Trend Analysis

The National Press presents a simplistic explanation that it is the ageing population which accounts for rising health care demand. However, growth in the proportion of admissions aged 75+ in different specialties shows seemingly inexplicable very wide variation, and is characterized by non-linear and sometimes cyclic trends over time. Other studies have shown that age at first admission (for those aged 60+) increases in line with life expectancy. The question is posed regarding the role of infectious agents in these trends. Everyone will be well aware of the ageing population or the demographic shift and that the increase in admissions, A&E attendances and costs are often blamed on 'the ageing population'.

This paper will review the current state of both biological and non-biological nanotechnology and will predict the near future of this technology using physical and economic forecasting methods. Nanotechnology is defined as the precise manipulation of matter under 1 micrometer.

There is considerable concern in Europe that soil organic matter (SOM) contents are declining, which would threaten both agriculture and the environment. We performed a trend analysis of SOM contents in sandy soils, using historic data from routine agricultural soil analyses. Data were selected from grass, grass-maize rotation and maize fields in four adjacent provinces that had been sampled four to five times during the period 1984–2004. Absolute (at least 1%) and relative changes (SOMt=20/SOMt=0) were calculated and regressed against initial SOM contents. Mean SOM content showed a north-south gradient per cropping system. We found no single uniform trend in SOM contents for any of the three systems. Over the 20-year period, SOM declined in c. 25% of all grasslands, amounting to 185 000 of the 635 000 hectares of land under grass and forage crops in the four provinces, and increased in a total of 267 000 hectares. Carbon accumulation in grassland sandy soils was calculated at 39 g C m−2 year−1 (top 5 cm). For the grasslands, initial SOM contents were linearly and negatively related to absolute changes in SOM; the relation with the relative change was best explained by using log-transformed values of SOM. We conclude that in grassland soils in the Netherlands, conservation of SOM requires identification of high-risk fields rather than high-risk areas. For continuous maize on sandy soils, the entire area may be denoted as high-risk, because all fields could reach the critical limit of 3.4% SOM in the near future.

This paper empirically analyses the trend of Islamization in Malaysia using the Islamization Index as an indicator to determine whether the time series dataset of the Islamization index possess deterministic trends or stochastic properties. The result determines the appropriateness of the employment of the Islamization index as a proxy of Islam in the empirical study of Islam and economic performance such as economic growth and development, and not as a spurious relation as in the case of the non-stationary stochastic trend.

Advances in information and communication technology are changing organisations, includ-ing those in educational settings. Old practices are being altered, and new practices, spaces and possibilities created. The changes are such that it is timely to consider whether our ...

O presente artigo pretende problematizar o desenvolvimento e o processo de consolidação dos Estudos de Tendências, enquanto área transversal com características transdisciplinares, que se desenvolveu em articulação com os conceitos e as práticas de áreas como os Estudos de Cultura. As várias perspectivas dos Estudos de Tendências e as suas diversas associações promovem um desenvolvimento disperso que se deve considerar e desconstruir, encontrando pontos em comum e práticas, ou perspectivas, distintas, com vista a uma maior coesão de conceitos e de metodologias. Neste sentido, importa apresentar um modelo de articulação para a identificação e a observação sistemáticas de tendências, no âmbito do estudo das mudanças ao nível da cultura e de mentalidades. Isto permite gerar um processo paralelo de análise cultural capaz de contribuir com as bases para a geração de soluções estratégicas para questões institucionais e sociais, numa nova abordagem ao nível da gestão da cultura.

Sutlej basin, a mountainous river basin is located in N-W Himalayan region. This basin has highest potential for hydropower generation as compared to other basins of Indus river system. Recent studies have revealed rise in mean annual surface temperature which will modify pattern of Sutlej river flow in this basin. The present paper has aimed for studying annual and seasonal patterns of river discharge at different gauging sites of Sutlej river basin (middle catchment), India. The study has been performed over three gauging sites, namely, Kasol, Sunni and Rampur located under different physiographic and climatic conditions. The daily historical records (1970-2010) of 41 years river discharge data have been employed for statistical analysis. The annual and seasonal Standardized Discharge Indices (SDI) has been derived in order to preserve uniformity and facilitate comparison between flows of Sutlej river at different sites. Mann-Kendall (MK) test, a non-parametric test method, has been applied to detect trend in annual and seasonal SDI for periods 1970-2010. Decadal (annual and seasonal) patterns in SDI have also been discussed. The results of annual and seasonal trend analysis have revealed decreasing trends in SDI at all the gauging sites. The trend in annual SDI is statistically significant (95% confidence level) at Rampur (0.04 cumec/year) and insignificant at Kasol (0.02 cumec/year) and Sunni (0.01 cumec/year) respectively. The study of annual decadal change in SDI at all the sites shows that reduction in river discharge has occurred in the decade of 2001-2010. Before this, continuous rise in annual discharge has been reported at all the sites from decades 1970-1980 to the last decade of 20th century (1991-2000). The decline in river flow may affect agriculture and electricity production as well as there may be problem related with drinking water. The present study is expected to be useful for planning water resources related projects that can be undertaken in the Sutlej basin.

The Air Quality Index (AQI) is an index for reporting daily air quality. A study on the annual and seasonal variations of Air Quality Index over a period of 9 years (1996–2004) based on daily averaged concentration data of criteria air pollutants has been conducted for Delhi. An attempt has been made to quantify the changes in the AQI on annual and seasonal (winter, summer, monsoon and post monsoon) basis for 9 years. Measurements for the seven monitoring sites (Nizamuddin, Ashok Vihar, Shahzada Baug, Shahadara, Janakpuri, Sirifort and ITO) in Delhi were analysed and trends were also compared amongst these sites. Maximum Operator Function method was used to compute the Air Quality Index of the above areas and percentage variations in different severity class is discussed which provides in depth analysis of the trends. The best air quality was depicted by Shahzada Baug followed by Shahdara, both of these were classified as industrial areas indicating that policy measures relating to ...

This document synthesizes the findings of case studies of career guidance and advice for adults in the European Union. Section 1 examines the problems of helping the following groups: marginalized individuals in need of vocational or social (re)integration; individuals in the process of becoming marginalized, individuals who appear to be "problem free"; and groups adversely affected by the economic recession. The case study findings pertinent to the issue of facilitating adults' social, personal, and/or occupational transitions are detailed in section 2. Special attention is paid to facilitating vocational integration, encouraging self-esteem and determination, teaching adults to network, helping adults make the best use of what they have learned, and helping adults reacquire a social role and reintegrate into temporary or permanent settings. Section 3 presents the following institutional solutions to the problems of personalizing help, advice, and guidance and offerin...

The analysis of relation between student performance and other variables in education setting is often useful in identifying influential factors on performance. Consequently, the need for adopting an effective tool to process these big data has risen. The analysis of big data will transform passive data into useful information. Data mining is referred to an analytic process designed that discovers data patterns and relationships between datasets. In this study, clustering is used to cluster student grade datasets to generate trend line clusters. The aim of the study is to assist lecturers and academic advisors to recognize the progress of their students.

This is a republish of the NASSCOM Emerge blog: A Macro economy view point by Shrikrishna Prakash, Saravu prior to September 2008 market collapse & USD 700B bailout. It has played out.

Scenario
Around 80% of foreign exchange/trade transactions is denominated in US dollars(USD) and a majority of these in crude oil import export. Crude being a lever to control USD flow (back to US), its rise impacts balance of payment for net crude oil importers, inflation and increase in cost of capital for business. Hence stocks discovering its prices to the re-adjusted EPS. In December 2007 realized time was not far off for business to chase funds and Private Equity (PE) and not the other way round.

Wall Street Outcomes
The heady day’s perceived profits in instruments, are now ill-liquid assets. To improve liquidity, earlier banks sought petro USD’s, some consolidated within Wall Street and others are filing for bankruptcy. About USD 450 billion of illiquid assets from various banks crept into Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae. Freddie & Fannie had to be bailed out by the US Federal Reserve(Fed). Fed released more than USD 250 billion in emergency funding. Fed has to clean up its balance sheet. New laws are being enacted giving treasury powers to create market for ill-liquid assets, buy and sell assets to tune of USD 700 billion.

OTC USD derivatives as an enabler ?
Most of USD’s are derivative positions and are traded on secretive OTC. As one of the steps to arrest the USD decline, central banks led by Fed in a synchronized manner went long on USD to the point of triggering short covering and shoring up USD. Central banks long positions were/are in the money. Globally, institutional investors who went long USD post the short squeeze upsurge, will feel the long squeeze when the intervention impact reduces and USD starts depreciating. This will make them square off and take on losses. (Read from central banks, as the coordinated entities would have booked profits at USD highs and positioned to buy at lower levels).

USA’s borrowings are denominated in home currency and the above process will assist in shoring up current assets in Fed’s balance sheet helping even out the ill-liquid assets. The reduction in OTC leveraged USD and a better Fed balance sheet enables printing USD in large quantity, controlling inflationary pressures- strategic in the world order. The consumption story will continue.

Possibilities
As the effect of coordinated intervention reduces, the USD is expected to weaken. If countries consume more USD’s, it will help ease the equation, else crude will continue to remain as a lever.

If Fed’s balance sheet gets cleaned up with no great inflationary effect, USD could get stronger. However to reach that state, the implementation of new monetary framework will have the affect of a “Manthan”, a sanskrit word for churning of the ocean to obtain nectar, when consumed attains immortality.

India over the next 18–24 months is expected to reduce crude import to an extent of 40%, a result of increasing production from KG-D6 block. On this materializing, equivalent USD’s will find its way back, assuming India’s orders for importing nuclear reactors & ancillaries will not off-set the reduction. Industrialist Mr. Godrej believes India has the potential to be a net exporter aswell. All these means the RBI may build USD reserves helping maintain USD 80–20 balance. The rupee’s (INR) movement depends on above equation, ECB, FII money flows and the existing flow dynamics.

Closing Comments
USA on its part will manoeuvre back to maintain world order and invent new “alpha seeking opportunities”. “Manthan’s” impact on India, its domestic story in healthcare, materials, industrial’s, infrastructure, financial services and software product space will be keenly watched.

Disclaimer: Views expressed here are personal.

This study shows the changing trend of the significant climatic variable with crop productivity (1970-2018). Sylhet district was selected as a study area. Mann-Kendall and Sen's Slope methods have been used for the trend analysis. A decrease of Aus yield at-1100.75 M. tons per year and an increase of Aman and Boro yield at a rate of 11028.56 M. tons and 22691.33 M. tons per year. No trend was shown for Wheat yield over time. An increasing trend of maximum and minimum temperature in the four-crop growing season (Aus, Aman, Boro, and Wheat) was 0.05 °C, 0.04 °C, 0.04 °C, 0.04 °C, and 0.016 °C, 0.02 °C, 0.04 °C, 0.04 °C per year respectively. Rainfall decreased to-0.04 mm,-0.03 mm, and-0.004 mm per year in Aus, Aman, and Wheat season while increasing slightly at 0.001 mm per year in Boro season. Relative humidity decreased to-0.004% and-0.03% per year in Aus and Aman season while increasing at 0.03% and 0.06% per in Boro and Wheat season. Cloud cover showed an increasing trend while wind speed provides decreasing trend in all four-crop growing seasons. The river water level also showed a decreasing trend. Finally, the changing pattern of climatic factors was profoundly fluctuating and not favorable for better crop production. Agriculture in Bangladesh is under pressure both from growing requests for food and from issues of farming area and water resources depletion. The chance of global climate change makes the issue particularly earnest.

There are now over six million students in the USA taking at least one online course 31 percent of all students in the USA (public, private and for-profit) are now taking at least one course online Since 2003, online enrollments have grown by 358 percent However, since 2003, the proportion of respondents who agree that their faculty ‘fully accept’ the ‘value and legitimacy of online education’ has edged up from 30.4 percent to just 32 percent One-third of all academic leaders continue to believe that the learning outcomes for online education are inferior to those of face-to-face instruction. Academic leaders at institutions with online offerings have a much more favorable opinion of the relative learning outcomes for online courses than do those at institutions with no online courses or programs. 65 percent of all reporting institutions said that online learning was a critical part of their long-term strategy, a small increase from 63 percent in 2010. For-profit institutions are th...

Despite the prominence of work-based training in British national policy debate, published statistics fail to give solid data on training volume or quality. The Labor Force Survey, commonly used to give a picture of increasing training, shows proportions of training over any 4-week period rose from 10.8 percent in 1985 to 15.2 percent in 1994. Closer analysis indicates that, spread over all employees, average time spent on off-the-job training was 39 minutes per week per employee in 1985 and 40 minutes in 1994. Use of proxy interviewing techniques makes reliability of the participation rate questionable. Current surveys provide little useful information about trends in training quality and none about trends in training sponsorship. Proposed typologies of training are based on training quantity, quality, and sponsorship. To develop this proposition, two surveys have been conducted--one focused on individuals, the other on employing organizations--to examine the quantity and quality o...

The growing demand for link bandwidth and node capacity is a frequent phenomenon in IP network backbones. Within this context, traffic prediction is essential for the network operator. Traffic prediction can be undertaken based on link traffic or on origin-destination (OD) traffic which presents better results. This work investigates a methodology for traffic prediction based on multidimensional OD traffic, focusing on the stage of short-term traffic prediction using Principal Components Analysis as a technique for dimensionality reduction and a Local Linear Model based on K-means as a technique for prediction and trend analysis. The results validated with data on a real network present a satisfactory margin of error for use in practical situations.

The state of workplace literacy in the United States was reviewed, and future challenges facing workplace literacy programs given projected economic and demographic changes were examined. First, statistical information from 121 workplace literacy program reports entered into the ERIC database between 1990 and 1993 was synthesized in an analysis of the following: program organization and target clientele, program goals, curriculum and materials, and program complexity. Next, selected workplace literacy programs were profiled in the context of existing policy guidelines for federally funded workplace literacy programs. Special emphasis was placed on curriculum approaches, commitment of school and business partners, and program evaluation methods. The implications of demographic and national/global economic trends economies for the provision of workplace literacy programs were analyzed. Finally, the following promising new developments in workplace literacy programs were described: pay...

Smokeless tobacco (SLT) has long been realized as an important component of the fight for global tobacco control. It still remains a major problem in countries like India, Bangladesh and Nepal. The objective of this study was to estimate the trends of SLT use in three countries of the SEARO WHO office. We used data from national surveys in three countries (Bangladesh, India and Nepal) to estimate trends in prevalence of current SLT use. All available nationally representative data sources were used. Estimates were weighted, age standardized and given along with 95% confidence intervals. Significance of linear trend in prevalence over time was tested using the Cochrane-Armitage test for trend. A p value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. We identified three surveys for Bangladesh, three for India and four for Nepal that met the selection criteria (such as Demographic and Health Surveys, WHO-STEPwise approach to Surveillance and Global Adult Tobacco Surveys). ...

This book contains 13 papers examining topical issues in vocational education and training (VET) in Victoria, Australia. The following papers are included: "Vocational Education and Schooling: The Changing Scene" (Jane Kenway, Sue Willis, Peter Watkins, Karen Tregenza); "The Enterprise Approach" (James Mulraney); "VET Programs at James Harrison College" (John Bromilow); "'Great Organisations Dream Great Dreams" (David Gallagher); "An Investigation into the Impact of Mentoring Unemployment" (Barbara Hammond); "Issues Confronting Vocational Education in Victorian Schools in the Late 1990s" (Karen Tregenza, Jane Kenway, Peter Watkins); "Participant Pathways and Outcomes in Vocational Education and Training: 1992-95" (Peter Dwyer, Aramiha Harwood, Geoff Poynter, Johanna Wyn); "Paths to Pathways: Educational Pathways for Educationally Disadvantaged Young People" (Jennifer Angwin, Louise Laskey); "Enh...

The companion report to this volume, 'Blue collar and beyond: the experiences of non-English speaking background women in the Australian labour force', which may be found at TD/TNC 87.2044, was prepared to review the experiences of non-English speaking background (NESB) women in the Australian labour force and to examine the various available sources of information, with a particular focus on the value of qualitative and community-based research in addition to quantitative research data. This volume summarizes findings on specific issues and makes recommendations for policy and action. It is proposed that a strategic approach to the collection, processing, dissemination and availability of statistical data is needed in order to provide a clearer picture of NESB women's needs in the workplace, and that this will assist government agencies in developing an accurate information base in order to devise policy and programs to meets the needs of their NESB clients in an equita...

Given the central role which demand plays in the cost of health care Money Matters has recently been exploring the issues around forecasting demand.  Having been involved in health care planning for over 18 years I have serious reservations about the central assumption in NHS planning that demographic change or the ageing population is driving demand.. In this respect increases in accident & emergency (A&E) attendances which are far above that suggested by demography are a common international feature. Fig. 1 elegantly demonstrates the complete lack of demographic involvement in that the A&E trends for England over the past 30 years behave in a way which has more to do with wavelet analysis, i.e. recurring peaks and troughs, rather than any other form of recognisable trend.

Virtually every revolution in architecture has been preceded by a revolution in materials: think iron, glass, steel, concrete, plastics, or composites. What is the next revolutionary material that will reshape the very nature of architecture? A solid that's lighter than air, metal latticework so delicate it rests on a dandelion, building insulation made from processed seaweed, self-generating microbial glue that repairs cracks in concrete, or transparent solar panels?

Materials expert Blaine Brownell, author of our bestselling Transmaterial series, reveals emerging trends and applications that are transforming the technological capacity, environmental performance, and design potential of architecture in Transmaterial Next. This book is an essential compendium for thinking architects, designers, and other creative professionals passionate about materials and looking for their bleeding edge and practical implementation.