Real Exchange Rates in Developing Countries: Are Balassa-Samuelson Effects Present?

There is surprisingly little empirical research on whether Balassa-Samuelson effects can explain the long-run behavior of real exchange rates in developing countries. This paper presents new evidence on this issue based on a panel-data sample of 16 developing countries. The paper finds that the traded-nontraded productivity differential is a significant determinant of the relative price of nontraded goods, and the relative price in turn exerts a significant effect on the real exchange rate. The terms of trade also influence the real exchange rate. These results provide strong verification of Balassa-Samuelson effects for developing countries. Copyright 2005, International Monetary Fund

The Exchange Rate and Consumer Prices in Pakistan: Is Rupee Devaluation In Inflationary?

This paper challenges the popular view that devaluation of the rupee is inflationary. Recent developments in the theoretical literature are reviewed to explain why consumer prices would be unresponsive to exchange rate changes in the short run. Then empirical tests are conducted for Pakistan during the period 1982 to 2001 to examine whether inflation is systematically related to changes in the exchange rate. The empirical analysis finds no association between rupee devaluations and inflation in Pakistan. It appears, therefore, that concerns about the inflationary consequences of rupee devaluation are unsupported by the facts

Wireless Health Monitoring using Passive WiFi Sensing

This paper presents a two-dimensional phase extraction system using passive WiFi sensing to monitor three basic elderly care activities including breathing rate, essential tremor and falls. Specifically, a WiFi signal is acquired through two channels where the first channel is the reference one, whereas the other signal is acquired by a passive receiver after reflection from the human target. Using signal processing of cross-ambiguity function, various features in the signal are extracted. The entire implementations are performed using software defined radios having directional antennas. We report the accuracy of our system in different conditions and environments and show that breathing rate can be measured with an accuracy of 87% when there are no obstacles. We also show a 98% accuracy in detecting falls and 93% accuracy in classifying tremor. The results indicate that passive WiFi systems show great promise in replacing typical invasive health devices as standard tools for health care.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, conference pape

HEER: Hybrid Energy Efficient Reactive Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of numerous sensors which send sensed data to base station. Energy conservation is an important issue for sensor nodes as they have limited power.Many routing protocols have been proposed earlier for energy efficiency of both homogeneous and heterogeneous environments. We can prolong our stability and network lifetime by reducing our energy consumption. In this research paper, we propose a protocol designed for the characteristics of a reactive homogeneous WSNs, HEER (Hybrid Energy Efficient Reactive) protocol. In HEER, Cluster Head(CH) selection is based on the ratio of residual energy of node and average energy of network. Moreover, to conserve more energy, we introduce Hard Threshold (HT) and Soft Threshold (ST). Finally, simulations show that our protocol has not only prolonged the network lifetime but also significantly increased stability period.Comment: 2nd IEEE Saudi International Electronics, Communications and Photonics Conference (SIECPC 13), 2013, Riyadh, Saudi Arabi

Analyzing Energy-efficiency and Route-selection of Multi-level Hierarchal Routing Protocols in WSNs

The advent and development in the field of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) in recent years has seen the growth of extremely small and low-cost sensors that possess sensing, signal processing and wireless communication capabilities. These sensors can be expended at a much lower cost and are capable of detecting conditions such as temperature, sound, security or any other system. A good protocol design should be able to scale well both in energy heterogeneous and homogeneous environment, meet the demands of different application scenarios and guarantee reliability. On this basis, we have compared six different protocols of different scenarios which are presenting their own schemes of energy minimizing, clustering and route selection in order to have more effective communication. This research is motivated to have an insight that which of the under consideration protocols suit well in which application and can be a guide-line for the design of a more robust and efficient protocol. MATLAB simulations are performed to analyze and compare the performance of LEACH, multi-level hierarchal LEACH and multihop LEACH.Comment: NGWMN with 7th IEEE Inter- national Conference on Broadband and Wireless Computing, Communication and Applications (BWCCA 2012), Victoria, Canada, 201

Hydromagnetic Flow and Heat Transfer of Eyring-Powell Fluid over an Oscillatory Stretching Sheet with Thermal Radiation

An analysis is carried out to investigate the magnetohydrodynamic flow and heat transfer in an unsteady flow of Eyring-Powell fluid over an oscillatory stretching surface. The radiation effects are also considered in energy equation. The flow is induced due to infinite elastic sheet which is stretched periodically back and forth in its own plane. Finite difference scheme is used to solve dimensionless partial differential equations. The effects of emerging parameters on both velocity and temperature profiles are illustrated through graphs. The results obtained by means of finite difference scheme are compared with earlier studies and found in excellent agreement

On Link Availability Probability of Routing Protocols for Urban Scenario in VANETs

This paper presents the link availability probability. We evaluate and compare the link availability probability for routing protocols; Ad hoc On-demand Distance vector (AODV), Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) and Fisheye State Routing (FSR) for different number of connections and node density. A novel contribution of this work is enhancement in existing parameters of routing protocols; AODV, DSR and FSR as MOD-AODV, MOD-DSR and MOD-FSR. From the results, we observe that MOD-DSR and DSR outperform MOD-AODV, AODV, MODOLSR and OLSR in terms of Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), Average End-to End Delay (AE2ED), link availability probability at the cost of high value of Normalized Routing Overhead (NRO).Comment: IEEE Conference on Open Systems (ICOS2012)", Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 201

Association of Physical Activity with Co-morbid Conditions in Geriatric Population

To find out association of physical activity with co-morbid conditions in geriatric population, a cross-sectional study was conducted in different cties of Pakistan in 2015. A total of 114 participants were inducted by non-probability convenience sampling technique. Data was collected after informed verbal consent by a validated questionnaire that is Rapid Assessment of Physical Activity (RAPA). Participants were categorized into two groups i.e. physically active and physically inactive. Data was entered and analyzed in SPSS version 20. There were 66 (57.9%) males and 48 (42.1%) females with mean age of 57.04±7.348 years. Among hypertensive individuals (n=43, 37.7%) there were 39 (90.7%) physically inactive, among individuals having angina (n=17, 14.9%) there were 15 (88.2%) physically inactive. Out of 37 (32.5%) diabetics, 35 (94.6%) were physically inactive. Among individuals suffering from arthritis (n=40, 35.1%), there were 38 (95%) physically inactive. A significant association was found between physical activity and diabetes and arthritis with p-value of 0.048 and 0.029 respectively. Physical activity is significantly associated with diabetes and arthritis in geriatric population. Adequate physical activity should be performed to reduce the risk of co-morbid conditions and improve the quality of life in geriatric population