Listening to loan officers: the impact of commercial credit standards on lending and output

Over most of the last thirty-three years, the Federal Reserve has polled a small number of bank loan officers about their moves to tighten or ease commercial credit standards. Although the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey uses a small sample and gathers only qualitative information, it proves to be a useful tool in predicting changes in commercial lending and output. The authors find a strong correlation between tighter credit standards and slower loan growth and output, even after controlling for credit demand and other predictors of lending and output. The analysis also shows that the loan officer reports can help predict narrower measures of business activity, including inventory investment and industrial production.Bank loans ; Business cycles ; Forecasting

Comparative Study of Different Techniques in Speaker Recognition: Review

The speech is most basic and essential method of communication used by person.On the basis of individual information included in speech signals the speaker is recognized. Speaker recognition (SR) is useful to identify the person who is speaking. In recent years speaker recognition is used for security system. In this paper we have discussed the feature extraction techniques like Mel frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC), Linear predictive coding (LPC), Dynamic time wrapping (DTW), and for classification Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM), Artificial neural network (ANN) Support vector machine (SVM)

A QUESTIONNAIRE BASED SURVEY TO ASSESS THE KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE AND PRACTICES OF AYURVEDIC PRACTITIONERS TOWARDS MASANUMASIK KASHAYAS

For a healthy pregnancy and delivery of a normal child, different group of medicines taken for each month of pregnancy is described in Ayurveda as Masanumasik Kashayas (monthly antenatal decoctions). Objectives: To assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of Ayurvedic practitioners regarding Masanumasik Kashayas. Methodology: Following ethical approval, a cross-sectional descriptive survey was conducted among Ayurvedic physicians from Mumbai region. Results: Of 130 questionnaires distributed, 120 physicians responded (92%). Although all the physicians were aware that Masanumasik Kashayasare described in the Samhitas, only 60% knew the number of Kashayas (decoctions). 85% knew the rationale for prescribing these Kashaya s(decoctions) and 93% agreed that these Kashayas (decoctions) improved pregnancy outcome. However, in clinical practice, 45% participants said that they prescribed Kashayas (decoctions) only in patients with bad obstetric history while 52.5% prescribed in regular ante-natal care. 83% preferred Vati (tablet) form rather than Kashaya (decoction) as patient compliance was better. All physicians who prescribed said that there were no adverse complaints and the pregnancy outcome was good. Conclusion: The study thus showed that all Ayurvedic practitioners were still well versed with Masanumasik Kashayas and prescribed these kashayas (decoctions) for a good pregnancy outcome in clinical practice with some modifications like usage of only 9 Kashayas (decoctions) and Vati form (tablet)

Assessment of the degree of awareness among post-graduate medical physicians and Pharmacists about look-alike, sound-alike drug and potential medication errors

Background: With thousands of drugs currently in the market, the potential for medication errors due to confusing drug names amongst practising physicians, pharmacists and patients is significant. The existence of confusing drug names is one of the most common causes of medication error. There are many look-alikes, sound-alike (LASA) combinations that could potentially result in medication errors. There is insufficient data about medication errors due to LASA. Hence, we conducted the present study to determine the degree of awareness regarding LASA drugs among post graduate medical physicians and Pharmacists.Methods: This study was a cross-sectional, questionnaire-based survey, conducted among 137 year post graduate medical residents of a tertiary care teaching hospital and 121 local pharmacists in an urban metropolitan Indian city.Results: There were 34% resident doctors and 17% pharmacists were aware of concept of LASA drugs. Only 46% resident doctors and 22% pharmacists had knowledge about the full form of LASA. Among resident doctors, 39% came across prescription errors due to LASA drugs. Only 69% of the pharmacists agreed that they consulted their doctors when they faced problems due to prescription errors due to similar looking and similar sounding drugs.Conclusions: Look-Alike, Sound-Alike (LASA) drugs are common source of medication errors. Our study suggests that there is lack of awareness about LASA drugs amongst resident doctors and pharmacists, which may contribute to occurrence of medication errors. Therefore, combined efforts by prescribers, pharmacists, organizations, manufacturers and patients is required to overcome medication errors due to LASA drugs