Love and Patriotism Essay Example for Free

Love and Patriotism Essay Patriotism is a frame of mind in which one loves ones country and is proud of it. It is a vigorous feeling of love, loyalty and support for ones country especially in defense against its enemies. It means that one should give more value and importance to ones country than to ones own self. It makes one bound for certain responsibilities, and these responsibilities are ideological commitment and dedication to the defense and prosperity of ones country. Only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country. (Nathan Hale) Man is a social animal. It is hard for him to breathe in isolation. Contact with his fellow beings is inevitable for mutual growth and economic development. Patriotism creates unity among the people for a noble cause and trains them to tolerate one and other and sacrifice for the country. Soldiers die not in hatred but in love. (Anonymous) Patriotism is a virtue that converts a mob into nation. Nations rise and prosper if their individuals are united by a cord of love, sympathy and sincerity. People learn to honor the freedom and independence of their country. They learn that they can prosper and progress if they have a deep natural relation with their country. Birds fly towards their nests, children rush to take refuge in the lap of their mothers and human beings move towards their homes for peace and shelter, and so is our country that gives us protection and peace. It is a sort of heaven for us. We should try our best to make it beautiful, secure, strong and peaceful. Our existence definitely depends on the existence and survival of our dear homeland. We can do so if we have an ultimate faith in our country. We must not undermine our relationship and association which we have with our homeland by birth. Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one. (Mareus) Disciplined armed forces, hardworking and skillful craftsmen, diligent and committed women, and ambitious students have only one aim and that is to serve their country. They believe that their personal achievement will benefit not only themselves but also their country. They want to raise the flag of their country because they have a strong sense of patriotism. Love works wonders. Miracles are not beyond us if we are fired with the passion of patriotism. Patriotism fills us with a magnetic force which overcomes all our petty differences of languages and creeds.

Structures of Bacterial Tyrosinases

Structures of Bacterial Tyrosinases Tyrosinases oxidise phenolic hydroxyl groups of small molecules or large polymeric substrates such as proteins. Tyrosinases catalyse first the ortho-hydroxylation of the phenolic substrate and second its subsequent oxidation to quinone (Figure 1) with the concomitant reduction of oxygen to water. The reaction is chromogenic as the quinones produced can undergo further non-enzymatic polymerisation to form black eu-melanins and, when reacting with thiol groups, brownish pheo-melanins [14]. This process can be inhibited by antioxidants such as ascorbic acid, for example to prevent the browning reaction in food preparations [15]. Tyrosinase activity is generally measured by either determining the consumption of oxygen during the reaction or spectrophotometrically by following the increase of absorbance at 475 nm due to dopachrome formation. The cross-linking activity of tyrosinase on proteins is usually analysed by SDS PAGE, size-exclusion chromatography, UV spectroscopy or mass spectrom etry [16]. The active site of tyrosinases interacts with both the phenolic substrates and the co-substrate oxygen and it alternates among three different oxidation states. When in the oxy state, tyrosinase binds oxygen and is able to catalyse the hydroxylation of monophenols to diphenols, thus changing into the met form. The met form of tyrosinase is responsible for the oxidation of diphenols to quinones and the reaction turns the enzyme into the deoxy form that, upon binding molecular oxygen, returns to the oxy form. The met form is the resting state of the enzyme and it has been calculated that up to 85% of the enzyme is in this state when in solution [17, 18]. The inability of most of the enzymes in an enzyme population to act on monophenols explains why a significant lag phase is detected in the activity when monophenols are the substrate of the reaction. Bacterial tyrosinases have been divided in five types according to the organisation of domains and the possible requirement of a caddie protein for enzyme activity [12]. The necessity of a secondary helper protein (caddie protein) for secretion, correct folding, assembly of the copper atoms and activity of the enzyme is common to tyrosinases of type I, e.g. the enzyme from S. castaneoglobisporus and S. antibioticus [19, 20]. Type II tyrosinases are small, monomeric enzymes containing only the catalytic domain, which do not require additional helper proteins and are possibly secreted. An example is the tyrosinase from B. megaterium [6]. Type III tyrosinases are represented by the enzyme from Verrucomicrobium spinosum. Like the fungal tyrosinases it carries a C-terminal domain whose removal led to about 100-fold higher activity [21]. This supports the theory that the role of the C-terminal extension in plant and fungal tyrosinases is to keep the enzyme in an inactive form inside the ce ll [22-24]. Among the smallest bacterial tyrosinases reported (Type IV) are the ones produced by Streptomyces nigrifaciens (18 kDa) and Bacillus thuringiensis (14 kDa) [25, 26]. However, it is debated whether these proteins are true tyrosinases [12]. Type V tyrosinases include enzymes that do not carry the sequence features of tyrosinases but show features typical of laccase and have only marginal activity on tyrosine. For example, a membrane-bound tyrosinase active on the typical laccase substrate ABTS (NCBI ID: AAF75831.2) has been isolated from Marinomonas mediterranea. A tyrosinase with a classical substrate specificity that is activated by SDS (NCBI ID: AAV49996.1) has also been reported from the same organism [27]. Similar to catechol oxidases and the oxygen carrying haemocyanins, tyrosinases are type-3 copper proteins, containing two copper atoms in the active site. The absorbance spectrum of oxy-tyrosinases has a characteristic maximum in the UV region (330-345 nm). As reported for the structurally similar catechol oxidases, a fluorescence intensity maximum at 330 nm upon excitation at 280 nm is also detected [28, 29]. Copper is essential for the catalytic activity of tyrosinases. The crystal structure of these enzymes has demonstrated the presence of two copper ions in the catalytic core (Table 1). In all tyrosinases of different origins and in the haemocyanins each of the copper ions is coordinated by three histidine residues that are found in a characteristic pattern in the primary structure (Figure 2). In the tyrosinase from Streptomyces glaucescens, for example, the key role of histidines at position 37, 53, 62, 189, 193 and 215 in the coordination of copper, and thus in catalytic activi ty, was confirmed by the decrease of activity upon their substitution with other amino acids [30, 31]. Various additional residues have been identified to have a function in fungal and bacterial tyrosinases, either being essential for or modulating tyrosinase activity. Sequence analysis and various mutagenesis studies have been performed in order to identify the residues necessary for the activity of the enzyme. In tyrosinase sequences from plants and fungi, the N-terminal signal peptide, when present, is followed by a conserved arginine residue that marks the beginning of the central catalytic domain and that forms a pi-cation interaction with a conserved C-terminal Y/FXY tyrosine motif, where X is any amino acid [32]. These residues are conserved also in bacterial tyrosinases (Supplementary file 1). Substitution of the N-terminal conserved arginine (R40) has been reported to abolish the production of tyrosinase from V. spinosum [21]. Two single-amino acid substitutions have been reported to improve the catalytic activity of the tyrosinase from Rhizobium etli CFN42. The independent r eplacement of proline at position 334 and of aspartic acid at position 535 (Supplementary file 1) with a smaller residue such as serine (P334S) or glycine (D535G), respectively, led to a significant enhancement of the catalytic activity and melanin formation [33-35]. In the tyrosinase from B. megaterium, a single substitution of arginine by histidine within the copper B binding region (R209H) has been sufficient for a 1.7-fold improvement of the activity towards tyrosine (monophenolase) and for a 1.5-fold reduction of activity on L-DOPA (diphenolase), whereby the overall protein stability was not affected [36]. The crystal structure of the tyrosinase from B. megaterium showed that this arginine is positioned at the entrance of the active site in a flexible position and plays a role in the docking of the substrate [6]. However, the conservative substitution of the corresponding residue asparagine 190 to glutamine (N190Q) in S. glaucescens tyrosinase abolished the catalytic activity, indicating that this residue was possibly involved in hydrogen bonding at the active site [30]. Moreover, the conservative substitution of the residue aspartic acid 209 (D209E) has been reported to stabilise the oxy-form of the same enzyme [37]. To our knowledge, no study has investigated the role of the oxygen binding motif PYWDW [38] with regards to the affinity for oxygen in tyrosinase. The affinity for the co-substrate oxygen has been evaluated for the tyrosinase from Streptomyces antibioticus that carries the PYWDW motif. It was found that this enzyme had a three-fold lower dissociation constant (kD) for oxygen than the A. bisporus tyrosinase [39, 40] that carries a PFWDW motif, i.e. 16.5 ÃŽ ¼M compared to 46.6 ÃŽ ¼M. The analysis of the characterised bacterial tyrosinases evidenced the presence of functionally active variants of this motif (Supplementary file 1 and 2), e.g. PYWNY in the tyrosinase from M. mediterranea, PFWDW in tyrosinase from R. etli, PYWEW in the tyrosinase from B. megaterium, PYWRF and PYWNW in the tyrosinases from Ralstonia solanacearum. Mutational studies have also addressed the interaction of tyrosinases from streptomycetes and their caddie protein. In S. antibioticus, the two histidine residues at positions 102 and 117 of the caddie protein MelC1 have been found to be crucial for the biosynthesis of active tyrosinase [41]. The available crystal structures of bacterial tyrosinases and their mutant forms have been obtained from Gram-positive S. castaneoglobisporus and B. megaterium (Table 1). While the B. megaterium tyrosinase formed crystals containing only the enzyme, the S. castaneoglobisporus tyrosinase required the presence of a second protein, referred to as caddie protein, to stabilise its structure [4]. Moreover, the structure of the Streptomyces tyrosinase has been solved in different states of oxidation. Aiming at understanding the interaction between tyrosinase and caddie protein, tyrosinase has been crystallised in the presence of mutant forms of the caddie protein (Table 1). Likewise, the fungal tyrosinase from A. bisporus was crystallised as a tetramer in a complex with a second protein, a lectin-like protein [7]. Both intracellular and secreted bacterial tyrosinases have been isolated and characterised. For example, the tyrosinases from Streptomyces nigrifaciens, Bacillus thuringiensis, M. mediterranea, R. solanacearum and Thermomicrobium roseum were isolated from cell biomass and the ones from S. antibioticus, S. glaucescens, S. castaneoglobisporus, Streptomyces albus, B. megaterium, Sinorhizobium meliloti, Aeromonas media, R. etli and V. spinosum were either isolated from the culture medium or predicted to be secreted [19, 21, 25, 26,42-51]. The twin-arginine signal peptide is often found in cofactor-binding oxidoreductases that undergo complete folding in the cytoplasm prior to secretion to the periplasmic or extracellular space. Twin-arginine type signal peptides [52] could be identified in the N-terminal region of tyrosinases from R. solanacearum (34-amino acid long) and V. spinosum (33-amino acid long). A more detailed analysis of the sequence retrieved for the tyrosinase from R. etli a nd the alignment with the other sequences of tyrosinases (Supplementary File 1) suggests the possibility of incorrect open reading frame prediction. The true N-terminal methionine may be M112 (underlined in Supplementary file 1) as it aligns with the initial residue of the tyrosinase from R. solanacearum (number 15 in Supplementary file 1) and is followed by a predicted twin-arginine signal peptide of 31 amino acids [51]. Thus, we suggest that these proteins purified from the cell biomass but carrying a signal peptide for secretion are localised in the periplasm. Tyrosinases, also from bacteria, and their caddie proteins generally lack conserved cysteine residues (for comments see [11, 12]). The paucity of cysteine residues, and thus disulphide bonds, allowed, however, the isolation of tyrosinases with significant thermal stability, e.g. the enzyme from B. megaterium had an optimum temperature of 50Â °C [48]. A single cysteine residue is conserved in proximity of the second histidine residue of the copper A binding motif in the characterised tyrosinases from M. mediterranea, R. solanacearum, S. meliloti, R. etli and V. spinosum (Supplementary file 1). A cysteine residue at this position has been found to be covalently bound to a histidine residue two positions forward in, for example, the fungal tyrosinase from Neurospora crassa [53], the plant catechol oxidase from I. batata [8] and haemocyanins from the snail Helix pomatia [54]. The function of this unusual cysteine-histidine bond is not established, but it could confer structural rigidity to the copper-binding region and affect the redox potential [8]. Replacement of this cysteine residue (C84) with serine abolished the production of the tyrosinase from V. spinosum [21]. Type-3 copper proteins carrying six conserved cysteines (forming three in silico predicted disulphide bonds) and characterised by significant thermal stability have been reported in fungi [26]. No mutagenesis study has addressed a possible improvement of the thermal stability of bacterial tyrosinases by introducing disulphide bonds. However, in silico analysis revealed the possible presence of one disulphide bond in the tyrosinases from R. solanacearum and S. meliloti and two in the enzymes from M. mediterranea and R. etli (Dianna software, http://clavius.bc.edu/~clotelab/DiANNA). The tyrosinase from S. castaneoglobisporus and the one from B. megaterium share approximately 30% sequence similarity with a catechol oxidase from Aspergillus oryzae that showed a melting temperature above 70Â °C and a ha lf-life of 20 hours when incubated at 50Â °C [29]. It should be noted that the tyrosinase from A. media exhibits different sequence features when compared to the other enzymes. The sequence alignment with bacterial tyrosinases shows that none of the typical signature motifs (copper A and B regions, oxygen binding motif and tyrosine motif) are present (see Supplementary file 1). Moreover, this enzyme has a predicted 23-amino acid long signal peptide [50] and shows strong sequence similarity to bacterial periplasmic proteins that are responsible for the uptake of peptides and involved in nutrition and sensing of the environment [55].

Influence of Terror on Pakistan Stock Market Returns

Influence of Terror on Pakistan Stock Market Returns Abstract This paper examines the influence of political instability and terror on Pakistan stock market returns between 1997 and 2010. The study constructs three variables that quantify political instability and terror and examine the effect on country stock return. This study seeks to apply the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model to assess the impact of these variables on stock market returns and volatility using daily time series data for KSE. Results for KSE showed strong support for the hypothesis that bad news exerts more adverse effect on stock market volatility than good news of the same magnitude. Furthermore, terror and regime have significant negative impact while war has positive but insignificant effect on stock market volatility. JEL Classification: O40, C32. Keywords: Terror, Regime, political instability, growth, ARCH/GARCH. Introduction Many people agree that stock prices sometimes behave in bizarre ways. Markets are pretty tough and quite difficult. In the world of todays no one can negate the importance of stock markets. Stock market acts as a barometer for any countrys economy. In todays information-oriented world, news travels very fast and contagion can spread quickly and capital markets become more flexible and are absorb shocks brought on different news such as terrorism, political instability etc. Stock market of Pakistan is going through quite rough patch from many years. The change of political government and later on the terrorists attacks have badly affected the stock market and make the Pakistan Stock Market unreliable place for investment. As by seeing the overall scenario of Pakistans stock market during that time period it was not difficult for prices to follow certain patterns that support the rejection of Random Walk Hypothesis. This paper examines the impact of change in government, war and terror on economic growth in the Pakistan. Pakistan is one of those episodic-democratic countries who are facing continuous upheavals and socio-political disruptions since their inception. Military interventions could be witnessed in the political history of Pakistan. More over intervallic wars with India, strikes, antigovernment demonstrations and most importantly the ongoing war on terror have popped Pakistan to prominence on the socio-political platform. Such sociopolitical flux, terrorist attacks and other disruptions can have serious implications for stock price movement because stock prices reflect investors expectations about the future and these stock price movements on aggregate can generate a surged wave of activity. There has been an extensive work on study of stock market returns and volatility with respect to the fundamental variables and the macroeconomic variables but a diminutive work has been done so far to study the impact of socio-political factors on the stock market volatility in Pakistan. The existing literature on impact of socio-political factors on stock returns volatility is quite inadequate especially if we talk in context of Pakistani market. Masood Sergi (2008) analyzed Pakistans political risks and events that have affected the Pakistani stock market since its independence but their study chiefly covers the political events. Terrorism and strikes which have recently become the matters of intense interest and the source of unrest in the economy are the missing part there. The Karachi stock market is rapidly converting into a volatile market. If we see figure below it showed that there are high volatility during 1997 to 2010. This cannot be viewed as a positive sign for this emerging markets like Stock market of Pakistan. Though heavy fluctuations in stock prices are not an unusual phenomena and it has been observed at almost all big and small exchanges of the world. But focusing on the reasons for such fluctuations is instructive and likely to have important policy implications. The efficient market hypothesis argued that changes in stock prices are mainly dependent on the arrival of information regarding the expected returns from the stock and risk associated with that stock. (See Figure 1.1) So the purpose of our study is to examine empirically the impact of socio-political instability on Pakistani stock market. This study examines the three factors and their impact on the Pakistani stock market; the political instability due to military interventions, 1999 Kargil war, and terrorism. Literature Review A number of theoretical and empirical articles argue that these factors hinder economic growth of a country. Cutler, Poterba and Summers (1989) claimed that the sock prices move in response to the information other than about the fundamental values. They estimate the fraction of stock returns that can be accredited to various kinds of economic and non-economic events including assassinations of important political or national figures, war, invasions, raids and major policy change but their findings suggests a very small effect of non-economic news on the share price. Most of the studies have found a significant impact of political news or events on the stock market behavior. Chan Wei (1996) studied the impact of political news on the stock market volatility in Hong Kong and using GARCH-M model they found the strong evidence of the impact of political news on stock market volatility inferring that unfavorable political news is correlated to negative returns for the Hang Seng Index and vice versa. Mei Guo (1999) examined the impact of political insecurity on the financial crises in emerging markets and they observe that market volatility increased during political election and transition periods and political uncertainty could be a major contributory factor to financial crisis. Similarly Kim Mei (2001) infered through empirical analysis using GARCH(1,1) filter that the political risk affect the stock market volatility but this impact of political events or news is asymmetric, with bad news having a greater influence on volatility relative to good news. However Voth (2001) have argued that the impact of political factors in studies on German market has been over stated. He argued that the majority of events escalating political uncertainty had a minute or no effect on the value of German assets and the volatility of their returns. Instead, it was inflation that is mainly responsible for most of the variability in stock returns. He suggests that there is no direct linkage between the political factors and the stock market, however through channel it impacts. But Voth (2002) in a panel study of a set of 10 countries using panel regression confess that during great depression political risks changed dramatically over the period, and are adequate to account for a large part of the boost in stock price volatility. Beaulieu, Cosset Essaddam (2002) examined the impact of political risk in Canada on the volatility of stock returns, covering important political events in the country. Their study suggested that political news performs a significant role in the volatility of stock returns. Moreover the volatility of stock returns also depends on the degree of how much a firm is exposed to political risk i.e. the structure of its assets and the level to which there is foreign involvement. Kutan Perez (2002)Â  also found a significant impact of social and political factors on stock return volatility in their study conducted on Colombian stock market. Bautista (2003) applied Regime-switching-ARCH regression on Philippine stock returns to estimate its conditional variance and the estimated volatility was then related to major political and economic events. Their study revealed that the Philippine stock market is sensitive to radical changes in the political situation. Moreover the series of military takeover attempts during late 1980s in Philippines lead to hefty fluctuations in stock market index. Masood Sergi (2008) analyzed political risks and events that have affected the Pakistans stock markets since its foundation. They have found that Pakistans political risk carries a significant risk premium of between 7.5% and 12%. They made forecasts using Bayesian hierarchical modeling and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques and found that there is relatively high probability of occurrence of events with an average arrival rate of approximately 1.5 events per year. Many others also wrote that political instability warped the future path of investment decisions (Calvo and Drazen (1997), lessened public investment leading to a shift of government budgets from capital spending to government consumption (Darby, Li and Muscatelli (1998), and makes governments less inclined to make improvements to the legal system (Svensson (1993) Wars and unrest at the borders creates instability and panic among the investors that could affect the stock market movement at large. The affect of war has been analyzed in many studies including Cutler, Poterba and Summers (1989), Aggarwal, Incaln Leal (1999) and in Pakistan Masood Sergi (2008). Aggarwal, Incaln Leal (1999) examined the sort of events that cause large swings in volatility of emerging stock markets. For this purpose they examine various social, political and economic events both at global and domestic level to find out their explanatory power in context of the returns volatility in the emerging markets including the impact of gulf war. Though at small scale but the impact of gulf war was felt in those emerging markets. Similarly Masood Sergi (2008) found that among other factors that they studied, wars with India, 1948, 1965, 1971 and 1999 kargil war negatively influenced the Pakistani stock market. Evia et al. (2008) examined the affect of socio-political conflict in Bolivia on economic performance. Factors studied widespread during the conflicts as strikes, demonstrations, road blockades, and conventional rent-seeking. Their results showed that economic growth due to external factors is positively related to conflict while growth due to productive investment is negatively related to conflict. Terrorism is another as put that has been studied in relation to economic activity. Many studied in this distance; produced conflicting results as Becker and Murphy (2001) argue that economic performance are not much affected, because terrorist attacks usually devastate only a small portion of the overall stock of capital in a country. By contrast, Abadie and Gardeazabal (2005) repeated that terrorism shape overall economic risk in a country and lead to the economic shakiness in the country. They also conclude their study that higher level of terrorism risks results into the lower levels of foreign direct investment (FDI). Almost all studies on terrorism and its influence on stock prices limited to only on a single or few events, such as the 11 September 2001 attacks, as considered by Hon et al. (2004) Chen and Siems (2003) study. Chen Siems (2003), used event study methodology to capture the aftermath of terrorism on global capital markets. They studied on the reaction of U.S. capital markets in response to terrorist attacks. Their results showed that capital markets of US are more resilient flexible than in the past and recover quicker from terrorist attacks than other global capital markets. Their study suggests this increased market resilience to be partially explained by a stable financial sector in US that provides adequate liquidity to support market stability and reduce the spread panic. Methodology and Data Description Stock index data is taken from Karachi Stock Exchange, Yahoo Finance. This is a well known and reliable source of business information in Pakistan. The daily closing value of KSE-100 index is used for calculating the daily returns. The continuously compounded annual rate of return is used to measure the returns for the specific period as; Rt = ln (Pt / Pt-1) The closing prices of KSE-100 index for Karachi Stock Exchange are taken for the period July 2, 1997 to Oct 13, 2010. Our proxies are TERROR, a dummy variable of terrorist incidents during this period; REGIME, a dummy variable for government changes from fully democratic government to Marshal Law or democratic under such condition; a dummy variable for the period of the Kargal War in 1999. We applied regression model and Arch/Garch technique to capture the results. ARCH/GARCH Study Models This section presents the methodology of the paper. Daily data for Karachi stock markets were obtained from Yahoo finance and data for terror, kargal war and regime were obtained from South East Asia Terrorism Portal, and Different News Paper of Pakistan. Study apply ARCH/GARCH tools to see the long term relationship of these variable taking stock return as dependent variable and terror, regime and kargal war as independent variables. As aggregate uncertainty may be a function of political instability, we proceed to model uncertainty directly. It is natural to look at the conditional variance of output. Thus, we examine GARCH processes, in a more general framework than in the previous section. The model estimated here is a GARCH (1,1) process. Engle (1982) argue that in high frequency data large and small disturbance errors appear in group therefore error term variances can be shown as a function of their lagged values. He calls it Autoregressive conditional Heteroskedasticity (ARCH). As an investor or policy maker, we might be interested in investigating the returns and variance financial assets over observable period of time (conditional) rather than long run estimate of variance (unconditional). Engle (1982) shows that it is possible to describe the conditional mean and conditional variance of a financial asset using information set of previous period; Where is the return of financial asset in time t conditional on the information set at time t-1. E represents the expected value in statistics. Consider the simple model Where Where the rate of is return and are the regression parameters. A typical ARCH model can be written as follows: Conditional Mean Equation; Error Decomposition OR where ‘v is the part of variance which is homoskedastic and is the conditional variance which is Heteroskedasticity. This conditional variance can be shown as ARCH Conditional variance Equation, i.e. where and are non negative. Engle (1982) has also derived a Lagrange Multiplier (LM) based principle to test the hypothesis of. Another useful variant of ARCH methodology, proposed by Bollerslev (1986) is the generalized ARCH or GARCH model. Bollerslev (1986) argues that conditional variance in financial series is not only the function of its lagged error term but also the function of its lagged conditional variances. Therefore, GARCH (1, 1) process would be So GARCH model helps to explain the conditional variance with the help of past squared error term and conditional variance lag value. Which also means that conditional variance at time‘t would be function of long run variances and also variances conditional on past information set (short run) or observed shocks i.e. . Testing for ARCH/GARCH effects: Before estimating Arch/Garch techniques, it is first important to check for possible presence of Arch effect in order to know which model is requires the ARCH estimation instead of OLS (Ordinary Least Squire). The presence of ARCH effects in a regression model does not invalidate OLS estimation. However it implies that there is more efficient nonlinear estimator than OLS. (See Table 1.1) Obs*R-Squared is 147.26 and has a probability limit of 0.000. This clearly suggested that ARCH effect is present and presence of Heteroskedasticity suggested that ARCH/GARCH is appropriate model for this type of time series data. So we can apply ARCH/GARCH model on this data instead of ordinary least squire regression. Result of GARCH effects: The results of GARCH are presented in Table 1.3. The first column presents the regression results when we include as independent variables dummy values of the regime, terror, and war. In most of the cases, the variables enter with the anticipated signs, but not all of them are consistently significant at the 0.05 level. We can see an evidence of significant negative impact of terror, regime that show due to bomb blast in Pakistan and change in government negatively impact the country stock return in long run while insignificant positive impact of war on the country stock return. The results can further explained that stock return volatility every day is explained by approximately 71% of the previous months return volatility for Karachi stock exchange. This is significant for KSE returns. The coefficient of return innovation are statistically significant for market implying that new information arrival into the markets has significant impact on predicting next days stock market volatility. Because, the constant term in the variance equation for KSE is significant. The results of GARCH (1,1) are presented in Table 1.3 (Table 1.2) The model can be written as; Mean Equation: = 0.001188+ 0.064048* R_KSE(-1) Variance Equation: GARCH = 4.01E-05 + 0.20721*ARCH+ 0.713458 GARCH(-1) 1.21E-05*Terror + 1.93E-05*War -1.48E-05*Regime The persistence parameter for KSE Durbin-Watson stat = 1.943, which is > 1. This show a very explosive volatility in KSE returns. It also demonstrates the capability of past volatility to explain current volatility (Engle and Bollerslev, 1986) and because it is very high, the rate at which it diminishes is rather very slowly. For ACRH/GARCH, conditional standard deviation and conditional varience graph were as shown in figure 1.2 and 1.3; The GARCH coefficient is both statistically significant and conforms to expectation. This implies that past variances exert significantly positive effect on stock return volatility in KSE. On the basis of these results, it is evident that there is significant time varying volatility in Pakistan stock market returns during the sample periods. Conclusions and Recommendations In this paper, we have estimated a nonlinear GARCH model for daily stock returns volatility and terror, Kargal war and regime in Pakistan. Data for the estimation of GARCH (1,1) models was obtained from Yahoo finance and South Asia Terror Portal and news paper of Pakistan. The asymmetric effect of terror, war and regime on stock returns and volatility was investigated. Preliminary investigation into the nature of the data reveals that study had to employ ARCH/GARCH techniques for data analysis. Firstly, results show evidence of time varying volatility in stock market returns across the market and from the asymmetric model, results indicate that bad news has larger impact on stock volatility than good news in the KSE. The result for KSE showed that terror and regime has negativity impact on returns of KSE while war has positively effect, it may be due to short term period of the war. All three variable are significantly have their impact on the returns.

Choice and Individual Freedom in The Stranger (The Outsider) :: Camus Stranger Essays

Choice and Individual Freedom in The Stranger Camus's The Stranger is a grim profession that choice and individual freedom are integral components of human nature, and the commitment and responsibility that accompany these elements are ultimately the deciding factors of the morality of one's existence. Meursault is placed in an indifferent world, a world that embraces absurdity and persecutes reason; such is the nature of existentialist belief, that rationalization and logic are ultimately the essence of humanity, and that societal premonitions and an irrelevant status quo serve only to perpetuate a false sense of truth. Meursault's virtue, as well as his undoing, lies in his unique tendency to choose, and thereby exist, without computing objective standards or universal sentiment. His stoic, de facto existentialism is a catalyst for endless conflict between his rationalization- and logic-based existence and that of others, which focuses on an objective subscription to "the norm" ; such is evident in heated discussions with the magistrate and prison minister, who are seen as paragons of invalid logic and the quixotic, quasi-passionate pursuit of hackneyed conformity. No windmills are slain1 in this simulated existence; absurdity of a different ilk dominates the popular mentality, one which would alienate a man based on his perceived indifference towards the mundane, and try, convict, and execute a man based on his lack of purported empathy towards the irrelevant. Attention to the trial sequence will reveal that the key elements of the conviction had little to do with the actual crime Meursault had committed, but rather the "unspeakable atrocities" he had committed while in mourning of his mother's death, which consisted of smoking a cigarette, drinking a cup of coffee, and failing to cry or appear sufficiently distraught. Indeed, the deformed misconception of moral truth which the jury [society] seeks is based on a detached, objective observation of right or wrong, thereby misrepresenting the ideals of justice by failing to recognize that personal freedom and choice are "...the essence of individual existence and the deciding factor of one's morality.2" The execution of Meursault at the close of the novel symbolically brings

An Analysis of Donne’s A Valediction: of Weeping Essay -- Valediction

An Analysis of Donne’s A Valediction: of Weeping    William Empson begins his critical essay on John Donne's "A Valediction: of Weeping" with the statement below.   Empson here plays the provocateur for the critic who wishes to disagree with the notion that Donne's intentions were perhaps less than the sincere valediction of a weeping man.  Ã‚  Ã‚   Indeed, "A Valediction" concerns a parting; Donne is going to sea and is leaving his nameless, loved other in England, and the "Valediction" is his emotive poesy describing the moment. "...the language of [A Valediction: of Weeping] is shot through with a suspicion which for once he is too delicate or too preoccupied to state unambiguously, that when he is gone she will be unfaithful to him.   Those critics who say the poem is sincere, by the way... know not what they do."  Ã‚   --- William Empson, "A Valediction: of Weeping," John Donne: a Collection of Critical Essays (ed. H. Gardner)   Ã‚  Ã‚   There is little argument as to what Donne is feeling at surface level: he is sorrowful and grieving because he must be apart from his loved one, who has become his world (a metaphor which is carried out in the second stanza).   Empson is indeed correct when he says that the poem is not unambiguous.   There is a large range of interpretations that can be made based upon the language in the poem, and these are focused around the source of Donne's grief.   Ã‚  Ã‚   It is easy for one to picture a grieving sailor leaving his lover, but what makes this man grieve?   It is the innate love between two people who are intensely focused upon each other which must be put on hold?   Is it some additive emotion that consists of two people who are about to suffer separation and loss of a lover?   Or is it, as Empson p... ..., Donne and his lover/other struggle with their sadness just before separation.   Donne realizes that this may be a futile goal, but he also sees the importance of composure if their relationship - his "world" - that he credits to her is going succeed.   Donne seems to have no dearth of sincerity in this poem.   He is also purposeful in writing it; Donne himself was a man of great passion, and who had to go out to sea.   "A Valediction: of Weeping" seems not to be the valediction of a jealous lover, but of a conscientious other making a concerted effort not to let jealousy and self-pity control his farewell to a lover. Works Cited: Donne, John. "A Valediction: Of Weeping". The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Volume 1A. 2nd ed. Ed. Damrosch, David, Christopher Baswell and Anne Howland Schotter. New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers, Inc, 2003.

A Change Is as Good as a Holiday.

‘’A change is as good as a holiday†¦ really? ’’ According to my personal experience a change is better than a holiday. I changed my life by moving to another country, the UK, where I can create something and develop my life, unlike going on holiday for a short period of time and returning to do the same thing again. During my time in Iraq I enjoyed spending time with my family and I was happy as a clown. However, on April the 9th 2003 USA had a master plan to invade Iraq, as a child I was scared due to my parents clearly being worried; this made me anxious I was so terrified and shaken like an electric tooth brush.It was like I had adrenalin rush, I couldn’t sleep – I was alive with fear. As the army entered the city of Baghdad, Iraq†¦ The sky was red like blazing flames and I could hear the bullets shoot through my ears like thunder. The gun powder rushed into my nose from the chimney from the fire place in the comfort of my own hom e. There were so many reasons why I had left my country with my family, and one of them was the war. However I’ve been through the hard times and I could’ve just stayed. Not knowing what my destiny would be but as a family we made the decision of leaving.We all agreed that if we left Iraq then we could all have a better life and could continue with our education to have the best life possible. Who wants to leave their home town? Obviously it was a struggle and to look back and leave behind everything and everyone I know: The home I grew in for 11 years and the place where my childhood was full with amazing memories. On the way to the airport I felt miserable; I was reluctant to get on the plane. I hesitated to step forward, however a decision has been made and I had no choice apart from getting on the plane as I knew that my dad was at the other end of the journey.The dream came true! My first step out of the plane towards success, I continued walking through the tunne l to see my dad for the first time in a year. I was bursting with joy to see my father; I was pumped with energy full of happiness: I couldn’t express my feelings so I just hugged him, and my heart was finally relieved. The family and I were on the way out of the airport, into to the car that my dad bought which was blue like the Circassian sea, and we were on the way to the house in Neasdon, London. When I was in the car whilst my dad was driving, I was scared; I didn’t know anyone or the language they spoke.The weather was dull; the clouds were grey and the dark streets. It was due to rain my dad said. I couldn’t play the sport I loved; swimming was my favourite sport back home. There was indoor swimming but it wasn’t the same. I couldn’t even go to my own back garden to do anything, and it was full of mud. A week after I arrived it had snowed, for the first time in my life I saw little white flakes falling from the sky, like a blessing from god. I wanted to go out, but I had a cold and I wasn’t even used to this miserable demotivating weather.Back in Iraq it was blazing hot nearly every day of the year. Every day it was a staggering 50 degrees Celsius like the Saharan desert. As I started school I felt the effects of the change, I didn’t know whether it would be for the better or worse; however I knew I was going to achieve something great, and become a role model to inspire my brother as he was young and needed someone to look up to besides my dad. I feel a little safer nowadays due to people being nice, although there are those occasional racist remarks people give.But altogether the people all colours, races and nationalities are not as I expected; there are mixed cultures and religions -they did not shun me they welcomed me to the area and country; even though they did not know where I was from, who I am, or what I do. Till this day the dream of a better life still lives on. Change instead of a holiday ca n be good in some circumstances such as mine. For me my safety was more important so I had to leave. Sometimes freedom and safety are something a holiday can’t give.

Chemistry Concentration and Molarity Lab Essay

I solved for my unknown by plugging in â€Å"y† as my given transmittance value, which was 85.0. y = -278x + 100.12 .85 = -278x + 100.12 -99.27 = -278x X = .357M (concentration) The relationship between the transmittance values and the concentration is an indirect relationship. Whenever the concentration increases, the transmittance decreases. It can also be reversed, so when the concentration decreases, the transmittance increases. For this graph, the line should not touch the origin because it is a negative slope. In order for the concentration to be 0, the transmittance level must be at exactly 100%. This means that all the light particles are transmitted directly through the object without any levels of concentration. Y = 1.4599x – 0.0068 .07 = 1.4559x – 0.0068 X = 0.05 The 2nd graph was between concentration and absorbance. This is a direct relationship because as the concentration increased, the absorbance also increased. For this graph, the line should touch the origin because it is a positive slope going from lower values to higher values. Also it passes through the origin because direct variation relationships are in the form of y = mx, where y and m are constant variables. For the absorbance value to zero, the concentration must be also be zero. Should the line of Concentration versus Absorbance go through the origin? As stated above, the line should touch and go through the origin eventually because it is a positive slope going from lower values to higher values. It is a direct variation relationship.