Can Students Studying Abroad use Forward Exchange Rates as a Tool for Better Budgeting Their Semesters?

Traveling abroad requires an immense amount of planning and attention to detail. Budgeting is a difficult task in one’s own country, but when planning across borders, that task becomes even greater. Differences in exchange rates and buying power have the potential to adversely affect the budget set ahead of time, placing more stress on the traveler. Financial tools available in the foreign exchange market, if used strategically, may provide a reliable method to budgeting travel abroad as accurately as possible. There are many individuals, students especially, that plan on traveling or studying abroad yet are on tight budgets. Having a reliable budgeting tool that works to hedge against risk can make a difference in their ability to travel abroad

A History of Slavery in Central Asia: Shī’ī Muslim Enslavement in 19th Century Bukhara

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. Despite more than a century of interest on the part of western scholars and historians in the region of Central Asia, in many respects our knowledge of many topics in Central Asian history remains limited. To date, when compared to the body of historical works treating the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas, or even the history of slavery within the Arab-Muslim world, the history of slavery in Islamic Central Asia has received little attention. Thus, it stands to reason that the history of the enslavement of Shī’ī Muslims in the early modern and modern eras has been likewise neglected, often being mentioned in passing or dealt with in a few pages within larger works. Considering the extent to which both Bukhara and Khiva depended upon Shī’ī slaves as agricultural workers, domestic servants, bureaucrats, and such, this history of slavery in Central Asia is a topic that demands closer scrutiny. This paper will therefore consider the history of the enslavement of Shī’ī Muslims in the Emirate of Bukhara during the nineteenth century. As an institution, slavery was ideologically rationalized and sanctified according to long-standing sectarian prejudices, in this instance those of the Sunnī Muslims towards the Shī’ī Muslims, in the Central Asian states of the nineteenth century. This can be verified by an examination of the extant sources; as a preliminary examination of the topic, therefore, this study will draw primarily from nineteenth century travel accounts. By re-examining such works we can begin to fashion a more coherent narrative for the history of Shī’ī enslavement in Islamic Central Asia. However, before examining the travel accounts, the institution of slavery in relation to Islamic tradition must first be considered, as this will provide some perspective when we turn our attention to the enslavement of Shī’ī Muslims in Central Asia

Book Review: Encounters with Hinduism

A review of Encounters with Hinduism by Horst Georg Pöhlmann

International Lending, Capital Controls and Wealth Inequality

Collateral, Capital Controls, Wealth Distribution

Time Constraints Limit Group Sizes and Distribution in Red and Black-and-White Colobus Monkeys

Researchers have shown that, in frugivorous primates, a major constraint on group size is intra group feeding competition. The relationship is less obvious in folivorous primates. We investigated whether colobine group sizes are constrained by time limitations as a result of their low energy diet and ruminant-like digestive system. We used climate as an easy to obtain proxy for the productivity of a habitat. Using the relationships between climate, group size, and time budget components for populations of Colobus and Piliocolobus at different research sites, we created 2 taxon-specific models. In both genera, feeding time increased with group size or biomass. The models for Colobus and Piliocolobus correctly predicted the presence or absence of the genera at, respectively, 86% of 148 and 84% of 156 African primate sites. Median predicted group sizes where the respective genera were present are 19 for Colobus and 53 for Piliocolobus. We show that the differences between the 2 genera are due mainly to intrinsic differences in the way each taxon’s digestive physiology interacts with climatic variables to influence resting time requirements. The models may help us explore their responses to climatic change in both the past and the future