Proposed Changed to WTO Special and Differential Treatment Provisions: An Analysis from the Perspective of Asian LDCs

Special and differential treatment (S&D) provisions introduced in the GATT and the WTO in support of strengthened global integration of the developing country (DC) and least developed country (LDC) members have come under increasing scrutiny and criticism in recent years. One criticism has been that most of the S&D provisions are weak in their formulations, i.e., are expressed in the form of best endeavour clauses and hence are non-enforceable. The other strand of argument is that that in order for the S&D provisions to be effective and enforceable they ought to be targeted to countries that are in need of them most and be applied not in general, but with discretion, by identifying and targeting select group of developing countries that require a particular type of support most.Special and differential treatment, GATT

Examining the factors that moderate and mediate the effects on depression during pregnancy and postpartum

Background: Antenatal depression is relatively a new area of study compared to postnatal depression and the depth and sophistication of this research is yet developing. For instance, very little is reported on the specific role of the risk factors as moderators and mediators to explain the variability in the magnitude of exposure and the causal pathway for depression during pregnancy. Moderators are those variables that are not modifiable (e.g., ethnicity, and gender), or have qualitative character or nominal in nature, and could also often be antecedent to other independent variables (e.g., behavioural and psychosocial) and depression. Mediators are those variables that may be better able to describe the pathway that connects a predictor to an outcome and intervention can be designed targeting mediators as they are causally related to the outcome. This thesis will address this gap in research and provide empirical evidence to increase the understanding of the role of each identified risk factors that could potentially influence maternal mental health interventions. Methods: In this thesis, I have used the Feelings in Pregnancy and Motherhood (FIP) study. This was a longitudinal study and 649 pregnant women participated in the study. Women were interviewed three times over the course of their pregnancy and the immediate postpartum. Depression status was assessed by the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS); sociodemographic characteristics, psychosocial and behavioural information were collected at each time point. Depression status in late pregnancy and postpartum were the two outcomes of interest. Non-modifiable sociodemographic risk factors were considered as moderators. Behavioural and psychosocial variables were considered as mediators. Moderators and mediators were tested through series of regression analysis. Results: In modeling moderating effects in late pregnancy, low income women who were in poor marital relationships (β=1.54; p<0.05) and partnered women (married or common law) who reported having used recreational drugs (β= -1.62; p<0.05) were more likely to be depressed. Young mothers with low social support (β= 1.04; p=0.15) and Aboriginal mothers with low social support (β= 1.12; p=0.17) were also almost significantly noted to have depression symptoms in late pregnancy. In mediating analysis for late pregnancy, psychosocial mediators such as stress, social support, and marital satisfaction, and behavioural factors, such as smoking and recreational drug use exerted partial or full mediating effect for depressive symptoms in women in late pregnancy. In moderating analysis for postpartum, Aboriginal women who had never exercised in late pregnancy were found to be depressed at postpartum compared with non Aboriginal mothers who did not exercise. In looking at mediating effects in postpartum, smoking at late pregnancy exerted full mediating effects for ethnicity and marital satisfaction pathways, and partial mediating effects for age, education, and stress pathways in predicting depression in postpartum period among mothers. Conclusion: Depression, particularly during pregnancy and in postpartum, is a top priority for women themselves, their families, care providers, and society in general. This study found that characteristics of women or their psychosocial or behavioural experiences could have specific effects such as either a mitigating or exacerbating role, or a mediating role, in depression in late pregnancy or in postpartum. This information could be strategically used by clinicians or by health promotion professionals to either target or provide tailored programs to women who might experience depression during pregnancy and postpartum

A Data Driven Approach to Quantify the Impact of Crashes

The growth of data has begun to transform the transportation research and policy, and open a new window for analyzing the impact of crashes. Currently for the crash impact analysis, researchers tend to rely on reported incident duration, which may not always be accurate. Further, impact of the crashes could linger a much longer time at upstream, even if the records are correct for the crash spot and it is a challenge to quantify the impact of a crash from the complex dynamics of the recurrent and non-recurrent congested condition. Therefore, a difference-in-speed approach is developed in this research to estimate the true crash impact duration using stationary sensor data and incident logs. The proposed method used the Kalman filter algorithm to establish traveler’s anticipated travel speed under incident-free condition and then employ the difference-in-speed approach to quantify the temporal and spatial extent of the crash. Moreover, potential applications such as statistical models for predicting the impact duration and total delay were developed in this research. Later, an analysis on distribution of travel rate was performed to describe and numerically show to what extent crashes influenced travel rates compared with the normal conditions at different periods of the day and by the crash types. This study can help to shape incident management policies for different types of crashes at different periods and illustrates the usages of data to improve the understanding of crashes, their impact, and their distribution in a spatial-temporal domain

Application of chromium doped titanium dioxide in solar-to-chemical energy conversion

The thesis postulates that the photocatalytic performance of semiconducting materials based on nonstoichiometric compounds, such as TiO2-based solid solutions, is determined by point defects. Therefore, the performance of the studied solid solutions in solar energy conversion may be considered in terms of defect-related properties. The present research project aimed at verification of the postulate of the thesis. The ultimate aim was to understand the effect of chromium on defect disorder of TiO2 and its defect-related properties, such as photocatalytic properties. The research involved the determination of the effect of processing conditions of Cr-doped TiO2 on chromium segregation and the related concentration gradients of defects within the surface layer that is active photo-catalytically. The strategic aim of the research is to develop a new technology of the conversion of solar energy into chemical energy. Such technology may lead to the reduction of the costs of water processing and elimination of the use for this purpose of the electrical energy produced from fossil fuels. Ultimately, the technology could reduce global warming and climate change

Innovation in Rural Development in Bangladesh: A Case of Some Rural Development Institutions

The conceptual basis for this study can be briefly stated as follows. Any innovation in rural development does not happen simply through the introduction of new technologies and new policies, though they are often quite valuable. It is now argued that the circumstances that lead to innovation are often unplanned, serendipitous, path dependent and as a result, specific to the location. This idea places a lot of emphasis on the ingenuity of entrepreneurs and the like in adapting new and existing ideas to suit their need. These innovations are often part of informal networks that are sources of different ideas and expertise and used in often novel and unexpected ways

Effects of Defects on the Performance of Hierarchical Honeycomb Metamaterials Realized Through Additive Manufacturing

Cellular metamaterials are of immense interest for many current engineering applications. Tailoring the structural organization of cellular structures leads to new metamaterials with superior properties providing lightweight and very strong/stiff structures. The incorporation of hierarchy to regular cellular structures enhances the properties and introduces novel tailorable metamaterials. For many complex cellular metamaterials, the only realistic manufacturing process is additive manufacturing (AM). The use of AM to manufacture large structures may lead to several types of defects during the manufacturing process, such as imperfect cell walls, irregular thickness, flawed joints, partially missing layers, and irregular elastic plastic behavior due to toolpath. It is important to understand the effect of defects on the overall performance of the structures to determine if the manufacturing defect(s) are significant enough to abort and restart the manufacturing process or whether the material can still be used in its defective state. Honeycomb structures are often used for the high strength to weight ratio applications. These metamaterials have been studied and several models have been developed based on idealized cell structures to explain their elastic plastic behavior. However, these models do not capture real-world manufacturing defects resulting from AM. The variation of elastic plastic behavior of regular honeycomb structures with defects has been studied, but the performance of hierarchical honeycomb structures with defects is still unknown. In this study, cell wall defects are modeled as the worst case scenario, which is entirely missing cell walls. The effects of missing cell walls are investigated to understand the elastic behavior of hierarchical honeycomb structures using finite element analysis. Hierarchical honeycombs demonstrated more sensitivity to missing cell walls than regular honeycombs. On average, the axial elastic modulus decreased by 45% with 5.5% missing cell walls for regular honeycombs, 60% with 4% missing cell walls for first order hierarchical honeycomb and 95% with 4% missing cell walls for second order hierarchical honeycomb. The transverse elastic modulus decreased by about 45% with more than 5.5% missing cell walls for regular honeycomb, about 75% with 4% missing cell walls for first order and more than 95% with 4% missing cell walls for second order hierarchical honeycomb

Essays on food demand and supply in Bangladesh

Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of Agricultural EconomicsAleksan ShanoyanThe socio-economic and demographic conditions of Bangladesh have changed dramatically during the last three decades after economic and political reforms in 1991, which lead to change in food preferences both in rural and urban areas. Following the global trend of increasing commodity prices, the price hike in Bangladesh has raised policy concerns regarding the potential shifts in consumption patterns and welfare loss. Furthermore, the agricultural industry and the food supply in Bangladesh is highly susceptible to the effects of climate change and increased frequency of extreme weather events. The accurate and timely insights on food demand patterns in Bangladesh under the changing socio-economic scenarios can have important implications for food and nutritional security, price stability, poverty alleviation and appropriate import-export policy of the country. Policies on these issues cannot produce desired outcome without accurate estimation of consumer demand. However, despite the increasing need for improved understanding of food demand in Bangladesh, the literature in this area is relatively limited. The purpose of this dissertation is to provide insight on food demand and supply in Bangladesh by utilizing recent advancements in demand modeling and the latest and most complete data available on household food consumption in Bangladesh. The first essay examines welfare consequences of rising food prices in Bangladesh utilizing the Exact Affine Stone Index (EASI) demand model. Bangladeshi households experienced a sharp increase in food commodity prices during the last two decades especially in the period of 2007-2008. Inflation moved to two-digit level in 2007-08 and also in 2010-11 reaching 12.28% and 10.89% respectively, mostly driven by inflation in food prices. Estimating welfare impact of rising food price utilizing the prevalent demand models like the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) and its’ family models may lead to biased estimate due to a number of practical limitations of these models. The EASI model has number of advantages over AIDS due to its flexibility in analysis of disaggregated consumer level data. In Essay 1, we utilize EASI model to estimate price and expenditure elasticities of 14 major food items using secondary data extracted from Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics. The estimated elasticities are then used to evaluate the welfare consequences of rising food prices in Bangladesh. Welfare analysis based on both actual price change and simulated price change indicates that the welfare loss is the highest for lower income household. Further, the results indicate that the welfare loss of rural households was higher compared to that of urban households. The focus of the Essay 2 is on the analysis of pre-commitments in food demand in Bangladesh. Pre-committed demand is the portion of demand where the quantity demanded is not sensitive to changes in price or income. In the presence of pre-commitments, the demand is almost perfectly inelastic over the pre-committed portion of demand leading to biased estimates if it is not accounted for in modeling. The phenomenon of pre-committed demand for food has been more commonly observed in developing countries. Similar demand patterns are likely in Bangladesh with high proportion of low-income households and strong dependence on a range of staple food items by Bangladeshi households. Thus, in Essay 2, we utilize the generalized EASI (GEASI) demand model to estimate the demand elasticities of 14 major food items in Bangladesh by accounting for potential pre-commitments. The evidence of pre-committed demand is found in case of rice, pulse, vegetables and onion which accounts for 16.20%, 32.04%, 9.73% and 21.82% respectively. The new insights generated by the analysis in Essay 2 have important policy implications and can inform policy initiatives related to social safety net programs and food security of low-income households in Bangladesh. The Essay 3 focusses on forecasting supply and demand of rice in Bangladesh. Rice is not only the main staple food in Bangladesh but is also the single most important agricultural crop in terms of its contribution to national economy and its role in creating income and employment opportunities and ensuring food security. The analysis of rice supply and demand has always been at the center of policy makers attention in Bangladesh since the deficit tends to cause significant increase in price and resulting consumer welfare loss, while the surplus tends to result in price reductions negatively affecting farm profitability and household wellbeing in rural areas where the rice farming is the main source of income. Thus, the objective of this study is to forecast the supply and demand of rice with an aim to improve the understanding of potential deficit or surplus trends in the short- and long-term future. The analysis in Essay 3 utilizes ARIMA, Holt-Winter, and double exponential forecasting models. The findings reveal that both rice production and consumption will gradually increase in the short-run and in the long-run in Bangladesh. The forecasting results by ARIMA and Holt-Winter approaches show that there might be deficit in rice production in Bangladesh both in short-run and long-run with exceptions of rare surplus years. However, the results of double exponential approach indicate potential surplus in rice production both in the short-run and the long-run. Importantly, the deficits and surpluses are not large enough in magnitude to influence the price of the rice. The findings of the study would be useful for policy makers to formulate policies on rice production, distribution, export and import