Impact of ASEAN-India FTA on India’s Plantation Commodities : A Simulation Analysis

The present study attempts a quantitative assessment of the impact of recently signed ASEAN-India FTA (AIFTA) for selected plantation commodities (coffee, tea and pepper) in India. We use partial equilibrium modeling approach (SMART model and gravity model) to simulate the likely import increase of the plantation commodities under the proposed tariff reduction schedule of the AIFTA. Overall, the results suggest that the AIFTA will cause significant increase in Indias import of plantation commodities. The increase in imports is mostly driven by trade creation rather than trade diversion. From the economic efficiency point of view, trade creation improves welfare as the new imports replace the high-cost domestic production. The analysis shows that the proposed tariff reduction may lead to significant tariff revenue loss to the government. However, the gain in consumer surplus (due to the fall in domestic price and the consequent reduction in dead-weight loss) outweighs the loss in tariff revenue leading to net welfare gain. By and large, the simulations based on the SMART and gravity models provide similar results on the magnitude of total increase in imports. The surge of new imports may have adverse impact for the livelihood of the Indian farmers engaged in the production of these commodities. Farmers will have to realign the structure of production according to the changing price signals and hence it is critical to provide adjustment assistance to the affected farmers.SMART Model, Gravity Model, Simulation Analysis

Ring-opening copolymerization (ROCOP): synthesis and properties of polyesters and polycarbonates

Controlled routes to prepare polyesters and polycarbonates are of interest due to the widespread application of these materials and the opportunities provided to prepare new copolymers. Furthermore, ring-opening copolymerization may enable new poly(ester–carbonate) materials to be prepared which are inaccessible using alternative polymerizations. This review highlights recent advances in the ring-opening copolymerization catalysis, using epoxides coupled with anhydrides or CO2, to produce polyesters and polycarbonates. In particular, the structures and performances of various homogeneous catalysts are presented for the epoxide–anhydride copolymerization. The properties of the resultant polyesters and polycarbonates are presented and future opportunities highlighted for developments of both the materials and catalysts

Hot Spots on the Fermi Surface of Bi2212: Stripes versus Superstructure

In a recent paper Saini et al. have reported evidence for a pseudogap around (pi,0) at room temperature in the optimally doped superconductor Bi2212. This result is in contradiction with previous ARPES measurements. Furthermore they observed at certain points on the Fermi surface hot spots of high spectral intensity which they relate to the existence of stripes in the CuO planes. They also claim to have identified a new electronic band along Gamma-M1 whose one dimensional character provides further evidence for stripes. We demonstrate in this Comment that all the measured features can be simply understood by correctly considering the superstructure (umklapp) and shadow bands which occur in Bi2212.Comment: 1 page, revtex, 1 encapsulated postscript figure (color

Self managed Access Scheme for Demand Request in TDM TDMA Star Topology Network

In demand assignment protocol, resources are granted on the basis of demand, governing some rules, policies in resource assignment and after the completion of need, resources are released back to the central pool for further requests. In star topology TDM/TDMA network of VSATs, large number of participating terminals generate signaling packet on common demand request channel. It is desired that these signaling terminals to have higher chances of successful access to the media and at the same time with minimal number of collision over the shared channel. Under these circumstances, performance of media access protocol is really crucial. Aloha is the simplistic technique to access the shared channel but suffers from extremely low throughput. Its immediate successor slotted Aloha improves the throughput by cutting down the vulnerable period to half by agreeing on transmission at slot boundaries. This improvement is also not adequate to provide the better chances of packets getting through when multiple nodes are participating. The large latency network where one hop delay is of the order of 270ms, feedback time and timeouts are also of high order this further worsen the problem. In this paper, we propose self-managed access scheme for demand request that tries to reduce the collision by managing the multiple requests and distributing them over different slots

Context aware Routing to Assist Routing Decisions for Quality Improvement in Multi Hop Ad hoc Networks

The context information is an intriguing aspect of decision making. The context-awareness can be useful in the ad hoc networks in which nodes are mobile, and the conditions are dynamic. In ad hoc networks, routing protocols are intended to discover the route over multi-hop wireless links under varying conditions. The context-awareness can assist the routing protocols in determining the appropriate path. This paper investigates into choosing the appropriate route by applying the context information and presents the approach to improve the decision making and the quality of the route. We consider nodes, connecting links, and different layers as the context. The paper introduces the scalability and flexibility in the set of parameters that govern the eminence of the node inter-connection that, in turn, influences the overall quality of the route. We propose the context-aware dynamic routing protocol (CADR) and present the approach, algorithm, and analysis. We simulate the protocol by taking the flexible combination of the context attributes and the values, also compares the performance with AODV. The simulation results show that the protocol chooses the appropriate route as per the considered attributes and weight, and provide the enhanced performanc

Stochastic Modeling of a Concrete Mixture Plant with Preventive Maintenance

In this paper, a stochastic model for concrete mixture plant with Preventive Maintenance (PM) is analyzed in detail by using a supplementary variable technique. In a concrete mixture plant eight subsystems are arranged in a series. The system goes under PM after a maximum operation time and work as new after PM. The time to failure of each subsystem follows a negative exponential distribution while PM and repair time distributions are taken as arbitrary. A sufficient repair facility is provided to the system for conducting PM and repair of the system. Repair, maintenance and switch devices are perfect. All random variables are statistically independent. Various measures of system effectiveness such as reliability, mean time to system failure (MTSF), are derived using a supplementary variable technique. The numerical results for reliability and availability are obtained for particular values of various parameters and costs