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The Calotropis procera leaves extract (CPLE) was investigated as a potential corrosion inhibitor for mild steel in HCl solution using the thermometric technique. The phytochemical screening showed that tannins, saponins, flavonoids, steroids glycosides, and resins were all present in the leaves extract. Results of this work reveal that corrosion rate of mild steel in HCl is proportionally related to the acid concentration. Additionally, it was also found that inhibition efficiency (%I) increased with the increase in the concentration of leaf extracts, which directly led to a decrease in corrosion reaction number. It was determined that an ethanolic extract of Calotropis procera may be a good candidate for preventing mild steel corrosion in an acidic environment owing to the significant number of phytochemical compounds that the extract contained, and its ability to achieve an inhibition efficiency of up to 82.99%.

Item does not contain fulltext OBJECTIVES: There is substantial variation in the classification and management of scapula fractures. The first purpose of this study was to analyze the interobserver reliability of the OTA/AO classification and the New International Classification for Scapula Fractures. The second purpose was to assess the proportion of agreement among orthopaedic surgeons on operative or nonoperative treatment. DESIGN: Web-based reliability study. SETTING: Independent orthopaedic surgeons from several countries were invited to classify scapular fractures in an online survey. PARTICIPANTS: One hundred three orthopaedic surgeons evaluated 35 movies of three-dimensional computerized tomography reconstruction of selected scapular fractures, representing a full spectrum of fracture patterns. MAIN OUTCOME MEASUREMENTS: Fleiss kappa (kappa) was used to assess the reliability of agreement between the surgeons. RESULTS: The overall agreement on the OTA/AO classification was moderate for the types (A, B, and C, kappa = 0.54) with a 71% proportion of rater agreement (PA) and for the 9 groups (A1 to C3, kappa = 0.47) with a 57% PA. For the New International Classification, the agreement about the intraarticular extension of the fracture (Fossa (F), kappa = 0.79) was substantial and the agreement about a fractured body (Body (B), kappa = 0.57) or process was moderate (Process (P), kappa = 0.53); however, PAs were more than 81%. The agreement on the treatment recommendation was moderate (kappa = 0.57) with a 73% PA. CONCLUSIONS: The New International Classification was more reliable. Body and process fractures generated more disagreement than intraarticular fractures and need further clear definitions. 01 maart 2014

At large financial institutions, operational risk is gaining the same importance as market and credit risk in the capital calculation. Although scenario analysis is an important tool for financial risk measurement, its use in the measurement of operational risk capital has been arbitrary and often inaccurate. We propose a method that combines scenario analysis with historical loss data. Using the Change of Measure approach, we evaluate the impact of each scenario on the total estimate of operational risk capital. The method can be used in stress-testing, what-if assessment for scenario analysis, and Loss Given Default estimates used in credit evaluations. INTRODUCTION Scenario analysis is an important tool in decision making. It has been used for several decades in various disciplines, including management, engineering, defense, medicine, finance, and economics. Mulvey and Erkan (2003) illustrate modeling of scenario data for risk management of a property-casualty insurance company. When properly and systematically used, scenario analysis can reveal many important aspects of a situation that would otherwise be missed. Given the current state of an entity, it tries to navigate situations and events that could impact important characteristics of the entity in the future. Thus, scenario analysis has two important elements: 1. Evaluation of future possibilities (future states) with respect to a certain characteristic. 2. Present knowledge (current states) of that characteristic for the entity. Scenarios must pertain to a meaningful duration of time, for the passage of time will ultimately render the scenarios obsolete. Also, the current state of an entity and the environment in which it operates give rise to various possibilities in the future. In management of market risk, scenarios also play an important role. Many scenarios on the future state of an asset are actively traded in the market and could be used for risk management. Derivatives such as call (or put) options on asset prices are linked to its possible future price. Suppose, for example, that Cisco (CSCO) is trading today at $23 in the spot (NASDAQ) market. In the option market, we find many different prices available as future possibilities. Each of these is a scenario for the future state of CSCO. The price for each option reflects the probability that the market attaches to CSCO attaining more (or less) than a particular price on (or before) a certain date in the future. As the market obtains more information, prices of derivatives change and our knowledge of the future state expands. In the language of asset pricing, more information on the future state is revealed. At one time, any risk for a financial institution that was not a market or credit risk was considered an operational risk. This definition of operational risk made data collection and measurement of operational risk intractable. To make it useful for measurement and management, Basel banking regulation narrowed the scope and definition of operational risk. Under this definition, operational risk is the risk of loss, whether direct or indirect, to which the Bank is exposed because of inadequate or failed internal processes or systems, human error, or external events. Operational risk includes legal and regulatory risk, business process and change risk, fiduciary or disclosure breaches, technology failure, financial crime, and environmental risk. It exists in some form in every business and function. Operational risk can cause not only financial loss, but also regulatory damage to the business' reputation, assets, and shareholder value. One may argue that at the core of most of the financial risk, one may be able to observe an operational risk. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (2011) report identifies many of the risks defined under operational risk as among the reasons for the recent financial meltdown. Therefore, it is an important financial risk to consider along with the market and credit risk. …

Against the background that domestic policies in Nigeria have been linked to an endemic - high, volatile and rising food prices in the country, this paper empirically examined the transmission of key monetary policy variables to domestic food prices in Nigeria. Furthermore, the study employed estimates of policy induced price changes from estimated cointegrating relations between commodity prices and policy variables, and demand elasticities from a system of household demand equations to estimate the associated compensating variation as a measure of the welfare impacts on farm households. The study found that government management of exchange rates and money supplies as well as withdrawal of subsidies from petroleum products have been the main driver of rising food prices in the country. While an average farmer was found to have benefited from the policy induced rising food prices with the mean compensated variation of -3.3% of the household budget, most of the farm households ended up being losers. The gainers were mostly owners of the relatively few large farms (-36.9%) including the commercial livestock farms (-38.9%), rice farm (-35.0%), and fish farms (-27.8%). Smallholders, which constituted about three-quarter of the farm households, lost on the average, about 8.1% of their purchasing power to the rising food prices, with female headed households also loosing 6.6% of their purchasing power.

Poultry production is largely faced with a number of risks. In this study, sources of risk, attitude of farmers towards risk, the determinants and risk management strategies adopted by farmers were examined. Primary data from 74 respondents were collected using cluster sampling method with the aid of a well-structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, composite analysis, safety first behavioural model and the censored Tobit model were the analytical tools employed. The most prevalent source of risk in the study area was fluctuation of input prices (75.3%) and the least encountered risk source was inefficiency of workers (12.2%). Average poultry egg farmer in the study area experienced at least one source of risk. The respondents were found to exhibit low risk aversion and risk-aversion was significantly increased by cost of labour, number of layers in battery cage system and number of layers in deep litter system. However, years in poultry farming and amount of credit received significantly reduced the risk aversion among the farmers. The most used risk management strategy was relaxation of pen before re-stocking them (97.3%). Farmers should be encouraged to insure their farms and extension services should be made readily available to farmers. Enabling policy environment towards an effective credit programme should be facilitated while attention should also be shifted towards protection of farmers against input price variations.

At large financial institutions, operational risk is gaining the same importance as market and credit risk in the capital calculation. Although scenario analysis is an important tool for financial risk measurement, its use in the measurement of operational risk capital has been arbitrary and often inaccurate. We propose a method that combines scenario analysis with historical loss data. Using the Change of Measure approach, we evaluate the impact of each scenario on the total estimate of operational risk capital. The method can be used in stress-testing, what-if assessment for scenario analysis, and Loss Given Default estimates used in credit evaluations.

Apprehension of risk induces certain behaviour into a farmer and this would grossly affect enterprise selection and consequently his resource use and allocation pattern. In this study, risk preferences of food crop farmers in Osun State were measured and efficient resource use and allocation patterns were modeled and suggested. Data from 165 farmers, obtained using a two-stage sampling procedure were used in the study. Analytical tools were descriptive statistics, Risk Behavioural Model (RBM) and Target Minimization of Total Absolute Deviation (T-MOTAD). Risk averse farmers were 144 representing 87.3 percent while the risk preferers were 21 representing 12.7 percent. However risk preference was higher among the males, farmers with larger farm sizes and smaller household sizes. Efficient utilization of labour and borrowed capital was discovered among the risk preferers than the risk averters; hence a significant difference existed in their returns (P< 0.01). It is recommended that farm management research and the extension packages should be channel to the farmers while considering the socio-economic environments that characterize their risk preferences.

Operational risk is being recognized as an important risk component for financial institutions as evinced by the large sums of capital that are allocated to mitigate this risk. Therefore, risk measurement is of paramount concern for the purposes of capital allocation, hedging, and new product development for risk mitigation. We perform a comprehensive evaluation of commonly used methods and introduce new techniques to measure this risk with respect to various criteria. We find that our newly introduced techniques perform consistently better than the other models we tested.

Return distributions in general and interest rates in particular have been observed to exhibit skewness and kurtosis that cannot be explained by the (log)normal distribution. Using g‐and‐h distribution we derived a closed‐form option pricing formula for pricing European options. We measured its performance using interest rate cap data and compared it with the option prices based on the lognormal, Burr‐3, Weibull, and GB2 distributions. We observed that the g‐and‐h distribution exhibited a high degree of accuracy in pricing options, much better than those other distributions in extracting probabilistic information from the option market.

In this paper we have studied the two-pion exchange three-nucleon potential $(2��E-3NP)$ using an approximate $SU(2) \times SU(2)$ chiral symmetry of the strong interaction. The off-shell pion-nucleon scattering amplitudes obtained from the Weinberg Lagangian are supplemented with contributions from the well-known $��$-term and the $��(1232)$ exchange. It is the role of the $��$-resonance in $2��E-3NP$, which we have investigated in detail in the framework of the Lagrangian field theory. The $��$-contribution is quite appreciable and, more significantly, it is dependent on a parameter Z which is arbitrary but has the empirical bounds $|Z| \leq 1/2$. We find that the $��$-contribution to the important parameters of the $2��E-3NP$ depends on the choice of a value for Z, although the correction to the binding energy of triton is not expected to be very sensitive to the variation of Z within its bounds., 14 pages, LaTex

This article 'Agrophysiological Differences Between Deepwater Rice (DWR) and Rainfed Lowland Modern Variety (MV) Under Farmers' Field Conditions' appeared in the International Rice Research Newsletter series, created by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). The primary objective of this publication was to expedite communication among scientists concerned with the development of improved technology for rice and for rice based cropping systems. This publication will report what scientists are doing to increase the production of rice in as much as this crop feeds the most densely populated and land scarce nations in the world.

Background: Apical Membrane antigen 1 (AMA-1) is positioned on the surface of merozoite and it may play a role in attack to red blood cells. The mainaim of present study was to determine the genetic variation, as well as, to detect of selection at domain I of AMA-1 gene Plasmodium vivax isolates in Iran. Methods: Blood samples were collected from 58 patients positive for P. vivax,mono infection and the domain I of AMA-1 gene was amplified by nested PCR and then sequenced. Results: A total 33 different haplotypes were identified among 58 Iranian sequences.The 23 new haplotypes were determined in this study that was not reported previously in other regions of the world. There were totally observed 36 point mutations at the nucleotide level in the analyzed sequences. Sequences analyses indicated 25 amino acid changes at 20 positions in which 5 sites demonstrated thrimorphic polymorphism and the others were dimorphic in the domain I of the Iranian PvAMA-1 isolates. Conclusion: Our findings indicated relatively high level of allelic diversity at the domain I of PvAMA-1 among P.vivax isolates of Iran. Since, PvAMA-1 is considering as vaccine candidate antigen, these data provide valuable information for the development of a PvAMA-1 based malaria vaccine.

Background: The study of their knowledge, attitude, and behavior toward health is an essential step for health planning. In the urban area, there are several concerns about environmental pollution, health status, the dangers of insecurity, and bad dietary habits. The aim of the study was the determination of knowledge, attitude, and behavior of Tehran citizens in order to plan better municipal services. Methods: This descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted on 13000 participants between 15-84 years in 22 districts of Tehran, Iran University of Medical Sciences, in August and September of 2011. Cluster sampling and self-administered reliable and valid questionnaire were used for data gathering. The inclusion criteria are all of citizens of Tehran. Age, sex, marital and job status, obesity, physical activity, hypertension, myocardial infarction, accidents, diabetes, nutrition, stroke, psychological behavior, smoking, addiction and drugs, musculoskeletal, sexual behavior, anemia, physical environment, fat blood, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, dietary habits and socioeconomic status were measured under standard protocols and by using calibrated instruments. Results: From 13000 participants in the study, 11753 (90%) was fulfilled the questioners. Nonresponse rate from 11753 participants was 8.6%. The proportion of obesity/overweight was 50% and 29.5% of people had appropriate physical exercise, 37.6% reported a tobacco consumer in their family and 4.5% reported an experience of substance misuse. Also, 29.2% and 24.8% from these had anomalistic consuming of salt and soft drink, respectively. Of the participants, 44.8%, 89.1% had a good knowledge and attitude, respectively. Cronbach alpha coefficient was 0.82 and 0.79 for knowledge, attitude and behavior, respectively. In additional, the correlation coefficient between test and re-test questions was 0.91. Conclusion: This study was a comprehensive study to measure the knowledge, attitude and practice of Tehran citizens using reliable and valid questionnaires about general health status. A considerable percentage of Tehran citizens suffering from overweight, obesity, hypertension, diabetes, high blood lipids and smoking consuming and using anomalistic from TV and computer. The results can be used as a framework and guide to prioritize problems and planning health education interventions in Tehran