Economic Uncertainty And The Demand For Money In South Africa

This study examines the importance of economic uncertainty as one of the determinant of money demand function in South Africa by determining the long-run relationships between the real money demand (RMI, RM2, and RM3) and the economic uncertainty, and other control variables as well. The period of study employed is from 2000Q1 to 2014Q4. The GARCH methodology is employed at first to construct the economic uncertainty index (EUI). Then, the long-run relationships are determined by the Johansen cointegration test. The result shows there is a long-run relationship between each real money demand and the control variables. Stable real money demand function for RM 1, RM2, and RM3 models are resulted from the CUSUM and CUSUMSQ tests. However, there is only one model which all control variables are significant to the real money balance, which is RM3 model. This indicates that the RM3 is suitable to be employed as indicator for monetary policy or inflation targeting policy in South Africa to predict the trend of inflation in future and whereby some effective precautions or strategies can be recommended for encountering the shocks or uncertainty in future

Xi Jin-Ping's world cup dreams: from a major sports country to a world sports power

Football is among the world’s most popular sports. It is also one which China has sought to develop in the field of global professional sport. Nevertheless, the professionalization of football in China has not to date actually improved China's Olympic achievement in the sport. In stark contrast to the glory of being the country that won most gold medals at the 2008 Olympics, China’s poor football performance has been troublesome for the country’s leader. In 2009, newly elected Xi Jin-Ping made a public statement about promoting elite football and expressed his personal hope that China would be capable of both qualifying for the final stages and winning the FIFA World Cup. With such concern on the part of the state leader, attention turned to football, with many private enterprises beginning to echo government policy by demonstrating a willingness to promote elite football. In addition, to accelerate football development, the Chinese government promised to take action on the separation of government and football associations. Research on this process was based on the theoretical framework of state corporatism derived from the work of Schmitter (1974). Semi-structured interviews were conducted as the method of data collection aimed at helping us understand how Chinese government either integrated or controlled relevant stakeholders such as NGOs and private enterprises, and further, to discuss the interactions between them

Economic Uncertainty and the Demand for Broad Money in South Africa

This paper scrutinised the impact of economic uncertainty on the broad money demand in South Africa using quarterly data from 2001 to 2018. Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model is employed to capture the volatilities of selected components in order to construct an economic uncertainty index (EUI) for South Africa. The constructed index is then used as a regressor along with real income, interest rate and exchange rate in determining South African demand for broad money. The empirical finding using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag approach notably shows that the EUI is negatively affecting South Africa’s demand for broad money in the long term. This reveals that economic agents tend to hold real or safer assets than riskier assets, thus reduce broad money demand during times of heightened economy in South Africa. The model is cointegrated in the long-run and stable with the inclusion of EUI in the broad money demand function for South Africa. The findings are able to assist policy makers in using suitable determinants as stabilisation tools and targeting a more effective monetary policy framework refined by appropriate monetary aggregates in South Africa

Antimicrobial Drug Resistance in Singapore Hospitals

A new national antimicrobial resistance surveillance program in Singapore public hospitals that uses WHONET detected high levels of methicillin resistance among Staphylococcus aureus (35.3%), carbapenem resistance among Acinetobacter spp. (49.6%), and third-generation cephalosporin resistance among Klebsiella pneumoniae (35.9%) hospital isolates in 2006. Antimicrobial drug resistance is a major problem in Singapore

Actin dynamics provides membrane tension to merge fusing vesicles into the plasma membrane

Vesicle fusion is executed via formation of an Ω-shaped structure (Ω-profile), followed by closure (kiss-and-run) or merging of the Ω-profile into the plasma membrane (full fusion). Although Ω-profile closure limits release but recycles vesicles economically, Ω-profile merging facilitates release but couples to classical endocytosis for recycling. Despite its crucial role in determining exocytosis/endocytosis modes, how Ω-profile merging is mediated is poorly understood in endocrine cells and neurons containing small ∼30–300 nm vesicles. Here, using confocal and super-resolution STED imaging, force measurements, pharmacology and gene knockout, we show that dynamic assembly of filamentous actin, involving ATP hydrolysis, N-WASP and formin, mediates Ω-profile merging by providing sufficient plasma membrane tension to shrink the Ω-profile in neuroendocrine chromaffin cells containing ∼300 nm vesicles. Actin-directed compounds also induce Ω-profile accumulation at lamprey synaptic active zones, suggesting that actin may mediate Ω-profile merging at synapses. These results uncover molecular and biophysical mechanisms underlying Ω-profile merging

Clinical significance of serological biomarkers and neuropsychological performances in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is a common form of focal epilepsy. Serum biomarkers to predict cognitive performance in TLE patients without psychiatric comorbidities and the link with gray matter (GM) atrophy have not been fully explored.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Thirty-four patients with TLE and 34 sex - and age-matched controls were enrolled for standardized cognitive tests, neuroimaging studies as well as measurements of serum levels of heat shock protein 70 (HSP70), S100ß protein (S100ßP), neuronal specific enolase (NSE), plasma nuclear and mitochondrial DNA levels.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Compared with the controls, the patients with TLE had poorer cognitive performances and higher HSP70 and S100ßP levels (<it>p </it>< 0.01). The patients with higher frequencies of seizures had higher levels of HSP70, NSE and S100ßP (<it>p </it>< 0.01). Serum HSP70 level correlated positively with duration of epilepsy (σ = 0.413, <it>p </it>< 0.01), and inversely with memory scores in the late registration (σ = −0.276, <it>p </it>= 0.01) and early recall score (σ = −0.304, <it>p </it>= 0.007). Compared with the controls, gray matter atrophy in the hippocampal and parahippocampal areas, putamen, thalamus and supplementary motor areas were found in the patient group. The HSP70 levels showed an inverse correlation with hippocampal volume (R square = 0.22, <it>p </it>= 0.007) after controlling for the effect of age.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our results suggest that serum biomarkers were predictive of higher frequencies of seizures in the TLE group. HSP70 may be considered to be a stress biomarker in patients with TLE in that it correlated inversely with memory scores and hippocampal volume. In addition, the symmetric extratemporal atrophic patterns may be related to damage of neuronal networks and epileptogenesis in TLE.</p

Corrigendum to: The TianQin project: current progress on science and technology

In the originally published version, this manuscript included an error related to indicating the corresponding author within the author list. This has now been corrected online to reflect the fact that author Jun Luo is the corresponding author of the article