UNDERSTANDING WORLD COMMODITY PRICES Returns, Volatility and Diversification

In recent times, the prices of internationally-traded commodities have reached record highs and there is considerable uncertainty regarding their future. This phenomenon is partially driven by strong demand from a small number of emerging economies, such as China and India. This paper places the recent commodity price boom in historical context, drawing on an investigation of the long-term time-series properties, and presents unique features for 33 individual commodity prices. Using a new methodology for examining cross-sectional variation of commodity returns and its components, we find strong evidence that the prices of world primary commodities are extremely volatile. In addition, prices are roughly 30 percent more volatile under floating than under fixed exchange rate regimes. Finally, using the capital asset pricing model as a loose framework, we find that global macroeconomic risk components have become relatively more important in explaining commodity price volatility.

Reduing Hospital Readmissions: IDEAL Discharge Planning for Heart Failure Management

Abstract The objectives during this project were to achieve by the end of 2018 an overall reduction of 25% in HF readmissions within 30 days. By identifying root causes of readmissions and using needs assessment within the microsystem, literature highlights the elements defining interventions that can be used to improve transitions of care and reduce avoidable HF hospital readmissions. A plan was developed for integrating an evidence-based practice, IDEAL Discharge Planning, along with engaging patients and families at bedside from the first day of admission until discharge to more effectively assist staff in providing patient-centered education and self-care skills. The results were a better care transition experience and prevention of avoidable readmissions in HF patient populations. The microsystem consists of twenty-six telemetry beds and specializes in managing patients with a primary diagnosis of cardiovascular disease. Fifty patients’ charts were reviewed for 2 months prior to initiation of the project, and again 2 months later to collect data specific to HF patient 30-day readmission rates. The CNL strives to identify quality measures that need improvement, incorporate new evidence into practice, implement new guidelines for patient care, track data on the project, and is able to show improved clinical outcomes that are immensely cost effective within the microsystem. Ultimately, this project should gain support and spread to other microsystems and other patient populations within the hospital organization

Strong completeness for a class of stochastic differential equations with irregular coefficients

We prove the strong completeness for a class of non-degenerate SDEs, whose coefficients are not necessarily uniformly elliptic nor locally Lipschitz continuous nor bounded. Moreover, for each $t$, the solution flow $F_t$ is weakly differentiable and for each $p>0$ there is a positive number $T(p)$ such that for all $t<T(p)$, the solution flow $F_t(\cdot)$ belongs to the Sobolev space W_{\loc}^{1,p}. The main tool for this is the approximation of the associated derivative flow equations. As an application a differential formula is also obtained

Construction and Refinement of Coarse-Grained Models

A general scheme, which includes constructions of coarse-grained (CG) models, weighted ensemble dynamics (WED) simulations and cluster analyses (CA) of stable states, is presented to detect dynamical and thermodynamical properties in complex systems. In the scheme, CG models are efficiently and accurately optimized based on a directed distance from original to CG systems, which is estimated from ensemble means of lots of independent observable in two systems. Furthermore, WED independently generates multiple short molecular dynamics trajectories in original systems. The initial conformations of the trajectories are constructed from equilibrium conformations in CG models, and the weights of the trajectories can be estimated from the trajectories themselves in generating complete equilibrium samples in the original systems. CA calculates the directed distances among the trajectories and groups their initial conformations into some clusters, which correspond to stable states in the original systems, so that transition dynamics can be detected without requiring a priori knowledge of the states.Comment: 4 pages, no figure

Strongly interacting matter from holographic QCD model

We introduce the 5-dimension dynamical holographic QCD model, which is constructed in the graviton-dilaton-scalar framework with the dilaton background field $\Phi$ and the scalar field $X$ responsible for the gluodynamics and chiral dynamics, respectively. We review our results on the hadron spectra including the glueball and light meson spectra, QCD phase transitions and transport properties in the framework of the dynamical holographic QCD model.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, proceedings for QCD@Work2016, June 27-30,2014, Martina Franca, Italy. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1409.843