Sovereign-debt Renegotiations: A Strategic Analysis

The process of debt-rescheduling between a creditor and a sovereign (LDC) debtor is modeled as a noncooperative game built on a one-sector growth model. The creditor's threat to impose default penalties is ignored here as inherently incredible; instead, the debtor's motivation for repayment is to reap benefits from attaining an improved credit standing in international capital markets. The creditor can forgive portions of the outstanding debt so that a real-time bargaining process results with concessions being in the form of debt-service payments by the debtor and debt forgiveness by the creditor. Subgame-perfect equilibria of the game are characterized the main finding is that these all result in Pareto optima in which the creditor extracts all the surplus.

Snowboard, Ski, and Skateboard Sensor System Application

The goal of this project was develop a sensor for the commercial market for skiers, snowboarders, and skateboarders that can give them the data such as speed, elevation, pressure, temperature, flex, acceleration, position, and other performance data such as trick characterization. This was done by using a variety of sensors, including a GPS, flex sensors, accelerometer, and others to provide data such as speed, position, position, and temperature. The sensors were placed in an external polycarbonate casing attached to the ski or board by using an adhesive pad on the bottom of the casing. These sensors then transmit the data via a microcontroller to either an LCD screen displaying a simple application or a memory system. The user can then access and analyze this data using Matlab code to interpret its relevancy. Using this system, performance data was recorded to analyze tricks such as spins and jumps

In the eye of the storm: gasoline markets after the hurricanes

Hurricane Katrina, 2005 ; Gasoline ; Gas industry ; Petroleum industry and trade

Ökologische Bewertung von Bächen auf La Gomera und Teneriffa (Spanien) – ein methodischer Ansatz zur Einschätzung von Renaturierungsmaßnahmen bei der Umsetzung der EU-Wasserrahmenrichtlinie

In recent decades, the number of streams on the Canary Islands has decreased dramatically due to the non-sustainable consumption of water for agriculture and tourism. Natural reaches of streams with an endemic macroinvertebrate fauna do, however, still exist in protected areas of Tenerife and La Gomera. Those reaches serve as a reference to develop an assessment method for streams on islands. This method takes into account common parameters such as water quality and hydromorphology, while emphasizing biodiversity and endemism. The latter concepts as they relate to stream conservation are important in both nature conservation and protection of species as many endemic aquatic organisms are endangered.In den letzten Jahrzehnten ist die Zahl der Fließgewässer auf den Kanarischen Inseln drastisch zurückgegangen. Ursache dafür ist eine sehr hohe Wasserentnahme für Landwirtschaft und Tourismus, die das nachhaltig nutzbare Dargebot bei weitem überschreitet. Dennoch existieren in besonders geschützten Bereichen der Inseln Teneriffa und La Gomera noch naturnahe Abschnitte von Fließgewässern mit Elementen endemischer Makroinvertebraten-Fauna. Diese Abschnitte dienen als Referenzgewässer für die Entwicklung eines spezifischen Bewertungssystems für Fließgewässer auf Inseln. Dieses System berücksichtigt die üblichen Qualitätsparameter wie Wassergüte und Hydromorphologie, hebt aber die Biodiversität und den inseltypischen Endemismus besonders hervor. Die daraus resultierenden Gewässerentwicklungskonzepte stellen ein entscheidendes Instrument des Natur- und Artenschutzes dar, da viele der endemischen Gewässerorganismen vom Aussterben bedroht sind

Gasoline content regulation as a trade barrier: do boutique fuels discourage fuel imports?

This paper examines the impact of Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (CAAA) environmental regulations on U.S. motor gasoline import patterns. Following the damage to U.S. petroleum refining infrastructure from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the federal government provided temporary relief for several weeks from so-called boutique fuel specifications designed to improve air quality in certain regions of the country. These temporary waivers increased marketers’ ability to sell gasoline originally destined for specific regional markets into a greater number of markets. We hypothesize that these same waivers also encouraged gasoline imports more than increased prices would have alone. We test our hypothesis using two analyses. The first consists of a simple transfer function analysis designed to separate price effects (and thus effects of refinery closures) from the effects of regulatory relief. The second analysis consists of a natural experiment comparing the primary recipient of regulatory relief—the Gulf Coast gasoline market— to the rest of the United States. Both analyses suggest that the CAAA-related specifications prevent a substantial amount of gasoline imports from entering the United States under normal circumstances.

Role of Membrane GM1 on Early Neuronal Membrane Actions of Aβ During Onset of Alzheimer\u27s Disease

The ability of beta-amyloid peptide (Aβ) to disrupt the plasma membrane through formation of pores and membrane breakage has been previously described. However, the molecular determinants for these effects are largely unknown. In this study, we examined if the association and subsequent membrane perforation induced by Aβ was dependent on GM1levels. Pretreatment of hippocampal neurons with D-PDMP decreased GM1 and Aβ clustering at the membrane (Aβ fluorescent-punctas/20 μm, control = 16.2 ± 1.1 vs. D-PDMP = 6.4 ± 0.4, p \u3c 0.001). Interestingly, membrane perforation with Aβ occurred with a slower time course when the GM1 content was diminished (time to establish perforated configuration (TEPC) (min): control = 7.8 ± 2 vs. low GM1 = 12.1 ± 0.5, p \u3c 0.01), suggesting that the presence of GM1 in the membrane can modulate the distribution and the membrane perforation by Aβ. On the other hand, increasing GM1 facilitated the membrane perforation (TEPC: control = 7.8 ± 2 vs. GM1 = 6.2 ± 1 min, p \u3c 0.05). Additionally, using Cholera Toxin Subunit-B (CTB) to block the interaction of Aβ with GM1 attenuated membrane perforation significantly. Furthermore, pretreatment with CTB decreased the membrane association of Aβ (fluorescent-punctas/20 μm, Aβ: control = 14.8 ± 2.5 vs. CTB = 8 ± 1.4, p \u3c 0.05), suggesting that GM1 also plays a role in both association of Aβ with the membrane and in perforation. In addition, blockade of the Aβ association with CTB inhibited synaptotoxicity. Taken together, our results strongly suggest that membrane lipid composition can affect the ability of Aβ to associate and subsequently perforate the plasma membrane thereby modulating its neurotoxicity in hippocampal neurons

The Impacts of Wildlife Conservation Policies on Rural Household Welfare in Zambia

KEY POLICY POINTS • Tourism is increasingly important in Zambia as a vehicle for economic growth, and has been identified as a key sector for poverty reduction due to its potential to generate off-farm income and employment in rural areas. Growth in arrivals and receipts in Zambia has outpaced average growth rates for developing countries. • Tourism in Zambia relies mostly on the stock of natural resources, including the protected area system which includes national parks and game management areas (GMAs). Co-management agreements between Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) and rural communities present opportunities and threats for households living in GMAs. • Households living in GMAs have lower average income than households in other rural areas. Yet we find that, for prime GMAs (those well stocked with wildlife), the GMA designation leads to higher incomes than households would otherwise be expected to achieve, based on their own characteristics and those of the areas in which they reside. • We further find that the benefits of living in a prime GMA accrue mostly to the wealthier segments of the population. • Though overall effects on households are positive, losses from crop damage by wildlife are a threat to this success: we find that such losses are statistically significant, large enough to be meaningful to households, and greatest in prime GMAswildlife conservation, rural households, zambia, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Environmental Economics and Policy, Food Security and Poverty, International Development, q57,

Determining citizens’ opinions about stories in the news media: analysing Google, Facebook and Twitter

We describe a method whereby a governmental policy maker can discover citizens’ reaction to news stories. This is particularly relevant in the political world, where governments’ policy statements are reported by the news media and discussed by citizens. The work here addresses two main questions: whereabouts are citizens discussing a news story, and what are they saying? Our strategy to answer the first question is to find news articles pertaining to the policy statements, then perform internet searches for references to the news articles’ headlines and URLs. We have created a software tool that schedules repeating Google searches for the news articles and collects the results in a database, enabling the user to aggregate and analyse them to produce ranked tables of sites that reference the news articles. Using data mining techniques we can analyse data so that resultant ranking reflects an overall aggregate score, taking into account multiple datasets, and this shows the most relevant places on the internet where the story is discussed. To answer the second question, we introduce the WeGov toolbox as a tool for analysing citizens’ comments and behaviour pertaining to news stories. We first use the tool for identifying social network discussions, using different strategies for Facebook and Twitter. We apply different analysis components to analyse the data to distil the essence of the social network users’ comments, to determine influential users and identify important comments

Comparing the fundamental limit of detection for interferometric and resonant biosensors with coherent phase read-out

We compare the limit of detection of coherently interrograted photonic biosensors, using both interferometric and resonant architectures.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech