A systematic literature review of cloud computing in eHealth

Cloud computing in eHealth is an emerging area for only few years. There needs to identify the state of the art and pinpoint challenges and possible directions for researchers and applications developers. Based on this need, we have conducted a systematic review of cloud computing in eHealth. We searched ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, Inspec, ISI Web of Science and Springer as well as relevant open-access journals for relevant articles. A total of 237 studies were first searched, of which 44 papers met the Include Criteria. The studies identified three types of studied areas about cloud computing in eHealth, namely (1) cloud-based eHealth framework design (n=13); (2) applications of cloud computing (n=17); and (3) security or privacy control mechanisms of healthcare data in the cloud (n=14). Most of the studies in the review were about designs and concept-proof. Only very few studies have evaluated their research in the real world, which may indicate that the application of cloud computing in eHealth is still very immature. However, our presented review could pinpoint that a hybrid cloud platform with mixed access control and security protection mechanisms will be a main research area for developing citizen centred home-based healthcare applications

Financial Integration and International Risk Sharing

Conventional wisdom suggests that financial liberalization can help countries insure against idiosyncratic risk. There is little evidence, however, that countries have increased risk sharing despite recent widespread financial liberalization. This work shows that the key to understanding this puzzling observation is that conventional wisdom assumes frictionless international financial markets, while actual international financial markets are far from frictionless. In particular, financial contracts are incomplete and enforceability of debt repayment is limited. Default risk of debt contracts constrains borrowing, and more importantly, it makes borrowing more difficult in bad times, precisely when countries need insurance the most. Thus, default risk of debt contracts hinders international risk sharing. When countries remove their official capital controls, default risk is still present as an implicit barrier to capital flows; the observed increase in capital flows under financial liberalization is in fact too limited to improve risk sharing. If default risk of debt contracts were eliminated, capital flows would be six times greater, and international risk sharing would increase substantially.international risk sharing, financial integration, financial liberalization, financial frictions, sovereign default, international capital flows

Financial Integration and International Risk Sharing

In the last two decades, financial integration has increased dramatically across the world. At the same time, the fraction of countries in default has more than doubled. Contrary to theory, however, there appears to have been no substantial improvement in the degree of international risk sharing. To account for this puzzle, we construct a general equilibrium model that features a continuum of countries and default choices on state-uncontingent bonds. We model increased financial integration as a decrease in the cost of borrowing. Our main finding is that as the cost of borrowing is lowered, financial integration and sovereign default increases substantially, but the degree of risk sharing as measured by cross section and panel regressions increases hardly at all. The explanation, we propose, is that international risk sharing is not sensitive to the increase in financial integration given the current magnitude of capital flows because countries can insure themselves through accumulation of domestic assets. To get better risk sharing, capital flows among countries need to be extremely large. In addition, although the ability to default on loans provides state contingency, it restricts international risk sharing in two ways: higher borrowing rates and future exclusion from international credit marketsFinanical Integration, Risk Sharing, Globalization, Sovereign Debt

Duration of Sovereign Debt Renegotiation

The structure of sovereign debt has evolved over time from illiquid bank loans toward liquid bonds that are traded on the secondary market in the past two decades. This change in the debt structure is accompanied with a reduction in the duration of sovereign debt renegotiation; it takes on average 9 years to restructure bank loans, but only 1 year to restructure bonds. In this work, we argue that the secondary market plays an important role -- information revelation -- in reducing the renegotiation length. We construct a dynamic bargaining game between the government and the creditors with private information on the creditors' reservation value. The government uses costly delays as a screening device for the creditors' type, and so the delays arise in equilibrium. Moreover, the more severe is the private information, the longer the delays are. When we introduce the secondary market, the equilibrium delays are greatly reduced. This is because the secondary market price conveys information about the creditors' reservation and lessens the information friction. We also find that bond financing is more friendly to the debtor country; it increases ex-ante borrowing and investment and ex-post renegotiation welfare of the government.sovereign debt renegotiation, secondary bond markets, dynamic bargaining, incomplete information

Cross section design of holey optical fibers with coating based on stress analysis in tension

In this paper, the mechanical behavior of newly developed holey optical fibers with and without coating was investigated by numerical analysis. Based on experimental work, the tensile failure characteristics were observed. The stress characteristics of some typical holey fibers with different section design were studied though the finite element method under tensile load. The optimum design of air hole arrangements and sizes were proposed according to the numerical results. The influence of the coating thickness on the axial stress of holey optical fiber was also investigated. The numerical results and conclusions will be useful for the cross section optimum design of holey optical fiber for increase its strength