Currency values, prices, consumption and incomes are at the heart of the economic performance of all countries. In order to make a meaningful comparison between one economy and another, economists routinely make use of purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates, but while PPP rates are widely used and well understood, they take a lot of...

With today's increasing economic uncertainties, a strong investment strategy is to put a portion of your net worth in gold. However, given investors' overall lack of knowledge about gold as an investment, as wealth insurance, or as a store of...

Use of Beowulf clusters (collections of off-the-shelf commodity computers programmed to act in...

Many industry analysts believe that Grid computing will be the next big wave in technology. It is so promising that major technology companies such as IBN, Microsoft, Oracle, and Sun are allocating significant quantities of resources for Grid research and development. A Developer’s Guide to Grid...

The academic study of diamonds is as multi-faceted as the precious stones themselves. Mineralogists and geographers have written about them, as have historians and economists and students of art and fashion. They each shine their light on a different aspect of this source of luminous radiance. But who would venture to describe the entire...