Working Paper 76 - Are Exports the Engine of Economic Growth? An Application of Cointegration and Causality Analysis for Egypt, 1977 - 2003

The paper examines the export-led growth (ELG) paradigm for Egypt, using historical data from 1977 to 2003. During this period, Egypt changed its economic philosophy from central planning and government intervention to one based on a free market economy. The paper employs a variety of analytical tools, including cointegration analysis, Granger causality tests, and unit root tests, coupled with vector auto regression (VAR) and impulse response function (IRF) analyses. The paper sets three hypotheses for testing the ELG paradigm for Egypt, (i) whether GDP, exports and imports are cointegrated, (ii) whether exports Granger cause growth, (iii) whether exports Granger cause investment. The paper fails to reject the first two hypotheses, while it fails to accept that exports Granger cause investment. In addition to the analysis of the 1977-2003 period, the paper looks briefly also at the impact of the economic reform undertaken in 1991, and weather the ELG hypothesis still holds during the 1991-2003 sub-period.

Lithostratigraphy and biostratigraphy of the Florentine Valley Formation in the Tim Shea area, southwest Tasmania

The Florentine Valley Formation is defined. The Formation is subdivided into three members; the Churchill Sandstone Member, the Pontoon Hill Siltstone Member, and the Mt. Field Siltstone Member. Seven consecutive fossil assemblages based on brachiopods and trilobites can be recognised within the Florentine Valley Formation. International correlation of the assemblages in the Florentine Valley Formation is based on graptolites, that of the basal Karmberg Limestone on graptolites and conodonts. The Formation ranges in age from Early Tremadoc to Late Arenig

Energy dissipation in porous media for equilibrium and nonequilibrium translational motions

In the modelling of translational motion, the concepts of frequency-dependent (of the angular fluctuations of the velocity field) self-diffusion and the dispersion tensor are commonly used in its characterisation. Both of these parameters are related to velocity autocorrelation. An alternative means of modelling translational motion is via the equilibrium and nonequilibrium fluctuation-dissipation theorem in classical statistical mechanics. This alternative approach provides further insight into the molecular level processes occurring in the system. Here both of these theoretical fluctuation-dissipation approaches are employed to determine expressions for energy dissipation in simple equilibrium systems exhibiting asymptotic and preasymptotic diffusion and dispersion phenomena and also in a nonequilibrium preasymptotic system involving dispersion within and beyond the upper limit of heterogeneity of an isotropic porous medium. As an example the permeability of porous media due to diffusion and dispersion are studied and it is shown how a frequency-dependent permeability can be treated as a phasor

Lesion correlates of auditory sentence comprehension deficits in post-stroke aphasia

Auditory sentence comprehension requires coordination of multiple levels of processing: auditory-phonological perception, lexical-semantic comprehension, syntactic parsing and discourse construction, as well as executive functions such as verbal working memory (WM) and cognitive control. This study examined the lesion correlates of sentence comprehension deficits in post-stroke aphasia, building on prior work on this topic by using a different and clinically-relevant measure of sentence comprehension (the Token Test) and multivariate (SCCAN) and connectome-based lesion-symptom mapping methods. The key findings were that lesions in the posterior superior temporal lobe and inferior frontal gyrus (pars triangularis) were associated with sentence comprehension deficits, which was observed in both mass univariate and multivariate lesion-symptom mapping. Graph theoretic measures of connectome disruption were not statistically significantly associated with sentence comprehension deficits after accounting for overall lesion size

Better, faster, more versatile NMR diffusion measurements

The range of applications and versatility of NMR diffusion measurements [1,2] increase with the speed, accuracy, and the practical lower concentration limits that can be used. For example, faster measurements expand the horizons of diffusion measurements to study reaction kinetics [3,4], as well as simply increasing throughput. Our group has been investigating various approaches for improving the performance of NMR diffusion measurements. Here we present some of our recent advances

Gordon Subgroup (Ordovician) carbonates at Precipitous Bluff and Point Cecil, southern Tasmania, Australia

The palaeogeographically and biostratigraphically important Ordovician carbonate sequence at Precipitous Bluff is at least 360m thick. The lowest 130 m, the New River Beds, consist of bryozoan algal biospararenites of Chazyan to Blackriveran age. These beds were probably deposited in a high energy subtidal environment with minor periods of intertidal deposition. The upper 50 m of this lowest unit contains abundant Calathium, bryozoans and corals. The succeeding 230 m of biosparites, biomicrites, argillaceous carbonates and siltstones, the Precipitous Bluff Beds, are dominated by trilobites, brachiopods and bryozoans, range in age from Trentonian to Cincinnatian and were probably deposited in deeper water than the New River Beds. The Prion Beach Beds at Point Cecil, five km south of Precipitous Bluff, are laceous micrites containing a trilobite/brachiopod fauna and include strata of Blackriveran and rentonian age and are thus biostratigraphically correlated with the upper part of the New River Beds and at least part of the Precipitous Bluff Beds. Vertical carbonates along New River Lagoon and sheared carbonates at Point Cecil suggest structural complications perhaps associated;with a continuation of a large, possibly transcurrent fault, trending north along New River

Biexponential diffusion decay in formalin-fixed prostate tissue: Preliminary findings

Magnetic resonance microimaging was used to measure diffusion decay over an extended b-factor range in a formalin-fixed normal prostate sample and a Gleason pattern 3+4 cancer tissue sample. The coefficients of biexponential fits to diffusion decay data from 1600 voxels of dimension 160 x 160 x 160 mu m3 in each sample were correlated with underlying epithelial and stromal compartment partial volumes estimated from high-resolution apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) data (40 x 40 x 40 mu m3 voxels) from the same tissue. In the normal tissue sample, the signal fractions of the low and high ADC components of the biexponential fits correlated linearly with partial volumes of epithelial tissue (R2 = 0.6) and stromal tissue (R2 = 0.5), respectively. Similar but weaker correlations were observed in the cancer sample. Epithelium-containing high spatial resolution voxels appeared to be composed of similar to 60% low ADC and similar to 40% high ADC component. Stromal voxels appeared to be composed of similar to 20% low ADC and similar to 80% high ADC component. This preliminary report suggests that distinctly different diffusion properties in microscopically adjacent cell types contribute to the multiexponential diffusion decay phenomenon in prostate tissue. Magn Reson Med, 2012. (c) 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc