ON THE DETERMINANTS OF LEVERAGED BUYOUT ACTIVITY: A COMPARISON BETWEEN DEVELOPED AND DEVELOPING ECONOMIES

I study Leveraged buyouts (LBOs) internationally over the period 1980-2012. Returns on LBOs are on average higher for developed markets. However, returns of LBOs during high economic growth periods are high for developing nations relative to developed economies. On the other hand returns in developing nations are lower when compared to the returns in developed nations in periods of negative economic growth. During periods of negative economic growth, the returns in developing nations do not compensate for the high risk associated with them. Developing countries are more unstable relative to developed countries during conditions of boom as well as collapse. Exit times for LBO transactions in developing economies are therefore shorter relative to developed economies in periods of high economic growth rate. This is because PE investment firms would like to exit soon and lock in their profits. During periods of negative economic growth rate, the LBOs in developing nations exit sooner. When things go badly in the developing economies, they are magnified multiple times. Hence the PE firms would like to avoid further losses and hence exit sooner. In periods of low or medium economic growth, LBOs in developing economies take longer times to exit. Reputed firms and small firms have higher returns and exit sooner. Club deals have higher returns and exit sooner when compared with single PE firm deals, until the year there was higher government on the motive of club deals. After 2006 there was higher government scrutiny which make club deals take longer time to exit. Club deals in developing economies are on average not profitable and exit sooner

Universally composable zero-knowledge protocol using trusted platform modules

Cryptographic protocols that are established as secure in the Universally Composable (UC) model of security provide strong security assurances even when run in complex environments. Unfortunately, in order to achieve such strong security properties, UC protocols are often impractical, and most non-trivial two-party protocols cannot be secure in the UC model without some sort of external capability (or "setup assumption") being introduced. Recent work by Hofheinz et al provided an important breakthrough in designing realistic universally composable two party protocols, in which they use trusted, tamper proof hardware as a special type of helping functionality which they call a catalyst. Hofheinz et al. use government issued signature cards as a catalyst to design universally composable protocols for zero-knowledge proofs and commitments, but did not give a complete security proof for either protocol. In this thesis, we consider another form of security hardware, Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs), which are more widespread than signature cards and are currently shipped as a part of almost every business laptop or desktop. Trusted Module Platforms are tamper evident devices which support cryptographic functionalities including digital signatures, but have a different key management model from signature cards. In this thesis we consider TPMs as catalysts and describe a universally composable zero knowledge protocol using Trusted Platform Modules. We also present a complete security proof for both the Hofheinz's universally composable zero knowledge protocol from signature cards and our universally composable zero knowledge protocol using TPMs as a catalyst

Methods to estimate link level travel based on spatial effects

Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) is used in several planning, roadway design, operational and safety analyses by transportation planners and engineers. Existing methods are very complex and do not adequately address the modeling needs. Errors and inaccuracies in a traditional four-step method get carried to later steps often resulting in incorrect estimates of travel demand. The primary focus of this research is to develop a systematic and simplified methodology to estimate link level travel on roadways. The proposed methodology involves scientific principles and statistical techniques, but bypasses the tedious four-step method. Two spatial methods, first one based on “spatial proximity” and second one based on “spatial weighting”, are proposed to estimate link level travel. While the former method investigates to identify ideal “proximal” distance to capture spatial data, the later method involves application of “spatial weights” that decrease with an increase in distance to integrate spatial data from multiple buffer bandwidths. Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) models are developed for both the methods using Poisson and Negative Binomial distributions with and without network characteristics to facilitate transportation planning and analysis. Validation of the developed models is carried out using Chi-Square Statistic test. The goodness of fit statistics indicates that Negative Binomial models performed better than Poisson models. Models with network characteristics performed better than models without network characteristics. Model validation results indicate that link level travel can be accurately estimated using both the spatial methods

Systematic search for putative new domain families in Mycoplasma gallisepticum genome

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Protein domains are the fundamental units of protein structure, function and evolution. The delineation of different domains in proteins is important for classification, understanding of structure, function and evolution. The delineation of protein domains within a polypeptide chain, namely at the genome scale, can be achieved in several ways but may remain problematic in many instances. Difficulties in identifying the domain content of a given sequence arise when the query sequence has no homologues with experimentally determined structure and searching against sequence domain databases also results in insignificant matches. Identification of domains under low sequence identity conditions and lack of structural homologues acquire a crucial importance especially at the genomic scale.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>We have developed a new method for the identification of domains in unassigned regions through indirect connections and scaled up its application to the analysis of 434 unassigned regions in 726 protein sequences of <it>Mycoplasma gallisepticum </it>genome. We could establish 71 new domain relationships and probable 63 putative new domain families through intermediate sequences in the unassigned regions, which importantly represent an overall 10% increase in PfamA domain annotation over the direct assignment in this genome.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The systematic analysis of the unassigned regions in the <it>Mycoplasma gallisepticum </it>genome has provided some insight into the possible new domain relationships and putative new domain families. Further investigation of these predicted new domains may prove beneficial in improving the existing domain prediction algorithms.</p

Ladson-Billings' culturally relevant pedagogy is not measuring up - and that's exactly as it should be! : a philosophical reading of the problem of static ways of thinking about culture in our epoch of calculative, scientific thinking

Since 1989 one of the undisputed leaders in the field of culturally meaningful pedagogy, Gloria Ladson-Billings, has persistently reminded educators about one core idea - any practice that is committed to meaningful engagement with cultural identity should conceive of culture as being fluid. Yet we are recalcitrant in changing how we think about culture. We continue to practice under the assumption that culture can be easily categorized, fully known, preserved, and then seamlessly transmitted from teacher to student, or vice versa. In 2014, Ladson-Billings expressed her dissatisfaction with our static conception and superficial notions which results in the fluidity and variety within cultural groups being lost. If it is indeed our conception of culture that renders it stagnant, should we not then give this problem of a fixed cultural conception of culture a philosophical reading that explores how different modes of thinking can render culture static? To explore different modes of thinking, I converse with four philosophers: Martin Heidegger, a German, who thinks away from the classical western, calculative ways of his time offers us meditative thinking. Calvin Warren, an Afro-pessimist and Marimba Ani, an Afro-centrist open a space for thinking informed by spirit. Carl Mika, a Maori scholar invites us to think speculatively. These scholars all offer us different ways of thinking about the paradox of the human condition - our pre-ontological propensity for openness and fluidity, and our accompanying ontological anxiety that forecloses on this openness. Through close textual analysis, we explore what’s at stake for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in the face of this paradox

Model for analyzing course description using LDA topic modeling

This study demonstrates a way to generate a Topic model using LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) topic modeling for the courses of multiple universities in the USA, which is relatively significant. This model will specifically be able to differentiate the course structure between various universities, such as the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, the University of North Texas, the University of South Carolina, and the University of Western Carolina. This model will help find the related courses of a selected department of study, or so they thought. The LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) topic model is used to infer topics from the content in the university course description. Further, this study showed how to generate a Topic model using LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) topic modeling for the courses of multiple universities in the USA. This study will: Explain how to Infer topics from the corpora consisting of various universities’ text of course details; Helps to find out the related courses of a selected department of study in a big way; Group the topics into different communities by calculating the Modularity with the help of the Louvain method; Analyze how the courses are related to the topics, for the most part subtly inferred for each University; For a selected Department of study, see what all courses belongs to this department with the help of topics generated. This study helps us to identify the courses which have a relation with a selected department of study. The graph representations mainly included in this paper will generally explain our Approach

Validation of Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ) Advisories (2006 – 2007)

The Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ) Advisories are being generated and disseminated by Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS). The methodology used for generation of these advisories and the scientific basis behind the identification of the PFZ locations was described. With a view to validate these PFZ Advisories and to assess the potential benefits to the fishing community, INCOIS had undertaken PFZ validation experiments at various places under the leadership of fishery experts. Simultaneous fishing operations have been conducted within the PFZ Areas and outside PFZ Areas using identical vessels. The quantitative results of the experiments were described

Using zeta-potential measurements to quantify peptide partition to lipid membranes

© The Author(s) 2011. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com.Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.Many cellular phenomena occur on the biomembranes. There are plenty of molecules (natural or xenobiotics) that interact directly or partially with the cell membrane. Biomolecules, such as several peptides (e.g., antimicrobial peptides) and proteins, exert their effects at the cell membrane level. This feature makes necessary investigating their interactions with lipids to clarify their mechanisms of action and side effects necessary. The determination of molecular lipid/water partition constants (Kp) is frequently used to quantify the extension of the interaction. The determination of this parameter has been achieved by using different methodologies, such as UV-Vis absorption spectrophotometry, fluorescence spectroscopy and ζ-potential measurements. In this work, we derived and tested a mathematical model to determine the Kp from ζ-potential data. The values obtained with this method were compared with those obtained by fluorescence spectroscopy, which is a regular technique used to quantify the interaction of intrinsically fluorescent peptides with selected biomembrane model systems. Two antimicrobial peptides (BP100 and pepR) were evaluated by this new method. The results obtained by this new methodology show that ζ-potential is a powerful technique to quantify peptide/lipid interactions of a wide variety of charged molecules, overcoming some of the limitations inherent to other techniques, such as the need for fluorescent labeling.This work was partially supported by project PTDC/QUI/ 69937/2006 from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia-Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior (FCT-MCTES, Portugal), and by Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Portugal). JMF and MMD also thank FCT-MCTES for grants IMM/BT/37-2010 and SFRH/BD/41750/2007, respectively

Cost-effectiveness of a novel lipoarabinomannan test for tuberculosis in patients with HIV

BACKGROUND: A novel urine lipoarabinomannan assay (FujiLAM) has higher sensitivity and higher cost than the first-generation AlereLAM assay. We evaluated the cost-effectiveness of FujiLAM for tuberculosis testing among hospitalized people with HIV irrespective of symptoms. METHODS: We used a microsimulation model to project clinical and economic outcomes of three testing strategies: 1) sputum Xpert MTB/RIF (Xpert); 2) sputum Xpert plus urine AlereLAM (Xpert+AlereLAM); 3) sputum Xpert plus urine FujiLAM (Xpert+FujiLAM). The modelled cohort matched that of a two-country clinical trial. We applied diagnostic yields from a retrospective study (yields for Xpert/Xpert+AlereLAM/Xpert+FujiLAM among those with CD4<200/µL: 33%/62%/70%; among those with CD4≥200/µL: 33%/35%/47%). Costs of Xpert/AlereLAM/FujiLAM were USD15/3/6 (South Africa) and USD25/3/6 (Malawi). Xpert+FujiLAM was considered cost-effective if its incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (USD/year-of-life saved) was <$940 (South Africa) and <$750 (Malawi). We varied key parameters in sensitivity analysis and performed a budget impact analysis of implementing FujiLAM countrywide. RESULTS: Compared with Xpert+AlereLAM, Xpert+FujiLAM increased life expectancy by 0.2 years for those tested in South Africa and Malawi. Xpert+FujiLAM was cost-effective in both countries. Xpert+FujiLAM for all patients remained cost-effective compared with sequential testing and CD4-stratified testing strategies. FujiLAM use added 3.5% (South Africa) and 4.7% (Malawi) to five-year healthcare costs of tested patients, primarily reflecting ongoing HIV treatment costs among survivors. CONCLUSIONS: FujiLAM with Xpert for tuberculosis testing in hospitalized people with HIV is likely to increase life expectancy and be cost-effective at the currently anticipated price in South Africa and Malawi. Additional studies should evaluate FujiLAM in clinical practice settings

Trauma history and depression predict incomplete adherence to antiretroviral therapies in a low income country.

As antiretroviral therapy (ART) for HIV becomes increasingly available in low and middle income countries (LMICs), understanding reasons for lack of adherence is critical to stemming the tide of infections and improving health. Understanding the effect of psychosocial experiences and mental health symptomatology on ART adherence can help maximize the benefit of expanded ART programs by indicating types of services, which could be offered in combination with HIV care. The Coping with HIV/AIDS in Tanzania (CHAT) study is a longitudinal cohort study in the Kilimanjaro Region that included randomly selected HIV-infected (HIV+) participants from two local hospital-based HIV clinics and four free-standing voluntary HIV counselling and testing sites. Baseline data were collected in 2008 and 2009; this paper used data from 36 month follow-up interviews (N = 468). Regression analyses were used to predict factors associated with incomplete self-reported adherence to ART. INCOMPLETE ART ADHERENCE WAS SIGNIFICANTLY MORE LIKELY TO BE REPORTED AMONGST PARTICIPANTS WHO EXPERIENCED A GREATER NUMBER OF CHILDHOOD TRAUMATIC EVENTS: sexual abuse prior to puberty and the death in childhood of an immediate family member not from suicide or homicide were significantly more likely in the non-adherent group and other negative childhood events trended toward being more likely. Those with incomplete adherence had higher depressive symptom severity and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In multivariable analyses, childhood trauma, depression, and financial sacrifice remained associated with incomplete adherence.\ud This is the first study to examine the effect of childhood trauma, depression and PTSD on HIV medication adherence in a low income country facing a significant burden of HIV. Allocating spending on HIV/AIDS toward integrating mental health services with HIV care is essential to the creation of systems that enhance medication adherence and maximize the potential of expanded antiretroviral access to improve health and reduce new infections