The Impacts of Wheat Price Policy change on Nutritional Status in Egypt.

We compared energy and protein consumption among various Income classes in rural and urban areas of Egypt, The results indicate that adequate calories are provided at all income levels but inequalities exist in food distribution between rural and urban areas and among income classes. About two-thirds of Egypt's wheat, the country's basic food, is imported and the price is .heavily subsidized by the Government. Our analysis shows that removing the wheat price subsidy would create a large nutritional sacrifice for the poor, especially in rural areas. We also examined alternative policies for improving nutritional status and reducing Government subsidy costs.Egypt, energy requirement, protein requirement, calorie consumption, protein consumption, wheat consumption, income elasticities, price elasticitie.s, food policy.

Earthquake Hazard Safety Assessment of Existing Buildings Using Optimized Multi-Layer Perceptron Neural Network

The latest earthquakes have proven that several existing buildings, particularly in developing countries, are not secured from damages of earthquake. A variety of statistical and machine-learning approaches have been proposed to identify vulnerable buildings for the prioritization of retrofitting. The present work aims to investigate earthquake susceptibility through the combination of six building performance variables that can be used to obtain an optimal prediction of the damage state of reinforced concrete buildings using artificial neural network (ANN). In this regard, a multi-layer perceptron network is trained and optimized using a database of 484 damaged buildings from the Düzce earthquake in Turkey. The results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the selected ANN approach to classify concrete structural damage that can be used as a preliminary assessment technique to identify vulnerable buildings in disaster risk-management programs

Food Security Assessment: Why Countries Are at Risk

Food insecurity in many low-income, developing countries is projected to intensify unless steps are taken to reverse the performance trend of key contributing factors: agricultural productivity, foreign exchange earnings, and population growth. For the poorest countries, an increase in agricultural productivity is the key to improving food security. In these countries, imports play a small role in the domestic food supply because of limited foreign exchange availability. This study evaluates availability and distribution of food and analyzes their trends through 2008 by projecting food gaps to maintain per capita consumption, meet nutritional needs, and fulfill requirements stemming from unequal food distribution.food security, developing countries, productivity, foreign exchange availability, import capacity, income distribution, population growth, nutritional requirements, per capita consumption, Food Security and Poverty,

FOOD INSECURITY IN THE LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES AND THE INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE

Despite adequate food supplies at the global level, many low-income countries experience food insecurity. Given that food deficits are projected to get even bigger in the future, the problem probably will only get worse. Added to the concern is the likelihood that global trade liberalization will increase prices and price volatility of major imported staple food commodities. Presently, the international safety nets that do exist are inadequate in stabilizing food supplies for the more vulnerable countries. Food aid has been the primary safety net, but is not sufficient to meet estimated needs around the world. The few alternatives to food aid that have been implemented so far have been either underutilized or ineffective. New safety net proposals could help stabilize grain import prices or manage import costs. This paper shows that 3 selected proposals (grain options, a revolving import compensation fund, and import insurance) would be much less costly than international food aid. The 3 programs would have cost about $300-$600 million per year, compared with the recent cost of food aid from all donors estimated at $2.9 billion. Each of the programs would be effective in stabilizing consumption variability. Improving the international safety net programs may help temper food security concerns and improve support in low-income countries for trade liberalization.Food Security and Poverty,

Boundedness of multilinear pseudo-differential operators on modulation spaces

Boundedness results for multilinear pseudodifferential operators on products of modulation spaces are derived based on ordered integrability conditions on the short-time Fourier transform of the operators' symbols. The flexibility and strength of the introduced methods is demonstrated by their application to the bilinear and trilinear Hilbert transform.Comment: 29 pages, journal submissio

Retrospective review of the use of Swan Ganz catheters in our intensive care unit (ICU): a short report

The widespread and often \u27misuse\u27 of the Swan Ganz (SG) or Pulmonary artery catheter has often been seen in intensive care patients. The objective of this preliminary review was to observe the trends and possibly formulate an association with outcome of the use of SG catheters as well as to determine the frequency of use and possible complications. The chart review of ten patients was carried out for the months of January and February 2004 in a retrospective manner. The incidence of SG catheter insertion was 12% per month on average. Nine out of 10 patients received the SG catheters for \u27fluid management\u27; and 1 for \u27haemodynamic instability\u27. Eight out of 10 patients expired and average length of stay was 9 days. There were no complications recorded. The cause of death in all patients was \u27severe sepsis\u27. The overwhelming majority of patients who received these catheters expired at the end of their stay