Historical path of traditional and modern idea of ‘conscious universe’

What this study shows is that although the ‘idea of conscious universe’ is given further advance by some discoveries of modern sciences, it was articulated by many ancient and previous thinkers. Philosophically, the idea of ‘Consciousness’ can be traced back to ancient times and can be proven through historical documents in various traditions, cultures and religions. In this study, the ideas are provided from perspectives of West, East and Islam. Simply, the term ‘awareness’ and the concept of ‘ability to be aware of the environment’ imply the notion of ‘Consciousness’ in linguistic and psychology. In a comparative study, we show that philosophical and scientific views in the past and contemporary period highly recommended the existence of ‘Consciousness’ attribute. In fact, all of the mentioned studies are talking about the same ideology based on the qualitative perceptions. However, there are some differences in parts, but the major theme is same.     

无需过度忧虑通货膨胀

远期均衡通胀尚未对大宗商品价格回落做出回应,而且实际上均衡通胀比5月份石油价格处在类似水平时更高了。我们建议远期均衡通胀下降仓位。石油价格已从7月初的140美元/桶的高点急剧回落至117美元/桶,当前已经回到5月初的水平。不出所料地,全球均衡通胀从7月初高点急剧下降,     

Current Accounts and Global Adjustment: The Long and Short of It

Global rebalancing is underway, but still quite a distance from being done. Current account imbalances have been a persistent feature of the global economy for over 100 years, especially during the two eras of globalization—the period 1870 to 1914 and the present. Such imbalances have reflected underlying imbalances between savings and investment as well as the prevailing international monetary regime. One important lesson from the past 150 years is that capital flows play an important role in funding global investment opportunities—a role that would be harmed if policy makers responded to the perceived threat of global imbalances by imposing any sort of cap. During those periods when capital flows have been relatively unhindered, investment opportunities around the world have been financed by capital flows. Such flows have financed the growth of many erstwhile “emerging market” economies, including the U.S. in the early part of this century. And global capital flows are doing much the same for many emerging markets today, even though purchases of reserves by some countries have been offsetting inbound private capital flows in the aggregate. The other main lesson of history is that imbalances do not last forever, and tend to lead to adjustments and reversals. Experience shows that such adjustments are much easier for surplus countries than for deficit countries.     

Determining the Optimum Guarantee Period for a One-Life Retirement Annuity

Abstract

We consider a risk averse retiree from a defined contribution plan who decides to purchase a onelife annuity with a guarantee period. Given the retiree has a bequest motive, we focus on the problem of determining the optimum length of the guarantee period. Assuming the retiree’s bequest function is proportional to his or her utility function, we determine necessary and/or sufficient conditions under which the retiree would choose an annuity with (i) no guarantee period, (ii) the maximum guarantee period, or (iii) an intermediate guarantee period.     

Does economic freedom fosters banks’ performance? Panel evidence from Malaysia

The present paper provides new empirical evidence on the impact of economic freedom on banks’ performance. The empirical analysis is confined to the Malaysian banking sector during the period of 1999–2007. We find that overall economic freedom and business freedom exerts positive impacts, implying that higher (lower) freedom on the activities that banks can undertake and entrepreneurs to start businesses increases (reduces) banks’ profitability. The empirical findings seem to suggest that corruption has a corrosive impact on Malaysian banks’ profitability. Interestingly, the impact of monetary freedom is negative, demonstrating the importance of government intervention in determining the profitability of banks operating in the Malaysian banking sector.     

Welfare and technology in the network society—Concerns for the future of welfare

The last decade of explosive innovation thanks to the growth of information and communication technologies (ICT) has left the public sector, and particularly the provision of welfare services, largely unchanged. Where socialising, commerce, information finding, entertainment and travel have all undergone profound structural transformations, the workings of government have not seen a similar shift. To be sure, the pace of decision-making has been sped up, as it has elsewhere, by Blackberries, and a small number of services are delivered online. But these services are still based around their offline equivalents, and usually aim simply at cutting the costs associated with their delivery by moving online. While this will continue to be a key motivation for the digitisation of government, other more fundamental developments are set to take place which will herald new online-only services, and which will encourage radical decentralisation of power.The first part of this paper will look at the private sector's experience over the past decade for clues as to why the public sector has moved relatively slowly, and likely directions of development in coming years. We will also here present evidence from our own forecasts of the likely narrowing of the digital divide. The next two sections will then deal with future developments in more detail, firstly looking at ICT's future role in welfare service delivery, and secondly at the ways in which it might be used for greater citizen engagement, and the reshaping of power structures that will result from this. The final section will examine some conflicts that arise from this reorientation away from the centre.     

The Bolivian Social Investment Fund: An Analysis of Baseline Data for Impact Evaluation

The Bolivian Social Investment Fund (SIF) is a financial institutionthat promotes sustainable investments in the social sectors,principally in the areas of health, education, and sanitation.This article shows how to use preintervention data collectedfor evaluating the SIF to improve the targeting of a program,to test the quality of the evaluation design, and to definecorrective measures if necessary. It finds that among SIF interventionsthe benefits in education are distributed relatively equallyover the population, while the investments in health and sanitationfavor better-off communities. The article contributes to the methods used to evaluate socialinvestment funds and similar programs. It compares two typesof evaluation designs to assess social investment fund interventionsin the education sector. The authors demonstrate that a simplematched-comparison design introduces a bias in the estimateof the program effect, whereas an experimental design basedon random assignment does not. With preintervention data, theanalyst can select a quasi or indirect experiment, where thechoice of the indirect experiment coincides with the selectionof valid instrumental variables. The availability of preinterventiondata makes it possible to compare the two types of evaluationdesigns as well as to test the validity of the instruments andto determine the loss of efficiency due to the use of quasi-experimentaltechniques instead of random treatment assignment.     

Analysing the correlation between social network analysis measures and performance of students in social network-based engineering education

Social network-based engineering education (SNEE) is designed and implemented as a model of Education 3.0 paradigm. SNEE represents a new learning methodology, which is based on the concept of social networks and represents an extended model of project-led education. The concept of social networks was applied in the real-life experiment, considering two different dimensions: (1) to organize the education process as a social network-based process; and (2) to analyze the students’ interactions in the context of evaluation of the students learning performance. The objective of this paper is to present a new model for students evaluation based on their behavior during the course and its validation in comparison with the traditional model of students’ evaluation. The validation of the new evaluation model is made through an analysis of the correlation between social network analysis measures (degree centrality, closeness centrality, betweenness centrality, eigenvector centrality, and average tie strength) and the grades obtained by students (grades for quality of work, grades for volume of work, grades for diversity of work, and final grades) in a social network-based engineering education. The main finding is that the obtained correlation results can be used to make the process of the students’ performance evaluation based on students interactions (behavior) analysis, to make the evaluation partially automatic, increasing the objectivity and productivity of teachers and allowing a more scalable process of evaluation. The results also contribute to the behavioural theory of learning performance evaluation. More specific findings related to the correlation analysis are: (1) the more different interactions a student had (degree centrality) and the more frequently the student was between the interaction paths of other students (betweenness centrality), the better was the quality of the work; (2) all five social network measures had a positive and strong correlation with the grade for volume of work and with the final grades; and (3) a student with high average tie strength had a higher grade for diversity of work than those with low ties.     

陕西软件龙头企业成长状况分析与对策研究

软件龙头企业在软件产业化经营中具有关键作用,文章对陕西软件龙头企业成长状况及其存在的问题与差距进行分析,探讨陕西软件龙头企业实现快速健康可持续发展的对策。     

Did the Health Card Program Ensure Access to Medical Care for the Poor during Indonesia's Economic Crisis?

The Indonesian Social Safety Net health card program was implementedin response to the economic crisis that hit Indonesia in 1997,to preserve access to health care services for the poor. Healthcards were allocated to poor households, entitling them to subsidizedcare from public health care providers. The providers receivedbudgetary support to compensate for the extra demand. This articlefocuses on the effect of the program on primary outpatient healthcare use, disentangling the direct effect of allocating healthcards from the indirect effect of government transfers to healthcare facilities. For poor health card owners the program resultedin a net increase in use of outpatient care, while for nonpoorhealth card owners the program resulted mainly in a substitutionfrom private to public health care. The largest effect of theprogram seems to have come from a general increase in the supplyof public services resulting from the budgetary support to publicproviders. These benefits seem to have been captured mainlyby the nonpoor. As a result, most of the benefits of the healthcard program went to the nonpoor, even though distribution ofthe health cards was propoor. The results suggest that had theprogram, in addition to targeting the poor, established a closerlink between provision of services to the target groups andfunding, the overall results would have been more propoor.