The behavior of the spread between Treasury bill rates and private money market rates since 1978

An abstract for this article is not available.Money market ; Interest rates

Where does good evidence come from?

This paper started as a debate between the two authors. Both authors present a series of propositions about quality standards in education research. Cook’s propositions, as might be expected, concern the importance of experimental trials for establishing the security of causal evidence, but they also include some important practical and acceptable alternatives such as regression discontinuity analysis. Gorard’s propositions, again as might be expected, tend to place experimental trials within a larger mixed method sequence of research activities, treating them as important but without giving them primacy. The paper concludes with a synthesis of these ideas, summarising the many areas of agreement and clarifying the few areas of disagreement. The latter include what proportion of available research funds should be devoted to trials, how urgent the need for more trials is, and whether the call for more truly mixed methods work requires a major shift in the community

Interest rate expectations and the slope of the money market yield curve

An examination of the relationship between yield and maturity in the money market. The expectations theory suggests that the yield curve should be a good predictor of future spot interest rates. A substantial body of research in recent years has tested this implication of the theory and discussed possible reasons for the lack of support for the theory from these tests. This paper provides a review of this literature.Interest rates

Projection Pursuit for Exploratory Supervised Classification

In high-dimensional data, one often seeks a few interesting low-dimensional projections that reveal important features of the data. Projection pursuit is a procedure for searching high-dimensional data for interesting low-dimensional projections via the optimization of a criterion function called the projection pursuit index. Very few projection pursuit indices incorporate class or group information in the calculation. Hence, they cannot be adequately applied in supervised classification problems to provide low-dimensional projections revealing class differences in the data . We introduce new indices derived from linear discriminant analysis that can be used for exploratory supervised classification.Data mining, Exploratory multivariate data analysis, Gene expression data, Discriminant analysis

Treasury bill versus private money market yield curves

An abstract for this article is not availableMoney market ; Treasury bills ; Interest rates

The spatial ecology of free-ranging domestic pigs (Sus scrofa) in western Kenya

Background In many parts of the developing world, pigs are kept under low-input systems where they roam freely to scavenge food. These systems allow poor farmers the opportunity to enter into livestock keeping without large capital investments. This, combined with a growing demand for pork, especially in urban areas, has led to an increase in the number of small-holder farmers keeping free range pigs as a commercial enterprise. Despite the benefits which pig production can bring to a household, keeping pigs under a free range system increases the risk of the pig acquiring diseases, either production-limiting or zoonotic in nature. This study used Global Positioning System (GPS) technology to track free range domestic pigs in rural western Kenya, in order to understand their movement patterns and interactions with elements of the peri-domestic environment. Results We found that these pigs travel an average of 4,340 m in a 12 hr period and had a mean home range of 10,343 m2 (range 2,937–32,759 m2) within which the core utilisation distribution was found to be 964 m2 (range 246–3,289 m2) with pigs spending on average 47% of their time outside their homestead of origin. Conclusion These are the first data available on the home range of domestic pigs kept under a free range system: the data show that pigs in these systems spend much of their time scavenging outside their homesteads, suggesting that these pigs may be exposed to infectious agents over a wide area. Control policies for diseases such as Taenia solium, Trypanosomiasis, Trichinellosis, Toxoplasmosis or African Swine Fever therefore require a community-wide focus and pig farmers require education on the inherent risks of keeping pigs under a free range system. The work presented here will enable future research to incorporate movement data into studies of disease transmission, for example for the understanding of transmission of African Swine Fever between individuals, or in relation to the life-cycle of parasites including Taenia solium

Placer mining in Alaska II

During July, August and September, 1979, a team from the Mineral Industry Research Laboratory visited a number of placer mining districts that could be reached by automobile, hence at a reasonable cost for transportation. These districts yielded varying amounts of information that will be of value to the industry. The district visited were: 1. Fairbanks, 2. Circle (Birch Creak), 3. Livengood (Tolovana), 4. Manley Hot Springs, 5. Fortymile, 6. Klondike, 7. Kantishna, 8. Yentna.University of Alaska Mining and Mineral Resources Research Institute.Placer mining in Alaska II -- Selected references -- List of figures

The behavior of the spread between Treasury bill rates and private money market rates since 1978

An abstract for this article is not available.Money market ; Interest rates