Troubled Banks, Impaired Foreign Direct Investment: The Role of Relative Access to Credit

The relative wealth hypothesis of Froot and Stein (1991), motivated by the aggregate correlation between real exchange rates and foreign direct investment (FDI) observed in the 1980s, cannot explain one of the major shifts in FDI in the 1990s: the continued decline in Japanese FDI during a period of stable stock prices and a rapidly appreciating yen. However, when the relative wealth hypothesis is supplemented with the relative access to credit hypothesis proposed in this study, we are able to show that unequal access to credit by Japanese firms can explain the FDI puzzle in the 1990s. We utilize a unique data set that links individual Japanese firms engaged in FDI to their main banks. Using both bank-level and firm-level data sets, we find that financial difficulties at banks were economically and statistically important in reducing the number of FDI projects by Japanese firms into the United States, even after controlling for the effects associated with the relative wealth movements driven by macroeconomic fluctuations in the exchange rate and stock market prices. This provides strong empirical evidence that differences across firms in the degree of their access to credit can be an important determinant of foreign direct investment.

Baseball and Nursing: How the Game Coaches Us in Spirituality, Self-Care, and Resilience

This continuing education course is a four-part series designed for practicing nurses who work in areas that are considered high risk for compassion fatigue, burnout, and secondary stress syndrome. These areas include, but are not limited to, Emergency Departments, Intensive Care Units, Pediatric Emergency Departments and Intensive Care Units, Oncology, Hospice and Palliative Care. This course will examine how repeated exposure to traumatic events of patients and their families affects the nurses who care for them. The overall goal of this continuing education course is for learners to define their spirituality as the foundation for engaging in self-care strategies that promote resilience when faced with adversity in both their personal and professional lives. Each session focuses on a specific theme related to baseball

The Structural Complexity of (Bi0.5Na0.5)TiO3-BaTiO3 as Revealed by Raman Spectroscopy

The structural phase diagram of the Pb-free ferroelectric (Na1/2Bi1/2)1-xBaxTiO3 (NBT-BT), x<0.1, has been explored by Raman spectroscopy at temperatures from 10 to 470 K. The data provide clear evidence for a proposed temperature-independent morphotropic phase boundary at x \approx 0.055. However, there is no evidence for a structural phase transition across T \approx 370 K for x > 0.055, where bulk-property anomalies appear to signal a transition to a nonpolar or antiferroelectric phase. The results identify that the phase above 370 K shows short-range ionic displacements that are identical to those in the long-range-ordered phase below 370 K. These conclusions provide a natural interpretation of the weak piezoelectric response in this system and have important implications for the search for Pb-free piezoelectrics.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figure

Integrated patient-to-room and nurse-to-patient assignment in hospital wards

Assigning patients to rooms and nurses to patients are critical tasks within hospitals that directly affect patient and staff satisfaction, quality of care, and hospital efficiency. Both patient-to-room assignments and nurse-to-patient assignments are typically agreed upon at the ward level, and they interact in several ways such as jointly determining the walking distances nurses must cover between different patient rooms. This motivates to consider both problems jointly in an integrated fashion. This paper presents the first optimization models and algorithms for the integrated patient-to-room and nurse-to-patient assignment problem. We provide a mixed integer programming formulation of the integrated problem that considers the typical objectives from the single problems as well as additional objectives that can only be properly evaluated when integrating both problems. Moreover, motivated by the inherent complexity that results from integrating these two NP-hard and already computationally challenging problems, we devise an efficient heuristic for the integrated patient-to-room and nurse-to-patient assignment problem. To evaluate the running time and quality of the solution obtained with the heuristic, we conduct extensive computational experiments on both artificial and real-world instances. The artificial instances are generated by a parameterized instance generator for the integrated problem that is made freely available

Prevalence and Risk Factors of Early-Stage Age-Related Macular Degeneration in Patients Examined at a Health Promotion Center in Korea

We evaluated the prevalence and risk factors for early age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in Koreans 50 yr of age or older who were examined at a single health promotion center. We retrospectively reviewed the records of 10,449 subjects who visited the center over a 6-month period. Fundus photography was performed on all subjects, and systematic risk factor analysis was conducted using a structured questionnaire. All patients (n = 322) were initially diagnosed with drusen or early AMD using fundoscopy; the control group (n = 10,127) were those yielding normal fundoscopy findings. The age- and gender-adjusted prevalence of early AMD was 3.08%. Advanced age, male gender, smoking status, hyperlipidemia, working outdoors, and residence in rural areas were all significantly associated with an increased risk for development of early AMD. Higher-level ingestion of fruit or herbal medication and an increased amount of exercise were associated with a lower risk of early AMD development. In our Korean cohort, consisting principally of relatively healthy, middle-class urban adults, the prevalence of early AMD was 3.08% that is similar to that reported in earlier epidemiological studies. Several modifiable risk factors such as smoking and hyperlipidemia are associated with the prevalence of early AMD in our cohort

What’s Sex (Composition) Got to Do with It? The Importance of Sex Composition of Gangs for Female and Male Members’ Offending and Victimization

Sex composition of groups has been theorized in organizational sociology and found in prior work to structure female and male members’ behaviors and experiences. Peer group and gang literature similarly finds that the sex gap in offending varies across groups of differing sex ratios. Drawing on this and other research linking gang membership, offending, and victimization, we examine whether sex composition of gangs is linked to sex differences in offending in this sample, further assess whether sex composition similarly structures females’ and males’ victimization experiences, and if so, why. Self-report data from gang members in a multi-site, longitudinal study of 3,820 youths are employed. Results support previous findings about variations in member delinquency by both sex and sex composition of the gang and also indicate parallel variations in members’ victimization. These results are further considered within the context of facilitating effects such as gender dynamics, gang characteristics, and normative orientation

A trivariate additive regression model with arbitrary link functions and varying correlation matrix

In many empirical situations, modelling simultaneously three or more outcomes as well as their dependence structure can be of considerable relevance. Copulae provide a powerful framework to build multivariate distributions and allow one to view the specification of the marginal responses’ equations and their dependence as separate but related issues. We propose a generalizationof the trivariate additive probit model where the link functions can in principle be derived from any parametric distribution and the parameters describing the residual association between the responses can be made dependent on several types of covariate effects (such as linear, nonlinear, random, and spatial effects). All the coefficients of the model are estimated simultaneously within a penalized likelihood framework that uses a trust region algorithm with integrated automatic multiple smoothing parameter selection. The effectiveness of the model is assessed in simulation as well as empirically by modelling jointly three adverse birth binary outcomes in North Carolina. The approach can be easily employed via the gjrm() function in the R package GJRM

Choral Classics Concert

Sololists: Ivin Bellamy, bass, will perform the Benedictus. He is a junior who participates in basketball, volleyball, track and field, orchestra and chorus. He plans to at-tend the University of North Carolina majoring in music. Kiyah Bracy, soprano, performs as soloist on the Kyrie. She is a senior who par-ticipates in theatre and chorus. She plans on attending Georgia State University with a major in human biology, aspiring to be a pediatric surgeon. Taniyah Colter, soprano, sings as soloist on the Gloria. She is a senior and is the vice president of the choral program. She hopes to attend college to major in psychology and minor in vocal music. Her goal is to become a psychologist. Alona Fransis, soprano, is heard today as soloist on the piece Benedictus. She is a junior who participates in the marching band, and chorus. In the future, she plans to attend Regent University and major in criminal justice. Christopher Freeman, bass, is heard as soloist on the Gloria. He is a senior who participates in volleyball, chorus, enjoys writing and plans to attend Norfolk State University for psychology. Markle Juste, tenor, will perform the Benedictus. Markle is a senior who partici-pates in the theatre program and chorus. After high school, he would like to be a merchant seaman. Sidney Mapp, soprano, will solo on the Gloria. As a sophomore, she is in volley-ball, chorus, and enjoys reading. She plans to attend the University of Virginia to become a nurse. Savion White, bass, is a soloist on the Agnus Dei. Savion is a senior who partici-pates in volleyball and the Teens With a Purpose poetry club. After high school, he hopes to attend The American Musical and Dramatic Academy for music performance and production. Jordan Wright, soprano, will perform as soloist on the Agnus Dei. Jordan is a junior who participates in chorus and enjoys drawing and writing. She plans is to attend Old Dominion University and major in graphic design