Policies to combat child labor: A dynamic analysis

This paper analyzes child labor in a fully dynamic model with credit constraints. It considers the ong-run and short-run effects of an array of policies like lump-sum subsidy, enrollment subsidy, improvement in primary education and variations in loan market parameters. It is shown that some policies that reduce child labor in the long run may lead to an increase in child labor in the short run. Marginal changes in the borrowing rate or credit limit do not affect the long-run incidence of child labor if the rate of time preference is constant. Implications of variable rate of time preference are also examined.

Do IFRS convergence affects firm performance? Picturing Indian-listed manufacturing firms

Purpose – The study has endeavored to assay the nexus between the converged version of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on the performance of the Indian-listed manufacturing firms. Design/methodology/approach – The study has randomly accessed the data of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) listed Indian manufacturing firms using the Prowess IQ database. It has covered 2014–2016 as pre-IFRS and 2017–2020 as the post-IFRS convergence period. Moreover, the study has followed a longitudinal research design with cross-sectional time-series data and has used the difference-in-difference (DiD) technique to assess the effect of the IFRS convergence on firm performance (FP). Findings – The results have indicated that the adoption of the Indian Accounting Standards (Ind AS) has unlikely reported better FP. It has concurred policy implications as full adoption rather than convergence could reap the benefits of the IFRS. Originality/value – It has contributed to the existing body of knowledge by assaying the effect of the IFRS convergence on FP in developing economies like India using the DiD methodology. The study is an original piece of research and is free from plagiarism

A STUDY ON ANTIOXIDANT PROPERTIES OF DIFFERENT BIOACTIVE COMPOUNDS

Free radicals induce damage mainly to biomembranes and DNA due to peroxidation, which lead to tissue damage resulting in number of degenerative diseases. Antioxidants can neutralise the effect of these free radicals through various ways and may protect the body from harmful alterations. Antioxidants may be of different types viz. enzymatic, non-enzymatic and also found from plant sources. Nowadays, numerous synthetic antioxidant supplements are also found in the market. The antioxidative potential of samples can be assayed by different in vitro and in vivo methods. The present review describes a brief account of the free radical generation, their role in aging and other diseases, classification of antioxidants, their natural and synthetic sources, possible mechanism and several assay methods of free radical scavenging activity of different bioactive compounds

Social Bots for Online Public Health Interventions

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in the United States hundreds of thousands initiate smoking each year, and millions live with smoking-related dis- eases. Many tobacco users discuss their habits and preferences on social media. This work conceptualizes a framework for targeted health interventions to inform tobacco users about the consequences of tobacco use. We designed a Twitter bot named Notobot (short for No-Tobacco Bot) that leverages machine learning to identify users posting pro-tobacco tweets and select individualized interventions to address their interest in tobacco use. We searched the Twitter feed for tobacco-related keywords and phrases, and trained a convolutional neural network using over 4,000 tweets dichotomously manually labeled as either pro- tobacco or not pro-tobacco. This model achieves a 90% recall rate on the training set and 74% on test data. Users posting pro- tobacco tweets are matched with former smokers with similar interests who posted anti-tobacco tweets. Algorithmic matching, based on the power of peer influence, allows for the systematic delivery of personalized interventions based on real anti-tobacco tweets from former smokers. Experimental evaluation suggests that our system would perform well if deployed. This research offers opportunities for public health researchers to increase health awareness at scale. Future work entails deploying the fully operational Notobot system in a controlled experiment within a public health campaign

Power Transfer Potential to the Southeast in Response to a Renewable Portfolio Standard: Final Report

Electricity consumption in the Southeastern US, including Florida, is approximately 32% of the total US. The availability of renewable resources for electricity production is relatively small compared to the high consumption. Therefore meeting a national renewable portfolio standard (RPS) is particularly challenging in this region. Neighboring regions, particularly to the west, have significant wind resources and given sufficient transmission these resources could serve energy markets in the SE. This report looks at renewable resource supply relative to demands and the potential for power transfer into the SE. We found that significant wind energy transfers, at the level of 30-60 GW, are expected to be economic in case of federal RPC or CO2 policy. Development of wind resources will depend not only on the available transmission capacity and required balancing resources, but also on electricity supply and demand factors

Waiver, Effectivity and Rights as Game Forms.

This paper introduces the concept of a waiver function of a game form: a function that measures the extent to which one can leave choice to others. This is compared with the concept of effectively function used to measure the power of coalitions within a game form. The author shows that under some circumstances either function can be used to capture the notion of rights underlying game forms. Copyright 1994 by The London School of Economics and Political Science.