Sequential reform strategy: The case of Azerbaijan

The aim is to review transition literature for evidence that supports sequential reform strategy, as presented in this report. The second part discusses the findings in the context of Azerbaijan, a formerly socialist transition economy with interesting initial conditions. Evidence of the country's current need to focus on improving public services fits well with the sequential reform view. The authors argue that constraints captured by initial conditions (human resources, administrative capacities, traditions, etc.) necessitate sequencing of reforms and outline general aspects of a sequential reform strategy designed to expedite the transition process. The literature survey supports the Washington Consensus recommendations for starting transition with macroeconomic reforms, but over time initial conditions inevitably constrain and necessitate sequencing. In other words, reform efforts initially need to be directed across the widest possible front, but later in transition the emphasis of reform efforts needs to shift from one area to another. In the later stages, emphasis needs to be laid on improvement of public sector governance to support and promote macroeconomic reforms and formation of a healthy corporate sector. Democratic institutions arise with economic growth generated by the corporate sector.transition economics; sequencing; governance; macroeconomic reforms; structural reforms; private sector; democracy; Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan: Recent Economic Developments and Policy Issues in Sustainability of Growth

The macro economic stabilisation in Azerbaijan has been successful. Following cessation of conflict with Armenia, and decline of GDP by 60 per cent from 1990 to 1995, the government in effect implemented a big-bang reform process in 1995. The inflation rate has now declined to the lowest rate of any transition country and important reforms in the monetary-fiscal mix have been undertaken. The second plank of first generation reforms, liberalisation, has also been successfully implemented with liberalisation of prices, the trade and foreign exchange regimes and virtual completion of small-scale privatisation, although the onset of the Russian crisis in 1998 has impacted negatively both internal and external balances. The paper presents the current economic picture for Azerbaijan and then assesses economic policy issues facing the country. Azerbaijan is well endowed with natural resources, particularly oil but also gas. The second part of the paper considers the question by focussing on policy issues related to the potential flow of oil-based monies into Azerbaijan. The possibility of the “Dutch Disease” syndrome impacting Azerbaijan through a rising real exchange rate on the non-oil sector is not considered to be a problem at present but is expected to become a policy concern in the medium- to long term. Structural reforms in public finance to deal with expected surpluses are lagging and are necessary in the next phase of the transition of Azerbaijan. Moreover, significant reforms are required in banking – privatisation, improvement in regulation and supervision and in the implementation of supporting legal rights, given the current lack of financial intermediation.Azerbaijan; economic development; oil; Dutch Disease; transition economies

Securing Cluster Head Selection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor network routing protocols are prone to various attacks as these protocols mainly provide the function of routing data towards the sink. LEACH is a one of the routing protocol used for clustered implementation of wireless sensor network with Received Signal Strength based dynamic selection of Cluster Heads. But, as with other routing protocols, LEACH is also prone to HELLO flood attack when the malicious sensor node becomes the Cluster Head. Cryptographic and non-cryptographic approaches to detect the presence of HELLO flood attack also exist but they lack efficiency in some way. In this paper, an efficient protocol is proposed for the detection and prevention of HELLO Flood attack in wireless sensor network. Cluster heads are vulnerable to various malicious attacks and this greatly affects the performance of the wireless sensor network. Cryptographic approaches to prevent this attack are not so helpful though some non-cryptographic methods to detect the HELLO Flood attack also exist but they are not too efficient as they result in large test packet overhead. In this paper, we propose HRSRP (Hello flood attack Resistant Secure Routing Protocol) extension to LEACH protocol so as to protect the cluster head against Hello flood attack. HRSRP is base on encryption using Armstrong number and decryption using AES algorithm to verify the identity of cluster head. The proposed technique is implemented in NS2, the experimental results clearly indicate the proposed technique has significant capability for the detection of hello flood attack launched for making the malicious node as the cluster head

Tweeting Strategy: Military Social Media Use as Strategic Communication

Many Western militaries now actively engage with various social media platforms. The starting point for my dissertation research was this question: how does the military use social media? Considering the Canadian Armed Forces’ use of Twitter as a case study, I collected over 14,000 tweets from four Twitter accounts of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), the Canadian Army, the Royal Canadian Navy, and the Royal Canadian Air Force with some tweets as old as September 2012 and the most recent tweets from December 2015. I employed Grounded Theory Method to analyze these tweets, which revealed four themes — organization, history, preparedness, and partnership. These themes create an image of CAF as a Canadian institution and a military one, as they speak to the many war and other combat operations that the Canadian Armed Forces have engaged in at the behest of the government. A literature review conducted simultaneously with the analysis uncovered the International Relations literature on strategic narratives and the Organizational/Military Studies literature on strategic communication. The main finding is that the Canadian Armed Forces are using social media for the strategic communication of government strategic narratives because the norms of civil-military relations require the military to follow government orders and prevent the military from using social media as intended because social media tend to be political whereas the military has to be “apolitical.” The military, thus, maintains an “apolitical” image by communicating what the government wishes it to communicate, even though the government’s narrative can be political. Government strategic narratives frame organizational strategic communication, while organizational strategic communication supports government strategic narratives

A MicroRNA TARGET PREDICTION ALGORITHM

MicroRNA target prediction using the experimental methods is a challenging task. To accelerate the process of miRNA target validation, many computational methods are used. Computational methods yield many potential candidates for experimental validation. This project is about developing a new computational method using dynamic programming to predict miRNA targets with more accuracy. The project discusses the currently available computational methods and develops a new algorithm using the currently available knowledge about miRNA interactions