Transition to market and normative framework of fiscal federalim

The mainstream literature on normative framework on fiscal federalism has been largely developed keeping in view the advanced market economies. It is necessary to modify these before they are applied to developing transitional economies to take account of the characteristics of these economies, legacies of past policies, and the nature of their institutions. The paper analyses the effect of lack of development of market institutions and legacies of planning on fiscal decentralisation and intergovernmental fiscal relationships. It attempts to identify the important features of these economies that make the modifications in the normative propositions necessary. These include, impact of planning in distorting the budgetary systems, overhang of public enterprises and its inhibiting influence on the development of the market, controls over prices and output and the distortions and invisible regional transfers they create, physical barriers to mobility and trade across different regions, need to replace public enterprise profits with taxes and variety of instruments used to establish regional equity under planning and the problems that they can create in a market economy. The paper argues that normative principles of fiscal federalism and intergovernmental transfers will have to be modified to take account of these special features before they are applied in designing and implementing these policies in developing and transitional economies.

Pigeonpea perspective in India

Pigeonpea occupies a prominent place in Indian rainfed agriculture. It is an integral component of in various agro ecologies of the country mainly inter cropped with cereals, pulses and oilseeds and millets. It is the second most important pulse crop next to chickpea, covering an area of around 4.42 m ha (occupying about 14.5% of area under pulses) and production of 2.86 MT (contributing to 16% of total pulse production) and productivity of about 707 kg/ha. It is mainly consumed as dry split dhal throughout the country besides several other uses of various parts of pigeonpea plant. Enhancing the productivity of the crop assumes specific significance in India mainly to combat protein malnutrition as it is the main source of protein to the predominant vegetarian population. Based on the crop duration and climatic condition the crop is grouped under four agro ecological zones with varied plant type requirements and location specific constraints for each zone. Systematic crop improvement efforts were launched at ICRSIAT since its inception in 1972. It focused during first decade (1972 to 1980) on collection, evaluation, maintenance and sharing of germplasm and yield enhancement research. During 1980 to 2000 ICRISAT research priorities were development of stable sources of resistance for wilt and Sterility Mosaic Diseases which are highly devastating and endemic in India in almost all the agro ecologies of pigeonpea cultivation. From 2000, concerted efforts are in progress on CGMS based hybrid development. Spectacular achievement by ICRISAT in recent past in the crop is deciphering its genome sequence and it has ushered pigeonpea in to genomic era. Subsequently lot of genomic information is in the process of development through molecular approaches like Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS), Nested Association Mapping (NAM). Multiparent Advance Generation Inter Crosses (MAGIC) and Introgression Libraries (IL) etc. These approaches are under process of utilization for crop improvement

Intrinsic noise-induced phase transitions: beyond the noise interpretation

We discuss intrinsic noise effects in stochastic multiplicative-noise partial differential equations, which are qualitatively independent of the noise interpretation (Ito vs. Stratonovich), in particular in the context of noise-induced ordering phase transitions. We study a model which, contrary to all cases known so far, exhibits such ordering transitions when the noise is interpreted not only according to Stratonovich, but also to Ito. The main feature of this model is the absence of a linear instability at the transition point. The dynamical properties of the resulting noise-induced growth processes are studied and compared in the two interpretations and with a reference Ginzburg-Landau type model. A detailed discussion of new numerical algorithms used in both interpretations is also presented.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Modelling of strain effects in manganite films

Thickness dependence and strain effects in films of $La_{1-x}A_xMnO_3$ perovskites are analyzed in the colossal magnetoresistance regime. The calculations are based on a generalization of a variational approach previously proposed for the study of manganite bulk. It is found that a reduction in the thickness of the film causes a decrease of critical temperature and magnetization, and an increase of resistivity at low temperatures. The strain is introduced through the modifications of in-plane and out-of-plane electron hopping amplitudes due to substrate-induced distortions of the film unit cell. The strain effects on the transition temperature and transport properties are in good agreement with experimental data only if the dependence of the hopping matrix elements on the $Mn-O-Mn$ bond angle is properly taken into account. Finally variations of the electron-phonon coupling linked to the presence of strain turn out important in influencing the balance of coexisting phases in the filmComment: 7 figures. To be published on Physical Review

The fallacy of indexed effective orifice area charts to predict prosthesis-patient mismatch alter prosthesis implantation

Aims Indexed effective orifice area (EOAi) charts are used to determine the likelihood of prosthesis-patient mismatch (PPM) after aortic valve replacement (AVR). The aim of this study is to validate whether these EOAi charts, based on echocardiographic normal reference values, can accurately predict PPM.Methods and results In the PERIcardial SurGical AOrtic Valve ReplacemeNt (PERIGON) Pivotal Trial, 986 patients with aortic valve stenosis/regurgitation underwent AVR with an Avalus valve. Patients were randomly split (50:50) into training and test sets. The mean measured EOAs for each valve size from the training set were used to create an Avalus EOAi chart. This chart was subsequently used to predict PPM in the test set and measures of diagnostic accuracy (sensitivity, specificity, and negative and positive predictive value) were assessed. PPM was defined by an EOAi <= 0.85 cm(2)/m(2) and severe PPM was defined as EOAi <= 0.65 cm(2)/m(2). The reference values obtained from the training set ranged from 1.27 cm(2) for size 19 mm up to 1.81 cm(2) for size 27 mm. The test set had an incidence of 66% of PPM and 24% of severe PPM. The EOAi chart inaccurately predicted PPM in 30% of patients and severe PPM in 22% of patients. For the prediction of PPM, the sensitivity was 87% and the specificity 37%. For the prediction of severe PPM, the sensitivity was 13% and the specificity 98%.Conclusion use of echocardiographic normal reference values for EOAi charts to predict PPM is unreliable due to the large proportion of misclassifications.Thoracic Surger

An Integrated TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource to Drive High-Quality Survival Outcome Analytics

For a decade, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program collected clinicopathologic annotation data along with multi-platform molecular profiles of more than 11,000 human tumors across 33 different cancer types. TCGA clinical data contain key features representing the democratized nature of the data collection process. To ensure proper use of this large clinical dataset associated with genomic features, we developed a standardized dataset named the TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource (TCGA-CDR), which includes four major clinical outcome endpoints. In addition to detailing major challenges and statistical limitations encountered during the effort of integrating the acquired clinical data, we present a summary that includes endpoint usage recommendations for each cancer type. These TCGA-CDR findings appear to be consistent with cancer genomics studies independent of the TCGA effort and provide opportunities for investigating cancer biology using clinical correlates at an unprecedented scale. Analysis of clinicopathologic annotations for over 11,000 cancer patients in the TCGA program leads to the generation of TCGA Clinical Data Resource, which provides recommendations of clinical outcome endpoint usage for 33 cancer types