Role of Central Banks in Promoting Small and Medium Scale Enterprises

This collaborative project aims to present and compare the latest developments and policies concerning small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) in SEACEN member economies. In doing so, the focus is placed on central banks¡¯ initiatives and involvement in national policy to promote SME. The paper presents major country-specific issues, including definition of SMEs, comparison of various financing schemes, and highlights of best-achieved financing policy measures in member economies. There is a variation in the definition of SME used in the individual SEACEN economies, reflecting differences in policy emphasis and SMEs¡¯ level of development. As a group, the sector dominates business establishments in SEACEN economies, accounting for 98 percent of total business establishments. It is also the biggest employer as it employs almost 70 percent of labour force. Thus, fluctuations in SME business lead to fluctuations in overall employment. In term of value added to GDP, the SME contributes to less than half of total GDP. It is also observed that the SME¡¯s contribution to GDP has not improved significantly over the years even though they employ more labour than before. In general, SME business is clustered in the commerce and agricultural sector. While financing continues to be one of the major problems in the SME sector, current measures to channel fund to the SMEs tend to be mostly market-based, via official financial intermediaries or banks. Efforts are focused on completing market by providing information, encouraging banks to specialise on small loans, organising meetings between banks and SMEs, and simplifying regulations and procedures to make it easier for SMEs to apply for loans. Although banks are the main provider of financing for SMEs, they have not been the major player in financing high-tech start-up and restructuring of SMEs. In this respect, bank financing may have to be supplemented by access to capital market, venture capitalist and business angels networking. Most SEACEN member central banks are generally active in supporting SME, with the measures being directing more toward strengthening and enhancing lending capacity of banks to the SMEs. These include obligatory loan portfolio share requirements, lowering risk weight on SME loans, building infrastructure for swift funding to SMEs, providing consultancy to the SMEs in applying for loans, enhancing SMEs credit information by establishing a credit information bureau, and providing credit guarantee. The study recommends that central banks should assist the SME sector through sustainable financing channel to help support profitable growth of SMEs. Market completing and promotional policies are preferred to protective and subsidy based or directed lending. In our opinion, there are three main areas where central bank should be involved in promotion of SME. They are: i) financial market infrastructure development; ii) enhancing availability of credit information; and iii) swift, safe and secure banking for small borrowers.

A NEUROMARKETING STUDY ON MONGOLIAN CONSUMERS’ BUYING DECISION PROCESS

There has been almost 20 years since science of marketing has developed in Mongolia and there has been significant progress in acquiring and using it. Business companies’ leadership have become aware of the importance of this science and see marketing as business philosophy and understand that analyzing the market, business environment and conditions by consumers is the key to success. Today’s society demands from marketing professionals’ delicacy and taking into account consumers’ needs and creating new needs and new means of consumption. Main purpose of business entities is to be aware of consumer needs, to establish its position on the market and to be successful. In order to provide consumers with the best products and keep them at the center of their attention it is important to establish optimal ratio of marketing factors that would most efficiently influence consumers with different behaviors

Results of neuromarketing study of visual attention and emotions of buyers in retail store environment

Retail trade involves constant changes and trends due to influence of marketing promotions on traders themselves and their customers as well. This is an internal environment of a retail store, which is a part of factors that define customer’s buying decision. In general, more than 80% of buyers make a buying decision on the spot or the last place where buyers normally can change their mind to make a purchase. A customer’s final decision to make a purchase is affected not only by the cost of the item but also the means of marketing promotion and visual aspect of goods. Therefore, it is necessary to constantly collect factual information based on customers’ feedback on effectiveness and efficiency of these marketing promotions in real-store environment. Recent trends of marketing research development demand a wide use of research methods in conducting in-store research based on new technologies besides the traditional ones. Optimal use of new methods of neuromarketing gives more opportunity to develop efficient marketing strategy and to provoke customers’ interest and emotions as well. Techniques to stimulate customer’s interest and emotions can help increase their motivation to make a purchase followed by increase in s store’s sales and profit. In this study we have used a methodology based in neuromarketing technology to identify factors affecting customer’s visual attention and emotions in a grocery store. The study was conducted in real environment of a retail grocery store using a mobile eye camera (Eye tracker), mobile electroencephalograph (EEG), face reading technology (FA) and internal position system. The objective of the study is to identify customers’ reaction, emotions and feedback using selected neuromarketing methods in a store. At the end of the research, we have identified how neuromarketing techniques can be applied in better understanding customer behavior at a point of sale

Adjustments of the Financial and Corporate Sector to the Changes in Exchange Rate Volatility and their Policy Implications in the SEACEN Countries

This collaborative project, which is participated by 8 SEACEN member banks, aimed to examine exchange rate volatility faced by the member countries and to study its impact on the domestic economy with emphasis on adjustments of the corporate and financial sector. The project also investigated how the adjustments could contribute to the overall financial stability. The last decade was the end of explicit commitment to the fixed exchange rate regime. Although, it is still debatable whether exchange rate should move or not, the lesson learnt from the 1997 Asian crisis was that a fixed exchange rate regime ould have serious implications when the economy is not protected from severe exchange rate movements. The regime could undermine the resilience of the financial and corporate sector due to the commitment to stability of the exchange rate. Nevertheless, in the decade since the crisis, SEACEN economies have adjusted to an environment of more volatile exchange rates. The gradual decline in volatility could have contributed to economic performance and exchange rates adjusting to new levels. The managed float seems to be the main adopted regime and in some countries, the exchange rate has almost returned to the pre-crisis level. The financial sector has increased capitalisation in response to the volatile exchange rate environment, boosting profitability and the capacity to absorb shocks including exchange rate volatility. Financial stability has increased as a result of accumulated foreign reserves by the monetary authorites, helping to raise foreign investors' confidence in bringing back capital to the region and allowing the economy to leverage the international financial market. The corporate sector is always aware of exchange rate risk and is investing in instruments that allow it to mitigate exchange rate volatility. Financial derivatives are some of the instruments used widely. Empirical evidence reveals that exchange rate volatility does not influence corporate value significantly, due perhaps to the successful risk mitigating strategies by the corporations and also partially because of more prudent exchange rate policy. This study used the industry specific exchange rates for the analysis of exchange rate exposure and its impact on non-financial corporate sector in the participating SEACEN countries. The calculation of real effective exchange rate indices for each industry using trade weights specifically for that industry is more useful for the analysis of exchange rate pressure on the real economy. The economy wide aggregate real effective exchange rate would not be able to capture the pressure of exchange rate when half of the economy is importing and the other half is exporting. With more precise data on trade of each industry, the real pressure generated through exchange rate change can be captured more accurately. From the empirical analysis of some industries, it is noted that industry specific real effective exchange rate could be used for further analysis. On the whole, the conclusion reached is that corporate value is not affected by exchange rate exposure and this is in line with the conclusion reached in other studies. The corporate sector adopts strategies which mitigate exchange rate risk. The strategies vary depending on the availability of instruments. Larger companies are utilising financial instruments such as forwards, swaps and netting off cash flows that match balance sheet exposures. Smaller companies, however, have to face risks if there is no option to hedge. The cost and access to hedge instruments is an issue of infrastructure which allow companies to leverage on them. Authorities' efforts to establish an efficient infrastructure was discussed in the case of Philippines. Similarly, the Indonesian non-deliverable forwards market is being developed. Finally, it was found that there have been few adjustments made in recent times to mitigate the volatility of exchange rate. The major adjustments were made mostly right after the crisis period and presently, markets have become increasingly efficient in dealing with the impact of exchange rate volatilities. The most important contributions by the authorities are measures to ensure resilience of financial institutions, improvement of the efficiency of market, development of legal and technical framework for financial instruments that help both financial and corporate sectors to diversify risks and ensuring that exchange rate policy is prudent which would not lead to misalignments that create excessive exchange rate exposure.

A Study on the Detection of Protective Helmets for the Safety of Construction Workers

In recent years, with the rapid development of the construction industry, the number of accidents and deaths on construction sites increased, so the prevention of accidents is one of the important issues. Worker safety during construction is a major concern of the construction industry. Wearing helmets can reduce injuries among construction workers, but helmets are not always worn and used correctly for a variety of reasons. Therefore, computer vision-based automatic helmet detection systems are very important. Although many researchers have developed machine and deep learning-based motorcycle helmet detection systems, there is little research on helmet detection for construction workers. Therefore, in this research work, an automatic system for detecting the helmets of construction workers based on real-time computer vision is presented. In this study, machine learning method is used to detect helmets, and a model is trained using 1,500 images. The test results show that the average accuracy is above 95% in laboratory conditions

Design, implementation, and analysis of router architectures and network topologies for FPGA-Based Multicore System

[EN] In this project, different router architectures will be designed, together with different connection patterns among routers, which will lead to different topologies. The goal is the exploration of resource overheads and performance achieved in an FPGA-based environment with a completed multicore system developed. The work will analyze which is the best router design and topology when focusing on the relative performance achieved per cost unit. In addition, new router techniques will be explored in order to reduce the latency of the network, thus improving performance. The project will set a baseline configuration which is made of a 2D mesh topology with XY routing. The project will address topologies like concentrated mesh, torus network, mesh with express channels, and flattened butterfly. The work will be developed completely on an FPGA-based environment with models deployed in Verilog, being synthesized and implemented on the FPGA board.[ES] In this project, different router architectures will be designed, together with different connection patterns among routers, which will lead to different topologies. The goal is the exploration of resource overheads and performance achieved in an FPGA-based environment with a completed multicore system developed. The work will analyze which is the best router design and topology when focusing on the relative performance achieved per cost unit. In addition, new router techniques will be explored in order to reduce the latency of the network, thus improving performance. The project will set a baseline configuration which is made of a 2D mesh topology with XY routing. The project will address topologies like concentrated mesh, torus network, mesh with express channels, and flattened butterfly. The work will be developed completely on an FPGA-based environment with models deployed in Verilog, being synthesized and implemented on the FPGA board.Juvaa, B. (2015). Design, implementation, and analysis of router architectures and network topologies for FPGA-Based Multicore System. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/55240TFG

The role of non-coding genetic variants on transthyretin gene transcription in transthyretin amyloidosis

The transthyretin-associated amyloidoses are a group of protein-folding disorders caused by deposition of the liver-secreted plasma protein transthyretin (TTR) in various tissues of the body. The sporadic form of the disease is caused by deposition of wild-type TTR whereas the inherited form is caused by deposition of mutated TTR; there are over 100 known amyloidogenic mutations of the TTR gene. The transcriptional regulation of the mouse transthyretin gene has been well studied. Organ-specific modulation of TTR mRNA is achieved by coordinated binding of hepatocyte-specific and ubiquitously expressed transcription factors to regulatory regions in the proximal promoter and upstream enhancer region. The hypothesis of this dissertation is that non-coding genetic sequence variations in the promoter of the transthyretin gene situated upstream of the regulatory regions, alter its transcriptional regulation, contributing to the onset and expression of transthyretin-associated amyloidosis. Previously, we identified a significant association of a non-coding polymorphism of the TTR promoter, rs3764479, with age of onset and survival in patients with ATTRwt amyloid disease. In this dissertation, electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA) were used to investigate transcription factor binding of HepG2 nuclear proteins to short DNA probes with and without rs3764479. These mobility shift studies revealed that HepG2 nuclear extract proteins showed higher affinity to the wild-type TTR sequence than to one containing the rs3764479 SNP. Competition EMSAs suggested SNP-related changes in the binding of transcription factors hepatocyte nuclear factor-1 (HNF1) and hepatocyte nuclear factor-3b may alter TTR gene transcription. To investigate transthyretin gene regulation in V122I ATTR amyloid, the most prevalent TTR gene variant in the United States, the proximal promoter region from patients with V122I ATTR amyloidosis was sequenced and analyzed. In total, 8 SNPs were identified; one (rs955705399) was significantly associated with disease between the two V122I genotype-positive cohorts studied with and without cardiomyopathy. It is postulated that the presence of SNPs could influence gene expression and ultimately disease pathogenesis. In summary, these studies suggest that presence of disease-associated non-coding genetic variations modify transthyretin gene expression by disrupting transcription factor binding and may, in part, explain the clinical heterogeneity seen in patients with transthyretin-associated amyloidoses

Dispersal and foraging rates of the facultatively parthenogenetic stick insect Megacrania batesii

Sexual conflict could play an important role in shaping spatial variation in sex ratio in facultatively parthenogenetic species. This is because if females of such species avoid mating, they can establish all-female populations via parthenogenetic reproduction. By contrast, if females cannot avoid mating (i.e., males), they reproduce offspring of both sexes and establish mixed-sex populations in the wild. In Australia, natural populations of Megacrania batesii exhibit extreme spatial variation in sex ratio, with all-female and mixed-sex populations occurring over a small scale. However, it is unclear how facultatively parthenogenetic females avoid mating and establish all-female populations. Sex-specific patterns of dispersal could play a role because, depending on whether females are mated or unmated, they could establish mixed-sex and all-female populations if they successfully disperse to new areas. However, if males invade all-female populations, they could convert these populations into mixed-sex populations via mating. In chapter one, I therefore investigated dispersal rate of females and males from a mixed-sex population and single females from an all-female population. I found that females from the all-female population were less dispersive than females and males from the mixed-sex population. I also found that dispersal was limited to movement within habitat patches. Additionally, in chapter two, I examined whether costs associated with mate guarding (which is widespread and long-lasting in M. batesii) imposes energetic costs on females (i.e., reduction in foraging rate) because guarded females carry males. If females’ foraging rates were impacted by guarding males, mate guarding could be a manifestation of sexual conflict in M. batesii. However, I found little evidence that laboratory-reared females from mixed-sex populations fed more while unpaired than while paired with males. Overall, these studies contribute insights into how sex-specific dispersal and costs of mating and guarding might contribute to sexual conflict and variation in sex ratio in natural populations of the facultative parthenogenetic species, M. batesii

Exogenous and endogenous ghrelin counteracts GLP-1 action to stimulate cAMP signaling and insulin secretion in islet β-cells

AbstractWe studied interactive effects of insulinotropic GLP-1 and insulinostatic ghrelin on rat pancreatic islets. GLP-1 potentiated glucose-induced insulin release and cAMP production in isolated islets and [Ca2+]i increases in single β-cells, and these potentiations were attenuated by ghrelin. Ghrelin suppressed [Ca2+]i responses to an adenylate cyclase activator forskolin. Moreover, GLP-1-induced insulin release and cAMP production were markedly enhanced by [d-lys3]-GHRP-6, a ghrelin receptor antagonist, in isolated islets. These results indicate that both exogenous and endogenous islet-derived ghrelin counteracts glucose-dependent GLP-1 action to increase cAMP production, [Ca2+]i and insulin release in islet β-cells, positioning ghrelin as a modulator of insulinotropic GLP-1

Dual-ion delivery for synergistic angiogenesis and bactericidal capacity with silica-based microsphere

Inhibition of bacterial growth with the simultaneous promotion of angiogenesis has been challenging in the repair and regeneration of infected tissues. Here, we aim to tackle this issue through the use of cobalt-doped silicate microspheres that can sustainably release dual ions (silicate and cobalt) at therapeutically-relevant doses. The cobalt was doped up to 2.5 wt% within a sol-gel silicate glass network, and microspheres with the size of ∼300 μm were generated by an emulsification method. The cobalt and silicate ions released were shown to synergistically upregulate key angiogenic genes, such as HIF1-α, VEGF and the receptor KDR. Moreover, the incorporation of ions promoted the polarization, migration, homing and sprouting angiogenesis of endothelial cells. Neo-vascular formation was significantly higher in the dual-ion delivered microspheres, as evidenced in a chicken chorioallantoic membrane model. When cultured with bacterial species, the cobalt-doped microspheres effectively inhibited bacteria growth in both indirect or direct contacts. Of note, the bacteria/endothelial cell coculture model proved the efficacy of dual-ion releasing microcarriers for maintaining the endothelial survivability against bacterial contamination and their cell-cell junction. The current study demonstrates the multiple actions (proangiogenic and antibacterial) of silicate and cobalt ions released from microspheres, and the concept provided here can be extensively applied to repair and regenerate infected tissues as a growth factor- or drug-free delivery system. STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: While several ions have been introduced to biomaterials for therapeutic purposes, relaying the effects of antibacterial into tissue regenerative (e.g., angiogenesis) has been a significant challenge. In this study, we aim to develop a biomaterial platform that has the capacity of both 'antibacterial' and 'proangiogenic' from a microsphere sustainably releasing multiple ions (herein cobalt and silicate). Here, dual-actions of the microspheres revealed the stimulated endothelial functions as well as the inhibited growth of different bacterial species. In particular, protecting endothelial survivability against bacterial contamination was reported using the bacterial/endothelial co-culture model. The current concept of drug-free yet multiple-ion delivery biomaterials can be applicable for the repair and regeneration of infected tissues with dual actions of angiogenesis and suppressing bacterial activity