Volatility and correlations for stock markets in the emerging economies

This paper examines the European investment implications of the recent European Union (EU) expansion to encompass former Eastern bloc economies. What are the risk and return characteristics of these markets pre- and post-EU? What are the implications for investors within the Euro zone? Should investors diversify outside the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? The former Eastern bloc economies constitute emerging markets which typically offer attractive risk-adjusted returns for international investors. In this paper, we explore a number of aspects of this important issue and their implications for CEE based investors, culminating in a Markowitz efficient frontier analysis of these markets pre- and post-EU expansion.Emerging Markets; European Union; Portfolio investment

Innovations in Pedriatic Cradiopulmonary Bypass: a continuous process of quality improvement

Cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) is defined as a technique that temporarily replaces the function of the heart and lungs, maintaining an adequate blood circulation and oxygen content of the body during surgery of the heart and great vessels. The current practice of cardiopulmonary bypass was achieved through the efforts of a numbers of individuals who believed that artificial cardiopulmonary support could replace the body’s own circulatory and respiratory systems. Collaborative efforts of physiologists, chemists, physicists, engineers, and physicians led to design and development of synthetic devices that could effectively sustain patients who required corrective surgical procedures of treatable lesions of the heart, lungs or other vital organs. In 1937, Gibbon reported the first successful total cardiopulmonary bypass of an animal (cat) with the use of heparin, a Dale-Schuster-type pump, and a vertical rotating cylinder oxygenator. However, it was not until 1951 that cardiopulmonary bypass was applied in a patient, enabling an unobstructed view of intracardiac lesions. In Minneapolis on the 5th of April 1951, Dennis and his associates performed the first total cardiopulmonary bypass in a 6-year old patient with an endocardial cushion defect. Unfortunately, the patient coul