The instability of international financial markets, as exhibited by persistent periodic crises, is an important issue for all market participants. This paper presents an alternative agent-based network theory of financial crises derived from recent developments in complexity science, and applies it to short-term currency crises. The theory, despite being parsimonious, is capable of generating c...

Brazil is the most decentralized country in the developing world. It has a long history of federalism and decentralization, and has become considerably more decentralized over the last two decades. By 1995, state and local governments together accounted for nearly 60 percent of public consumption (Ter-Minassian, 1997: 438). In comparison with other developing countries, the Brazilian states als...

Since Dr David Nabarro was appointed Representative of the Director-General for Health Action in Crises in July 2003, the work of his team has hardly been out of the headlines and their web site http://www.who.int/hac/en/ has become an important source of comprehensive health information on crisis-hit regions. In the last 18 months, WHO has responded to more than 12 major health crises across t...

After more than three decades of preoccupation with wars and internal political conflicts, the humanitarian community has the opportunity to reevaluate what humanitarian crises will dominate both policy and practice in the future. In reality, these crises are already active and some are over the tipping point of recovery. These crises share the common thread of being major public health emergen...

Actinopterygians (ray-finned fishes) successfully passed through four of the big five mass extinction events of the Phanerozoic, but the effects of these crises on the group are poorly understood. Many researchers have assumed that the Permo-Triassic mass extinction (PTME) and end-Triassic extinction (ETE) had little impact on actinopterygians, despite devastating many other groups. Here, two m...

A monoclonal antibody (LICR.LON.R10) specific for the major sialoglycoprotein of the erythroid cell membrane, glycophorin A (alpha), has been used to test the possibility that "cryptic" erythroleukemia may be diagnosed as acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) or acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML). In addition to 27 overt erythroleukemias, 724 leukemias, including 329 ALL (103 in relapse), 205 AML, ...

This paper addresses current problems of democratic instability in continental Latin America, assuming that all its countries have been at least “minimalist” democracies during the years 2000–07. To identify essential factors leading to instability, it focuses on the countries’ most recent and acute political crises. It considers two periods in the post–cold war years: 1992–99 and 2000–07. The ...

Painless and painful crises are common phenomena in sickle cell crises. People with Sickle Cell Disorder (SCD) do experience both chronic and acute pain throughout life. The painful crisis is unpleasant with wide variation in intensity, quality, duration and persistence. It accounts for over 60% of hospital admissions in any given year of persons affected with SCD. Little attempt has been made ...

The growing interconnections among societies have facilitated the emergence of systemic crises, i.e., shocks that rapidly spread around world and cause major disruptions. Advances in interdisciplinary field complexity can help understand mechanisms underpinning crises. This article reviews most important concepts findings from pertinent literature. It demonstrates an understanding nature disrup...

Can we improve forecasts of currency crises by using a large number of predictors? Which economic variables are most important to predict currency crises? This paper evaluates the performance of traditional Leading Indicators and a new Diffusion Index (DI) method as Early Warning Systems to monitor the risk and forecast the likelihood of the recent currency crises in East-Asia. We find that, re...