Public finance in adjustment programs

This paper reviews the experience with public finance issues under adjustment programs. This experience shows that fiscal changes are often triggered by budget and balance of payment crises. As a result, short-term considerations have dominated the policy measures introduced. Traditional stabilization policies usually emphasize measures aimed at reducing aggregate demand. On the fiscal side, this has implied cutbacks in public expenditures. There is, however, growing recognition of the need for more growth oriented adjustment programs, which entail a more comprehensive and durable approach to fiscal reform and therefore require a medium-term perspective. Countries committed to fundamental reform of fiscal and other key policy areas should be able to avail themselves of external financial support that lasts long enough for them to initiate and sustain the change process. They must strike a balance between stabilization and adjustment.Economic Stabilization,Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Sector Economics&Finance,National Governance,Banks&Banking Reform

Benefit-cost analysis of the Iowa Department of Transportation’s safety service patrol program

A methodology was established to quantifying the Incident-Induced Delay (IID). The methodology computes the IID using real-time travel time data taken from the Inrix dataset. Delay is determined by calculating the extra delay of the subject profile from the reference profile. Subject Profile is the real-time travel time data from 1 hour before the event start time until 1 hour after the time when traffic gets back to normal in the date that event occurred. Candidate profiles of each event are the real-time travel time profiles of each event from 1 hour before the event start time until 1 hour after the time when traffic gets back to normal in all dates except the date that event occurred. Reference profile is the most similar travel time profile to the subject profile without incident-affected (from incident start time until time when the incident gets back to normal) part of the profile. To establish a Reference profile, a k-nearest neighbor-based method was used. Reference profile is taken from assigning a rank-based weight to the 10 nearest candidate profiles that have the most similar traffic pattern to the subject profile in the duration without incidentaffected part of the profile. Then IID was used to compute the benefits of the Iowa Department of Transportation (Iowa DOT)’s Safety Service Patrol (SSP) program known as the Highway Helper (HH) program driven from delay reduction, emissions reduction, and fuel consumption reduction. Benefit calculation also includes motorist assistance benefit and secondary crash reduction. The final monetary equivalent benefit of DM area is provided in the following table. (The table is provided in the full document.

Evaluating the Temporal Coverage, Reliability, and Contribution of Incident Detection Sources Using Big Data Analysis

Traffic incidents impact traffic system components and have a major contribution to congestion, delays, and secondary incidents. In order to avoid these issues, all traffic control systems are trying to detect incidents in a timely manner using different sources of traffic monitoring. This research has developed a comparison method among different sources of real-time incident detection in terms of temporal and spatial characteristics. Incident reports from Waze and ATMS and generated automated incidents from the Inrix, and Wavetronix were used for this analysis. The result shows that all data sets have a similar pattern in recording incidents. The number of incidents recorded by Waze, Wavetronix, and Inrix tracks each other closely during different times of the day. ATMS is a validated set of incidents reports, but still, there are more incidents that were not recorded in ATMS. A state-of-the-art matching function is built to get the number of overlapping incidents from all four data sets. Waze and Inrix have the highest overlapping with ATMS, about 57%, which affirms their reliability. The matching function also was used to get the estimated contribution of each source to ATMS. Due to the lack of validation source, there will be some false alarms in the total number of contributions that were not identified

Fast microwave-assisted oxidation of 1,4-dihydropyridines with FeCl 3.SiO 2

Pyridine derivatives are easily obtained in high yields by microwave-promoted rapid oxidation of the corresponding 1,4-dihydropyridines with ferric chloride hexahydrate and silica gel under solvent-free conditions

Tourism Motivation: A System’s Perspective

This study specifies some shortcomings of common tourism motivation models and theories, and suggests a complex system approach to address the existing weaknesses. The proposed conceptualization depicts the tourism motivation system as a bipartite network of destinations with their respective reasons (i.e., (de)motives). (De)motivation is postulated as a force, which emerges from the system’s networked structure. Assuming that both reasons and destinations are unbounded, and the system is mainly governed by the two mechanisms of preferential attachment and node fitness, a power-law distribution is expected from the tourism motivation system in three levels of the entire system, reasons vertices type, and destination vertices type. Furthermore, using the relevant literature of thermodynamics and information theory in coordination with seven existing centralities and measures, seven new centrality measures are developed/proposed to evaluate the system’s components’ state/organization. For demonstration purposes, the proposed conceptualization is examined using a preliminary study

Investigating the effect of selecting delivery method on medical malpractice incidence in the specialized field of obstetrics and gynaecology in complaints referred to medical forensic expert commission during 2011-2012

Background and aims: Complaints of obstetrics and gynecology specialist are on the top of complaint from doctors and these have been increasing with increased population and births. In this regard, parallel to industrialization of life, tendency to cesarean against vaginal delivery has been increased in patients. All the cases of complaint increased from 1995 until 2010. In multiple studies and evaluation of complications of cesarean and vaginal delivery conducted in legal authorities like forensics due to patient and her relatives complains can have an effective role on selecting delivery method in specialists by creating virtue of working. Limited information is available on this study. We aimed to investigate the effect of selecting delivery method on medical malpractice incidence in the specialized field of obstetrics and gynecology. Methods: This is a descriptive-analytic study, and 913 cases of 2011 to 2012 who referred to Tehran forensics organization have been assessed and computer software SPSS was applied for data analysis. Our study was approved by the Ethical Committee of Forensic Medicine. Results: Of the total referred cases, 12.8 were in the field of obstetrics and gynecology in which 691 cases were obstetric and 222 cases related to gynecological. In 44.5 of cases, medical malpractice was confirmed and 2.3 of them were due to caesarian surgery. The rate of maternal injuries was more prevalent than babies and children, and most of complains were related to inexperience surgeons. Conclusion: As in our study, 2.3 of complaints were associated with cesarean patients and the rate of approved malpractice in cesarean was almost double the vaginal delivery. Furthermore, the rate of complains associated with mother in cesarean delivery has been twice the vaginal birth. The type of medical malpractice associated with type and method of delivery. In this study cesarean surgery delivery is pioneer. Discussion: Considering the patient and fetus situation and patients’ education selecting the type and method of delivery has an important role in prevention of patients’ complaint to surgeons from forensic view and creation of more awareness among obstetrics and gynecology specialists about medical mistakes and special training that should be given to those joining with these specialties

Jurisprudential and Legal Investigation of Effectiveness of the Muslim’s will on Using Bodily Organs of the Testator

Background: Human being is owned by God and is allowed to own him/herself and make a decision on his/her organs after demise, including the right of making will on using his/her organs in the case of death.Methods: This study is a review of Jurisprudential and legal investigation of the effectiveness of the Muslim’s will on using bodily organs of the testator in Iran. The findings that used, based on the studies were carried down in Iran and published in databases such as Google scholar, religious book and request for opinion emulation searching is done by using valid keywords.Results: This study concluded that using of organs of the deceased is acceptable for solving the problems of another live Muslim person. The legal department of the judiciary has declared also that organ donation is acceptable, but no organ may be sold since it is not included as a property.Conclusion: According to different religions and laws in the different countries similar studies are limited also in the Islamic countries, too. But there is disagreement on the studies in our country. There is a fundamental difference between the view of the proponents and that of the opponents of removing organs

The Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Adulthood Aggression and Self-Esteem-A Study on Male Forensic Clients

Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are stressful or traumatic events, including abuse and neglect. The long-term effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) occurring during childhood or adolescence; may lead to a wide range of physical and psychological health issues throughout a person’s lifespan. Children with ACEs, develops poor relation skills and low self-esteem, which may increase the likelihood of interpersonal problems and physical aggression in adult life. The current study examined the correlation among adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), self-esteem, and aggressive behavior.Materials and Methods: The sample included 350 adult male clients, accused of physical aggression in forensic setting. All participants completed interviews, focusing on different types of maltreatment prior to age 18, using the modified standardized Adverse Childhood Experiences International Questioner (ACE-IQ) and self-esteem level by Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale.Results: The most commonly reported adverse experience was family dysfunction, mainly violence in the family that caused problems. Strong correlations were shown to exist between various ACEs and aggressive behavior. Negative correlation detected between self–esteem and all categories subjected for ACE except sexual abuse and community violence (P=0>.05).Conclusion: Much attention has been focused on adverse childhood experiences as risk factors for a spectrum of violence-related outcomes during adulthood