University of the West of England

Economists believe that if these shortages trickle into the next year, it could further increase the prices of commodities. As central banks across the world dispute over inflation, they must also consider whether these pandemic shortages and delays are temporary or will spill into the next year. Lawrence Lepard Lawrence Lepard, economist and managing partner at Equity Management Associates, retweeted an article shared by macro analyst Luke Gromen on how the world is adapting to problems related to pandemic shortages, ranging from construction materials to computer chips that experts opine should have been resolved by now. As businesses struggle to meet the sudden growth in demand, they state that nothing has returned to normal. Accounts of people running short of products at supply stores reveal that businesses are not only getting used to paying soaring shipping costs for the goods being purchased but is also indicative of how the manufacturing and shipping industries are competing with the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Shortages, delays in delivery, and rising costs continue to impact small and large businesses globally, while consumers are confronted with a new problem of stock availability. Automotive manufacturer Toyota recently announced that the company is reducing its global production of cars by 40% due to a shortage for computer chips. Factories are also reducing their operations despite growing demand for wares due to the inability to purchase raw materials, plastics, and metal parts. Construction companies, meanwhile, are paying high costs for hardware, paint, and lumber and hardware, while waiting weeks and months for what they need. David Wessel David Wessel, a journalist and director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution, shared an article on Fed Chair Jerome Powell having dealt well with not just recessions but also full employment after taking the jobless rate down to 3.5% in the US. This is expected to be the lowest in 50 years since the Covid-19 struck, and therefore, Powell deserves a reappointment rather than the arguments advocating his removal. The US Fed is facing growing criticism amid an unrelenting pandemic, right from tackling inflation which has peaked to its highest level in 30 years, to prompting income inequality and being weak on climate change agendas. President Biden is also being urged by many senators to remove Powell as Fed Chair on the grounds of his stand to loosen various bank-safety regulations that were implemented after the 2008 financial collapse. Others believe that the criticism of Powell is rooted in his independence, which is being looked on as a threat to more aggressive approaches. The chairman is a realist and is focusing on price stability and full employment as the foundation of the central banker’s role amid the raging pandemic. .@RogerLowenstein: The Powell Fed has earned an “A+” on dealing with recessions. And it deserves an “A-“ on full employment, having taken the jobless rate to 3.5%, its lowest in more than 50 years, before the pandemic struck. He deserves reappointment. — David Wessel (@davidmwessel) August 31, 2021 Daniela Gabor Daniela Gabor, associate professor in economics at the University of the West of England, Bristol, shared a letter on the Covid-19 pandemic being a massive threat for emerging and developing countries (DECs). The letter signed by various economists such as Nelson Barbosa suggested that instant capital controls, coordinated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), are needed to prevent a financial disaster. In global financial crises, liquid assets are held in safe currencies like the US dollar to enable rich countries to respond with necessary fiscal and monetary tools. However, economists emphasise that ever since the pandemic struck in March 2020, international investors have withdrawn large sums from DEC assets, contributing to a dramatic currency depreciation, especially for those subject to falling prices of commodities. Economists urged governments to reduce the externally imposed restraints on DECs, as they struggled to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, economic recession, unemployment, and the financial crisis.

A novel method for distinguishing different types of bowel disease using the stool samples of patients has been created by a group of researchers in the UK. It works by analysing the chemical compounds emitted from the samples and could provide cheaper, quicker and more accurate diagnoses, at the point of care, for a group of diseases that have, up until now, been very hard to distinguish. The preliminary results of the test, which have been published today, 28 March, in IOP Publishing’s Journal of Breath Research, show that patients with either inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) could be distinguished from each other with an overall accuracy of 76 per cent. This was based on the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from their stool samples, which act as a proxy for conditions in the gastrointestinal tract and provide a unique profile, or fingerprint, for the different bowel diseases. Both IBD and IBS present similar symptoms to each other and other bowel conditions such as colon cancer, making any definitive diagnosis very difficult. IBD—an inflammatory autoimmune disease caused by a response of the immune system to microbes in the gut—is usually diagnosed through endoscopic and histological testing, which are both invasive and costly and come with associated risks to the patient. IBS—a functional disorder of the digestive tract with no known cause—is often diagnosed by exclusion, ruling out more serious bowel diseases. The researchers of the study, from the University of the West of England, Bristol Royal Infirmary and the University of Liverpool, overcame these diagnostic problems by building a system that combined a gas chromatograph coupled to a metal oxide sensor with pattern recognition software. The system was trained to recognise patterns of VOCs that were specific to known diseases. It then used this information to try and diagnose unknown samples by comparing and matching them to the database of patterns it had previously acquired. In the researchers’ study, 182 stool samples were collected from patients with IBD and IBS between October 2010 and October 2011 and stored at freezing temperatures. Control samples were also collected from healthy patients. The results showed that patients with IBD could be distinguished from healthy controls with an accuracy of 79 per cent. Differentiating patients with IBS from healthy controls using VOCs appeared to be more difficult and could only be achieved with an accuracy of 54 per cent. The reasons, the researchers write, could be because IBS is a functional disorder as opposed to a structural disorder, so the changes in composition of VOCs in the stool samples would not be as great, producing a very similar pattern to healthy controls. The method was able to distinguish IBD from IBS with an accuracy of 76 per cent. Co-author of the study Sophie Shepherd, from the University of the West England, said: “Our work has demonstrated that a low-cost device based on VOC analysis could be used to potentially diagnose, and differentiate, IBS and IBD at the point of care. “We will continue to study faecal volatiles as a way of detecting IBS, IBD and other gastrointestinal conditions and continue to develop our techniques further. If we’re able to produce results that exceed current commercial methods, then our technique could be added to the growing number of medical tests that use VOC analysis as a diagnostic tool.” For more information, visit Institute of Physics.