PUBLIC-PRIVATE SECTOR RELATIONSHIPS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

This paper refutes the conventional wisdom, bolstered in the wake of the Asian financial crisis that governments should not become too friendly with the private sector but, instead, should remain neutral and at arms-length distance. The empirical findings presented here indicate that countries in which governments have forged close and cooperative working relationships with the private sector have had much greater economic success. Furthermore, countries with more business-friendly public-private sector relationships tend to exhibit greater positive responsiveness to pro-growth policy reforms. In many developing countries today, where public-private sector relationships are characterized more by mistrust than cooperation, more not less collaboration is needed to spur economic growth. The art of governance, however, is avoiding state capture and not letting this partnership degenerate into favoritism and cronyism.Public-Private Sector Relationships, Governance

Employment Practices and Trends – A Discussion

Non

Immunogenicity of tumour cells modified with various chemicals.

Mouse tumour cells were treated with various chemical modifiers. The number of modifying groups per cell was determined with labelled reagents. The effects of the different modifying groups on the immunogenicity of the tumour cells was tested in syngeneic mice for tumour protection using a challenge dose of viable cells at 1000 or 10,000 time LD100. Best protection was obtained after immunization of animals with tumour cells modified with dimethylsulphate or acetic anhydride, or with glutardialdehyde-fixed cells treated with a carbodiimide and methylamine. Up to 40% of the animals remained tumour-free. The other animals exhibited a greatly increased mean survival time. The post-challenge sera showed no detectable amounts of antibodies against the tumour cells

Chemical modification and immunogenicity of membrane fractions from mouse tumour cells.

A crude membrane fraction isolated from mouse tumour cells was treated with various chemicals. The effects on the immunogenicity of the membrane sample were tested in syngeneic mice for tumour protection, using a challenge dose of 10(5) viable tumour cells. Best protection was obtained after immunization of mice with a membrane sample modified with dimethylsulphate. Up to 60% of the animals remained tumour free, and the tumour-bearing animals showed a greatly increased mean survival time. The post-challenge sera contained no detectable amounts of cytotoxic antibodies. The membrane sample isolated from tumour cells which had been modified with dimethylsulphate showed less immunogenicity than the modified cells or the membrane fraction from unmodified cells

Semantic Transformation of Web Services

Web services have become the predominant paradigm for the development of distributed software systems. Web services provide the means to modularize software in a way that functionality can be described, discovered and deployed in a platform independent manner over a network (e.g., intranets, extranets and the Internet). The representation of web services by current industrial practice is predominantly syntactic in nature lacking the fundamental semantic underpinnings required to fulfill the goals of the emerging Semantic Web. This paper proposes a framework aimed at (1) modeling the semantics of syntactically defined web services through a process of interpretation, (2) scop-ing the derived concepts within domain ontologies, and (3) harmonizing the semantic web services with the domain ontologies. The framework was vali-dated through its application to web services developed for a large financial system. The worked example presented in this paper is extracted from the se-mantic modeling of these financial web services

Versuchsanstellung im Weinbau

An Modell- und Blindversuchen wurden Richtwerte und Unterlagen für die besonderen Verhältnisse der weinbaulichen Versuchsanstellung ermittelt.In der Versuchsanstellung sind je Versuchsglied wenigstens 100 Einzelpflanzen zu verwenden, wenn eine Gewähr dafür gegeben sein soll, daß die spezifische Einzelpflanzenstreuung Berücksichtigung findet. Bei geringeren Stockzahlen können sowohl negative als auch positive Abweichungen von der spezifischen Einzelpflanzenstreuung auftreten. Der Einzelpflanzenstreuung entspricht auch eine spezifische Streuung des Mittelwertes, die bei Stockzahlen von 100 und mehr nur noch geringeren Schwankungen unterworfen ist. Bei 100 Einzelpflanzen muß mit einem m % von ca. 4 gerechnet werden.Die Parzellengröße richtet sich nach der Versuchsfragestellung und der in Punkt 5 angegebenen günstigsten Blockgröße. Für Klonen- und Sortenprüfungen, die meist in einer Einzelzeile angelegt werden können, wäre eine Parzellengröße von 25 -30 Stock empfehlenswert, wobei die Zahl der Wiederholung mindestens 4 betragen müßte. Für Düngungs- und Schädlingsbekämpfungsversuche etc. muß eine Rand- und Nachbarwirkung berücksichtigt werden, so daß bei 25 auswertbaren Pflanzen die Parzelle 75 Stock umfassen müßte. Die Zahl der Versuchsglieder müßte in diesem Falle wesentlich eingeschränkt werden, um die günstige Blockgröße nicht zu überschreiten.Fehlstellen können durch Einsetzen des über den Mittelwert errechneten Stockertrages ergänzt werden.Das Teilstück kann in Form einer Einzelzeile angelegt werden, da Rand- und Nachbarwirkungen meist nicht auftreten. Ausnahmen sind naturgemäB Düngungs- und Schädlingsbekämpfungsversuche, bei denen zwei Zeilen zwischen den Teilstücken aus der Verrechnung des Versuchs ausgeschlossen werden müssen.Die Bodenungleichheiten in hangigem Gelände machen es erforderlich, den Versuchsblock nicht als Quadrat sondern als Rechteck anzulegen, wobei die kurze Seite quer zum Rang verlaufen muB. Für die GröBe des Blockes wird eine Flache von 1 000 -1 300 m2 empfohlen (also eine Stockzahl von 800-1000), innerhalb dieser BlockgroBe werden meist keine groBeren systematischen Bodenunterschiede mehr auftreten.Für Sorten- und Klonenprüfungen sollten wenigstens 5-6jährige Versuchsauswertungen Berücksichtigung finden. Der Einfluß von Wiederholungszahl und Jahresvarianz auf den Versuchsfehler läßt es vorteilhaft erscheinen, bei einer 5jährigen Versuchsanstellung mit 6 Wiederholungen zu arbeiten.Die Anwendung unterschiedlicher Verrechnungsmethoden kann in der weinbaulichen Versuchsanstellung zu widersprüchlicheh Ergebnissen führen. Es wird daher empfohlen, z. B. die Varianzanalyse bei Klonen- und Sortenprüfungen durch Ermittlung der spezifischen Streuungen zu ergänzen, da häufig stärkere Unterschiede in den Streuungen erwartet werden müssen

The origin of the excess transit absorption in the HD 189733 system: planet or star?

We have detected excess absorption in the emission cores of Ca II H&K during transits of HD 189733b for the first time. Using observations of three transits, we investigate the origin of the absorption, which is also seen in Hα and the Na I D lines. Applying differential spectrophotometry methods to the Ca II H and Ca II K lines combined, using respective passband widths of Δλ = 0.4 and 0.6 Å yields excess absorption of td = 0.0074 ± 0.0044 (1.7σ; Transit 1) and 0.0214 ± 0.0022 (9.8σ; Transit 2). Similarly, we detect excess Hα absorption in a passband of width Δλ = 0.7 Å, with td = 0.0084 ± 0.0016 (5.2σ) and 0.0121 ± 0.0012 (9.9σ). For both lines, Transit 2 is thus significantly deeper. Combining all three transits for the Na I D lines yields excess absorption of td = 0.0041 ± 0.0006 (6.5σ). By considering the time series observations of each line, we find that the excess apparent absorption is best recovered in the stellar reference frame. These findings lead us to postulate that the main contribution to the excess transit absorption in the differential light curves arises because the normalizing continuum bands form in the photosphere, whereas the line cores contain a chromospheric component. We cannot rule out that part of the excess absorption signature arises from the planetary atmosphere, but we present evidence which casts doubt on recent claims to have detected wind motions in the planet's atmosphere in these data

A Semantic Portal for Fund Finding in the EU: Semantic Upgrade, Integration and Publication of Heterogeneous Legacy Data

FundFinder is a Semantic Web portal that allows searching for and navigating through information about funding opportunities. This application has been created following a set of techniques and using a set of tools for the upgrade of legacy content to the Semantic Web, including databases and semi-structured documents. This process consists in extracting and populating knowledge from heterogeneous information sources and making it available on the Web