MALEO: Modular Assembly in Low Earth Orbit. A strategy for an IOC lunar base

Modular Assembly in Low Earth Orbit (MALEO) is a new strategy for building an initial operational capability lunar habitation base. In this strategy, the modular lunar base components are brought up to Low Earth Orbit by the Space Transportation System/Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle fleet, and assembled there to form a complete lunar base. Modular propulsion systems are then used to transport the MALEO lunar base, complete and intact, all the way to the moon. Upon touchdown on the lunar surface, the MALEO lunar habitation base is operational. An exo-skeletal truss superstructure is employed in order to uniformly absorb and distribute the rocket engine thrusting forces incurred by the MALEO lunar base during translunar injection, lunar orbit insertion, and lunar surface touchdown. The components, configuration, and structural aspects of the MALEO lunar base are discussed. Advantages of the MALEO strategy over conventional strategies are pointed out. It is concluded that MALEO holds promise for lunar base deployment

Institutional Investors, Financial Sector Development And Economic Growth in OECD Countries

This paper studies the role of institutional investors (pension fund, insurance companies and investment companies) in the development of the financial sector and economic growth in OECD countries by employing a dynamic panel VAR. While pervious studies in this area have mainly focused on contractual savings institutions of pension funds and insurance companies, we provide a consistent analysis of institutional investors that includes pension funds, insurance companies, and investment companies both at the aggregated and disaggregated levels. At the aggregate level, we found that institutional investors significantly Granger causes stock market developments and economic growth. However, we do not find such evidence with the banks. At the disaggregated level, we found that market capitalization Ganger causes the development of contractual savings institutions of pension funds and insurance companies. While these contractual savings institutions Granger causes liquidity and turnover in the stock market, the results suggest that the maturity and large coverage of these institutional investors have diluted the impact in deepening the stock market. In turn, the ‘risk averseness’ of these contractual savings institutions in holding large capitalized and diversified stock portfolio verifies the reverse causality evidence. Contrary to a passive ‘buy and hold’ strategy, the unidirection causality to both market liquidity and turnover verifies that contractual savings institutions actively manage their portfolios. Another key finding of this study is the significant role of investment companies in Granger causing both financial sector development and economic growth. While both contractual savings institutions exhibit uni -directional causality on economic growth, we found a dynamic relationship between investment companies and growth due to the risk taking activities of investment companies.Institutional Investors, Financial Sector Development, Economic Growth, Causality

Linkages and Spillovers from Foreign Ownership in the Indian Pharmaceutical Firms

The paper examines the spillover and linkage effects from the presence of foreign firms in the Indian pharmaceutical industry. A comprehensive panel data consisting of nearly 200 firms from 1989 to 2000 was used in the current study. The recent semi-parametric estimation methods as suggested by Olley and Pakes (1996) and Levinsohn and Petrin (2003) were adopted to account for the endogeneity in the input demand. Our results suggest the existence of positive and significant spillover from the foreign equity ownership in the Indian pharmaceutical industry. However, we also found negative and significant spillovers from the backward linkages with foreign firms. The negative spillovers from the backward linkages suggest the possibility of large technology and efficiency gap between local and foreign firms. The results also suggest that institutional arrangements that protect intellectual property rights such as product patents as opposed to process patents will be important for establishing positive linkages and spillovers between local and foreign firms in the Indian pharmaceutical industry.FDI, Backward and Horizontal Linkages, Olley-Pakes, Levinsohn-Petrin

Economic Reform and Productivity growth in Indian Manufacturing Industries: An interaction of technical change and scale economies

This paper studies the effects of the key economic reforms of 1991 on the Indian manufacturing industries using a panel of manufacturing industries. A Translog cost function is used to analyze the production structure in terms of biased technical change and economies of scale. A panel consisting of 121 Indian manufacturing industries from 1982 to 1998 was used in our estimation. The results of our paper support the evidence that there are economies of scale (only moderate) in the Indian manufacturing industries and it has been exploited after the key economic reforms in 1991. Most of the industries in our study revealed bias technology change and majority of the industries have experienced capital-using technical change. This suggests that the key economic reforms of liberalizing the capacity licensing regime that allows greater investment in capital goods will have a positive impact on productive performance of the industries if the price of capital does not substantially increase after the economic reforms. We observe TFP improvements for most of the industries after the 1991 reform initiatives, which support the evidence of improvements in economic efficiency after the key reform initiatives of the 1991.Total Factor Productivity, Bias Technical Change, Economies of Scale, Economic Reforms

Singapore Information Sector: A Study Using Input-Output Table

The paper measures the impact of information technology on the output growth of Singapore economy. A vibrant information sector will play an important catalytic role in developing Singapore into a knowledge-based economy. The analysis provided in the paper support the assertion that information economy will be a precursor to a knowledge-based economy. The information sector grew in tandem with the expansion of export in the first half of the 1990s. By the second half of the 1990s, it developed sufficient momentum and capability to expand domestically as a cluster. The use of ICT as intermediate input is found to be generally pervasive in the economy. The paper also investigated the impact of falling prices of information input on sectoral GDP. It is found that for a 10% decrease in information input prices, the sector GDPs had to increase by 0.05% to 2.2%. The overall impact for the economy is a positive 0.84% increase in national income (GDP) for a 10% decline in information input prices.

Multifrequency Eddy Current Clad Thickness Measurement of Thin Aluminum Alloy Combinations Having Similar Conductivities

Clad materials can offer several performance advantages over unclad materials including better corrosion resistance, increased mechanical wear, improved joining qualities, and enhanced metallurgical properties. Clad materials are used extensively in automotive and building products, aerospace applications, and air conditioning equipment. Clad products pose special production problems due to their unique composition. These products might require clad on one or both sides and, depending on the product, the clad and core alloys come in several combinations. For proper process and quality control, products are required to be sampled to ensure that the clad layer is within a certain tolerance band for maximum and minimum thickness. The eddy current method described here can be employed to make a rapid, nondestructive determination of the clad thickness

चेन्नई तट में तटीय मेखाला के निम्नीकरण पर प्रबन्धन

कृपया पूरा लेखा पढ

Landau (\Gamma,\chi)-automorphic functions on \mathbb{C}^n of magnitude \nu

We investigate the spectral theory of the invariant Landau Hamiltonian \La^\nu acting on the space ${\mathcal{F}}^\nu_{\Gamma,\chi}$ of $(\Gamma,\chi)$-automotphic functions on \C^n, for given real number $\nu>0$, lattice $\Gamma$ of \C^n and a map $\chi:\Gamma\to U(1)$ such that the triplet $(\nu,\Gamma,\chi)$ satisfies a Riemann-Dirac quantization type condition. More precisely, we show that the eigenspace {\mathcal{E}}^\nu_{\Gamma,\chi}(\lambda)=\set{f\in {\mathcal{F}}^\nu_{\Gamma,\chi}; \La^\nu f = \nu(2\lambda+n) f}; \lambda\in\C, is non trivial if and only if $\lambda=l=0,1,2, ...$. In such case, ${\mathcal{E}}^\nu_{\Gamma,\chi}(l)$ is a finite dimensional vector space whose the dimension is given explicitly. We show also that the eigenspace ${\mathcal{E}}^\nu_{\Gamma,\chi}(0)$ associated to the lowest Landau level of \La^\nu is isomorphic to the space, {\mathcal{O}}^\nu_{\Gamma,\chi}(\C^n), of holomorphic functions on \C^n satisfying g(z+\gamma) = \chi(\gamma) e^{\frac \nu 2 |\gamma|^2+\nu\scal{z,\gamma}}g(z), \eqno{(*)} that we can realize also as the null space of the differential operator $\sum\limits_{j=1}\limits^n(\frac{-\partial^2}{\partial z_j\partial \bar z_j} + \nu \bar z_j \frac{\partial}{\partial \bar z_j})$ acting on $\mathcal C^\infty$ functions on \C^n satisfying $(*)$.Comment: 20 pages. Minor corrections. Scheduled to appear in issue 8 (2008) of "Journal of Mathematical Physics