Without significant intervention, demand for crude oil could rise by a further 25% by 2035, stemming from its use for transportation, particularly road transport. Many technologies for alternative fuels and substitute transport energy carriers are being researched, but successful implementation of these technologies at scale will require attention to consumer-behavioural and policy challenges a...

Strategists call the successful launch of new, game-changing products like the iPhone “innovation shocks.” An innovation shock arises when the specific combination of an innovative product or service leads to a rapid rise in demand in that product or service category. It rocks an entire industry, leaving rival firms scrambling to figure out how to respond. Should rival firms faced with this fol...

In 2005 and 2006, the split-share structure reform converted the nontradable shares of most domestic public firms in China to tradable shares. This conversion imparted a drastic supply shock to the public market. Studying this unique event, we provide direct evidence to support an inelastic demand curve for stocks. Abnormal returns of the sample firms resulting from the reform are found to be n...

I analyze the impact of food price inflation on parental decisions to send their children to school. Moreover, I use the fact that food crop farmers and cotton farmers were exposed differently to that shock to estimate the income elasticity of school enrolment. The results suggest that the shock-induced loss in purchasing power had an immediate effect on enrolment rates. Instrumental variable e...

OBJECTIVE to evaluate the association between psychological demands, control over the work and the reduction of work ability of nursing professionals. METHOD this cross-sectional study involved 498 nursing professionals of a university hospital in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Data collection was carried out in 2009 using the Brazilian versions of the Work Ability Index and Job Stre...

In the eighteenth century the French surgeon Le Dran coined the term choc for soldiers suffering from severe traumatic injuries and heavy blood loss. Shock began appearing in the medical literature in the nineteenth century, and in 1872 the venerated trauma surgeon Samuel D. Gross defined shock as ‘‘the rude unhinging of the machinery of life.’’ Over the centuries the term shock became synonymo...

Effluent discharge from septic tanks is affecting the environment in developing countries. The most challenging issue facing these countries is the cost of inadequate sanitation, which includes significant economic, social, and environmental burdens. Although most sanitation facilities are evaluated based on their immediate costs and benefits, their long-term performance should also be investig...

What is so special about banks that their demise often triggers government intervention? In this paper we show that, even ignoring interconnectedness issues, the failure of a bank causes a larger welfare loss than the failure of other institutions. The reason is that agents in need of liquidity tend to concentrate their holdings in banks. Thus, a shock to banks disproportionately affects the ag...

The hemipteran (Insecta) diversity in the upper part of the Kerian River Basin was low with only 8 families and 16 genera recorded at 4 study sites from 3 rivers. Water bug composition varied among sampling sites (Kruskal-Wallis χ (2) = 0.00, p<0.05) but was not affected by wet-dry seasons (Z = 0.00, p>0.05). All recorded water parameters were weakly associated with generic abundance but the bi...

In this study, the ecological parameters of the effluent obtained from dyeing of scoured and mercerised organic cotton single jersey fabrics with textile reactive dyes adopting exhaust dyeing method was investigated. The dyes used include regular (Navacron H and FN) reactive dyes and low impact (Remazol and Levafix) reactive dyes along with inorganic salt (sodium sulphate) and biosalt (trisodiu...