Impact of Export Subsidies on Pakistan’s Exports

Throughout Pakistan’s history, policy has sought to promote exports through government support and incentives. The government machinery is geared to export promotion especially through direct and indirect subsidies. Surprisingly, these policies have been continued without serious examination. This paper makes a first attempt to evaluate these policies by estimating the impact of two such schemes—export financing and rebate/refund schemes—on export performance. Our analysis shows that, over the long run, the export financing scheme had a negative effect on exports while the rebate/refund scheme affected exports insignificantly. Subsidy schemes clearly do not seem to work, yet they have been retained for many years.Rebate, Duty Drawback, Export Financing, Exports, Trade, Exchange Rate, Co-integration, Vector Error Correction, Pakistan

Biochemical characterisation of the eukaryotic cell cycle regulatory proteins, E2F and pRB

Control of the cell cycle is partly mediated by a transcriptional regulatory mechanism whose components include the pRb family of tumour suppressors (pRb, p130, p107) and the E2F/DP heterodimeric transcription factors. Each of these heterodimers consists of one member of the E2F family of proteins (E2Fs 1- 6) and one of the DP family (DPs 1 and 2). E2F/DP activation of cell cycle genes is negatively regulated by cyclin A-CDK2-mediated phosphorylation of DP. The formation of a complex between E2F/DP and a pRb family protein leads to antiproliferative transcriptional repression. Binding of the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) E7 oncoprotein to pRb blocks the interaction of the tumour suppressor with E2F/DP as part of a viral cell transformation mechanism. Fragments of pRb, E2F-1 and DP-1 were over-expressed and purified by chromatographic means prior to their biochemical characterisation. Using the SELEX (Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment) procedure, attempts were made to determine high affinity DNA-binding sites for E2F homodimers. Although such sites were not identified, important considerations relating to the SELEX protocol are highlighted by these experiments. Electrophoretic Mobility Shift Assays were used to demonstrate that the interaction of fragments of E2F-1 and DP-1 with their cognate DNA could be inhibited by phosphorylation by cyclin A-CDK2. Furthermore, mutation of one of two putative phosphorylation sites in DP-1 resulted in a reduced rate of cyclin A- CDK2-dependent loss of DNA binding. Isothermal titration calorimetry studies revealed that not only does pRb interact with the minimal pRb-binding region of E2F-1, but also with additional regions outside of the transactivation domain. I present data showing that HPV E7 competes for binding to pRb with constructs of E2F-1 incorporating these additional regions. Our results suggest that the CR3 domain of E7 competes with the marked box region of E2F-1 for binding to pRb

Face and Face Parts Detection in Image Processing

This paper based on a procedure for automatically detecting one ormore human faces, eyes pair, nose, mouth in colour images. This is dependingon two-method which first detects regions of face, eyes pair, nose, mouth containhuman skin in the colour image and then extracts information from these regionsand then detect the regions which include face, eyes pair, mouth, nose in thecolour image. The face, eyes pair, mouth, nose identified is completed on acolour image having only the identified image parts. An arrangement of threshholding and calculated values and some functions are used to remove itemstructures that would show the existence of an identified area

Fractional Transport Models for Shale Gas in Tight Porous Media

Modelling the flow of fluid through tight porous media, such as unconventional hydrocarbon reservoirs, is very challenging and it is a growing sector and must be addressed. Shale gas is found in such tight porous rocks which are characterized by nano-scale size porous networks with ultra-low permeability [1,2]. Please download the full abstract below