Long-Term Issues for Fiscal Sustainability in Emerging Asia

The aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2007-08 underlined the importance of maintaining fiscal space and fiscal sustainability. Even though many Asian economies implemented fiscal stimulus policies during the crisis period, their fiscal conditions generally improved rapidly thereafter, and their overall government debt positions, aside from that of Japan, appear strong. This reflects a number of supportive factors, including strong underlying growth, conservative fiscal management, and financial repression that keep interest rates low. Nonetheless, there are a number of reasons to believe that conditions in emerging Asian economies will not always be so supportive. First, economic growth will tend to slow as countries reach higher income levels. Second, many economies will face rapid aging, which will raise old-age-related spending dramatically, while tending to reduce economic dynamism. Third, financial repression is likely to diminish as financial markets develop, making debt management more challenging. The first objective of this paper is to identify long-term issues of fiscal sustainability risk for emerging Asian economies - such as large-scale subsidies, infrastructure investment requirements, aging and social protection spending, contingent liabilities, financial repression, and the exposure of the domestic banking sector to sovereign debt. The second objective is to recommend policies to reduce these risks to sustainability, including improving the balance of revenues and expenditures, implementing more explicit fiscal rules and frameworks, and establishing stronger fiscal surveillance at the national and regional levels

EurA1c: the European HbA1c Trial to Investigate the Performance of HbA1c Assays in 2166 Laboratories across 17 Countries and 24 Manufacturers by Use of the IFCC Model for Quality Targets

Background: A major objective of the IFCC Committee on Education and Use of Biomarkers in Diabetes is to generate awareness and improvement of HbA1c assays through evaluation of the performance by countries and manufacturers. Methods: Fresh whole blood and lyophilized hemolysate specimens manufactured from the same pool were used by 17 external quality assessment organizers to evaluate analytical performance of 2166 laboratories. Results were evaluated per country, per manufacturer, and per manufacturer and country combined according to criteria of the IFCC model for quality targets. Results: At the country level with fresh whole blood specimens, 6 countries met the IFCC criterion, 2 did not, and 2 were borderline. With lyophilized hemolysates, 5 countries met the criterion, 2 did not, and 3 were borderline. At the manufacturer level using fresh whole blood specimens, 13 manufacturers met the criterion, 8 did not, and 3 were borderline. Using lyophilized hemolysates, 7 manufacturers met the criterion, 6 did not, and 3 were borderline. In both country and manufacturer groups, the major contribution to total error derived from between-laboratory variation. There were no substantial differences in performance between groups using fresh whole blood or lyophilized hemolysate samples. Conclusions: The state of the art is that 1 of 20 laboratories does not meet the IFCC criterion, but there are substantial differences between country and between manufacturer groups. Efforts to further improve quality should focus on reducing between-laboratory variation. With some limitations, fresh whole blood and well-defined lyophilized specimens are suitable for purpose

Insights into APC/C: from cellular function to diseases and therapeutics

Anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C) is a multifunctional ubiquitin-protein ligase that targets different substrates for ubiquitylation and therefore regulates a variety of cellular processes such as cell division, differentiation, genome stability, energy metabolism, cell death, autophagy as well as carcinogenesis. Activity of APC/C is principally governed by two WD-40 domain proteins, Cdc20 and Cdh1, in and beyond cell cycle. In the past decade, the results based on numerous biochemical, 3D structural, mouse genetic and small molecule inhibitor studies have largely attracted our attention into the emerging role of APC/C and its regulation in biological function, human diseases and potential therapeutics. This review will aim to summarize some recently reported insights into APC/C in regulating cellular function, connection of its dysfunction with human diseases and its implication of therapeutics

'How To' of Fiscal Sustainability in Oil-Rich Countries: The Case of Azerbaijan

Assessing fiscal sustainability - i.e. considering whether or not a country can maintain its current fiscal policies without running into solvency problems and possible default - requires projections on a government’s future revenue stream, expenditures and contingent liabilities within a macroeconomic framework. Such an exercise is always subject to uncertainty. In commodity-rich countries dependent upon resource revenues, this is intensified by unpredictable and volatile commodity prices. We apply the Framework for Fiscal Sustainability and Managing Uncertainty to Azerbaijan: we explore the link between non-oil primary deficit and Oil Fund allocation rules and assess their impact on fiscal sustainability in Azerbaijan and allow for explicit analysis of the effects of uncertainty through scenario analysis and full stochastic analysis allowing Value-at-Risk assessments

Testing of diagnostic test-systems for detection of antibodies to foot-and-mouth disease virus structural proteins with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for their serotype specificity

A total of 138 serum samples from pigs and cattle vaccinated against foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) of one or two serotypes or infected with FMDV were used for testing of 24 enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) diagnostic tests-systems for detection of antibodies against FMDV structural proteins produced by 6 manufacturers (Federal Centre for Animal Health, Prionics, IZSLER, Innovative Diagnostics, BIONOTE and MEDIAN Diagnostics) for their serotype-specificity. All used test-systems detected apparent serotype-specific activity (homologous reaction) as well as cross-reacting virus-specific antibodies that was accounted for some reasons related to conservative epitopes in amino acid sequence of FMDV virion capsid VP1–VP3 polypeptides, accessibility of internal conservative epitopes of VP4 polypeptide for the animal’s immune system during virus replication or vaccine antigen (virus) destruction in the animal’s body in the process of immunity development, as well as the pilot anti-FMD vaccine composition, etc. Nevertheless, the analysis of a large data set (about 3,500 tests) showed that the homologous serotype-specific reaction in general was significantly higher and predominant, the proportion of virus-specific non-protective antibodies, including cross-reacting ones, was not significant and did not distort the results of ELISA tests of anti-FMD vaccine for its immunogenicity. Inconclusive test results require confirmation with other serological tests. Complex tests for FMDV using different diagnostic methods such as ELISA with standard and reference test-systems and/or virus neutralization test in cell culture are to be considered as the best option