Pricing payment cards

In a payment card association such as Visa, each time a consumer pays by card, the bank of the merchant (acquirer) pays an interchange fee (IF) to the bank of the cardholder (issuer) to carry out the transaction. This paper studies the determinants of socially and privately optimal IFs in a card scheme where services are provided by a monopoly issuer and perfectly competitive acquirers to heterogeneous consumers and merchants. Different from the literature, we distinguish card membership from card usage decisions (and fees). In doing so, we reveal the implications of an asymmetry between consumers and merchants: the card usage decision at a point of sale is delegated to cardholders since merchants are not allowed to turn down cards once they are affiliated with a card network. We show that this asymmetry is sufficient to induce the card association to set a higher IF than the socially optimal IF, and thus to distort the structure of user fees by leading to too low card usage fees at the expense of too high merchant fees. Hence, cap regulations on IFs can improve the welfare. These qualitative results are robust to imperfect issuer competition, imperfect acquirer competition, and to other factors affecting final demands, such as elastic consumer participation or strategic card acceptance to attract consumers. JEL Classification: G21, L11, L42, L31, L51, K21interchange fees, Merchant fees, Payment card associations

Merger Efficiency and Welfare Implications of Buyer Power

This paper analyzes the welfare implications of buyer mergers, which are mergers between downstream firms from different markets. We focus on the interaction between the merger's effects on downstream efficiency and on buyer power in a setup where one manufacturer with a non-linear cost function sells to two locally competitive retail markets. We show that size discounts for the merged entity has no impact on consumer prices or on smaller retailers, unless the merger affects the downstream efficiency of the merging parties. When the upstream cost function is convex, we find that there are "waterbed effects", that is, each small retailer pays a higher average tariff if a buyer merger improves downstream efficiency. We obtain the opposite results, "anti-waterbed effects", if the merger is inefficient. When the cost function is concave, there are only anti-waterbed effects. In each retail market, the merger decreases the final price if and only if it improves the efficiency of the merging parties, regardless of its impact on the average tariff of small retailers.Buyer mergers, non-linear supply contracts, merger efficiencies, size discounts, waterbed effects

Genome-wide Transcriptome Analysis of Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) to Identify Genes in Response to Aspergillus flavus Infection, and Development of RNA-Seq Data Analysis Pipeline

Aflatoxins are toxic and potent carcinogenic metabolites produced by Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus. Aflatoxins can contaminate cottonseed under conducive environmental conditions. Much success has been achieved by the application of atoxigenic strains of A. flavus for controlling aflatoxin contamination in cotton, peanut and maize. Development of aflatoxin-resistant cultivars overexpressing resistance-associated genes and/or knocking down aflatoxin biosynthesis of A. flavus could be an effective strategy for controlling aflatoxin contamination in cotton. In this study, differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in response to infection with both toxigenic and atoxigenic strains of A. flavus pericarp and seed of cotton through genome-wide transcriptome profiling. The genes involved in antifungal response, oxidative burst, transcription factors, defense signaling pathways and stress response were highly differentially expressed in pericarp and seed tissues in response to A. flavus infection. The cell-wall modifying genes and genes involved in the production of antimicrobial substances were more active in pericarp than seed. Genes involved in defense response in cotton were highly induced in pericarp. The DEGs will serve as the source for identifying biomarkers for breeding, potential candidate genes for transgenic manipulation, and will help in understanding complex plant-fungal interaction for future downstream research. The increasing volume of sequence data generated by the rapidly decreasing cost of RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) necessitates the development of software pipeline(s) that can analyze the massive amounts of RNA-Seq data in an efficient manner. Through the present study, a comprehensive and flexible Standalone RNA-Seq Analysis Pipeline (SRAP) implemented with the parallel programming approach was developed, which can analyze transcriptome for any genome. SRAP consists of high-level modules, including sequence reads filtering, mapping to reference genome (or transcriptome), sequence assembly, gene expression analysis and variant discovery along with low-level modules for other common NGS utilities. The high-level modules, unlike low-level modules, require intense computation in terms of memory and processor. SRAP is developed with in-house developed scripts (Python), parallel computing and open source bioinformatics tools. It can be executed as a batch and/or individual mode for single or multiple sample files. SRAP generates RNA-Seq data analysis output files with statistical summary and graphic visualization

Coupled Fixed Point Theorems In Cone D*-Metric Space

Abstract: In this paper, we have proved some coupled fixed point theorems in partially ordered cone D*-Metric spaces. Related important results are also discussed. M. S. C. 2000: 47H10, 54H25 Key words: D*-Metric space, normal cones, fixed point, Coupled fixed point

Study of difference in child rearing practice based on sex of child among married women of reproductive age group in urban slum of Mumbai

Background: India a vast country has left behind a number of stigmas and prejudices to move ahead as one nation. Still in a number of states, villages, cities and towns, gender bias is persistent leading to female discrimination. Objective: To study the difference in child rearing practices based on sex of child among married women of reproductive age group in urban slum of Mumbai.Methods:A community based, cross-sectional study was carried out among 900 married women of reproductive age group during a period of Jan. 2007 to Jan. 2008 at Shivajinagar urban health centre, which is field practice area of T. N. medical college, Mumbai. Participants were selected by systematic random sampling in an urban slum of Mumbai, Maharashtra.Results:In present study, a total of 900 married women with their children below five year are 1158 (male: 632 & female: 526) were analyzed. There was statistically significant difference between child rearing practices like breast feeding initiation, complimentary feeding, immunization status, nutritional status, and treatment seeking behavior.Conclusion:The findings in the present study confirm that sex based difference in child rearing practices persist in urban slum area of Mumbai.

New era in plant alternative splicing analysis enabled by advances in high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies

Alternative splicing (AS) is a crucial posttranscriptional mechanism of gene expression which promotes transcriptome and proteome diversity. At the molecular level, splicing and AS involves recognition and elimination of intronic regions of a precursor messenger RNA (pre-mRNA) and joining of exonic regions to generate the mature mRNA. AS generates more than one mRNA transcript (transcripts) differing in coding and/or untranslated regions (UTRs). AS can be classified into four major types including the exon skipping (ES), intron retention (IR), alternative donor (AD), and alternative acceptor (AA), of which IR is the most prevalent event in plants (Mandadi and Scholthof, 2015). In addition to these AS types, a subfamily of IR called exitrons, which has dual features of introns and protein-coding exons were first reported in Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) and later also found in humans (Marquez et al., 2015). These spliced transcripts influence multiple biological processes such as growth, development and response to biotic and abiotic stresses in plants (Filichkin et al., 2015; Mandadi and Scholthof, 2015; Wang et al., 2018a).Fil: Bedre, Renesh. Texas A&m University Commerce; Estados UnidosFil: Irigoyen, Sonia. Texas A&m University Commerce; Estados UnidosFil: Petrillo, Ezequiel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias; ArgentinaFil: Mandadi, Kranthi. Texas A&m University Commerce; Estados Unido

Smart Follower Sensing Shopping Cart using Centralized Billing System

In the age of technological advancements, automation is essential to improve and streamline processes. Since last few decades,technology has transformed the landscape of industries and lifestyle .The proposed system suggests implementing a smart cart using a touchscreen liquid crystal display (LCD) which will show the product details using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).The LCD displays an overview of the entire supermarket showing all the different sections available helping the customer to find products. The system has a centralized billing system because of the customer need not wait in long queues for the final billing process which will eventually save his/her time. Machine automation has starting replacing human effort .With a view to accomplish this ,the customer does not have to move the cart ,instead the cart will follow the customer. A RF receiver is fixed inside the cart and the transmitter is given handed over to the customer . The information of the product added in the cart by the customer is stored in Electrically Erasable Programming Read Only Memory (EEPROM). Once the customer is done with shopping and clicks the finish button all the information will be transferred to the administrative system using Zigbee

Global Awakening of Cryptic Biosynthetic Gene Clusters in Burkholderia thailandensis

© 2017 American Chemical Society. Many bacteria encode biosynthetic proteins that produce a vast array of natural products. These compounds are often synthesized during host invasion as they function as virulence factors. In addition, such secondary metabolites have yielded numerous molecular scaffolds with pharmaceutical and clinical importance. The gene clusters that encode proteins responsible for synthesis of these compounds are typically silenced or cryptic under laboratory growth conditions, hampering discovery of novel lead compounds. We report here that MftR is a global repressor of secondary metabolite synthesis in Burkholderia thailandensis and that urate functions as a physiologically relevant inducer of gene expression. Biosynthetic gene clusters under MftR control include those associated with production of the antimicrobial bactobolins, the iron siderophore malleobactin, and the virulence factor malleilactone. MftR also controls additional genes associated with survival in a host environment, such as genes encoding components of the type III secretion system (T3SS) and proteins linked to anaerobic respiration. This observation not only has implications for understanding activation of gene regulatory networks during host invasion, but it also paves the way for isolation of novel therapeutic leads