Oil Exporters to the Euro's Rescue?

Energy-exporting countries have more at risk than any other participant in the world economy if the euro crisis plunges Europe into recession. These countries would likely experience greater losses in 2012 should Europe fail. Oil and natural gas prices would plummet, and the price collapse would likely be larger than the 2008–09 decline. Energy-exporting countries therefore should be working feverishly with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union to rescue the euro. They, along with China and other large holders of foreign exchange reserves, should lend to the IMF to help it construct an emergency lending facility with capacity of more than €1 trillion. The fund, administered by the IMF, would be used to buy bonds issued by Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland. The goal should be to bring interest rates on long-term bonds down to 3 percent. Simultaneously, efforts should be redoubled to fix the economic problems in the troubled nations and restore balance to their budgets. An energy price collapse would increase disruptions in energy-exporting countries, promote economic ills in some consuming nations, such as Canada, and almost certainly start yet a third, even more violent, economic cycle.

Using US Strategic Reserves to Moderate Potential Oil Price Increases from Sanctions on Iran

The new, draconian sanctions introduced by the United States and the European Union to prevent Iran from earning money from its crude oil exports could pose a serious economic threat to oil-importing countries that also trade heavily with the US and EU economies. Nations such as China, South Korea, and Japan, which obtain significant amount of oil from Iran while enjoying large trade surpluses with the United States, are justifiably anxious. These countries and others worry that by pushing Iran from the global crude market, the new US and EU sanctions will disrupt oil markets, increase crude prices, and further slow global economic growth, which, at a minimum, would cut their export revenues. Saudi Arabia and other members of the Oil and Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have indicated they would replace oil previously purchased from Iran, but these offers have done little to allay the apprehensions. Verleger suggests a way to put real pressure on Iran while moderating or eliminating economic fallout for the US and EU economies and those of their trading partners: selling oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which now holds far more oil than required by treaty obligations—more than 280 million surplus barrels. This strategic use of the SPR will increase the effectiveness of sanctions on Iran and ease the adjustment difficulties that confront US allies. The sales might also reduce any price pressure caused by removal of light Iranian crude from the market.

Lateral-torsional Buckling of Ferritic Stainless Steel Beams in Case of Fire

audience: researcherThis work presents a numerical study of the behaviour of ferritic stainless steel Ibeams subjected to lateral-torsional buckling and compares the obtained results with the beam design curves of Eurocode 3. New formulae, for the lateraltorsional buckling, that approximate better the real behaviour of ferritic stainless steel structural elements in case of fire are proposed. These new formulae were based on numerical simulations using the program SAFIR, which was modified to take into account the material properties of the stainless steel

Kinematic studies of transport across an island wake, with application to the Canary islands

ArXiv pre-print: http://arxiv.org/abs/nlin/0605051.-- Final full-text version of the paper available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0870.2006.00199.x.Transport from nutrient-rich coastal upwellings is a key factor influencing biological activity in surrounding waters and even in the open ocean. The rich upwelling in the North-Western African coast is known to interact strongly with the wake of the Canary islands, giving rise to filaments and other mesoscale structures of increased productivity. Motivated by this scenario, we introduce a simplified two-dimensional kinematic flow describing the wake of an island in a stream, and study the conditions under which there is a net transport of substances across the wake. For small vorticity values in the wake, it acts as a barrier, but there is a transition when increasing vorticity so that for values appropriate to the Canary area, it entrains fluid and enhances cross-wake transport.M.S. and U.F. would like to acknowledge the financial support by the DFG grant FE 359/7-1(2003). E.H-G. and C.L. acknowledge financial support from MEC (Spain) and FEDER through project CONOCE2 (FIS2004-00953). Both groups have benefited from a MEC-DAAD joint program. C.L. is a Ramón y Cajal fellow of the Spanish MEC

Eye blink correction: a test on the preservation of common ERP components using a regression based technique

Eye blinks are a pervasive problem in electroencephalography research as they contaminate the brain signal. This paper tests the merits of a software tool employing the regression-based Gratton method that claims to remove the detrimental effects of the eye blink and leaves the activity of the brain. The efficacy of the correction tool was tested on five common stimulus-locked Event Related Potential (ERP) components used in a standard Go/Nogo task. Results suggested that the ‘corrected’ data could be predicted from data containing no eye blinks, suggesting the tool does not distort the data to great extent. This effect was found significant for all components, except for the P3. The conclusion is that this tool distorts the data at acceptable levels, yet caution should be taken when interpreting later components, like the P3

Slowing of Mask-Triggered Inhibition in the Elderly

A commentary on Inhibitory motor control in old age: evidence for de-automatization? by Maylor, E. A., Birak, K. S., and Schlaghecken (2011). Front. Psychol. 2:132. doi: 10.3389/ fpsyg.2011.00132 Maylor et al.’s (2011) study combines the Simon effect, a well-investigated manipulation, with the masked-priming technique. This is an original idea, and the study was competently performed. This interesting approach provides new evidence about changes of response control in old age. The impact of this paper might be further improved if alternative account

Institutional Design under Windfall Conditions: the North Sea

The 1959 discovery of oil and gas in the North Sea provides the analyst with an opportunity to observe the design of institutions governing the extraction of natural resources. Three states - the UK, the Netherlands and Norway - all industrialized, constitutional monarchies, faced significant political, economic and technical challenges in managing their new-found resources. All three states shared similar histories and yet designed different institutions to govern the extraction process. The wide variation creates a most similar systems comparison, lending itself to guided, constructed qualitative analysis. This analysis shows that regime preferences, domestic demand and international prices are significant variables in explaining the choice of level of state participation in the extraction proces

Genetic contribution to the P3 in young and middle-aged adults.

Previous studies in young and adolescent twins suggested substantial genetic contributions to the amplitude and latency of the P3 evoked by targets in an oddball paradigm. Here we examined whether these findings can be generalized to adult samples. A total of 651 twins and siblings from 292 families participated in a visual oddball task. In half of the subjects the age centered around 26 (young adult cohort), in the other half the age centered around 49 (middle-aged adult cohort). P3 peak amplitude and latency were scored for 3 midline leads Pz, Cz, and Fz. No cohort differences in heritability were found. P3 amplitude (∼50%) and latency (∼45%) were moderately heritable for the 3 leads. A single genetic factor influenced latency at all electrodes, suggesting a single P3 timing mechanism. Specific genetic factors influenced amplitude at each lead, suggesting local modulation of the P3 once triggered. Genetic analysis of the full event-related potential waveform showed that P3 heritability barely changes from about 100 ms before to 100 ms after the peak. Age differences are restricted to differences in means and variances, but the proportion of genetic variance as part of the total variance of midline P3 amplitude and latency does not change from young to middle-aged adulthood