Trade Liberalization versus Protectionism in Developing Countries: The case of the 100% Tariff in Kosovo

The principal aim of this Honors project is to analyze the effects of the protective trade measures, by the example of the 100% tariff in Kosovo. The analysis is carried out mainly with respect to three dimensions: price of goods and consumption, volume of trade, and new trade patterns; with the purpose of deriving lessons for the development of future trade policies in Kosovo. The research methodology for this study includes a combination of primary and secondary data. In line with the goal of providing an in-depth analysis on the impact of the 100% tariff on trade and Kosovo’s economic performance, the secondary data attained through literature review was coupled with primary data, namely semi-structured interviews. Consequently, the evidence collected displays a lack of positive ‘protectionist’ measure by the tariff, and a myriad of new-arising problems due to the tariff

Internet connectivity for mobile Ad Hoc networks

Ad hoc networking allows portable devices to establish communication independent of a central infrastructure. However, the fact that there is no central infrastructure and that the devices can move randomly gives rise to various kind of problems, such as routing and security. In this thesis the problem of routing is considered. There are several ad hoc routing protocols, such as AODV, DSR, OLSR and ZRP, that propose solutions for routing within a mobile ad hoc network. However, since there is an interest in communication between not only mobile devices in an ad hoc network, but also between a mobile device in an ad hoc network and a fixed device in a fixed network (e.g. the Internet), the ad hoc routing protocols need to be modified. In this thesis the ad hoc routing protocol AODV is used and modified to examine the interconnection between a mobile adhoc network and the Internet. For this purpose Network Simulator 2, ns2, has been used. Moreover, three proposed approaches for gateway discovery are implemented and investigated. The goal of the thesis project is twofold: • To modify the source code of AODV in accordance with the Internet draft\Global connectivity for IPv6 Mobile Ad Hoc Networks " which presents a solution where AODV is used to provide Internet access to mobile nodes. • To implement and compare di®erent approaches for gateway discovery. In this thesis, three di®erent type of gateway discovery have been taken: • The proactive gateway discovery is initiated by the gateway itself. The gateway periodically broadcasts a gateway advertisement message which is transmitted after expiration of the gateways timer. The time between two consecutive advertisements must be chosen with care so that the network is not °ooded unnecessarily. All mobile devices residing in the gateways transmission range receive the advertisement and update information about gateway. After receiving advertisement, a mobile device just forward it broadcast it again. This process goes on within entire MANET. • In reactive gateway discovery a mobile device of MANET connects by gateway only when it is needed. For that the mobile device broadcasts request message to the ALL MANET GW MULTICAST address (the IP address for the group of all gateways in a mobile ad hoc network). Thus, only the gateways are addressed by this message and only they process it. Intermediate mobile nodes that receive the message just forward it by broadcasting it again up to gateway. • To minimize the disadvantages of proactive and reactive gateway discovery, the two approaches can be combined. This results is a hybrid gateway discovery. For mobile devices in a certain range around a gateway, proactive gateway discovery is used. Mobile devices residing outside this range use reactive gateway discovery to obtain information about the gateway. In comparing theses di®erent gateway discovery, three matrices are used. These are packet delivery ratio,average end-to-end delay and overhead. In case of proactive gateway discovery and hybrid gateway discovery, value of packet delivery ratio is larger than reactive gateway discovery. In case of proactive gateway discovery and hybrid gateway discovery, value of end to end delay is less than reactive gateway discovery. The overhead of proactive gateway discovery is greater than other two gateway discovery As for the average end-to-end delay, the proactive and hybrid methods perform slightly better than the reactive method. Concerning the routing overhead, when the advertisement interval is short the reactive method generates much less overhead than the proactive method, which in turn generates much less overhead than the hybrid method

Robust Techniques for Feature-based Image Mosaicing

Since the last few decades, image mosaicing in real time applications has been a challenging field for image processing experts. It has wide applications in the field of video conferencing, 3D image reconstruction, satellite imaging and several medical as well as computer vision fields. It can also be used for mosaic-based localization, motion detection & tracking, augmented reality, resolution enhancement, generating large FOV etc. In this research work, feature based image mosaicing technique using image fusion have been proposed. The image mosaicing algorithms can be categorized into two broad horizons. The first is the direct method and the second one is based on image features. The direct methods need an ambient initialization whereas, Feature based methods does not require initialization during registration. The feature-based techniques are primarily followed by the four steps: feature detection, feature matching, transformation model estimation, image resampling and transformation. SIFT and SURF are such algorithms which are based on the feature detection for the accomplishment of image mosaicing, but both the algorithms has their own limitations as well as advantages according to the applications concerned. The proposed method employs this two feature based image mosaicing techniques to generate an output image that works out the limitations of the both in terms of image quality The developed robust algorithm takes care of the combined effect of rotation, illumination, noise variation and other minor variation. Initially, the input images are stitched together using the popular stitching algorithms i.e. Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) and Speeded-Up Robust Features (SURF). To extract the best features from the stitching results, the blending process is done by means of Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) using the maximum selection rule for both approximate as well as detail-components

A very useful blotting-paper !

La prévention du danger rare que représente la contamination des fromages de chèvre au lait cru par Listeria monocytogenes passse par une augmentation de la fréquence du plan d’autocontrôlés des laits mis en fabrication. Les producteurs fermiers de Touraine ont adopté un système original de “lactobuvard” qui permet de répondre efficacement et à moindre coût à cette exigence qualité.The contamination of goat’s raw milk cheese by Listeria monocytogenes is rare. Nevertheless, a higher frequency of milk self-checking, during cheese manufacturing, permits to control this hazard. The farm producers of Touraine have adopted an original system of blotting-papers witch allows to be effectively in accordance with the quality requirements and at a lower cost

A Novel Genetic Score Approach Using Instruments to Investigate Interactions between Pathways and Environment: Application to Air Pollution

Air pollution has been associated with increased systemic inflammation markers. We developed a new pathway analysis approach to investigate whether gene variants within relevant pathways (oxidative stress, endothelial function, and metal processing) modified the association between particulate air pollution and fibrinogen, C-reactive protein (CRP), intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1), and vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1). Our study population consisted of 822 elderly participants of the Normative Aging Study (1999–2011). To investigate the role of biological mechanisms and to reduce the number of comparisons in the analysis, we created pathway-specific scores using gene variants related to each pathway. To select the most appropriate gene variants, we used the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (Lasso) to relate independent outcomes representative of each pathway (8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine for oxidative stress, augmentation index for endothelial function, and patella lead for metal processing) to gene variants. A high genetic score corresponds to a higher allelic risk profile. We fit mixed-effects models to examine modification by the genetic score of the weekly air pollution association with the outcome. Among participants with higher genetic scores within the oxidative stress pathway, we observed significant associations between particle number and fibrinogen, while we did not find any association among participants with lower scores (pinteraction = 0.04). Compared to individuals with low genetic scores of metal processing gene variants, participants with higher scores had greater effects of particle number on fibrinogen (pinteraction = 0.12), CRP (pinteraction = 0.02), and ICAM-1 (pinteraction = 0.08). This two-stage penalization method is easy to implement and can be used for large-scale genetic applications

Epigenetic Influences on Associations between Air Pollutants and Lung Function in Elderly Men: The Normative Aging Study

Background: Few studies have been performed on pulmonary effects of air pollution in the elderly—a vulnerable population with low reserve capacity—and mechanisms and susceptibility factors for potential effects are unclear. Objectives: We evaluated the lag structure of air pollutant associations with lung function and potential effect modification by DNA methylation (< or ≥ median) at 26 individual CpG sites in nine candidate genes in a well-characterized cohort of elderly men. Methods: We measured forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in 1 sec (FEV1), and blood DNA methylation one to four times between 1999 and 2009 in 776 men from the Normative Aging Study. Air pollution was measured at fixed monitors 4 hr to 28 days before lung function tests. We used linear mixed-effects models to estimate the main effects of air pollutants and effect modification by DNA methylation. Results: An interquartile range (IQR) increase in subchronic exposure (3 to 28 days cumulated), but not in acute exposure (during the previous 4 hr, or the current or previous day), to black carbon, total and nontraffic particles with aerodynamic diameter ≤ 2.5 μm (PM2.5), carbon monoxide, and nitrogen dioxide was associated with a 1–5% decrease in FVC and FEV1 (p < 0.05). Slope estimates were greater for FVC than FEV1, and increased with cumulative exposure. The estimates slopes for air pollutants (28 days cumulated) were higher in participants with low (< median) methylation in TLR2 at position 2 and position 5 and high (≥ median) methylation in GCR. Conclusions: Subchronic exposure to traffic-related pollutants was associated with significantly reduced lung function in the elderly; nontraffic pollutants (particles, ozone) had weaker associations. Epigenetic mechanisms related to inflammation and immunity may influence these associations. Citation: Lepeule J, Bind MAC, Baccarelli AA, Koutrakis P, Tarantini L, Litonjua A, Sparrow D, Vokonas P, Schwartz JD. 2014. Epigenetic influences on associations between air pollutants and lung function in elderly men: the Normative Aging Study. Environ Health Perspect 122:566–572; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.120645