The Role Of Oil Speculation On The Economy: The Problem With The View Of Fattouth, Kilian, And Mahadeva

On July 30, 2012, Fattouth, Kilian, and Mahadeva published and online paper titled, “The Role of Oil Speculation in Oil Markets: What Have We Learned So Far?”  They concluded that the existing evidence is not supportive of an important role of speculation in driving the spot price of oil after 2003.  This paper aims to show that the conclusion of their paper, which challenges the finding of direct correlation between oil speculation and rising spot oil prices in Ajuzie et al. (published in 2009) is fraught with omissions that have led to mistaken conclusions.  In their literature review, they failed to include opposing findings, even when those views are in public domain.  Because of the enormous negative consequences that will result from misapplication of economic policies based on such mistaken conclusions, it is important to address the error in their finding

Oil Speculation: The Impact On Prices, Inflation, Interest Rates And The Economy

The vector autoregression process is used to estimate a reformulated model of the equation of exchange developed from the quantity theory of money.  In describing the effect of oil speculation, represented by spot oil price, on general price level and the overall economy, new variables are incorporated to take into account current global economic conditions and realities.  A variable, which was introduced in Ajuzie et al, 2008 paper, import of goods and services, is included and impulse-response function is used to forecast future economy and determine policy scenarios.  Results show that an increase in spot oil price last period has a highly statistically significant positive effect on CPI inflation.  This effect is strong enough to eliminate the negative significant impact of import of goods and services on CPI inflation found in the paper of May 2008.  Based on this finding, it is highly recommended that oil speculation should be discouraged and trade relations be bases purely on the principles of comparative advantage.           &nbsp

The Economic Impact Of Water Resource: Broken Bow Lake In Mccurtain County In Southeastern Oklahoma

Oklahoma has had water problems in the past, when most cities and towns relied mostly on wells pumping water to irrigate their agricultural lands and to provide water for municipal and industrial purposes. One of the fundamental elements of the social accounting method, especially the macroeconomic analysis and planning in the developed market economies, is the Social Accounting Matrix (SAM). The Social Accounting Matrix could be defined as a system of accounts integrated in the form of matrix, consistently including data on production and income generation on one hand, and on the revenues and expenditures of various institutional groups and classes in society on the other. The present study presents a frame work for using a Social Accounting matrix (SAM) technique to analyze the economic impacts of Broken Bow Lake in McCurtain County. The SAM has been used in developing countries to explore the interaction between macro-policy and structure adjustment. Using multiplier analysis, results of the present study can be used to illustrate how this frame work can capture the essential structural features of McCurtain County and sort out the direct and indirect links through which macro-shocks affect the systems (Sherman Robinson)

Uniform-in-time convergence of numerical schemes for Richards' and Stefan's models

We prove that all Gradient Schemes - which include Finite Element, Mixed Finite Element, Finite Volume methods - converge uniformly in time when applied to a family of nonlinear parabolic equations which contains Richards and Stefan's models. We also provide numerical results to confirm our theoretical analysis

Import Response And Inflationary Pressures In The New Economy: The Quantity Theory Of Money Revisited

Contending with the rationale for rate increases to counter inflationary pressures, this study revisits the quantity theory of money and the equation of exchange developed in the sixteenth century by the likes of John Locke, John Law, etc., and popularized over the years by economists, such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Irvin Fisher to predict the response of some variables, especially imports of goods and services, on the rate of inflation.  The vector autoregression (VAR) process was used to estimate the model.  Results show that import is significant in its impact in the reduction of the growth rate of CPI inflation, thereby dampening the weight of inflationary pressures on economic policy formulations. Because of present economic environment, coupled with author’s fulfilled seven-year prediction, the urgency of incorporating this into our economic policy determination cannot be overemphasized

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

Critical review on the passive film formation and breakdown on iron electrode and the models for the mechanisms underlying passivity

Iron and its alloys acquire stability because of the phenomenon of passivity. Though several theories, models and experimental works on passivity have been published in the literature, the mechanisms underlying the stability of the passive oxide over the metals remain still a mystery. This review presents recent developments on theoretical and experimental results besides the literature available in other reviews and critically reviewselected experimental results on iron/electrolyte system and theoretical developments in general and specific to iron by invoking high fieldmodel,modified high fieldmodel, point defect model (PDM), variants of PDM(VPDM), diffusion Poisson coupled model (DPCM), density functional theory based atomistic model. The experimental and model-predicted dependencies on applied voltage, pH, chloride and temperature are also presented and discussed

Efficient algorithms for distortion and blocking techniques in association rule hiding

Data mining provides the opportunity to extract useful information from large databases. Various techniques have been proposed in this context in order to extract this information in the most efficient way. However, efficiency is not our only concern in this study. The security and privacy issues over the extracted knowledge must be seriously considered as well. By taking this into consideration, we study the procedure of hiding sensitive association rules in binary data sets by blocking some data values and we present an algorithm for solving this problem. We also provide a fuzzification of the support and the confidence of an association rule in order to accommodate for the existence of blocked/unknown values. In addition, we quantitatively compare the proposed algorithm with other already published algorithms by running experiments on binary data sets, and we also qualitatively compare the efficiency of the proposed algorithm in hiding association rules. We utilize the notion of border rules, by putting weights in each rule, and we use effective data structures for the representation of the rules so as (a) to minimize the side effects created by the hiding process and (b) to speed up the selection of the victim transactions. Finally, we study the overall security of the modified database, using the C4.5 decision tree algorithm of the WEKA data mining tool, and we discuss the advantages and the limitations of blocking

Gossypiboma Mimicking Intra-abdominal Tumour

Gossypiboma is a rare, preventable and under-reported pseudo-tumour complication following surgery. It has serious medicolegal consequences. It poses a diagnostic dilemma due to non-specific clinical and radiologic features. We therefore report a case of gossypiboma in a 31-year old woman following a midnight emergency caesarean operation, to highlight the risk in our environment, the implications and the need for a high index of suspicion in postsurgical patients