The Bohl spectrum for nonautonomous differential equations

We develop the Bohl spectrum for nonautonomous linear differential equation on a half line, which is a spectral concept that lies between the Lyapunov and the Sacker--Sell spectrum. We prove that the Bohl spectrum is given by the union of finitely many intervals, and we show by means of an explicit example that the Bohl spectrum does not coincide with the Sacker--Sell spectrum in general. We demonstrate for this example that any higher-order nonlinear perturbation is exponentially stable, although this not evident from the Sacker--Sell spectrum. We also analyze in detail situations in which the Bohl spectrum is identical to the Sacker-Sell spectrum

Impacts of household credit on education and healthcare spending by the poor in peri-urban areas in Vietnam

There is debate about whether microfinance has positive impacts on education and health for borrowing households in developing countries. To provide evidence for this debate we use a new survey designed to meet the conditions for propensity score matching (PSM) and examine the impact of household credit on education and healthcare spending by the poor in peri-urban areas of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In addition to matching statistically identical non-borrowers with borrowers, our estimates also control for household pre-treatment income and assets, which may be associated with unobservable factors affecting both credit participation and the outcomes of interest. The PSM estimates of binary treatment effect show significant and positive impacts of borrowing on education and healthcare spending. However, multiple ordered treatment effect estimates reveal that only formal credit has significant and positive impacts on education and healthcare spending, while informal credit has insignificant impacts on the spending

Heterogeneous credit impacts of healthcare spending of the poor in peri-urban areas, Vietnam: Quantile treatment effects estimation

Quantile Treatment Effects are estimated to study the impacts of household credit access on health spending by poor households in one District of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. There are significant positive effects of credit on the health budget shares of households with low healthcare spending. In contrast, when an Average Treatment Effect is estimated there is no discernible impact of credit access on health spending. Hence, typical approaches to studying heterogeneous credit impacts that only consider between group differences and not differences over the distribution of outcomes may miss some heterogeneity of interest to policymakers

Household credit to the poor and its impact on child schooling in peri-urban areas, Vietnam

This paper uses a novelty dataset of poor households in peri-urban areas in Vietnam to estimate impacts of small loans on child schooling. The Probit and Negative Binomial model estimates roughly indicate no strong evidence of the effect, especially of informal credit. Formal credit is likely to have positive impacts on child schooling, but its effect is not strong enough to be conclusive. The paper suggests that to obtain the target of sustainable poverty reduction, easing access to formal credit sources as well as exempting tuition and other school fees are necessary to keep poor children at schools longer

Intensity Variations of H Alpha and N II 6 583 A Lines in the Night Sky Spectrum

Intensity variations of H alpha and N II 6 583 A lines in night sky spectru

On the Decoding of Polar Codes on Permuted Factor Graphs

Polar codes are a channel coding scheme for the next generation of wireless communications standard (5G). The belief propagation (BP) decoder allows for parallel decoding of polar codes, making it suitable for high throughput applications. However, the error-correction performance of polar codes under BP decoding is far from the requirements of 5G. It has been shown that the error-correction performance of BP can be improved if the decoding is performed on multiple permuted factor graphs of polar codes. However, a different BP decoding scheduling is required for each factor graph permutation which results in the design of a different decoder for each permutation. Moreover, the selection of the different factor graph permutations is at random, which prevents the decoder to achieve a desirable error-correction performance with a small number of permutations. In this paper, we first show that the permutations on the factor graph can be mapped into suitable permutations on the codeword positions. As a result, we can make use of a single decoder for all the permutations. In addition, we introduce a method to construct a set of predetermined permutations which can provide the correct codeword if the decoding fails on the original permutation. We show that for the 5G polar code of length $1024$, the error-correction performance of the proposed decoder is more than $0.25$ dB better than that of the BP decoder with the same number of random permutations at the frame error rate of $10^{-4}$

Study of process variables associated with manufacturing hermetically sealed nickel-cadmium cells

Formation time, specific gravity of solution, and overcharge amount associated with electrochemical cleaning or formation operation in manufacturing nickel cadmium cell

Firm exporting and employee benefits: first evidence from Vietnam manufacturing SMEs

This study examines linkages between the export participation of firms and employee benefits in terms of wages and employment quality. Based on a uniquely matched firmworker panel dataset for 2007 and 2009, we find evidence that export participation by firms in Vietnam has a positive impact on wages when taking into account firm characteristics alone. However, the exporter wage premium falls when both firm and worker characteristics are controlled for, and it decreases further when controlling for time-invariant unobservable factors by spell fixed effect estimation. While there are many studies on the export wage premium, the role of export participation on the quality of employment remains largely unexplored. By using a firm-level balanced panel dataset for the same period, our results suggest that export participation has a negative effect on employment quality. Nevertheless, the impact of export participation on both wages and employment quality vary greatly with respect to levels of technology

Study of process variables associated with manufacturing hermetically sealed nickel-cadium cells Quarterly report, 23 May - 23 Aug. 1970

Separator materials, ceramic to metal seals, cell plate polarization and impregnation processes, and plaque sintering data for study of variables in manufacture of nickel cadmium cell