MULTINOMIAL LOGIT ANALYSIS OF HOUSEHOLD COOKING FUEL CHOICE IN RURAL KENYA: A CASE OF KISUMU DISTRICT

The study uses multinomial logit model to investigate the factors that determine household cooking fuel choice between firewood, charcoal, and kerosene in Kisumu, Kenya. Empirical results indicate that level of education of wife, the level of education of husband, type of food mostly cooked, whether or not the household owns the dwelling unit, and whether or not the dwelling unit is traditional or modern type are important factors that determine household cooking fuel choice. Implications for regional and national fuel policies are discussed.Consumer/Household Economics,

US Monetary Announcements and Irish Stockmarket Volatility

We investigate the influence of foreign monetary policy decisions on the volatility of the Irish stock market. Specifically, we examine the influence of US monetary policy announcements on the ISEQ. We find evidence of the so called calm before the storm i.e. there appears to be a decline in volatility on the day prior to an FOMC meeting and a subsequent increase in volatility after the results of such meetings are made known. We also find evidence to suggest that ISEQ volatility is influenced by surprise changes in US monetary policy. Moreover, US monetary surprises appear to affect Irish stock return volatility asymmetrically. In particular, higher than expected US federal funds, tend to increase Irish stock return volatility. This paper represents an important step in addressing the issues of spillover identification between the US and the Irish stock market.

Charmonium Suppression by Comover Scattering in Pb+Pb Collisions

The first reports of $\psi$ and $\psi'$ production from experiment NA50 at the CERN SPS are compared to predictions based on a hadronic model of charmonium suppression. Data on centrality dependence and total cross sections are in good accord with these predictions.Comment: 9 pages, latex, 6 figures, epsf, figure added and text modified to clarify result

Clicking into Mortgage Arrears: A Study into Arrears Prediction with Clickstream Data

This research project investigates the predictive capability of clickstream data when used for the purpose of mortgage arrears prediction. With an ever growing number of people switching to digital channels to handle their daily banking requirements, there is a wealth of ever increasing online usage data, otherwise known as clickstream data. If leveraged correctly, this clickstream data can be a powerful data source for organisations as it provides detailed information about how their customers are interacting with their digital channels. Much of the current literature associated with clickstream data relates to organisations employing it within their customer relationship management mechanisms to build better relationships with their customers. There has been little investigation into the use of clickstream data in credit scoring or arrears prediction. Since the financial meltdown of 2008, financial institutions have being obliged to have mechanisms in place to deal with mortgage accounts which are in arrears or have a risk of entering arrears. A potentially crucial step in this process is the ability of an institution to accurately predict which of their mortgage accounts may enter arrears. In addition to traditional demographical and transactional data, this research determines the impact clickstream data can have on an arrears prediction model. A multitude of binary classifiers were reviewed in this arrears prediction problem. Of these classifiers, ensembles models proved to be the highest performing models achieving reasonably high recall accuracies without the inclusion of clickstream data. Once clickstream data was added to the models, it led to marginal increases in accuracy, which was a positive result

Number and plural semantics: Empirical evidence from Marori

This paper presents new empirical evidence from Marori (a Papuan language of Southern New Guinea) for the semantics of number in a complex number system. Marori has a basic three-way number system, singular/dual/plural. Marori is notable for showing distributed number exponence and constructed number strategies, in sharp contrast with familiar twoway, morphologically simpler number systems in languages such as English. Unlike in English, the reference of plurals in Marori in many contexts is to a group of three or more individuals. While Marori’s number system is typologically quite different from English, it shows an intriguing similarity in that in certain contexts, plural/nonsingular forms allow an inclusive reading (i.e. reference to any number of individuals, including one). The paper also presents evidence that all number types, including constructed dual, can be used for generic reference. The paper concludes with remarks on the theoretical significance of our findings

INTERNATIONALIZATION OF GENERAL EDUCATION CURRICULUM IN MISSOURI COMMUNITY COLLEGES: A FACULTY PERSPECTIVE

Providing global educational experiences for students in higher education has been a topic of discussion for decades. Although there is a common appreciation that students should be exposed to and gain awareness of other cultures, most institutions of higher education in the U.S. fall short in providing such opportunities. To accommodate for this need, some institutions are striving to internationalize the curriculum as well as the culture of the institution. Community colleges play a key role in the higher education system in the U.S. and may be the first, if not only opportunity for students to gain global awareness. This study examined factors that might contribute to, or impede the development of internationalized general education curricula in Missouri community colleges. Two hundred forty-three (243) general education faculty members from each of the 18 community college campuses in Missouri responded to an online questionnaire. This provided a 32% response rate of the potential population. The survey instrument consisted of three areas; demographics of the participants and their respective colleges or campuses, faculty perspectives on internationalization of curriculum, and an open comment forum. Descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis of variance were conducted to aid in determining the factors that affect internationalization efforts in community college general education curriculum. Additional quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted to provide further insight into global education not directly related to the study’s hypotheses. Findings from this study indicate that administrative support of internationalization, the geographic location of the college, positive attitudes toward internationalization, and faculty who place a high value on such efforts have a significant effect on internationalization of the general education curriculum. For a college to improve in the area of global education, the faculty, staff and administration must have an understanding of how these factors influence the success of providing an internationalized curriculum

Dynamical generation of the constituent mass in expanding plasma

We investigate dynamics of the chiral transition in expanding quark-antiquark plasma produced in an ultra-relativistic heavy ion collision. The chiral symmetry break-down and dynamical generation of the constituent quark mass are studied within the linear sigma model and Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. Time dependence of the quark and antiquark densities is obtained from the scaling solution of the relativistic Vlasov equation. Fast initial growth and strong oscillations of the constituent quark mass are found in the linear sigma model as well as in the NJL model, when derivative terms are taken into account.Comment: 7 pages, Latex. To appear in Physics Letters

Determination of two-body potentials from n-body spectra

We show how the two-body potential may be uniquely determined from n-body spectra where the hypercentral approximation is valid. We illustrate this by considering an harmonic oscillator potential which has been altered by changing the energy or normalisation constant of the ground state of the n-body system and finding how this modifies the two-body potential. It is shown that with increasing number of particles the spectrum must be known more precisely to obtain the two-body potential to the same degree of accuracy.Comment: 13 pages of text (LATEX), 3 figures (not included, available from authors), NIKHEF-93-P