Will a Conservative vision for community cohesion work?

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Narrow Banking: Theory, evidence and prospects in India

The narrow banking proposal defining a class of safe and liquid assets (generally sovereign Government securities) for investments by weak banks, backed fully by demand liabilities (generally non-interest bearing deposits) has been considered as a means of deposit protection and a possible solution to the banking problems. The paper seeks to explain the theoretical implications of the proposal and examine its implications for the Indian public sector banks facing large non-performing loans. The evidence presented shows that even without a directive, narrow banking on the asset side is already being practised as part of the asset-liability management by these banks. However, given the structure of deposit ownership, narrow banking in its strict sense does not afford a solution to reforming weak banks. Strictly practiced narrow banking can neither guarantee deposit protection not turn around the weak banks. On the contrary, it may expose weak banks to immense market and interest rate risks which can make the banking system vulnerable to idiosyncratic and systemic risks arising from macroeconomic shocks. The paper however recognises that some contraction in the scale of operations of weak banks seems to be an unavoidable by-product of measures which may be necessary to strengthen weak banks.Narrow banking; government securities; deposit insurance; India

On Enabling Concurrent Communications in Wireless Networks

Today innumerable devices use the wireless spectrum for communication, including cell-phones, WiFi devices, military radios, public safety radios, satellite phones etc. This crowding is limiting the experience of each device either through interference or by waiting fortheir turn to communicate. So, how do we allow a limited spectral resource to reliably scale to many more devices? This is possible through concurrent communication where multiple links share the spectrum and communicate simultaneously using multi-antenna techniques. One promising technique is Interference Alignment (IA), that has been shown to be Degrees-of-Freedom optimal under some conditions. Still, IA requires accurate channel knowledge to be effective and its ability to achieve high throughput under time varying wireless conditions is yet unproven. We make progress towards understanding these limitations and provide viable solutions.We study an IA system under different models of the time varying channel and derive expressions for the achieved rate over time and the system throughput. Using these, we can arrive at the optimal duration of the data phase that maximizes throughput. We proposetwo strategies that help to counter the effects of a time varying channel. First, data aided receiver beam-tracking along with link adaptation provides a sizable improvement in the received signal to interference and noise ratio. Second, updating the transmit beams during data transmission using short feedback pilots improves alignment at the receivers. In faster varying channels, we get a more stable achieved rate whereas in slower varying channels, we see additional throughput gains. The conclusion from this work is that an IA system must be trained more frequently than the channel coherence time to ensure high throughput and beam adaptation during the data phase gives significant robustness to the system.Lastly, we present an IA based medium access control (MAC) protocol that outperforms traditional protocols. Our concurrent carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) protocol based on beam-nulling is compatible with CSMA and increases the sum throughput by 2 to 3x.We also show that IA outperforms optimal time division multiple access under time varying conditions. Hence a well-designed IA system can enable reliable concurrent communications in a wireless network

DESIGN, PREPARATION, AND EVALUATION OF SELF-MICROEMULSIFYING DRUG DELIVERY SYSTEM OF BAMBUTEROL HYDROCHLORIDE

Objective: The self-micro-emulsifying drug delivery system (SMEDDS) of bambuterol hydrochloride was designed, prepared, and evaluated to overcome the problem of poor bioavailability.Methods: The designing of the formulation included the selection of oil phase, surfactant, and cosolvent/cosurfactant based on the saturated solubility studies. Psuedoternary phase diagram was constructed using aqueous titration method, to identify the self-emulsifying region. Different ratios of the selected surfactant and cosolvent/cosurfactant (Smix) were also studied and used to construct the ternary phase diagram. The prepared formulations of the SMEDDS were evaluated for drug content, morphology, globule size, robustness to dilution, emulsification time, optical clarity, and stability.Results: The formulation containing 10 mg bambuterol hydrochloride, triacetin (12.50% w/w), Tween 80 (43.75% w/w), and ethanol (43.75% w/w) was concluded to be optimized. The optimized SMEDDS not only showed optimum globule size, zeta potential, and drug content but was also found to be robust to dilution, formed emulsion spontaneously, and was stable. The optimized SMEDDS showed increased permeability of the drug across the intestinal membrane in ex vivo studies.Conclusion: The results suggest that bambuterol hydrochloride can be formulated as self-microemulsifying drug delivery system, and further, SMEDDS can be used to improve the oral bioavailability of bambuterol hydrochloride

Trading activity in the Indian government bond market

We study how the Indian government bond market functions, how it has changed over time, and what factors help explain some of its features. Looking at the primary market, we describe how underwriting obligations are allocated to primary dealers via auction and identify several significant determinants of the underwriting commission cutoff rate, including the launch of the Negotiated Dealing System-Order Matching System (NDS-OM) electronic trading platform. Turning to the secondary market, we explore the importance of benchmark bonds, the launch of NDS-OM, the growth in trading activity, and the migration of activity from the over-the-counter (OTC) market to NDS-OM. We find that benchmark bonds, larger issues, and recently issued bonds tend to trade more actively, but that the launch of NDS-OM is associated with a reduced likelihood of a bond trading but greater trading volume conditional on trading. Benchmark bonds, larger issues, and recently issued bonds are associated with a greater share of NDS-OM trading volume (as opposed to OTC trading volume), suggesting that the NDS-OM platform is especially attractive for trading bonds with benchmark attributes

Tough at the Top: the glass ceiling problem

Most of the attention concerning immigrant integration is devoted to problems at the bottom of society. This is understandable given that Britain?s post-war immigrants have had, for the most part, poorer educational and employment profiles than natives. But it means that problems of equality and opportunity at the top of the tree sometimes get overlooked. This essay looks at the problems associated with ethnic penalties in the professions, and other high reward/status sectors, and the extent to which these are due to persistent discrimination or to other factors. (And we should bear in mind that one problem here is lack of reliable data.) I will also look at things from the perspective of one runaway successful group, Indians, to assess what has gone well for them and what still holds back further gains