Foreseeing another HIPC: The response of a post-HIPC economy

A perfect foresight OLG model is set up to study the dynamic response of a small open economy to a temporary fiscal impetus (bond-financed government deficit) anticipated to be closed by a mix of taxes, money finance and grant aid. The model is solved for the general mixed tax-money-aid finance case with a focus on the conclusions for the full-grant finance case in the hope to inform the ongoing debate on debt sustainability in post-HIPC Africa and to some extent crisis-prone emerging markets like Turkey and Argentina. The conclusions emanating from the model are that anticipated aid (or debt forgiveness) works like a ?proborrowing policy? inducing the economy to consume more, save less and hence run bigger current account deficits; the size of the immediate responses to the impetus as well as the long-term trajectory of the economy depends critically on whether domestic agents start off as net debtors or net creditors, outcomes being much less desirable in the former case; if future aid expects to replace taxes, consumption and the current account jump more when the real interest rate is low, consumption less important in the utility function relative to real balances, the instantaneous probability of death higher, and the bond-financed deficit regime of longer duration. To the extent that these conditions hold in the current HIPC context, and given the earlier results, the paper reinforces existing doubts over about the prospects of attaining longterm debt sustainability in Africa

Posterior Mediastinal Chondrosarcoma- A rare entity

Introduction:Chondrosarcoma is a well defined tumor of soft tissue with calcification. Extraskeletal myxoid chondrosarcoma is an unusual sarcoma of soft tissue adding only 3% to all soft tissue tumors. Majority of mediastinal foci originates from variety of tissues, the reason being their diverse embryological and anatomical approximations. Chondrosarcomas are more common in males with 2:1 male to female ratio. The exact pathology of these tumors is unclear; however recent data ensures that these tumors have multidirectional delineation. Classical histopathological features of chondrosarcoma include S-100 positivity, EMA positivity. These features of Immunohistochemical favor extra skeletal myxoid chondrosarcoma.Case Report:Recent data signifies that the tumor is known for its rare occurrence, here we have reported a unique case of 40 years old male visited Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for pre employment checkup without any symptoms. All the tests were negative except Chest X-ray PA view which revealed dense mass on lower lobe of lung. For further evaluation, CT scan of chest with contrast was ordered and eventually the mass was resected surgically. On the basis of macro and microscopic findings, histopathological tests and immunohistochemical stains, the mass was found to be chondrosarcoma with myxoid origin. This tumor has to be distinguishing among the list of different diseases like hamartoma, hydatid cyst, and neuroendocrine tumors for the differential diagnosis of the case.Conclusion: Our paper reports an extraskeletal mesenchymal chondrosarcoma originating in the posterior mediastinum with a rare presentation.Â

THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL EFFECT OF WORKPLACE SPIRITUALITY ON EMPLOYEE WORK INTENSION WITH MODERATING ROLE OF ETHICAL LEADERSHIP AMONG THE EMPLOYEES OF CIVIL SECRETARIAT KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA

This study investigated the degree to which workplace spirituality linked to work intentions, with ethical leadership acted as a mediator in this relationship. A sample 303 employees working full-time in Civil Secretariat Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan was polled. Smart-PLS has been employed for data analysis. Results revealed a favorable strong link between “workplace spirituality” and “employee work intentions”, as well as “mediation via ethical leadership”, using correlation and route analysis. Both assumptions were supported by the study's findings. The results of the study have both theoretical and practical contributions. This study extends the extant literature by adding new insights to workplace spirituality literature. Side by side, the results have a lot for the organizations' managers to understand employees' behaviour in the light of their spirituality and their intension of working with their interplay with ethical leadership

Cost-effectiveness of traffic enforcement: case study from Uganda

BACKGROUND: In October 2004, the Ugandan Police department deployed enhanced traffic safety patrols on the four major roads to the capital Kampala. OBJECTIVE: To assess the costs and potential effectiveness of increasing traffic enforcement in Uganda. METHODS: Record review and key informant interviews were conducted at 10 police stations along the highways that were patrolled. Monthly data on traffic citations and casualties were reviewed for January 2001 to December 2005; time series (ARIMA) regression was used to assess for a statistically significant change in traffic deaths. Costs were computed from the perspective of the police department in $US 2005. Cost offsets from savings to the health sector were not included. RESULTS: The annual cost of deploying the four squads of traffic patrols (20 officers, four vehicles, equipment, administration) is estimated at$72,000. Since deployment, the number of citations has increased substantially with a value of $327 311 annually. Monthly crash data pre- and post-intervention show a statistically significant 17$603 per death averted or $27 per life year saved discounted at 3$300 GDP per capita). CONCLUSION: The costs of traffic safety enforcement are low in comparison to the potential number of lives saved and revenue generated. Increasing enforcement of existing traffic safety norms can prove to be an extremely cost-effective public health intervention in low-income countries, even from a government perspective

A dynamic modelling of the regional and international political economy of US aid to Pakistan

This study takes a unique approach by empirically examining the political economy of US aid to Pakistan in the South Asian regional strategic context, including the geopolitics of China, India, Iran, and Russia. Using the dynamic Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method from 1971 to 2016, we find that US economic assistance responds positively to regional wars in Afghanistan and the Indo-Russian strategic relationship in the long run. The improvement in the relationship between India and Pakistan increases US economic aid in the short run but reduces it in the long run. The Pak-Iran economic relationship reduces US economic assistance in the short run while in the long run, it is positive but insignificant. Washington’s policy for South Asia is now more China-centric in reshaping regional geopolitics. The US-foreign-aid-policy instrument generally plays a dynamic role in achieving manifold strategic objectives in the South Asian region. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics of foreign aid and geopolitical relationships

Traffic-adaptive Signal Control and Vehicle Routing Using a Decentralized Back-pressure Method

The problem of controlling traffic lights under adaptive routing of vehicles in urban road networks is considered. Multi-commodity back-pressured algorithms, originally developed for routing and scheduling in communication networks, are applied to road networks to control traffic lights and adaptively reroute vehicles. The performance of the algorithms is analyzed using a microscopic traffic simulator. The results demonstrate that the proposed signal control and adaptive routing algorithms can provide significant improvement over a fixed schedule and a single-commodity back-pressure signal controllers, in terms of various performance metrics, including queue-length, trips completed, and travel times

Design and analysis of social network systems (SNS)

In the last few years, online Social Network Systems (SNSs) thrived and changed the overall outlook of the Internet. These systems play an important role in making the Internet social, a hallmark of Web 2.0. Various such systems have been developed to serve a diverse set of needs. SNSs provide not only a space for self-representation, but also mechanisms to build and maintain one’s social network online. A lot of studies have been carried out on such systems to identify how people develop cultures of communication, sharing and participation and also to identify the network structure of such systems. In this thesis, we carry this line of research forward. Our aim is the identification of some key user characteristics and social processes which result in the emergence of a social network. These might help future platform and application developers in creating better, more efficient and more open and user-friendly SNSs. Specifically, we make the following three major contributions: a) One of the distinct features of an SNS is the public listing of friendship links - social network. Most of the personal details such as hometown and workplace information have been hidden from non-friends, but the list of friendships remains open. Being a true representation, people use their real names as their screen names. Such names alone contain detailed cultural information about their ethnicities, religion and even their geographical origins. Our first contribution is that we have made good use of such information by inferring ethnic classification of users of Facebook. We identified how clustered and segregated the overall social network is when users’ inferred ethnicity is taken into account. Different cultures have different behaviours with distinct characteristics. This rich information can be used to develop an understanding and help create diverse applications catering for specific ethnicities and geographical regions; covering both the dominant and non-dominant groups. We have identified ethnicities of a subset of Facebook users with their friends and studied how different ethnicities are connected among and within each other. A large social network dataset of four thousand Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) students have been selected from Facebook. We have extensively analysed this dataset for its network structure and also its semantic and social structure. Our work suggests our dataset is clustered and segregated on ethnic lines. b) To develop a user liberating SNS where the control and the ownership of rich personal data is in the hands of SNS users, a clear understanding is required of how such systems on an individual and group level are developed and maintained. Never before in Social Sciences was it possible to study society on such a large scale. These systems have facilitated the study of individuals both at a local and global scale. However, at the moment very little knowledge is available to identify how people develop their friendship in reality. So for example, it is not known whether in SNSs people meet others based on their attributes and interests, or if they simply bring online their real lives’ social networks. And more specifically, what processes does one go through to develop her social network. To fill this knowledge gap in this thesis, as our second contribution, we have used a computer simulation technique known as Agent-Based simulation, to develop four simulation models based on both individuals’ affinities and environmental aspects. Specifically, we have developed models of student interaction to develop social networks. Three University’s datasets which include Caltech (Nodes 762, Edges 16651), Princeton (Nodes 6575, Edges 293307) and Georgetown (Nodes 9388, Edges 425619), have been used to check the performance and rigour of the model. Our evidence suggests that ‘friend-of-a-friend’ (FOAF) best represents social interactions in Caltech University. In the case of Princeton and Georgetown, we found a multitude of social and structural processes involved, which are: attribute based (same dormitory, major or high school etc.), social interaction, random meet ups (through parties or other social events) and current friends introducing new friends. c) We observe that in the main, SNSs are centralised, and depend solely on central entities for everything. With huge personal data on such SNSs, advertising and marketing agencies have made very sophisticated systems to gather information about people. It is a goldmine for them for personalised advertisement. Also various governmental agencies have been using SNSs as an excuse to curb potential threats both legally and illegally, to obtain information on numerous users (people). In order to deal with such issues inherent in centralised client-server architecture, as the third contribution of this thesis, we have proposed and implemented a completely decentralised SNS in a peer-to-peer fashion. Our implementation is done in an open source Peer-To-Peer (P2P) client Tribler. To handle the dynamicity of users in a P2P system – their availability, we have developed mechanisms to deal with it. This SNS has been evaluated on a deployed system with real users. This prototype establishes the feasibility of a totally distributed SNS, but its practicality when scaled to a full system would require more work

A comparative study of HPr proteins from extremophilic organisms

A thermodynamic study of five homologous HPr proteins derived from organisms inhabiting diverse environments has been undertaken. The aim of this study was to further our understanding of protein stabilization in extremes of environment. Two of the proteins were derived from moderate thermophiles (Streptococcus thermophilus and Bacillus staerothermophilus) and two from haloalkaliphilic organisms (Bacillus halodurans and Oceanobacillus iheyensis); these proteins were compared with HPr from the mesophile Bacillus subtilus. Genes for three of these homologous HPr proteins were for the first time cloned from their respective organisms into expression vectors and they were over-expressed and purified in Escherichia coli. Stability measurements were performed on these proteins under a variety of solution conditions (varying pH, salinity and temperature) by thermal and solvent induced denaturation experiments. Stability curves were determined for every homologue and these reveal very similar conformational stability for these homologues at their habitat temperatures. The BstHPr homologue is the most thermostable and also has the highest G25; the stability of other homologues was ranked as Bst>Bh>St>Bs>OiHPr. Other key thermodynamic parameters, like Cp, have been estimated for all the homologues and it was found that these values are identical within errors of estimation. Also, it was found that the values of TS are very similar for these homologues. Together these observations allow us to propose a thermodynamic mechanism toward achieving higher Tm. The crystal structures of the BstHPr and a single tryptophan-containing variant (BstF29W) of this homologue are also reported here. Also reported is a domain-swapped dimeric structure for the BstF29W variant, together with a detailed investigation into the solution oligomeric nature of this protein. The crystal structure of BstHPr is analyzed to enumerate various stabilizating interactions like hydrogen bonds and salt-bridges and these were compared with those for the mesophilic homologue BsHPr. Finally, an analysis of sequence alignments together with structural information for these homologues has allowed design of numerous variants of both Bs and BstHPr. A detailed thermodynamic study of these variants is presented in an attempt to understand the origins of the differences in stability of the HPr homologues