Empirical Evidence on the Relationship between Foreign Direct Investment and Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Exploration in Asia

The issue of capital flows is considered to be the most accessible route for economic growth whereby investment is regarded as the engine of growth. The worldwide changes have recognized the importance of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as one of the possible options to stimulate growth momentum. Against this backdrop this paper examines the short run and long run dynamics between economic growth and foreign direct investment for selected Asian economies covering the period from 1975 to 2010. A neo-classical production function is estimated to capture the short run dynamics followed by cointegration technique to capture the long run effect. This paper provides strong evidence regarding the existence of long run equilibrium relationship between FDI and growth for majority of the countries followed by varied causality between foreign direct investment and economic growth. The policy recommendations may not be uniform for the entire Asian region due to their diversified industrialization experience

Cosmological Simulations of Galaxy Groups and Clusters-III: Constraining Quasar Feedback Models with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array

The thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect serves as a direct potential probe of the energetic outflows from quasars that are responsible for heating the intergalactic medium. In this work, we use the GIZMO meshless finite mass hydrodynamic cosmological simulation SIMBA (Dave et al. 2019), which includes different prescriptions for quasar feedback, to compute the SZ effect arising from different feedback modes. From these theoretical simulations, we perform mock observations of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in four bands (320 GHz, 135 GHZ, 100 GHz and 42 GHz) to characterize the feasibility of direct detection of the quasar SZ signal. Our results show that for all the systems we get an enhancement of the SZ signal, when there is radiative feedback, while the signal gets suppressed when the jet mode of feedback is introduced in the simulations. Our mock ALMA maps reveal that, with the current prescription of jet feedback, the signal goes below the detection threshold of ALMA. We also find that the signal is higher for high redshift systems, making it possible for ALMA and cross SZ-X-ray studies to disentangle the varying modes of quasar feedback and their relative importance in the cosmological context.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

Epigenetic Editing of Ascl1 Gene in Neural Stem Cells by Optogenetics

Enzymes involved in epigenetic processes such as methyltransferases or demethylases are becoming highly utilized for their persistent DNA or histone modifying efficacy. Herein, we have developed an optogenetic toolbox fused to the catalytic domain (CD) of DNA-methyltransferase3A (DNMT3A-CD) or Ten-Eleven Dioxygenase-1 (TET1-CD) for loci-specific alteration of the methylation state at the promoter of Ascl1 (Mash1), a candidate proneuron gene. Optogenetical protein pairs, CRY2 linked to DNMT3A-CD or TET1-CD and CIB1 fused to a Transcription Activator-Like Element (TALE) locating an Ascl1 promoter region, were designed for site specific epigenetic editing. A differentially methylated region at the Ascl1 promoter, isolated from murine dorsal root ganglion (hypermethylated) and striated cells (hypomethylated), was targeted with these optogenetic-epigenetic constructs. Optimized blue-light illumination triggered the co-localization of TALE constructs with DNMT3A-CD or TET1-CD fusion proteins at the targeted site of the Ascl1 promoter. We found that this spatiotemporal association of the fusion proteins selectively alters the methylation state and also regulates gene activity. This proof of concept developed herein holds immense promise for the ability to regulate gene activity via epigenetic modulation with spatiotemporal precision

DELINEATING REGIONAL DIFFERENTIATION ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY INFRASTRUCTURE IN NORTHEAST INDIA THROUGH AN EFFICIENT SYNTHETIC INDICATOR

The north-eastern region of India presents intra-regional disparity, which is reflected in every aspect of development. The transport sector, especially railway transportation, is one of the important aspects, and the development of railway infrastructure seems to be very different in every region. The research question addressed in this study was “Which factors, geo-physical or socio-economic, influenced the variation in the level of railway development in Northeast India?” The aim of the study was to delineate regional differentiation on railway development in Northeast India and to analyse the reasons for different development patterns of railway lines among the north-eastern states. The research was based on secondary data collected from multiple sources, and the existing synthetic indicator was applied for the classification of eight states based on their railway infrastructural status. An alternative approach called the alternative synthetic indicator has been proposed and found to be more efficient than the existing synthetic indicator. The degree of inequality among the northeastern states by considering railway infrastructural variables was measured by plotting a Lorenz curve; the corresponding Gini coefficient specifies the unequal distribution of railway infrastructure among all the northeastern states. The causality of such unequal development has been analysed through a correlation test by defining the composite dimension index. The analysis revealed that all the externalities of regional inequality significantly influence the development of railway lines in northeastern states. Environmental determinism plays a crucial role in railway development in Northeast India, but political willingness is also crucial for creating an actual state of differentiation and will play a special role in the future

Optogenetic regulation of site-specific subtelomeric DNA methylation

Telomere length homeostasis, critical for chromosomal integrity and genome stability, is controlled by intricate molecular regulatory machinery that includes epigenetic modifications. Here, we examine site-specific and spatiotemporal alteration of the subtelomeric methylation of CpG islands using optogenetic tools to understand the epigenetic regulatory mechanisms of telomere length maintenance. Human DNA methyltransferase3A (DNMT3A) were assembled selectively at chromosome ends by fusion to cryptochrome 2 protein (CRY2) and its interacting complement, the basic helix loop helix protein-1 (CIB1). CIB1 was fused to the telomere-associated protein telomere repeat binding factor-1 (TRF1), which localized the protein complex DNMT3A-CRY2 at telomeric regions upon excitation by blue-light monitored by single-molecule fluorescence analyses. Increased methylation was achieved selectively at subtelomeric CpG sites on the six examined chromosome ends specifically after blue-light activation, which resulted in progressive increase in telomere length over three generations of HeLa cell replications. The modular design of the fusion constructs presented here allows for the selective substitution of other chromatin modifying enzymes and for loci-specific targeting to regulate the epigenetic pathways at telomeres and other selected genomic regions of interest