Financing firms in India

The authors examine the legal and business environments, financing channels, and governance mechanisms of various types of firms in India and compare them to those from other countries. Despite its English commonlaw origin, strong legal protection provided by the law, and a democratic government, corruption within India's legal system and government significantly weakens investor protection in practice. External financing of firms has been dominated by nonmarket sources of financing, while the characteristics of listed firms are similar to those from countries with weak investor protection. The evidence, including results based on a survey of small and medium-scale private firms, shows that alternative financing channels provide the most important source of funds. The authors also find that informal governance mechanisms, such as those based on reputation, trust, and relationships are more important than formal mechanisms (such as courts) in resolving disputes, overcoming corruption, and supporting growth.Banks&Banking Reform,Corporate Law,Financial Intermediation,Governance Indicators,Small Scale Enterprise

Variation of the gas and radiation content in the sub-Keplerian accretion disk around black holes and its impact to the solutions

We investigate the variation of the gas and the radiation pressure in accretion disks during the infall of matter to the black hole and its effect to the flow. While the flow far away from the black hole might be non-relativistic, in the vicinity of the black hole it is expected to be relativistic behaving more like radiation. Therefore, the ratio of gas pressure to total pressure (beta) and the underlying polytropic index (gamma) should not be constant throughout the flow. We obtain that accretion flows exhibit significant variation of beta and then gamma, which affects solutions described in the standard literature based on constant beta. Certain solutions for a particular set of initial parameters with a constant beta do not exist when the variation of beta is incorporated appropriately. We model the viscous sub-Keplerian accretion disk with a nonzero component of advection and pressure gradient around black holes by preserving the conservations of mass, momentum, energy, supplemented by the evolution of beta. By solving the set of five coupled differential equations, we obtain the thermo-hydrodynamical properties of the flow. We show that during infall, beta of the flow could vary upto ~300%, while gamma upto ~20%. This might have a significant impact to the disk solutions in explaining observed data, e.g. super-luminal jets from disks, luminosity, and then extracting fundamental properties from them. Hence any conclusion based on constant gamma and beta should be taken with caution and corrected.Comment: 22 pages including 8 figures; published in New Astronom

Corporate governance in India

This study describes the Indian corporate governance system and examines how the system has both supported and held back India's ascent to the top ranks of the world's economies. While on paper the country's legal system provides some of the best investor protection in the world, enforcement is a major problem with slow, over-burdened courts and significant corruption. Ownership remains concentrated and family business groups continue to be the dominant business model. There is significant pyramiding and tunneling among Indian business groups and, notwithstanding copious reporting requirements, evidence of earnings management. However, corporate governance in India does not compare unfavorably with any of the other major emerging economies: Brazil, China and Russia. India ranks high on the ease of getting credit, and has a well-functioning banking sector with one of the lowest proportions of nonperforming assets. The two main Stock Exchanges have among the highest number of trades in the world, and the relatively young Securities and Exchanges Board of India has a rigorous regulatory regime to ensure fairness, transparency and good practice. Most importantly, the corporate governance landscape in the country has been changing fast over the past decade, particularly with the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley type measures and legal changes to improve the enforceability of creditor's rights. If this trend is maintained, India should have the quality of corporate governance necessary to sustain its impressive current growth rates

Two temperature accretion around rotating black holes: Description of general advective flow paradigm in presence of various cooling processes to explain low to high luminous sources

We investigate the viscous two temperature accretion discs around rotating black holes. We describe the global solution of accretion flows with a sub-Keplerian angular momentum profile, by solving the underlying conservation equations including explicit cooling processes selfconsistently. Bremsstrahlung, synchrotron and inverse Comptonization of soft photons are considered as possible cooling mechanisms, for sub-Eddington, Eddington and super-Eddington mass accretion rates around Schwarzschild and Kerr black holes with a Kerr parameter 0.998. It is found that the flow, during its infall from the Keplerian to sub-Keplerian transition region to the black hole event horizon, passes through various phases of advection -- general advective paradigm to radiatively inefficient phase and vice versa. Hence the flow governs much lower electron temperature ~10^8-10^{9.5} K, in the range of accretion rate in Eddington units 0.01 <~ \mdot <~ 100, compared to the hot protons of temperature ~ 10^{10.2} - 10^{11.8}K. Therefore, the solution may potentially explain the hard X-rays and \gamma-rays emitted from AGNs and X-ray binaries. We then show that a weakly viscous flow is expected to be cooling dominated, particularly at the inner region of the disc, compared to its highly viscous counterpart which is radiatively inefficient. With all the solutions in hand, we finally reproduce the observed luminosities of the under-fed AGNs and quasars (e.g. Sgr A^*) to ultra-luminous X-ray sources (e.g. SS433), at different combinations of input parameters such as mass accretion rate, ratio of specific heats. The set of solutions also predicts appropriately the luminosity observed in the highly luminous AGNs and ultra-luminous quasars (e.g. PKS 0743-67).Comment: 25 pages including 22 figures; to appear in MNRA

Anti-hepatitis B core antigen testing with detection and characterization of occult hepatitis B virus by an in-house nucleic acid testing among blood donors in Behrampur, Ganjam, Orissa in southeastern India: implications for transfusion

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Occult hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection might transmit viremic units into the public blood supply if only hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) testing is used for donor screening. Our aim was to evaluate the prevalence of occult HBV infection among the HBsAg negative/antiHBc positive donations from a highly HIV prevalent region of India.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A total of 729 HBsAg negative donor units were included in this study. Surface gene and precore region were amplified by in house nucleic acid test (NAT) for detection of occult HBV infection and surface gene was analyzed after direct sequencing.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 220 (30.1%) HBsAg negative donors were antiHBc positive, of them 66 (30%) were HBV DNA positive by NAT. HBV DNA positivity among 164 antiHBc only group, was 27.1% and among 40 antiHBs positive group was 30.0%. HBV/D (93.3%) was predominant and prevalence of both HBV/C and HBV/A was 3.3%. Single or multiple amino acids substitutions were found in 95% samples.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Thus, a considerable number of HBV infected donors remain undiagnosed, if only HBsAg is used for screening. Addition of antiHBc testing for donor screening, although will lead to rejection of a large number of donor units, will definitely eliminate HBV infected donations and help in reducing HBV transmission with its potential consequences, especially among the immunocompromised population. The HBV genetic diversity found in this donor population are in accordance with other parts of India.</p

Two temperature viscous accretion flows around rotating black holes: Description of under-fed systems to ultra-luminous X-ray sources

We discuss two temperature accretion disk flows around rotating black holes. As we know that to explain observed hard X-rays the choice of Keplerian angular momentum profile is not unique, we consider the sub-Keplerian regime of the disk. Without any strict knowledge of the magnetic field structure, we assume the cooling mechanism is dominated by bremsstrahlung process. We show that in a range of Shakura-Sunyaev viscosity parameter 0.2\gsim\alpha\gsim0.0005, flow behavior varies widely, particularly by means of the size of disk, efficiency of cooling and corresponding temperatures of ions and electrons. We also show that the disk around a rotating black hole is hotter compared to that around a Schwarzschild black hole, rendering a larger difference between ion and electron temperatures in the former case. With all the theoretical solutions in hand, finally we reproduce the observed luminosities ($L$) of two extreme cases -- the under-fed AGNs and quasars (e.g. Sgr $A^*$) with L\gsim 10^{33} erg/sec to ultra-luminous X-ray sources with $L\sim 10^{41}$ erg/sec, at different combinations of mass accretion rate, ratio of specific heats, Shakura-Sunyaev viscosity parameter and Kerr parameter, and conclude that Sgr $A^*$ may be an intermediate spinning black hole.Comment: 21 pages including 5 figures; few typos corrected; to appear in New Astronom

Characterization of the Occult Hepatitis B Virus Variants Circulating among the Blood Donors from Eastern India

A previous study from West Bengal documented very high rate of occult HBV infection (OBI) among the HBsAg negative blood donors. This study was aimed to characterize the OBI strains circulating among the blood donors and to estimate the risk associated with the prevailing viral variants/mutants. Blood samples from 2195 voluntary blood donors were included in the study. HBsAg, HBeAg, anti-HBc, and anti-HBs statuses of the samples were done by ELISA based detection. PCR amplification and sequencing were done to determine HBV genotypes, basal core promoter (BCP), and precore (Pre-C) mutations. Among the study samples, 268 were anti-HBc positive/HBsAg negative, among which 65 (24.25%) were HBV DNA positive. Phylogenetic analysis revealed the presence of HBV/D (87.23%), HBV/A (8.51%), and HBV/C (4.26%) (P<0.0001). HBV/D3 (65.85%) was the significantly prevalent subgenotype over HBV/D2 (26.83%) and HBV/D1 (7.31%) (P=0.0003). Considerable prevalence of differential BCP (1752C, 1753C, 1762T/1764A, 1753C+1762T/1764A, 1773C, and 1814C) and reverse transcriptase (rt) gene (rtI91L, rtL93P, rtS106C, rtR110G, rtN118T, rtS119T, rtY126H, rtG127W/R, rtC136R, and rtY158H) mutations was identified. Association of specific HBV subgenotypes with OBI was interesting and needs further study. Clinically relevant mutations were prevalent among the OBI strains which are of serious concern

Characterization of the Occult Hepatitis B Virus Variants Circulating among the Blood Donors from Eastern India

A previous study from West Bengal documented very high rate of occult HBV infection (OBI) among the HBsAg negative blood donors. This study was aimed to characterize the OBI strains circulating among the blood donors and to estimate the risk associated with the prevailing viral variants/mutants. Blood samples from 2195 voluntary blood donors were included in the study. HBsAg, HBeAg, anti-HBc, and anti-HBs statuses of the samples were done by ELISA based detection. PCR amplification and sequencing were done to determine HBV genotypes, basal core promoter (BCP), and precore (Pre-C) mutations. Among the study samples, 268 were anti-HBc positive/HBsAg negative, among which 65 (24.25%) were HBV DNA positive. Phylogenetic analysis revealed the presence of HBV/D (87.23%), HBV/A (8.51%), and HBV/C (4.26%) ( &lt; 0.0001). HBV/D3 (65.85%) was the significantly prevalent subgenotype over HBV/D2 (26.83%) and HBV/D1 (7.31%) ( = 0.0003). Considerable prevalence of differential BCP (1752C, 1753C, 1762T/1764A, 1753C+1762T/1764A, 1773C, and 1814C) and reverse transcriptase (rt) gene (rtI91L, rtL93P, rtS106C, rtR110G, rtN118T, rtS119T, rtY126H, rtG127W/R, rtC136R, and rtY158H) mutations was identified. Association of specific HBV subgenotypes with OBI was interesting and needs further study. Clinically relevant mutations were prevalent among the OBI strains which are of serious concern