Measuring Avoidable Health Inequality with Realization of Conditional Potential Life Years (RCPLY)

In a series of papers (Tang, Chin and Rao, 2008; and Tang, Petrie and Rao 2006 & 2007), we have tried to improve on a mortality-based health status indicator, namely age-at-death (AAD), and its associated health inequality indicators that measure the distribution of AAD. The main contribution of these papers is to propose a frontier method to separate avoidable and unavoidable mortality risks. This has facilitated the development of a new indicator of health status, namely the Realization of Potential Life Years (RePLY). The RePLY measure is based on the concept of a “frontier country” that, by construction, has the lowest mortality risks for each age-sex group amongst all countries. The mortality rates of the frontier country are used as a proxy for the unavoidable mortality rates, and the residual between the observed mortality rates and the unavoidable mortality rates are considered as avoidable morality rates. In this approach, however, countries at different levels of development are benchmarked against the same frontier country without considering their heterogeneity. The main objective of the current paper is to control for national resources in estimating (conditional) unavoidable and avoidable mortality risks for individual countries. This allows us to construct a new indicator of health status – Realization of Conditional Potential Life Years (RCPLY). The paper presents empirical results from a dataset of life tables for 167 countries from the year 2000, compiled and updated by the World Health Organization. Measures of national average health status and health inequality based on RePLY and RCPLY are presented and compared.

Income Distributions, Inequality, and Poverty in Asia, 1992–2010

Income distributions for developing countries in Asia are modeled using beta-2 distributions, which are estimated by a method of moments procedure applied to grouped data. Estimated parameters of these distributions are used to calculate measures of inequality, poverty, and pro-poor growth in four time periods over 1992–2010. Changes in these measures are examined for 11 countries, with a major focus on the People’s Republic of China (PRC), India, and Indonesia, which are separated into rural and urban regions. We find that the PRC has grown rapidly with increasing inequality accompanying this growth. India has been relatively stagnant. Indonesia has grown rapidly after suffering an initial set back from the Asian financial crisis in 1997

Impact of weather extremes on Indian food grain production -Winter School on Impact of Climate Change on Indian Marine Fisheries held at CMFRI, Cochin 18.1.2008 to 7.2.2008

Climate change and variability are recent concerns of humankind. The recurrent drought and desertification threaten seriously the livelihood of over 1.2 billion people who depend on land for most of their needs. The global economy has adversely been influenced due to droughts and floods, cold and heat waves, forest fires, landslips and mudslips, icestorms, duststorms, hailstorms, thunder clouds associated with lightning and sea level ris

Total Factor Productivity Growth in Agriculture: A Malmquist Index Analysis of 93 Countries, 1980-2000

In this paper we examine levels and trends in agricultural output and productivity in 93 developed and developing countries that account for a major portion of the world population and agricultural output. We make use of data drawn from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and our study covers the period 1980-2000. Due to the non-availability of reliable input price data, the study uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to derive Malmquist productivity indexes. The study examines trends in agricultural productivity over the period. Issues of catch-up and convergence, or in some cases possible divergence, in productivity in agriculture are examined within a global framework. The paper also derives the shadow prices and value shares that are implicit in the DEA-based Malmquist productivity indices, and examines the plausibility of their levels and trends over the study period

Climate change, mitigation and adaptation with reference to agriculture over the humid tropics - Winter School on Impact of Climate Change on Indian Marine Fisheries held at CMFRI, Cochin 18.1.2008 to 7.2.2008 -Winter School on Impact of Climate Change on Indian Marine Fisheries

The Bali road map under UNFCCC highlighted the conclusions of IPCC on climate change across the World. It indicates that the global warming is real. The Polar ice is melting and sea level will increase. One-third of our plant and animal species are likely to vanish. There will be famine around the world, particularly in Africa and central Asia. The Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) in developing countries is on top priority as deforestation alone may cause 20 to 25% increase in greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. The second major issue is on “Adaptation Fund” designed to help developing countries dealing with impact of climate change. Therefore, it is pertinent to follow the guidelines at the regional scale so as to mitigate the ill effects of climate change on war-footing

HPLC METHOD DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF LERCANIDIPINE HCL AND ATENOLOL, CHARACTERIZATION OF ITS DEGRADANTS BY LC-MS/MS

Objective: An assay method was developed and validated for the simultaneous estimation of Lercanipine HCl and atenolol using RP-HPLC. Methods: An effective chromatographic separation was achieved using waters symmetry C18 column of dimensions 150x4.6 mm, 3.5 μm, as a stationary phase. 0.1 percent ortho phosphoric acid and acetonitrile in 50:50 v/v was used as a mobile process with a rate of flow 1 ml/min and UV detection was carried out at 230 nm, respectively. Isocratic chromatography at ambient temperature was performed. Results: Lercanidipine HCl and atenolol were separated by a running time of around 8 min. at 2.925 min. and 6.482 min. Respectively. By injecting the norm six times, device suitability parameters were studied and the outcomes were well under the acceptance criteria. The linearity analysis was performed at levels ranging from 10% to 150% and the R2 value was found to be 0.999. Conclusion: Assay method validation was performed by using the marketed formulation and found to be within the limit. Degradation tests were conducted and the degradants were characterized by using LC-MS/MS

Cobalt(II) chloride. Aluminium promoted allylation of aldehydes with allylic halides

In the presence of cobalt(II) chloride-metallic aluminium, allylic halides react with aldehydes at room temperature in tetrahydrofuran-water to afford the corresponding alcohols in high yields