Issues in Infrastructure for Export of Rice from India

Rice is exported in two varieties, basmati (aromatic) and non-basmati. The basmati rice exports are in three categories: white, brown and parboiled. India earned Rs 18.4 billion in 2001-02 from exports of basmati rice and non-basmati rice contributed Rs 13.3 billion for the same period. This paper focuses on promoting rice exports, for which infrastructural and policy requirements are discussed.

Low Degree Metabolites Explain Essential Reactions and Enhance Modularity in Biological Networks

Recently there has been a lot of interest in identifying modules at the level of genetic and metabolic networks of organisms, as well as in identifying single genes and reactions that are essential for the organism. A goal of computational and systems biology is to go beyond identification towards an explanation of specific modules and essential genes and reactions in terms of specific structural or evolutionary constraints. In the metabolic networks of E. coli, S. cerevisiae and S. aureus, we identified metabolites with a low degree of connectivity, particularly those that are produced and/or consumed in just a single reaction. Using FBA we also determined reactions essential for growth in these metabolic networks. We find that most reactions identified as essential in these networks turn out to be those involving the production or consumption of low degree metabolites. Applying graph theoretic methods to these metabolic networks, we identified connected clusters of these low degree metabolites. The genes involved in several operons in E. coli are correctly predicted as those of enzymes catalyzing the reactions of these clusters. We independently identified clusters of reactions whose fluxes are perfectly correlated. We find that the composition of the latter `functional clusters' is also largely explained in terms of clusters of low degree metabolites in each of these organisms. Our findings mean that most metabolic reactions that are essential can be tagged by one or more low degree metabolites. Those reactions are essential because they are the only ways of producing or consuming their respective tagged metabolites. Furthermore, reactions whose fluxes are strongly correlated can be thought of as `glued together' by these low degree metabolites.Comment: 12 pages main text with 2 figures and 2 tables. 16 pages of Supplementary material. Revised version has title changed and contains study of 3 organisms instead of 1 earlie

Lookahead Pathology in Monte-Carlo Tree Search

Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) is an adversarial search paradigm that first found prominence with its success in the domain of computer Go. Early theoretical work established the game-theoretic soundness and convergence bounds for Upper Confidence bounds applied to Trees (UCT), the most popular instantiation of MCTS; however, there remain notable gaps in our understanding of how UCT behaves in practice. In this work, we address one such gap by considering the question of whether UCT can exhibit lookahead pathology -- a paradoxical phenomenon first observed in Minimax search where greater search effort leads to worse decision-making. We introduce a novel family of synthetic games that offer rich modeling possibilities while remaining amenable to mathematical analysis. Our theoretical and experimental results suggest that UCT is indeed susceptible to pathological behavior in a range of games drawn from this family

Effect of septoplasty on allergic rhinitis

OBJECTIVES: 1. Evaluate the improvement in nasal obstruction following septoplasty in allergic rhinitis patients with associated deviated nasal septum using Nasal Obstruction Symptom Evaluation (NOSE) Scale and measure the extent to which this outcome is affected by allergic rhinitis status. 2. To clarify whether patients with DNS and AR benefit from septoplasty. 3. Evaluate the effect of septoplasty on the clinical course of allergic rhinitis and improvement in quality of life by comparing Allergic Rhinitis Control Test Questionnaire (ARCT). STUDY DESIGN: A prospective study with consecutive sampling of all allergic rhinitis patients with symptomatic deviated nasal septum undergoing conventional septoplasty during the study period. METHODS: All participants were assessed the severity of their symptoms based on a Nasal Obstruction Symptom Evaluation (NOSE) Scale prior to and a month following septoplasty. Patients were divided into subgroups according to ARIA guidelines of allergic status, comparisons were made. A five item Allergic Rhinitis Control Test (ARCT) questionnaire was given to allergic patients according to ARIA 2007 guidelines who underwent septoplasty prior to surgery and at the end of two months following surgery. Improvement in the allergic status following surgery was evaluated. RESULTS: The mean decrease in NOSE score following septoplasty overall was (pre-operative 16.03, postoperative 9.58, p < 0.001) analysed to be statistically significant (significant at 1% level, 99% CI). This clearly shows that in allergic patients with deviated nasal septum, irrespective of the allergic status septoplasty significantly improves the nasal obstruction as shown by the decrease in NOSE score to a statistically significant extent. ARCT scores were recorded pre operatively and at the end of two months post operatively and results were analysed. Pre operative score was (mean 12.77 SD 1.024) and the post operative score (mean 21.8 SD 0.914) with p value < 0.001, significant statistically at 1% level, 99 % CI. This clearly shows that in allergic rhinitis patients with symptomatic deviated nasal septum, septoplasty improves the quality of life pertaining to allergy to a statistically significant extent. CONCLUSION: The present study suggests that in allergic rhinitis patients with symptomatic deviated nasal septum or in other words septoplasty performed in allergic rhinitis with coexistent deviated nasal septum not only improves the nasal obstruction significantly, but also there is a remarkable improvement in the control of allergic rhinitis following surgery

A perspective on reactive nitrogen in a global, Asian and Indian context

Reactive nitrogen (Nr) includes the inorganic (NH3, NH+4 , NOx, HNO3, N2O, NO-3) and organic forms (urea, amines, proteins, nucleic acids) that readily participate in various reactions of the global N cycle. Over the last half a century, anthropogenic perturbations of the natural N cycle have led to the increasing accumulation of inorganic Nr in the soil, water and air, intentionally through agriculture and unintentionally through fossil-fuel consumption and other activities, adversely affecting human health, biodiversity, environment and climate change. One of the major emerging challenges of this century will be to ensure adequate availability of Nr inputs for agriculture and other activities, while preventing their unwanted accumulation. This article provides an overall perspective of the emerging issues related to Nr in the global, Asian and Indian contexts

Does Function Follow Organizational Form? Evidence From the Lending Practices of Large and Small Banks

Theories based on incomplete contracting suggest that small organizations may do better than large organizations in activities that require the processing of soft information. We explore this idea in the context of bank lending to small firms, an activity that is typically thought of as relying heavily on soft information. We find that large banks are less willing than small banks to lend to informationally 'difficult' credits, such as firms that do not keep formal financial records. Moreover, controlling for the endogeneity of bank-firm matching, large banks lend at a greater distance, interact more impersonally with their borrowers, have shorter and less exclusive relationships, and do not alleviate credit constraints as effectively. All of this is consistent with small banks being better able to collect and act on soft information than large banks.

Does Function Follow Organzizational Form? Evidence From the Lending Practices of Large and Small Banks

Theories based on incomplete contracting suggest that small organizations may do better than large organizations in activities that require the processing of soft information. We explore this idea in the context of bank lending to small firms, an activity that is typically thought of as relying heavily on soft information. We find that large banks are less willing than small banks to lend to informationally “difficult†credits, such as firms that do not keep formal financial records. Moreover, controlling for the endogeneity of bank-firm matching, large banks lend at a greater distance, interact more impersonally with their borrowers, have shorter and less exclusive relationships, and do not alleviate credit constraints as effectively. All of this is consistent with small banks being better able to collect and act on soft information than large banks. The opinions in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Reserve Board or its staff. This work has been supported by the National Science Foundation (Rajan, Stein), and the George J. Stigler Center for Study of the State and Economy (Rajan). Thanks also to seminar participants at Yale, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Tulane, Babson, the University of Illinois, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Bank Structure Conference, the NBER and the Western Finance Association meetings, as well as to Abhijit Banerjee, Michael Kremer, David Scharfstein, Andrei Shleifer, Greg Udell, Christopher Udry and James Weston for helpful comments and suggestions.