter and to study the mechanism which eventually leads to generation of high energetic electrons, in laser based plasma accelerators. In a broad prospective, the work here can be described as a detailed experimental and numerical study of laser matter interaction, plasma formation and acceleration of particles. The motivation for these experiments arises from the fact that the results are relevant from both fundamental and applied research point of view

A Copula-Based Joint Model of Commute Mode Choice and Number of Non-Work Stops during the Commute

At the time of publication A. Portoghese, E. Spissu, and I. Meloni were at University of Cagliari, and C.R. Bhat and N. Eluru were at the University of Texas at Austin.In this paper, in the spirit of a tour-based frame of analysis, we examine the commute mode choice and the number of non-work stops during the commute. Understanding the mode and activity stop dimensions of weekday commute travel is important since the highest level of weekday traffic congestion in urban areas occurs during the commute periods. The paper employs a copula-based joint multinomial logit – ordered modeling framework in which commute mode choice is modeled using a multinomial logit formulation and the number of commute stops is modeled using an ordered response formulation. The data used in this study are drawn from the “Time use” multipurpose survey conducted between 2002 and 2003 by the Turin Town Council and the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) in the Greater Turin metropolitan area of Italy. The results highlight the importance of accommodating the inter-relationship between commute mode choice and commute stops behavior. The results also point to the stronger effect of household responsibilities and demographic characteristics in the Italian context compared to the US context.Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineerin