The 2014 “mother of all elections” in Belgium offers a unique opportunity to test whether candidate selection for regional and federal elections work alike or differently. The fact that Belgian “statewide” parties do not exist anymore and that Belgium is a quasi-closed list system, giving parties almost unlimited control over candidate selection enhances the uniqueness of the Belgian case. This ar

The 2012–14 reform of the Belgian state has deeeply transformed its Senate. Not only does the reform reduce the legislative powers of the Belgian upper chamber, but it also alters its composition. The former appointment of Senators based on a system of direct and community-based election is replaced by a system of indirect and mixed regional and community-based designation. This article presents t

Belgium is one of the world leaders with regard to gender quotas, with strict rules for gender parity being imposed on political parties. Nonetheless the question remains as to whether these requirements for gender-equal list formation have led to women-friendly candidate selection procedures. Noting a gap in research on this topic, this article proposes a definition of ‘women-friendly’ candidate

Artros är en vanligt förekommande ledsjukdom som kan leda till stelhet ochsmärta i den drabbade leden. Sjukdomen innebär att det sker en nedbrytning av det brosk som fungerar som smörjmedel och skyddande lager runt benändarna i leden. Nedbrytningen av brosket sker gradvis under flera år och oftast upptäcker man sjukdomen först i ett sent stadium när man börjar känna smärta eller få problem med rörOsteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative disease that affects articular cartilage, which covers the surfaces of the bones in synovial joints. At later stages the disease can result in major loss of articular cartilage and thus lead to major disability. In order to allow for an early detection and treatment of OA, it is necessary to better understand the rather subtle biochemical changes in the cartil

The Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) is witnessing an increase in chronic disorders, including mental illness. With ongoing unrest, this is expected to rise. This is the first study to quantify the burden of mental disorders in the EMR. We used data from the Global Burden of Disease study (GBD) 2013. DALYs (disability-adjusted life years) allow assessment of both premature mortality (years of li

Ocean thermal energy refers to the thermal potential energy produced by the temperature difference between the warm surface seawater and the cold deep seawater. In this paper, a siphon flash evaporation desalination system using ocean thermal energy is proposed. Because it can utilize the ocean thermal energy directly for desalination, siphon flash evaporation desalination system has relatively hi

Spirally corrugated tube is one of the most important parts of coaxial heat exchangers. It can greatly improve the heat transfer efficiency of heat exchangers. Here, a novel spirally corrugated tube with six-start is proposed. However, up to now, there is little literature about the heat transfer performance and flow field of this novel six-start spirally corrugated tube. In this paper, the effect

Coaxial heat exchanger is widely used in air conditioning, refrigeration etc., due to its highly efficient heat transfer performance. Spiral corrugated tube plays an important role in coaxial heat exchanger. In this paper, the numerical model of a six starts spiral corrugated tube and a smooth tube with the same size are developed. The temperature field and the velocity field of their streamline a

Pilot control globe valve (PCGV) can use the pressure difference produced by fluid itself to realize the opening and closing states with a pilot valve. In this paper, numerical method is used to investigate the fluid flow characteristics and the valve core movement inside PCGV under different opening and closing times of pilot valve. The result shows that, shorter opening and closing time of valve

The paper considers a Black and Scholes economy with constant coefficients. A contingent claim is said to be simple if the payoff at maturity is a function of the value of the underlying security at maturity. To replicate a simple contingent claim one uses so called delta-hedging, and the well-known strategy is derived from Itô calculus and the theory of partial differentiable equations. However,

In this article we apply the Flesaker–Hughston approach to invert the yield curve and to price various options by letting the randomness in the economy be driven by a process closely related to the short rate, called the abstract short rate. This process is a pure deterministic translation of the short rate itself, and we use the deterministic shift to calibrate the models to the initial yield cur

This paper formally analyses two exotic options with lookback features, referred to as extreme spread lookback options and look‐barrier options, first introduced by Bermin. The holder of such options receives partial protection from large price movements in the underlying, but at roughly the cost of a plain vanilla contract. This is achieved by increasing the leverage through either floating the s

There exists a non-closed formula for the American put option price and non-trivial computations are required to solve it. Strong efforts have been made to propose efficient numerical techniques but few have strong mathematical reasoning to ascertain why they work well. We present an extension of the American put price aiming to catch weaknesses of the numerical methods based on their non-fulfillm

In this paper, we show how to construct dynamic forward rate models in terms of exogenously specified eigenfunctions (or factor loadings). We also show how to link forward rate models with different number of driving Brownian motions to each other in a way consistent with the implied eigenfunctions. Finally, we discuss how to best parameterize the models in the sense of maximizing the number of fr