Fiscal Decentralization and Economic Growth in OECD Countries: Is there a Relationship?

We study the relationship between fiscal decentralization and economic growth for 23 OECD countries from 1975 to 2001 by using new panel data on sub-federal tax autonomy. While initial estimations suggest that fiscal decentralization causes lower growth rates, we find that this result is not robust to alternative specifications. We also fail to obtain evidence for a negative relationship in a number of additional robustness checks. We thus conclude that fiscal decentralization is unrelated to economic growth.fiscal federalism, sub-national fiscal autonomy, tax competition

An Electronic Model for CoO2CoO_2 layer based systems: Chiral RVB metal and Superconductivity

Takada et al. have reported superconductivity in layered Na__x CoO_2.yH_2O ($T_c \approx5 K$) and more recently Wen et al. in $A_xCoO_{2+\delta}$ ($A = Na,K$)(\tc$\approx~31 K$). We model a reference neutral \cob layer as an orbitally non-degenerate spin-\half antiferromagnetic Mott insulator on a triangular lattice and Na__x CoO_2.yH_2O and $A_xCoO_{2+\delta}$ as electron doped Mott insulators described by a t-J model. It is suggested that at optimal doping chiral spin fluctuations enhanced by the dopant dynamics leads to a d-wave superconducting state. A chiral RVB metal, a PT violating state with condensed RVB gauge fields, with a possible weak ferromagnetism and low temperature p-wave superconductivity are also suggested at higher dopings.Comment: 4 pages of LaTex file, 6 figures in eps files. Typos and minor corrections mad

Factors associated with prolonged length of stay following cardiac surgery in a major referral hospital in Oman: a retrospective observational study

Two objectives were set for this study. The first was to identify factors influencing prolonged postoperative length of stay (LOS) following cardiac surgery. The second was to devise a predictive model for prolonged LOS in the cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) based on preoperative factors available at admission and to compare it against two existing cardiac stratification systems.Observational retrospective study.A tertiary hospital in Oman.All adult patients who underwent cardiac surgery at a major referral hospital in Oman between 2009 and 2013.30.5% of the patients had prolonged LOS (≥11 days) after surgery, while 17% experienced prolonged ICU LOS (≥5 days). Factors that were identified to prolong CICU LOS were non-elective surgery, current congestive heart failure (CHF), renal failure, combined coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) and valve surgery, and other non-isolated valve or CABG surgery. Patients were divided into three groups based on their scores. The probabilities of prolonged CICU LOS were 11%, 26% and 28% for group 1, 2 and 3, respectively. The predictive model had an area under the curve of 0.75. Factors associated with prolonged overall postoperative LOS included the body mass index, the type of surgery, cardiopulmonary bypass machine use, packed red blood cells use, non-elective surgery and number of complications. The latter was the most important determinant of postoperative LOS.Patient management can be tailored for individual patient based on their treatments and personal attributes to optimise resource allocation. Moreover, a simple predictive score system to enable identification of patients at risk of prolonged CICU stay can be developed using data that are routinely collected by most hospitals

QUANTITATIVE ANALYSES FOR ACCESS OF ELECTRONIC INFORMATION BY THE FACULTY MEMBERS IN THE ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY INSTITUTIONS IN COIMBATORE DISTRICT

The study analyses the majority of the respondents 221 (42.5%) are assistant professors/ lecturers/senior lecturers, and 195 (37.5%) of them are associate professors followed by 104 (20%) of the respondents are professors. 331 (26.7%) of the respondents followed by the use of e-magazines by 182 (14.7%) respondents. The data shows that a large number of 263 (50.6%) of the respondents are “Highly Satisfied” with the lecturing materials followed by 257 (49.4%) of the respondents “Satisfied” with e-resources offering lecturing materials. This data presents that a large number of respondents 265 (51.0%) prefer gateway portal to a “Large Extent’ and 139 (26.7%) of the respondents prefer to a “Very Large Extent”. On the other hand, it has also been noticed that 105 (20.2%) of the respondents are “Less satisfied” whereas 11 (2.1%) of the respondents opted “No Comment”

QUANTITATIVE ANALYSES FOR ACCESS OF ELECTRONIC INFORMATION BY THE FACULTY MEMBERS IN THE ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY INSTITUTIONS IN COIMBATORE DISTRICT

The study analyses the majority of the respondents 221 (42.5%) are assistant professors/ lecturers/senior lecturers, and 195 (37.5%) of them are associate professors followed by 104 (20%) of the respondents are professors. 331 (26.7%) of the respondents followed by the use of e-magazines by 182 (14.7%) respondents. The data shows that a large number of 263 (50.6%) of the respondents are “Highly Satisfied” with the lecturing materials followed by 257 (49.4%) of the respondents “Satisfied” with e-resources offering lecturing materials. This data presents that a large number of respondents 265 (51.0%) prefer gateway portal to a “Large Extent’ and 139 (26.7%) of the respondents prefer to a “Very Large Extent”. On the other hand, it has also been noticed that 105 (20.2%) of the respondents are “Less satisfied” whereas 11 (2.1%) of the respondents opted “No Comment”

Hardware-software co-design of AES on FPGA

This paper presents a compact hardware-software co-design of Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) on the field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) designed for low-cost embedded systems. The design uses MicroBlaze, a soft-core processor from Xilinx. The computationally intensive operations of the AES are implemented in hardware for better speed. The sub-byte calculation is designed with the help of the processor carrying out the calculations using hardware blocks implemented using FPGA. By incorporating the processor in the AES design, the total number of slices required to implement the AES algorithm on FPGA is proved to be reduced. The entire AES system design is validated using 460 slices in Spartan-3E XC3S500E, which is one of the low-cost FPGA