Determinants of U.S. Textile and Apparel Trade

A gravity model using panel data is applied to determine factors affecting textiles and apparel trade flows into the United States. The study confirms that a nation's aggregate output and per unit productivity serve as important determinants of textiles and apparel trade into the U.S., and the exporting country's depreciating exchange rate as well as its lower prices relative to U.S. prices for textiles and apparel play an important role in determining textiles and apparel trade flows to the U.S. market. Since the WTO's multilateral trade restraining policies of the multi-fibre arrangement (MFA) is found to have slowed down imports, its abrogation in 2005 should lead to greater textiles and apparel imports to the U.S.brand equity, brand valuation, real options, food firms, growth option value, Agribusiness, International Relations/Trade,

Panel Data Analysis of Trade Policy Effects on U.S. Textile Industries

By applying a gravity model, the study confirms that devalued currencies of Asian exporters of textile products and liberalization of trade policies have significantly contributed to the increased imports of textile products to the U.S. Implications are derived from the abrogation of the WTO's Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC).International Relations/Trade,

Determinants of U.S. Textile and Apparel Import Trade

By applying a gravity model, the study confirms that devalued currencies of Asian exporters of textile products and liberalization of trade policies have significantly contributed to the increased imports of textile products to the U.S. Implications are derived from the abroagation of the WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC).International Relations/Trade,

Cyber Intelligence and OSINT: Developing Mitigation Techniques Against Cybercrime Threats on Social Media

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) involve the collection or processes of gathering data and profiling of publicly available private and public sector information sources about individuals and business intelligence purposes. These sources includes internet and other social media platforms such as Facebook, emails, twitters, what’s apps for. Much debate and research has been done on the threats, vulnerabilities and the impact of the use of social media sites but this study is to minimize bias. Objective: To systematic review and synthesis findings on current empirical research topic on cyber intelligence and open source intelligence profiling to identifying both the threats and vulnerabilities on online social networks for mitigation purposes. Methods: A systematic narrative review of research using rigorous searching on online databases. The results were then subjected to review using a quantitative and quality appraisal tool and a narrative synthesis methodology. A theoretical framework was developed for the synthesis using concepts from the literature ‘The Effectiveness of Neighborhood Watch’. A Campbell Systematic Review Results: The systematic search retrieved 18 original research papers investigating and exploring the effects of online social media technologies on open source intelligence concepts. The use of social media were reported as enhancing social cohesion among peers, improving business opportunities as information gets to customers quickly. Safe identity experimentations, OSINT and cyber intelligence social media gathering is especially vital in the modern war on terror. Understanding terrorist network topologies, crime data analysis and mining, countering improvised explosive devices. The study also highlighted potential negative impacts and threats and the effect of social engineering threats in SNSs, threats of social networking and identity crime. Vulnerabilities of HTTP header information and cookies being sent to third-party aggregators as well harmful effects of exposure to threats. Conclusion: The systematic review has revealed extraordinary evidences and contradictory concepts. It has also revealed the underlining research challenges impacting on open source intelligence. Due to the invincibility nature of social media technologies, social media platforms are constantly being used for social, business and intelligence gathering purposes but to ensure proper and advance mitigating circumstance, further research is required to gain situational awareness and appropriate counter measure

What is the Brillouin Zone of an Anisotropic Photonic Crystal?

The concept of the Brillouin zone (BZ) in relation to a photonic crystal fabricated in an optically anisotropic material is explored both experimentally and theoretically. In experiment, we used femtosecond laser pulses to excite THz polaritons and image their propagation in lithium niobate and lithium tantalate photonic crystal (PhC) slabs. We directly measured the dispersion relation inside PhCs and observed that the lowest bandgap expected to form at the BZ boundary forms inside the BZ in the anisotropic lithium niobate PhC. Our analysis shows that in an anisotropic material the BZ - defined as the Wigner-Seitz cell in the reciprocal lattice - is no longer bounded by Bragg planes and thus does not conform to the original definition of the BZ by Brillouin. We construct an alternative Brillouin zone defined by Bragg planes and show its utility in identifying features of the dispersion bands. We show that for an anisotropic 2D PhC without dispersion, the Bragg plane BZ can be constructed by applying the Wigner-Seitz method to a stretched or compressed reciprocal lattice. We also show that in the presence of the dispersion in the underlying material or in a slab waveguide, the Bragg planes are generally represented by curved surfaces rather than planes. The concept of constructing a BZ with Bragg planes should prove useful in understanding the formation of dispersion bands in anisotropic PhCs and in selectively tailoring their optical properties.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

Microfinance: an alternative means of healthcare financing for the poor

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Terahertz generation by beamlet superposition

We analytically show how a superposition of beamlets produces terahertz radiation with greater spatial homogeneity and efficiency compared to tilted-pulse-fronts generated by diffraction gratings. The advantages are particularly notable for large pump bandwiths and beam sizes, alluding to better performance in the presence of cascading effects and higher energy pumping. A theory of terahertz generation using a superposition of beamlets is developed. It is shown how such an arrangement produces a distortion free tilted-pulse-front. Closed form expressions for terahertz spectra and transients in three spatial dimensions are derived. Conditions for obtaining performance parity and bounds for optimal parameters are furnished

THz generation using a reflective stair-step echelon

We present a novel method for THz generation in lithium niobate using a reflective stair-step echelon structure. The echelon produces a discretely tilted pulse front with less angular dispersion compared to a high groove-density grating. The THz output was characterized using both a 1-lens and 3-lens imaging system to set the tilt angle at room and cryogenic temperatures. Using broadband 800 nm pulses with a pulse energy of 0.95 mJ and a pulse duration of 70 fs (24 nm FWHM bandwidth, 39 fs transform limited width), we produced THz pulses with field strengths as high as 500 kV/cm and pulse energies as high as 3.1 $\mu$J. The highest conversion efficiency we obtained was 0.33%. In addition, we find that the echelon is easily implemented into an experimental setup for quick alignment and optimization.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

Cybercrime and Risks for Cyber Physical Systems

Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) is the integration of computation and physical systems that make a complete system such as the network, software, embedded systems, and physical components. Major industries such as industrial plants, transport, national grid, and communication systems depend heavily on CPS for financial and economic growth. However, these components may have inherent threats and vulnerabilities on them that may run the risk of being attacked, manipulated or exploited by cyber attackers and commit cybercrimes. Cybercriminals in their quest to bring down these systems may cause disruption of services either for fame, data theft, revenge, political motive, economic war, cyber terrorism, and cyberwar. Therefore, identifying the risks has become imperative in mitigating the cybercrimes. This paper seeks to identify cybercrimes and risks that are associated with a smart grid business application system to determine the motives and intents of the cybercriminal. The paper identified four goals to mitigate the risks: as business value, organizational requirements, threat agent and impact vectors. We used the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the importance of the goals that contribute to identifying cybercrime and risks in CPS. For the results, a case study is used to identify the threat and vulnerable spots and the prioritized goals are then used to assess the risks using a semi-quantitative approach to determine the net threat level. The results indicate that using the AHP approach to identify cybercrime and risk on CPS provides specific risk mitigation goals