Money and Monetary Policy in a High Surplus Low Population Economy (Kuwait 1962-82).

This thesis examines money problems and policies in Kuwait, a capital plenty economy, during the period studied. Kuwait's balance of payments surplus has allowed it to continue to cover the domestic note issue by foreign reserve until today, whereas most developing economies have found this a constraining vestige of monetary arrangements in British colonial days and have legislated to give their central banks more flexibility. Due to the country's surplus, the commercial banks built up large holdings of foreign assets over the period 1962-1980, chiefly in the form of short-term money market deposits with banks abroad. Whereas the Central Bank of Kuwait started implementing monetary reforms from 1973, the independence of the commercial banks due principally to their liquidity, meant the central bank had little success in controlling the money supply until 1979, when it exploited the growing lack of liquidity among commercial banks to strengthen its control over their reserves. The analysis of the determination of the growth of the stock of money in Kuwait over the period 1962-80 needs to take account of the role of the commercial banks and their foreign assets in the rapid growth in lending, which began in 1972. Whereas we find high-powered money an important determinant of the growth of the money stock, the bank reserve ratio plays a significant role. The growth of the stock market in Kuwait was the main cause of the growth in lending after 1972. The Central Bank of Kuwait saw its main objectives as controlling the speculation and credit explosion connected with the stock market. The Kuwaiti Dinar was established by Britain at the time of Kuwait's political independence. The benefit to a country like Kuwait of having a separate currency would appear to be extremely limited. The Kuwait government have followed a policy of exploring possible monetary integration with neighbouring states, although we find this does not answer any specific economic problem in Kuwait. Meanwhile, the Central Bank of Kuwait has pursued a policy of maximum stability of the currency throughout the period under study, in order to minimize the risks of currency loss by the financial community, including the commercial banking system, which had substantial foreign asset holdings. This is of considerable importance because the commercial banks do not appear to behave in such a way as to hedge their foreign currency exposure

Exploring the Role of Viewing Technologies in the Chemistry Classroom

Spatial ability is an important tool in chemistry and this ability can be improved. Various technologies have been used to improve spatial ability. However, it is not clear if viewing technologies should take the place of the model kit; the traditional method of learning about molecular structures. Our research aims to address this gap. In our study, we aimed to take advantage of student affinity to technology to drive spatial ability improvements (in the context of chemistry) by having students experience molecules in virtual space using modern viewing technologies (WBVE, AR, and VR). Students were first engaged with the technologies then were assessed to see if their ability to solve problems relating to 3D-molecular structure improved. The mean spatial ability of students improved over the course of the semester (permutation test, p < 0.05) and students using model kits scored higher than those using the technologies (t-test, p < 0.05). The collection and assessment of anonymous, aggregated, student responses for this study was conducted with the approval of the University of Calgary ethics board (REB13-0724).  &nbsp

Reformas Educacionais de Al-Taher Bin Ashour

The aim of this research is idenify comprehensive view of Al-Taher bin Ashour’s educational reforms, both theoretical and practical. This is an analytical-logical research done by content analysis method. the paper critiques reductionist approaches to this book by showing that Ibn Ashour’s educational reforms are part and parcel of his larger reformist project delineated in Maqasid Al-Sharia Al-Islamiah (The Objectives of Islamic Sharia) and Usul Al-Nitham Al-Ijtimai fi Al-Islam (The Foundations of the Social System in Islam). This paper claims that Ibn Ashour had pioneering reformist views in education relative to the era he had inhabited. His family connections made the political environment conducive to his reforms, and he made use of the varied and multifarious knowledge he had accumulated, which made him more than a mere individual and more of a powerful force in the Tunisian and Arab-Islamic reformist process.El objetivo de esta investigación es identificar una visión integral de las reformas educativas de Al-Taher bin Ashour, tanto teóricas como prácticas. Esta es una investigación analítico-lógica realizada por el método de análisis de contenido. El periódico critica los enfoques reduccionistas de este libro al mostrar que las reformas educativas de Ibn Ashour son parte integrante de su proyecto reformista más amplio delineado en Maqasid Al-Sharia Al-Islamiah (Los Objetivos de la Sharia Islámica) y Usul Al-Nitham Al-Ijtimai fi Al. -Islam (Los fundamentos del sistema social en el Islam). Este documento afirma que Ibn Ashour tenía puntos de vista reformistas pioneros en la educación en relación con la época en que había habitado. Sus conexiones familiares hicieron que el entorno político fuera propicio para sus reformas, e hizo uso del variado y variado conocimiento que había acumulado, lo que lo convirtió en más que una simple y más poderosa fuerza en el proceso reformista tunecino y árabe-islámico.O objetivo desta pesquisa é identificar a visão abrangente das reformas educacionais de Al-Taher bin Ashour, tanto teóricas quanto práticas. Esta é uma pesquisa analítica-lógica feita pelo método de análise de conteúdo. o artigo critica abordagens reducionistas a este livro mostrando que as reformas educacionais de Ibn Ashour são parte integrante de seu projeto reformista mais amplo delineado em Maqasid Al-Sharia Al-Islamiah (Os Objetivos da Sharia Islâmica) e Usul Al-Nitham Al-Ijtimai fi Al Islam (As Fundações do Sistema Social no Islã). Este artigo alega que Ibn Ashour teve visões reformistas pioneiras em educação em relação à época em que ele havia habitado. Suas conexões familiares tornavam o ambiente político propício para suas reformas, e ele fazia uso do conhecimento variado e multifacetado que acumulara, o que o tornou mais do que um mero indivíduo e mais uma força poderosa no processo reformista tunisiano e árabe-islâmico

A novel approach of a fully inkjet printed SnO₂-based gas sensor on a flexible foil

International audienceIn recent years, printed and flexible gas sensors have quickly emerged as an innovative area of great interest because of their lightness and low cost. These flexible sensors can be easily integrated into autonomous systems for many applications such as smart food packaging and premature disease detection. In this paper, a novel approach was applied to manufacture a fully inkjet-printed gas sensor on a flexible polymeric foil. Platinum heater and gold electrodes were printed on the top side of the substrate, separated by a thin insulating layer of printed polyimide. An aqueous sol-gel process was adopted to synthesize nanosized SnO2-based sol that guaranty a crystallization at 350 °C, which is entirely consistent with the polyimide foil. Then, the sol was transformed into a stable ink and inkjet printed over the gold electrodes. The printability of different inks was optimized to ensure flawless ejection of droplets, and the complex physico-chemical interactions between the inks and different interfaces were controlled to get well-defined patterns with high resolution. Finally, electrical measurements of the printed sensor were performed to characterize the response and the sensitivity to different concentrations of ethanol, ammonia and carbon monoxide gases, at working temperature of 300 °C, in dry and wet air

Automating equipment productivity measurement using deep learning

Measuring the productivity of earth moving equipment help to identify their inefficiencies and improve their performance; however, measurement processes are time and resource intensive. Current literature has foccussed on automating equipment activity capture but still lack adequate approaches for measurement of equipment productivity rates. Our contribution is to present a methodology for automating equipment productivity measurement using kinematic and noise data collected through smartphone sensors from within equipment and deep learning algorithms for recognizing equipment states. The testing of the proposed method in a real world case study demonstrated very high accuracy of 99.78 in measuring productivity of an excavator

Ontology-Based Hazard Knowledge Representation and Identification for Deep Refurbishment Projects

The delivery of construction projects in general can be complex and demanding and presents well-documented challenges to the control of cost, safety, and quality. This situation becomes even more challenging in the case of renovation projects due to the high level of interaction with occupants, especially when they remain in the building over the renovation period. The safety of project participants as well as that of occupants when they are present in the renovation site must be ensured. Although the planning and management of such projects can be greatly enhanced by exploiting some of the advantages of Building Information Modelling (BIM), the process of construction hazard identification and renovation scenarios assessment is still human-based and so requires considerable time and effort. Moreover, there is little research that addresses how hazard identification can best be represented and processed automatically in order to optimise and develop more effective strategies for managing construction projects, particularly those involving the systematic renovation of existing properties for better energy performance. Using BIM along with Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools could help in processing the massive amount of newly-available data and knowledge (e.g., feedback, images captured from smart devices, IoT sensors) that are increasingly obtainable. A prerequisite for doing so is the development of a dedicated ontology that would enable the formalisation of domain knowledge, including associated concepts, relations, and constraints that are specific to renovation project hazard. The authors propose an ontology and demonstrate its application by developing a knowledge-based system for application within the context of deep renovation projects that are part of a large European research project: the RINNO project

Alpaca against Vicuna: Using LLMs to Uncover Memorization of LLMs

In this paper, we introduce a black-box prompt optimization method that uses an attacker LLM agent to uncover higher levels of memorization in a victim agent, compared to what is revealed by prompting the target model with the training data directly, which is the dominant approach of quantifying memorization in LLMs. We use an iterative rejection-sampling optimization process to find instruction-based prompts with two main characteristics: (1) minimal overlap with the training data to avoid presenting the solution directly to the model, and (2) maximal overlap between the victim model's output and the training data, aiming to induce the victim to spit out training data. We observe that our instruction-based prompts generate outputs with 23.7% higher overlap with training data compared to the baseline prefix-suffix measurements. Our findings show that (1) instruction-tuned models can expose pre-training data as much as their base-models, if not more so, (2) contexts other than the original training data can lead to leakage, and (3) using instructions proposed by other LLMs can open a new avenue of automated attacks that we should further study and explore. The code can be found at https://github.com/Alymostafa/Instruction_based_attack

Towards an Interoperable Approach for Modelling and Managing Smart Building Data: The Case of the CESI Smart Building Demonstrator

Buildings have a significant impact on energy consumption and carbon emissions. Smart buildings are deemed to play a crucial role in improving the energy performance of buildings and cities. Managing a smart building requires the modelling of data concerning smart systems and components. While there is a significant amount of research on optimising building energy using the smart building concept, there is a dearth of studies investigating the modelling and management of smart systems’ data, which is the starting point for establishing the necessary digital environment for representing a smart building. This study aimed to develop and test a solution for modelling and managing smart building information using an industry foundation classes (IFCs)-based BIM process. A conceptual model expressed in the SysML language was proposed to define a smart building. Five BIM approaches were identified as potential ‘prototypes’ for representing and exchanging smart building information. The fidelity of each approach is checked through a BIM-based validation process using an open-source visualisation platform. The different prototypes were also assessed using a multi-criteria comparison method to identify the preferred approach for modelling and managing smart building information. The preferred approach was prototyped and tested in a use case focused on building energy consumption monitoring to evaluate its ability to manage and visualise the smart building data. The use case was applied in a real case study using a full-scale demonstrator, namely, the ‘Nanterre 3’ (N3) smart building located at the CESI campus in Paris-Nanterre. The findings demonstrated that an open BIM format in the form of IFCs could achieve adequate modelling of smart building data without information loss. Future extensions of the proposed approach were finally outlined