Investment Provisions in Regional Trading Arrangements in Asia: Relevance, Emerging Trends, and Policy Implications

To exploit the locational advantages or synergies between the member countries of the regional trading bloc besides facilitating businesses reaping the economies of scale and specialization.Investment, Provisions, Regional, Trading Arrangements, Asia, Emerging Trends, policy Implications

Recent Developments on Colloidal Deposits Obtained by Evaporation of Sessile Droplets on a Solid Surface

Understanding flow patterns and coupled transport phenomena during evaporation of droplets loaded with colloidal particles is central to design technical applications such as organizing proteins/DNA on a solid surface. We review recent reports on evaporating sessile droplets of colloidal suspensions on a solid surface. Starting from the classical mechanism of formation of a ring-like deposit, we discuss the influence of several problem parameters. Notably, thermal or solutal Marangoni effect, particle size, particle concentration, particle shape, substrate wettability, pH of the suspension etc have been found important in controlling the deposition pattern. The deposit pattern complexity and shape have been attributed to the underlying coupled transport phenomena during the evaporation. We discuss important regimes maps reported for different types of deposit, which allow us to classify the deposits and coupled physics. We also present studies that have demonstrated particles sorting in an evaporating bi-dispersed colloidal suspensions on a solid surface. Finally, some remarks for the future research opportunities in this arena are presented

Coexisting Sickle Cell Anemia and Sarcoidosis: A Management Conundrum!

Sickle cell disease and Sarcoidosis are conditions that are more common in the African American population. In this report we share an unfortunate patient who had hepatic sarcoidosis but could not receive steroids since that precipitated acute liver failure. We have discussed potential therapy options but we need more options that improve mortality

India's Outward Foreign Direct Investments in Steel Industry in a Chinese Comparative Perspective

Indian and Chinese enterprises have emerged as important outward investors in recent times with their involvement in a number of prominent Greenfield investments and acquisitions. The theory of international business posits that the ownership of some unique advantages having a revenue generating potential abroad combined with the presence of internalization and locational advantages leads to outward FDI. Conventional MNEs based in the industrialized countries have grown on the strength of ownership advantages derived from innovatory activity that is largely concentrated in these countries. It examines the case of steel industry that has become an important sector of overseas activity for Chinese and Indian companies with a string of major acquisitions of foreign MNEs for acquiring footprints and natural resources in order to identify the sources of ownership advantages and strategies of outward investments from emerging countries.FDI outflows, steel, India

Fast numerical evaluation of time-derivative nonadiabatic couplings for mixed quantum-classical methods

We have developed a numerical differentiation scheme which eliminates evaluation of overlap determinants in calculating the time-derivative non-adiabatic couplings (TDNACs). Evaluation of these determinants was the bottleneck in previous implementations of mixed quantum-classical methods using numerical differentiation of electronic wave functions in the Slater-determinant representation. The central idea of our approach is, first, to reduce the analytic time derivatives of Slater determinants to time derivatives of molecular orbitals, and then to apply a finite-difference formula. Benchmark calculations prove the efficiency of the proposed scheme showing impressive several-order-of-magnitude speedups of the TDNAC calculation step for midsize molecules.Comment: 4 page

Optimization of slice thickness in multispectral MRI tissue classification of brain tissues

In recent years, magnetic resonance imaging has proven to be an important imaging modality for diagnosing and locating pathology. Recent studies have shown that multispectral tissue classification (MTC) may segment pathology from healthy tissues. Several studies have been done to classify brain tissues such as white matter (WM), gray matter (GM) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) using MTC with slice thicknesses ranging from 5 to 10 mm (Kohn, 1991; Fletcher, 1993; Kao, 1994). In one of the previous studies (Fletcher, 1993) MTC has been used to classify brain tissues such as WM, GM, CSF, adipose tissue (AD), muscle (MS) and skin and meninges (S&M) with a slice thickness of 5 mm. The chosen slice thickness in the above mentioned studies is not quantified. Therefore a question remains as to what is the optimum slice thickness for MTC of brain tissues. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the ability of MTC to segment the brain tissues as a function of slice thickness using spectral regions such as spin-lattice relaxation time (TO, spin-spin relaxation time (T2), and spin density (p). The slice thicknesses used in the study were 3 mm, 5 mm, and 10 mm. Raw spin-echo images were acquired from a 39 year old volunteer at the level of lateral ventricles through the brain on a General Electric (Milwaukee, WI) 1.5 Tesla Signa imager with quadrature bird cage head coil. Ti, and p images were calculated from a set of seven raw spin-echo images using non-linear least square procedure (Gong, 1992) with varying repetition time (TR) and a constant echo time (TE). Similarly T2 images were calculated from a set of eight raw images using linear least square fit algorithm (Li, 1993) with varying TE and constant TR images. The Ti, T2, and p images were calculated for 3, 5, and 10 mm slice thicknesses. The ability to segment tissues WM, GM, CSF, AD, MS, and S&M as a function of slice thickness, was analyzed using optimization parameters such as false positive ratio (FPR), false negative ratio (FNR), true positive ratio (TPR), unclassified pixel ratio (UPR) and signal-to-noise ratio (S/N). The effect of partial voluming and spatial resolution on tissue classification was also evaluated. The optimum slice thickness for six brain tissue classification was determined

National development banks and sustainable infrastructure in South Asia

This repository item contains a working paper from the Boston University Global Economic Governance Initiative. This particular working paper was worked on in collaboration with Pradeep K. Keshari and Rohan Ray. The Global Economic Governance Initiative (GEGI) is a research program of the Center for Finance, Law & Policy, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. It was founded in 2008 to advance policy-relevant knowledge about governance for financial stability, human development, and the environment.National development banks (NDBs) have played an important role in South Asia’s development over the years. In the early period after Independence, the focus of NDBs was generally of supporting industrial development. Infrastructure development was supported by the budgetary financing by the governments. However, over time with the widening gaps in infrastructure requirements and staggering resources required to close them prompted governments to turn to mobilize private investments. Hence, NDBs began to be established for facilitating infrastructure development including sustainable infrastructure through public private partnerships (PPPs). In addition to the sectoral coverage, the sources of funds and business models have undergone substantial transformation. This paper summarizes this transformation and reviews the financing of infrastructure and sustainable infrastructure. It also presents case studies of two key NDBs engaged in infrastructure financing. It concludes with a few policy lessons from Indian experience. There has been revival of interest in the national development banks all across the world in the context of the potential role that they can play in closing the infrastructure gaps and building sustainable infrastructure by supporting the public-private partnerships. Hence, this stock-taking may have some policy lessons for the new initiatives. The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 provides an overview of infrastructure gaps, financing challenges and NDBs in South Asia before summarizing the evolution of NDBs in India over the post-Independence period. Section 3 overviews the infrastructure gaps and financing challenges facing India. Section 4 reviews the issues involved in sustainable infrastructure development. Section 5 summarizes the policy framework for infrastructure NDBs including the sources of finance and their financing models. Section 6 presents case studies of two premier infrastructure NDBs. Section 7 concludes the paper with a few lessons from Indian experience