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Investigates recovery from drug addiction in the USA as an interactive social process. Describes what the author terms “the hermeneutic process” – a verbal interchange between two addicts, making the addiction “real” and, therefore, the addicts become aware of the addiction, creating a personal biographical text which translates, in a group setting, into a text of social history, with which other group members can identify. Indicates then that addicts should interact with other addicts and recovering addicts, so stimulating dialogue and reflection. Observes that recovering alcoholics suggest that alcoholism is a “thinking problem” rather than a “drinking problem” and that it is necessary to realize the truth of past experiences and overcome any denial. Talks about distorted interpretations on an individual and social level, providing some illustrative examples. Discusses the task of the clinical sociologist in aiding addiction recovery.

This study is an exploratory examination of cultural differences in accounting educators’ epistemological beliefs of accounting ethics education. It is motivated by a renewed global interest in accounting ethics in recent years following the reported breaches of ethical conducts by individuals from different cultures. In Pratt’s model, conceptions of teaching should be an interdependent and internally consistent trilogy of beliefs, intentions and actions. The purpose of this empirical study is to sketch an outline of how accounting ethics education is broadly understood by accounting educators from three different cultural backgrounds, the Anglo‐influenced Australian, the Chinese and the Moslem‐dominated Malaysian. It explores the cross‐cultural variations in their epistemological beliefs of what to teach, objectives to achieve, the ethics educator, and the learning process. Results suggest that Australian and Malaysian accounting educators differed significantly in their epistemological beliefs on the source of knowledge as well as the acquisition of knowledge. Interestingly, there were no significant statistical differences in the epistemological beliefs held by participants in this study concerning other issues in accounting ethics education, i.e. the delivery of ethics education, transferability, goals of ethics education, separate course, and qualification.

The authors explore the hypothesis that some movements in commodity prices are anticipated (news shocks) and can trigger aggregate fluctuations in small open emerging economies. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

The authors build a multi-sector dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with endogenous commodity production. There are five exogenous processes: a country-specific interest rate shock that responds to commodity price fluctuations, a productivity (TFP) shock for each sector and a commodity price shock. Both TFP and commodity price shocks are composed of unanticipated and anticipated components.

The authors show that news shocks to commodity prices lead to higher output, investment and consumption, and a countercyclical movement in the trade-balance-to-output ratio. The authors also show that commodity price news shocks explain about 24% of output aggregate fluctuations in the small open economy.

Given the importance of both anticipated and unanticipated commodity price shocks, policymakers should pay attention to developments in commodity markets when designing policies to attenuate the business cycles. Future research should investigate the design of optimal fiscal and monetary policies in SOE subject to news shocks in commodity prices.

This paper contributes to the knowledge of the sources of fluctuations in emerging economies highlighting the importance of a new source: news shocks in commodity prices.

In 2008, a number of Southern African countries cultivated about 900,000 ha of Jatropha, with a number of biodiesel plants ready for production; however, none of the projects succeeded. In 2014, KiOR advanced biofuel Energy Company in the USA announced bankruptcy due to incompetent technology. Studies disclose that the reasons for biofuel plants failure are not only due to lack of incentives and unclear policies but also due to lack of economic feasibility and low production yields. This paper aims to review the techno-economy assessment of second-generation biofuel technologies. The purpose of this paper is to summarize specific techno-economic indicators such as production cost, technology efficiency and process life cycle analysis for advanced biofuel technology and to narrate and illustrate a clear view of what requires assessment to deploy a feasible advanced biofuel technology. This study also reviews assessment of biomass supply chain, feedstock availability and site selection criteria. The review also elaborates on the use of different processes, forecasting and simulation-modeling tools used in different techno-economic analysis studies. The review provides guidance for conducting a technical and economic feasibility study for the advanced biofuels energy business.

The aim of this review is, therefore, to evaluate the techno-economic feasibility studies for the establishment of viable industrial scale production of second-generation biofuels. It does so by grouping studies based on technology selection, feedstock availability and suitability, process simulation and economies as well as technology environmental impact assessment.

In conclusion, techno-economic analysis tools offer researchers insight in terms of where their research and development should focus, to attain the most significant enhancement for the economics of a technology. The study patterns within the scope of techno-economics of advanced biofuel reveal that there is no generic answer as to which technology would be feasible at a commercial scale. It is therefore important to keep in mind that models can only simplify and give a simulation of reality to a certain extent. Nevertheless, reviewed studies do not reach the same results, but some results are logically similar.

The originality of this article specifically illustrates important technical and economic indicators that should be considered when conducting feasibility studies for advance biofuels.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of news shocks on monetary policies using the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. To this end, two kinds of news shocks (known as technology and consumer preferences) are defined according to Khan and Tsoukalas’ (2012) approach.

In order to construct and simulate the DSGE model to approaching the real conditions in a case study, consumption habits in the utility function were concerned based on the assumption of the zero-value obtained from multiplying the inflation by the real interest rate in the Fisher’s equation, whereas the real interest rates in the long run were appointed as negative remark in simulating the monetary policy models. The estimation and simulation results for the research models indicated that monetary policies using the interest rate instrument identified the news shocks less frequently than monetary policies using the monetary base instrument.

The approximate value of the social loss function in the optimal commitment and discretionary monetary policies suggests that the optimal commitment policy is estimated to be lower in both cases. Due to value of the social loss function in optimal monetary policies with nominal interest rate instrument in the presence of news shocks, this could be claimed that monetary policy with interest rate instrument is more appropriate than the monetary policy with a monetary base instrument.

The approximate value of the social loss function in the optimal commitment and discretionary monetary policies suggests that the optimal commitment policy is estimated to be lower in both cases.

Aslib is interested in developing modular simulation models of aspects of library systems in order to investigate the use of such models as aids to systems design and operation. The conceptual model of library procedures, developed during the OSTI‐supportcd project on the use of bibliographic records in libraries, offered a suitable basis for a pilot study. The pilot study was aimed at investigating the practicality of developing and using simulation models of library operations, and gaining experience in the application of simulation techniques to problems in the library and information field. The simulation language used was GPSS, in accordance with the 1968 edition of the IBM GPSS/360 User's Manual, H20–0326–2.

THE following list of contracts placed by the Air Ministry during January is extracted from the February issue of The Ministry of Labour Gazette:—

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked, which may be consulted in the Library.

This paper aims to present the quantitative results based on a comparison and evaluation of older people's experiences, needs and wants from their current kitchens, combining and comparing the results obtained from two studies conducted in 2000 and 2010 to see what progress has been made.

A study in 2010 investigated the life‐long and contemporary experiences of kitchens of 48 people aged over 60 years of age. The research included detailed questionnaire interviews asking people about their experiences of living in their current kitchen. A previous study, conducted in 2000, asked many of the same questions of 22 people in the same age group.

By combining and comparing the two sets of data it seems that only limited progress has been made in terms of kitchen design meeting the needs of older people between 2000 and 2010.

Owing to the small sizes of the samples it is not possible to compare the figures statistically or present them as fully representative of the British older population but while the two samples are limited both had similar characteristics of age and gender, so differences do show potential trends over time.

The research refers to guidance and a computer based design tool and identifies a number of practical implications for design.

As people age their abilities and needs can change and their kitchen may no longer be as accessible or appropriate to their needs.

This paper adds to the relevant guidance for designers, developers and managers of buildings where the continued personal use of a kitchen is important for continuing independence of older people.

In recent years, housing prices in Brazil have shown a surprising growth. An important issue is trying to understand what elements can explain this behavior. This study aims to investigate the hypothesis that a generalized optimism associated with government policies directed to the housing sector may be behind the behavior of real estate prices. This study develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to investigate these issues. The results showed that subsidies combined with the easing of credit conditions were able to positively influence real estate prices. Moreover, unanticipated shocks had a greater impact on housing prices than anticipated shocks.

The DSGE model was developed to analyze the relationship between economic agents’ expectations about future economic developments, also known in the literature as “news shocks,” expansionary fiscal policy and housing prices in Brazil. The economy is composed of families, entrepreneurs, final goods firms, a financial sector and a fiscal authority. Families are divided into two groups: patients or savers and impatient or debtors. They differ in terms of their intertemporal discount factors. Both provide labor for firms producing non-durable goods. Impatient families are restricted in the amount of borrowing they can take. The production side of economy model is given by the consumer goods production sector. The financial sector is composed of a representative bank that pays the deposits made by patient families and channels resources for the granting of housing loans with the accumulation of assets subject to regulatory restrictions.

The results show that both price subsidies and subsidized interest rates exerted a positive influence on housing prices in Brazil. In response to a housing demand shock, housing prices display a greater increase the greater are the subsidies to low income families. The authors show that anticipated shocks have a larger impact on housing prices than unexpected shocks. Therefore, the results support the idea that the wave of good news, optimistic behavior and government policies aimed at the housing sector were behind the behavior of housing prices in Brazil.

There are some studies applied to the Brazilian economy that mention some of these stimuli. In this study, the authors focused on studies proposed by Mendonça et al. (2011), Mendonça (2013), Silva et al. (2014) and Besarria et al. (2016). In general, the authors show that there is a negative relationship between monetary policy instruments and real estate prices. This paper differs from these authors by considering the effects of government subsidies, subsidized interest rates and anticipated shocks from a DSGE model, thus explicitly addressing their effects on housing prices in Brazil.