Inter-Dependencies in Budget Deficit and its Financing Sources in Pakistan (1960-2005)

The paper critically appraises causality, susceptibility to innovation of budget deficit, domestic borrowing from banking system and foreign borrowing. Secondary data is used, which was taken from annual Economic Survey of Pakistan (various issues), and International Financial Statistics (2005). For analysis, Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model with Impulse Response Function (IRF), Error Variance Decomposition and Granger Causality test is used. The study revealed that any innovation of one standard deviation took seven years for budget deficit and more than ten years for domestic bank borrowing and foreign borrowing to be effective. The variation in budget deficit is mostly explained by itself. Most of the variation in domestic bank borrowing is explained by budget deficit, while variation in foreign borrowing is mostly explained by budget deficit and domestic bank borrowing. Two unilateral causality are found and no bilateral causality, and in mostly independent relationships have been detected. Based on the finding the study suggests parallel and harmonized fiscal and monetary policy to reduce foreign reserves outflow. Fiscal policy is more vulnerable to shocks or innovations and monetary policy took longer time to become effective, so the gap between monetary policy formation and its implementation must be reduced

Hadrons at high temperature: an update from the FASTSUM collaboration

We present the most recent results from the FASTSUM collaboration for hadron properties at high temperature. This includes the temperature dependence of the light and charmed meson and baryon spectrum, as well as properties of heavy quarkonia. The results are obtained using anisotropic lattices with a fixed scale approach. We also present the status of our next generation gauge ensembles.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures. Contribution to the XVth Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum, 1-6 August 2022, Stavanger, Norwa

A comparative analysis of toluidine blue with frozen section in oral squamous cell carcinoma

Background:Surgical excision of the primary tumor with safe margins remains the mainstay of treatment for oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). The standard of care for assessment of intraoperative margins is frozen section histopathology. Unfortunately the facility is not available at most centers in limited resource countries. Toluidine blue, a metachromatic dye, has been well described in clinical identification of malignant and premalignant lesion in the oral cavity. Considering this we decided to explore intraoperative use of toluidine blue staining, in comparison with frozen sections, for the assessment of tumor-free margins. Methods: After obtaining clearance from the in-house ethical review committee, a prospective study was conducted at Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, from August 15, 2009 to March 14, 2010. A sample of 56 consenting Patients with biopsy-proven OSCC were included in the study, giving us 280 tumor margins. Margins were analyzed using toluidine blue staining and frozen section histopathology. A receiver operator curve (ROC) was then applied to compare assessment of margin status by toluidine blue and frozen section. Results: Of the 280 examined margins 11 stained positive with toluidine blue, three were positive on frozen section biopsy, and three were positive on final histopathology. Toluidine blue staining had sensitivity and specificity of 100% and 97%, respectively. The diagnostic accuracy of toluidine blue was found to be 97.1% with a positive predictive value (PPV) of 27.2% and a negative predictive value (NPV) of 100%. Conclusions: Toluidine blue can be used as an effective screening modality for the assessment of intraoperative margins in resource limited environments and reducing the number of frozen section biopsies performed. Further by providing real-time clinical information within minutes it can reduce indirect costs such as operating room time. It may also be used as an ad hoc for frozen section biopsies where frozen section facilities are available

Hadrons at high temperature: An update from the FASTSUM collaboration

We present the most recent results from the FASTSUM collaboration for hadron properties at high temperature. This includes the temperature dependence of the light and charmed meson and baryon spectrum, as well as properties of heavy quarkonia. The results are obtained using anisotropic lattices with a fixed scale approach. We also present the status of our next generation gauge ensembles

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Political connections and corporate financial decision making

This paper investigates whether and how political connections influence managerial financial decisions. Our study reveals that those firms that have a politician on its board of directors are highly leveraged, use more long-term debt, hold large excess cash and are associated with low quality financial reporting compared to their non-connected counterparts. These effects escalate with the strength of the connected politician and whether he or his party is in power. The winning party effect is observed to be stronger than victory by the politician himself. Overall, our paper provides strong evidence that political connection is a two-edged sword. It is indeed a valuable resource for connected firms, but it comes at a cost of higher agency problems

The baryo-quarkonium picture for hidden-charm and bottom pentaquarks and LHCb Pc(4380) and Pc(4450) states

We study baryo-charmonium [ηc- and J/ψ-N⁎, ηc(2S)-, ψ(2S)- and χc(1P)-N] and baryo-bottomonium [ηb(2S)-, ϒ(2S)- and χb(1P)-N] bound states, where N is the nucleon and N⁎ a nucleon resonance. In the baryo-quarkonium model, the five qqqQQ¯ quarks are arranged in terms of a heavy quarkonium core, QQ¯, embedded in light baryonic matter, qqq, with q=u or d. The interaction between the QQ¯ core and the light baryon can be written in terms of the QCD multipole expansion. The spectrum of baryo-charmonium states is calculated and the results compared with the existing experimental data. In particular, we can interpret the recently discovered Pc(4380) and Pc(4450) pentaquarks as ψ(2S)-N and χc2(1P)-N bound states, respectively. We observe that in the baryo-bottomonium sector the binding energies are, on average, slightly larger than those of baryo-charmonia. Because of this, the hidden-bottom pentaquarks are more likely to form than their hidden-charm counterparts. We thus suggest the experimentalists to look for five-quark states in the hidden-bottom sector in the 10.4–10.9 GeV energy region. Keywords: Baryo-charmonium, QCD multipole expansion, Pentaquarks, Pc(4380) and Pc(4450

Quark structure of the χc(3P) and X(4274) resonances and their strong and radiative decays

We calculate the masses of χc(3P) states with threshold corrections in a coupled-channel model. The model was recently applied to the description of the properties of χc(2P) and χb(3P) multiplets (Ferretti and Santopinto in Phys Lett B 789:550, 2019]. We also compute the open-charm strong decay widths of the χc(3P) states and their radiative transitions. According to our predictions, the χc(3P) states should be dominated by the charmonium core, but they may also show small meson-meson components. The X(4274) is interpreted as a cc¯ χc1(3P) state. More information on the other members of the χc(3P) multiplet, as well as a more rigorous analysis of the X(4274)’s decay modes, are needed to provide further indications on the quark structure of the previous resonance.peerReviewe