Agro tourism, One of the Main Factors in Rural Development

The paper describes the steps in projecting agro-tourism activity and it presents the issues and opportunities that show the importance of agro tourism activity as source of improving the income of small agricultural households. This paper examines the effects of agro tourism activity on standard small agricultural household - A and it is presented the empirical evaluation of agro tourism effects on resource distribution within a small agricultural household A as on net income

EVALUATION OF COST CENTER OPERATIONS USING ABC METHOD

The continuous changes appearing in the industrial and economic environment, upgrading of manufacturing technologies, the need to obtain relevant information to facilitate management decision making, have made absolutely necessary the rethinking of the cost calculation system. Both traditional and modern methods used in management accounting for costing is based on cropping the enterprise into responsibility centers. But within the organization is being felt the interdependence that is impossible to identify a center whose costs and performances are not conditioned by other centers of responsibility. A.B.C. method is one of the means to produce a more relevant cost proposing to allocate indirect costs based on the distribution base showing the cause and effect relationship between activity and product-consuming activity. This article aims to show what cost centers are, which is their role within the responsibility centers, which are the positive effects and the limits of cost centers, which represents and what is the ABC method - a modern method of evaluating a cost center operations and which are the advantages and limitations of this method.responsibility centers, cost centers, ABC method, activity, cost inducer

Deontic Modality in Baghdadi Arabic

The deontic modality – also known in the literature on the topic as speaker-oriented modality – indicates an obligation or permission imposed externally, compelling an agent to complete an action, in accordance with a corpus of pre-existent rules. In this paper, I will present an analysis of the possibilities to express the deontic modality – with its multiple facets – in Baghdadi Arabic, analysis based on a corpus of data gathered by me in the last ten years, during my visits to Iraq. The present analysis will point out the main modal verbs (i.e.: yimkin “to be possible”, yrīd “to want”, etc.), modal expressions (i.e.: lā budd min “it is inevitable”, akū luzūm “there is an obligation”, etc.), pre-verbal particles (i.e.: d-, d-rūḥ “go immediately”, etc.) and so on used to introduce the subjective degree of the compulsoriness or the permissibility, the necessity or the acceptability of an action

The Use of GARCH Autoregressive Models in Estimating and Forecasting the Crude Oil Volatility

Today, oil is one of the most popular commodities traded globally, due to its indispensable character and multiple properties offered to mankind. Increased attention is paid to the analysis of volatile and fluctuating trends in the overall price of this valuable energy source. Using the autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity models such as GARCH(1,1), GARCH-M(1,1) and EGARCH(1,1), the present study has as a priority objective in estimating and predicting the volatility of the oil returns series (Brent Crude Oil return series) in the 1987-2022. The main results highlighted the preference in using the asymmetric model EGARCH (1,1) on the measurement of conditional variance, showing that Brent Crude Oil reacts over 90% to any existing market’s shock (i.e.: information, events, facts, news, etc.) in a negative manner/way. At the same time, various tests and evaluation conditions were used (ARCH-LM Test, Durbin-Waston Test, High Log likelihood, Lowest Schwarz Information Criteria) in investigating the level of performance in estimation the conditional crude oil volatility. Each GARCH (1,1) model is meeting brilliantly these conditions and acquiring the character of stability and validity in use. At the same time, performing forecast analysis on crude oil volatility in two different time periods: 1987-2022, respectively 2020-2022, it was shown that existence of the phenomenon of clustering-volatility over the time, with strong implications for the functioning mechanism of international financial markets. Fulfilling those restrictive conditions, the symmetric and parametric model GARCH-M (1,1) becomes, in our case, the most efficient model in forecasting the volatility of Brent Crude Oil return series in the analysed period

Erratum to: Methods for evaluating medical tests and biomarkers

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s41512-016-0001-y.]

Studies on Arabic Dialectology and Sociolinguistics

This volume contains over fifty articles related to various fields of modern Arabic dialectology. All the articles are revised and enhanced versions of papers read on the 12th Conference of the Association Internationale de Dialectologie Arabe (AIDA) held in Marseille in June 2017. Since its first conference in Paris in 1993, AIDA members gather every two years in different country. The collection of the AIDA proceedings offer an updated insight of the development of the field. During the past few decadesthe the study of Arabic dialects has become an important branch of research covering a wide range of subjects from phonological analyses, morphosyntax, semantics to pragmatics, sociolinguistics, folk linguistics, studies on literacy and writings, cultural and artistic practices, etc. As many articles of this volume illustrate, the study of Arabic dialects explores different aspects of the languages and cultures of the contemporary Arab world. A remarkable feature is the growing and constant participation of young scholars from all around the globe

Progression of conventional cardiovascular risk factors and vascular disease risk in individuals: insights from the PROG-IMT consortium

Aims: Averaged measurements, but not the progression based on multiple assessments of carotid intima-media thickness, (cIMT) are predictive of cardiovascular disease (CVD) events in individuals. Whether this is true for conventional risk factors is unclear. Methods and results: An individual participant meta-analysis was used to associate the annualised progression of systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol with future cardiovascular disease risk in 13 prospective cohort studies of the PROG-IMT collaboration (n = 34,072). Follow-up data included information on a combined cardiovascular disease endpoint of myocardial infarction, stroke, or vascular death. In secondary analyses, annualised progression was replaced with average. Log hazard ratios per standard deviation difference were pooled across studies by a random effects meta-analysis. In primary analysis, the annualised progression of total cholesterol was marginally related to a higher cardiovascular disease risk (hazard ratio (HR) 1.04, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.00 to 1.07). The annualised progression of systolic blood pressure, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol was not associated with future cardiovascular disease risk. In secondary analysis, average systolic blood pressure (HR 1.20 95% CI 1.11 to 1.29) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HR 1.09, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.16) were related to a greater, while high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HR 0.92, 95% CI 0.88 to 0.97) was related to a lower risk of future cardiovascular disease events. Conclusion: Averaged measurements of systolic blood pressure, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol displayed significant linear relationships with the risk of future cardiovascular disease events. However, there was no clear association between the annualised progression of these conventional risk factors in individuals with the risk of future clinical endpoints

Evidence synthesis to inform model-based cost-effectiveness evaluations of diagnostic tests: a methodological systematic review of health technology assessments

Background: Evaluations of diagnostic tests are challenging because of the indirect nature of their impact on patient outcomes. Model-based health economic evaluations of tests allow different types of evidence from various sources to be incorporated and enable cost-effectiveness estimates to be made beyond the duration of available study data. To parameterize a health-economic model fully, all the ways a test impacts on patient health must be quantified, including but not limited to diagnostic test accuracy. Methods: We assessed all UK NIHR HTA reports published May 2009-July 2015. Reports were included if they evaluated a diagnostic test, included a model-based health economic evaluation and included a systematic review and meta-analysis of test accuracy. From each eligible report we extracted information on the following topics: 1) what evidence aside from test accuracy was searched for and synthesised, 2) which methods were used to synthesise test accuracy evidence and how did the results inform the economic model, 3) how/whether threshold effects were explored, 4) how the potential dependency between multiple tests in a pathway was accounted for, and 5) for evaluations of tests targeted at the primary care setting, how evidence from differing healthcare settings was incorporated. Results: The bivariate or HSROC model was implemented in 20/22 reports that met all inclusion criteria. Test accuracy data for health economic modelling was obtained from meta-analyses completely in four reports, partially in fourteen reports and not at all in four reports. Only 2/7 reports that used a quantitative test gave clear threshold recommendations. All 22 reports explored the effect of uncertainty in accuracy parameters but most of those that used multiple tests did not allow for dependence between test results. 7/22 tests were potentially suitable for primary care but the majority found limited evidence on test accuracy in primary care settings. Conclusions: The uptake of appropriate meta-analysis methods for synthesising evidence on diagnostic test accuracy in UK NIHR HTAs has improved in recent years. Future research should focus on other evidence requirements for cost-effectiveness assessment, threshold effects for quantitative tests and the impact of multiple diagnostic tests