Quantifying the Effects on Lending of Increased Capital Requirements

Examines how higher capital requirements, as part of financial reform, would affect loan volumes, costs, and interest rates, as well as the ability of the U.S. banking industry to raise new equity. Analyzes case scenarios of how banks would respond

On the importance of the plumber : the intersection of theory and practice in policymaking for federal financial institutions

The federal government's role as lender and insurer is very important, with over $1.4 trillion of loans and guarantees and at least$7 trillion of insured risk. Tens of millions of Americans benefit from housing loans, student loans, flood insurance, etc. Yet the federal financial institutions established to run these activities are often created almost as an afterthought, with little focus on their structure. This paper emphasizes the crucial importance of ending this neglect and recognizing how proper structure can help avoid major failures, such as the current problems at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and enhance successes. The author also challenges the economics profession to provide more guidance on a range of specific analytical issues with real-world implications, because economists have often failed to extend analyses derived from the private sector into useful formulations for public sector practitioners.Bank supervision ; Financial institutions

Assessing preventable hospitalisation indicators (APHID): protocol for a data-linkage study using cohort study and administrative data

Introduction Potentially preventable hospitalisation (PPH) has been adopted widely by international health systems as an indicator of the accessibility and overall effectiveness of primary care. The Assessing Preventable Hospitalisation InDicators (APHID) study will validate PPH as a measure of health system performance in Australia and Scotland. APHID will be the first large-scale study internationally to explore longitudinal relationships between primary care and PPH using detailed person-level information about health risk factors, health status and health service use. Methods and analysis APHID will create a new longitudinal data resource by linking together data from a large-scale cohort study (the 45 and Up Study) and prospective administrative data relating to use of general practitioner (GP) services, dispensing of pharmaceuticals, emergency department presentations, hospital admissions and deaths. We will use these linked person-level data to explore relationships between frequency, volume, nature and costs of primary care services, hospital admissions for PPH diagnoses, and health outcomes, and factors that confound and mediate these relationships. Using multilevel modelling techniques, we will quantify the contributions of person-level, geographic-level and service-level factors to variation in PPH rates, including socioeconomic status, country of birth, geographic remoteness, physical and mental health status, availability of GP and other services, and hospital characteristics. Ethics and dissemination Participants have consented to use of their questionnaire data and to data linkage. Ethical approval has been obtained for the study. Dissemination mechanisms include engagement of policy stakeholders through a reference group and policy forum, and production of summary reports for policy audiences in parallel with the scientific papers from the study.</p

Error analysis for full discretizations of quasilinear parabolic problems on evolving surfaces

Convergence results are shown for full discretizations of quasilinear parabolic partial differential equations on evolving surfaces. As a semidiscretization in space the evolving surface finite element method is considered, using a regularity result of a generalized Ritz map, optimal order error estimates for the spatial discretization is shown. Combining this with the stability results for Runge--Kutta and BDF time integrators, we obtain convergence results for the fully discrete problems.Comment: -. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1410.048

Catalytic hydroprocessing of bio-oils of different types

Pyrolyse is een interessante route om vaste biomassa om te zetten in vloeibare producten. Echter de product eigenschappen van de gevormde pyrolyse oliën zijn zodanig dat deze niet direct toepasbaar zijn als transportbrandstof. Een mogelijke technologie om de producteigenschappen te verbeteren is een katalytische waterstof behandeling. Tijdens deze behandeling worden de zuurstof bevattende componenten omgezet in een mengsel van koolwaterstoffen. Dit proefschrift beschrijft onderzoek naar de omzetting van pyrolyse oliën naar transportbrandstoffen met behulp van deze katalytische waterstof behandeling. Het onderzoek was experimenteel van aard en had als doelstellingen om meer inzicht te krijgen in i) het effect van de samenstelling van de voeding op het proces en de product eigenschappen, ii) relevante moleculaire omzettingen, iii) de rol van de katalysator en met name mogelijke deactiverings routes en iv) het bepalen van proces-product relaties. De experimenten werden uitgevoerd met een aantal verschillende pyrolyse olie voedingen in continue geopereerde vaste bed reactoren in het zogenaamde trickle flow regiem. De research beschreven in dit proefschrift toont aan dat een breed scala aan pyrolyse oliën kunnen worden omgezet in koolwaterstof rijke producten met een laag zuurstofgehalte De verwerkbaarheid van de verschillende pyrolyse oliën is afhankelijk van het gehalte aan sporenelementen en de thermische stabiliteit van de voeding, die gerelateerd is aan de aanwezigheid van bepaalde geoxygeneerde componenten. De opbrengst en de samenstelling van de product oliën blijkt sterk afhankelijk te zijn van de gebruikte voedingen.One pathway from renewable biomass feedstocks to replacements for liquid fuels from fossil sources is the fast pyrolysis pathway. Catalytic hydroprocessing of fast pyrolysis bio-oil is intended to improve the fuel quality from the highly oxygenated products to a hydrocarbon mixture, which could serve as a fuel in conventional transportation systems. This thesis includes studies to advance the state of technology of bio-oil hydrotreating. This thesis describes experimental work of an applied nature with a strong under-pinning of chemical mechanistic understanding, catalytic material analysis, and fuel property considerations. The chapters describe some of the most recent efforts in converting several types of biomass fast pyrolysis bio-oils to hydrocarbon mixtures with potential use as fuel blending components. Bench-scale experiments in the hydroprocessing of a range bio-oil products including 1) conventional fluid-bed pyrolysis products, 2) hot-vapor filtered bio-oil from an entrained flow reactor, 3) fractionated bio-oil from a conventional fluid-bed reactor, 4) oil products from a bio- oil recycle system, and 5) a catalytic pyrolysis product, which is a stabilized (deoxygenated) fast pyrolysis bio-oil product are reported. The chapters of this thesis demonstrate that a range of bio-oil products can be transformed by catalytic hydrotreatment to produce primarily hydrocarbon mixtures. The different bio-oil types, which were processed, can have different results relative to ease of processing due to trace component content or thermal stability related to oxygenated component types. The products can vary based on component types as well as yield structure

Slowly expanding/evolving lesions as a magnetic resonance imaging marker of chronic active multiple sclerosis lesions.

BACKGROUND:Chronic lesion activity driven by smoldering inflammation is a pathological hallmark of progressive forms of multiple sclerosis (MS). OBJECTIVE:To develop a method for automatic detection of slowly expanding/evolving lesions (SELs) on conventional brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and characterize such SELs in primary progressive MS (PPMS) and relapsing MS (RMS) populations. METHODS:We defined SELs as contiguous regions of existing T2 lesions showing local expansion assessed by the Jacobian determinant of the deformation between reference and follow-up scans. SEL candidates were assigned a heuristic score based on concentricity and constancy of change in T2- and T1-weighted MRIs. SELs were examined in 1334 RMS patients and 555 PPMS patients. RESULTS:Compared with RMS patients, PPMS patients had higher numbers of SELs (p = 0.002) and higher T2 volumes of SELs (p &lt; 0.001). SELs were devoid of gadolinium enhancement. Compared with areas of T2 lesions not classified as SEL, SELs had significantly lower T1 intensity at baseline and larger decrease in T1 intensity over time. CONCLUSION:We suggest that SELs reflect chronic tissue loss in the absence of ongoing acute inflammation. SELs may represent a conventional brain MRI correlate of chronic active MS lesions and a candidate biomarker for smoldering inflammation in MS