Can Sub-Saharan Africa leap into global network trade ?

This paper examines opportunities for Sub-Saharan African countries to effectively participate in globalization, particularly given the increasing interest of China and India in Sub-Saharan Africa. How can Sub-Saharan Africa fully engage and gain benefits from global network trade? Over the past 15 years Asia has become Africa's fastest growing export market. Asian countries are much more open to trade than Europe or America. There seems to be no evidence to suggest that this trend will not continue in the near future. The authors acknowledge the numerous caveats in Asia's growing interest in the African continent, not least the"resource curse"of exports that are heavily concentrated on oil, minerals, and raw materials, as well as the fierce competition from Asia's cheap manufactured exports. However, they believe that there is strong evidence to suggest a clear potential for South-South cooperation in trade and investment. Drawing on evidence from their extensive research into international value chains, the authors identify five critical factors for effective participation in global network trade: price, speed-to-market, labor productivity, flexibility, and product quality. Underlying competitive performance of these critical factors are a country's policies and institutions. Effective policies, efficient institutions, and the necessary infrastructure will ensure the best outcome for trading countries. To improve the depth and sustainability of these five critical factors, it is important that developing countries create a supportive policy and institutional framework from the outset.Markets and Market Access,Economic Theory&Research,Access to Markets,Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Transport and Trade Logistics

Public choices between lifesaving programs : how important are lives saved?

In developing and industrial countries alike, there is concern that health and safety policy may respond to irrational fears - to the"disaster of the month"- rather than address more fundamental problems. In the United States, for example, some policymakers say the public worries about trivial risks while ignoring larger ones and that funding priorities reflect this view. Many public health programs with a low cost per life saved are underfunded, for example, while many environmental regulations with a high cost per life saved are issued each year. Does the existing allocation of resources reflect people's preoccupation with the qualitative aspects of risks, to the exclusion of quantitative factors (lives saved)? Or can observed differences in the cost per life saved of environmental and public health programs be explained by the way the two sets of programs are funded? The authors examine the preferences of U.S. citizens for health and safety programs. They confronted a random sample of 1,000 U.S. adults with choices between environmental health and public health programs, to see which they would choose. The authors then examined what factors (qualitative and quantitative) seem to influence these choices. Respondents were asked about pairs of programs, among them: smoking education or industrial pollution control programs, industrial pollution control or pneumonia vaccine programs, radon eradication or a program to ban smoking in the workplace, and radon eradication or programs to ban pesticides. The survey results, they feel, have implications beyond the United States. They find that, while qualitative aspects of the life-saving programs are statistically significant in explaining people's choices among them, lives saved matter, too. Indeed, for the median respondent in the survey, the rate of substitution between most qualitative risk characteristics and lives saved is inelastic. But for a sizable minority of respondents, choice among programs appears to be insensitive to lives saved. The interesting question for public policy is what role the latter group plays in the regulatory process.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Public Health Promotion,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Insurance Law,Water Conservation,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Insurance Law,Water Conservation,Environmental Economics&Policies

Measuring the impact of the investment climate on total factor productivity : the cases of China and Brazil

This study measures the impact of investment climate factors on total factor productivity (TFP) of firms in Brazil and China. The analysis is conducted in two steps: first an econometric production function is estimated to produce a measure of TFP at the firm level. In the second step, variation in TFP across firms is statistically related to a indicators of the investment climate as well as firm characteristics. The results yield a number of insights about the factors underlying productivity. In both countries, and in a variety of industry groups, indicators of poor investment climate, especially delays in customs clearance and interruptions in utility services, have significant negative effects on TFP. Reducing customs clearance time by one day in China could increase TFP by 2-6 percent. Indicators such as email usage have positive effects on TFP. In the case of China, state-owned firms and firms located in the interior are shown to be much less productive than privately owned firms and firms located in the east. In Brazil, the results present an interesting contrast between the apparel industry and the electronics industry. In the apparel industry, older firms in competitive markets are more productive, while in the case of electronics, newer firms with higher market shares are more productive.Economic Theory&Research,Technology Industry,Water and Industry,ICT Policy and Strategies,Economic Growth

Global logistics indicators, supply chain metrics, and bilateral trade patterns

Past research into the determinants of international trade highlighted the importance of the basic spatial gravity model augmented by additional variables representing sources of friction. Studies modeled many sources of friction using various proxies, including indices based on expert judgment in some cases. This paper focuses on logistics friction and draws on a data set recently compiled by the World Bank with specific quantitative metrics of logistics performance interms of time, cost, and variability in time. It finds that the new variables that relate directly to logistics performance have a statistically significant relationship with the level of bilateral trade. It also finds that a single logistics index can capture virtually all of the explanatory power of multiple logistics indicators. The findings should spur public and private agencies that have direct or indirect power over logistics performance to focus attention on reducing sources of friction so as to improve their country's ability to compete in today's global economy. Moreover, since the logistics metrics are directly related to operational performance, countries can use these metrics to target actions to improve logistics and monitor their progress.Common Carriers Industry,Transport and Trade Logistics,Economic Theory&Research,Free Trade,Trade Policy

Development of biomaterial scaffold for nerve tissue engineering: Biomaterial mediated neural regeneration

Neural tissue repair and regeneration strategies have received a great deal of attention because it directly affects the quality of the patient's life. There are many scientific challenges to regenerate nerve while using conventional autologous nerve grafts and from the newly developed therapeutic strategies for the reconstruction of damaged nerves. Recent advancements in nerve regeneration have involved the application of tissue engineering principles and this has evolved a new perspective to neural therapy. The success of neural tissue engineering is mainly based on the regulation of cell behavior and tissue progression through the development of a synthetic scaffold that is analogous to the natural extracellular matrix and can support three-dimensional cell cultures. As the natural extracellular matrix provides an ideal environment for topographical, electrical and chemical cues to the adhesion and proliferation of neural cells, there exists a need to develop a synthetic scaffold that would be biocompatible, immunologically inert, conducting, biodegradable, and infection-resistant biomaterial to support neurite outgrowth. This review outlines the rationale for effective neural tissue engineering through the use of suitable biomaterials and scaffolding techniques for fabrication of a construct that would allow the neurons to adhere, proliferate and eventually form nerves

The Institutional Determinants of Bilateral Trade Patterns

The intensity of international transactions remains lower than could be potentially justified on the basis of transportation costs alone. This has become known as the ?mystery of the missing trade?. Transaction costs may be responsible for ?under-trading? across national borders. More specifically, the relatively low intensity of foreign trade may reflect the importance of institutions for cross-border transactions. This paper studies the effect of institutions on trade flows, using a gravity model approach. According to the gravity model, trade between any two countries is a function of each country's gross domestic product, the distance between them, and possibly other variables that reflect the costs of trade between them. We start from a standard gravity equation that incorporates variables for geographical proximity, common language, trade policy and common history. These factors reflect costs of trade across geographical and cultural distances. The quality of governance and the extent of familiarity with the resulting framework of rules and norms also affect the costs of doing business between any pair of countries. The effects of institutional quality and similarity on transaction costs may be substantial in international markets. Because of the greater extent of competition and higher uncertainty in international markets, the impact of quality and similarity of institutions on cross-border trade may be relatively pronounced. Therefore, this paper extends the gravity equation to include proxies for institutional quality and institutional homogeneity between trade partners. We use indicators on political stability, regulatory quality, corruption and other proxies that reflect the quality of governance, available from the comparative data set constructed by Kaufmann and others (World Bank, 2002). Variables that capture similarity in the quality of institutions are then constructed from these indicators. We test whether institutional homogeneity and institutional quality have an independent impact on trade volume between pairs of countries. The results indicate that, for example, having a similar law or regulatory framework promotes bilateral trade. Furthermore, a better quality of formal institutions on average coincides with higher trade. JEL codes: F14 Keywords: bilateral trade flows, gravity model, institutions

Comparative analysis of cyanobacterial superoxide dismutases to discriminate canonical forms

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Superoxide dismutases (SOD) are ubiquitous metalloenzymes that catalyze the disproportion of superoxide to peroxide and molecular oxygen through alternate oxidation and reduction of their metal ions. In general, SODs are classified into four forms by their catalytic metals namely; FeSOD, MnSOD, Cu/ZnSOD and NiSOD. In addition, a cambialistic form that uses Fe/Mn in its active site also exists. Cyanobacteria, the oxygen evolving photosynthetic prokaryotes, produce reactive oxygen species that can damage cellular components leading to cell death. Thus, the co-evolution of an antioxidant system was necessary for the survival of photosynthetic organisms with SOD as the initial enzyme evolved to alleviate the toxic effect. Cyanobacteria represent the first oxygenic photoautotrophs and their SOD sequences available in the databases lack clear annotation. Hence, the present study focuses on structure and sequence pattern of subsets of cyanobacterial superoxide dismutases.</p> <p>Result</p> <p>The sequence conservation and structural analysis of Fe (<it>Thermosynechococcus elongatus </it>BP1) and MnSOD (<it>Anabaena </it>sp. PCC7120) reveal the sharing of N and C terminal domains. At the C terminal domain, the metal binding motif in cyanoprokaryotes is DVWEHAYY while it is D-X-[WF]-E-H-[STA]-[FY]-[FY] in other pro- and eukaryotes. The cyanobacterial FeSOD differs from MnSOD at least in three ways <it>viz</it>. (i) FeSOD has a metal specific signature F184X₃A188Q189_.......T280_......F/Y303 while, in Mn it is R184X₃G188G189_......G280......W303, (ii) aspartate ligand forms a hydrogen bond from the active site with the outer sphere residue of W243 in Fe where as it is Q262 in MnSOD; and (iii) two unique lysine residues at positions 201 and 255 with a photosynthetic role, found only in FeSOD. Further, most of the cyanobacterial Mn metalloforms have a specific transmembrane hydrophobic pocket that distinguishes FeSOD from Mn isoform. Cyanobacterial Cu/ZnSOD has a copper domain and two different signatures G-F-H-[ILV]-H-x-[NGT]-[GPDA]-[SQK]-C and G-[GA]-G-G-[AEG]-R-[FIL]-[AG]-C-G, while Ni isoform has an nickel containing SOD domain containing a Ni-hook HCDGPCVYDPA.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The present analysis unravels the ambiguity among cyanobacterial SOD isoforms. NiSOD is the only SOD found in lower forms; whereas, Fe and Mn occupy the higher orders of cyanobacteria. In conclusion, cyanobacteria harbor either Ni alone or a combination of Fe and Ni or Fe and Mn as their catalytic active metal while Cu/Zn is rare.</p

Trace elemental analysis and antimicrobial activities of Elephantopus scaber L.

Screening of various Indian medicinal plants has various degrees of antimicrobial activities against pathogenic and opportunistic microorganisms.&nbsp; Since the number of effective exogenous antibiotics is decreasing, concerted efforts are to be made to identify antimicrobial materials from natural products and traditional medicines. In the present study, we are reporting the antimicrobial activity of the traditionally used Ayurvedic medicinal plant Elephantopus scaber and its elemental composition analysis.&nbsp; The antimicrobial activities are found to be higher in leaf extracts of Elephantopus scaber whereas no inhibition was found for root extracts. The elements such as Si, Ca, Cl, Mg, S, K and P are more abundant in the leaf than the root whereas heavy metals are higher in roots than in leaves. In the root, presence of Al, Fe, Ti, Sr, and V is more when compared to leaves whereas Zn, Cu, As, Rb and Sr are less available and are equally present in roots as well as leaf. The elements Cr, Co, Ni, Se, Br and Pb are not found in both leaves and roots