Issue 15: Economic Precarity among Syrian Refugee Families Living in Lebanon: Policy Recommendations to Restore Hope in the Context of Displacement

The conflict in Syria has been described as the largest humanitarian crisis to date. Ongoing for over eight years, the conflict has resulted in over five million refugees and 6.6 million people internally displaced within the borders of Syria. Most refugees from Syria have been displaced to neighbouring countries such as Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, and Lebanon. Lebanon is host to over one million Syrian refugees. Prior to the Syrian crisis, Lebanon was struggling economically, which has since exacerbated anti-refugee sentiment and government policies that aim to discourage Syrians from seeking refuge in Lebanon. Within Lebanon, Syrian families are challenged with high rates of poverty, restrictive governmental policies and regulations, a lack of affordable housing and health care, food insecurity, and family violence. These challenges have a destabilizing effect on Syrian families, impacting the mental health of parents as well as their ability to meet their families’ basic needs. This policy brief draws on research conducted with Syrian families in Lebanon to highlight policy points to address the impacts of economic precarity on the health and well-being of Syrian families. The lessons drawn from this research can be applied both within areas of displacement and in post-resettlement settings where issues of economic precarity can often persist

The microflown : a true particle velocity microphone; sound intensity application

The Microflown is world's first particle velocity microphone that enables numerous new acoustical applications, due to the combination of its unique acoustical performance and small dimensions. Several patents have been granted since its invention in 1994. This abstract will focus on one application: sound intensity measurements. The direct measurement of particle velocity makes it possible to measure sound intensity in one place. The advantage of this is that the complete audio band can be measured at once now, in the near field, far field and also both in reactive and nonreactive fields. With the use of the Microflown, the realisation of very small three dimensional sound intensity probes will become feasible soon. Some background information of the microflown concerning the manufacturing, signal and noise properties and preamplifiers will be presented

A particle velocity sensor to measure the sound from a structure in the presence of background noise

The performance (or quality) of a product is often checked by measuring the radiated sound (noise) from the vibrating structure. Often this test has to be done in an environment with background noise, which makes the measurement difficult. When using a (pressure) microphone the background noise can be such that it dominates the radiated sound from the vibrating structure. However, when using a particle velocity sensor, the Microflown [1,2], near the vibrating structure, the background noise has almost no influence (it is almost cancelled) and the sound from the structure is measured with a good S/N ratio. The experimental results are explained in terms of the different boundary conditions at the surface of the vibrating structure for the pressure and the particle velocity

Testing for financial crashes using the Log Periodic Power Law mode

A number of papers claim that a Log Periodic Power Law (LPPL) fitted to financial market bubbles that precede large market falls or 'crashes', contain parameters that are confined within certain ranges. The mechanism that has been claimed as underlying the LPPL, is based on influence percolation and a martingale condition. This paper examines these claims and the robustness of the LPPL for capturing large falls in the Hang Seng stock market index, over a 30-year period, including the current global downturn. We identify 11 crashes on the Hang Seng market over the period 1970 to 2008. The fitted LPPLs have parameter values within the ranges specified post hoc by Johansen and Sornette (2001) for only seven of these crashes. Interestingly, the LPPL fit could have predicted the substantial fall in the Hang Seng index during the recent global downturn. We also find that influence percolation combined with a martingale condition holds for only half of the pre-crash bubbles previously reported. Overall, the mechanism posited as underlying the LPPL does not do so, and the data used to support the fit of the LPPL to bubbles does so only partially.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figure