FDI and Local Financial Market Development:A Granger Causality Test Using Panel Data

This paper reports the findings of Granger causality tests on the relationship between foreign direct investment (henceforth, FDI) and local financial market development across 62 countries from 1996 to 2007. In this paper we explore whether local financial market development is important in catalyzing the flow of foreign direct investment. findings results are robust to different measures of financial market development. Furthermore, the results indicate that most of the causal links are found in Non OECD, Low income and Lower middle Income countries.FDI; Financial market, Capital markets; Credit markets;

FDI, local Financial Markets, employment and poverty alleviation

This paper examines the precise links between foreign direct investment (henceforth, FDI) and poverty alleviation, where so far there are few studies attempted to analyze empirically this relationship. The FDI inflows vary across international borders, therefore FDI reduces poverty only under certain circumstances. “Roll out the red carpet for foreign investors and they will come” ; Countries with better financial systems, and healthy business environment are able to attract more FDI, exploit it more efficiently and reduce poverty. Empirical analysis using panel data of 62 countries, from 1996 to 2007, shows that FDI appears regularly to be a key source of employment for women in Non OECD countries and has a favorable effect on poverty reduction in the host country if interacted with monetary and nonmonetary variables.FDI; Financial market ; Poverty ; Employment

Preliminary Investigation of the Frictional Response of Reptilian Shed Skin

Developing deterministic surfaces relies on controlling the structure of the rubbing interface so that not only the surface is of optimized topography, but also is able to self-adjust its tribological behaviour according to the evolution of sliding conditions. In seeking inspirations for such designs, many engineers are turning toward the biological world to correlate surface structure to functional behavior of bio-analogues. From a tribological point of view, squamate reptiles offer diverse examples where surface texturing, submicron and nano-scale features, achieve frictional regulation. In this paper, we study the frictional response of shed skin obtained from a snake (Python regius). The study employed a specially designed tribo-acoustic probe capable of measuring the coefficient of friction and detecting the acoustical behavior of the skin in vivo. The results confirm the anisotropy of the frictional response of snakes. The coefficient of friction depends on the direction of sliding: the value in forward motion is lower than that in the backward direction. In addition it is shown that the anisotropy of the frictional response may stem from profile asymmetry of the individual fibril structures present within the ventral scales of the reptil

Ecological Evaluation of Reclamation Success of Mine Sites of The Sapphire Mountains

Sapphires and gems have been mined from the Sapphire range of southwest Montana for more than 150-years. Across this region and elsewhere, an unknown count of pits and tunnels and tailing piles lay abandoned while the local ecology reclaims the disturbed earth. A historical practice of reclamation for decommissioned mines was to bulldoze the site flat, removing physical hazards from the landscape. This process mixes the soil strata and alters the composition of the topsoil. Soil compaction is also a consequence of this process. Altered composition and significant increases in soil compaction often cause native plant speciesto struggle or fail to thrive in an area, causing opportunistic weedy species to proliferate. Our research investigated the species richness and coverage of three sites: a disturbed mine without reclamation, a mine site with bulldoze reclamation, and a third site in the vicinity which was not mined. Our multivariate analyses confirmed that species composition was different among the three sites. The natural site had higher plant cover, however, it was not significantly different from the other two sites due to the higher coverage of exotic weeds in the reclaimed sites. A greenhouse-controlled species competition supported this as soil from the reclaimed site was significantly better for knapweed test plants. Soils from the natural sites proved to be significantly better for native bluebunch wheatgrass growth. These results show that reclamation success does depend on initial site preparation, on the presence of exotic plant species that can be further spread by inappropriate site management. Also reclamation sites need to be managed if exotic invasion could be a potential

A Real-Time Communication Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks

Recent advances in miniaturization and low power design have led to a flurry of activity in wireless sensor networks. Sensor networks have different constraints than traditional wired networks. A wireless sensor network is a special network with large numbers of nodes equipped with embedded processors, sensors, and radios. These nodes collaborate to accomplish a common task such as environment monitoring or asset tracking. In many applications, sensor nodes will be deployed in an ad-hoc fashion without careful planning. They must organize themselves to form a multihop, wireless communication network. In sensor network environments, much research has been conducted in areas such as power consumption, self-organisation techniques, routing between the sensors, and the communication between the sensor and the sink. On the other hand, real-time communication with the Quality of Service (QoS) concept in wireless sensor networks is still an open research field. Most protocols either ignore real time or simply attempt to process as fast as possible and hope that this speed is sufficient to meet the deadline. However, the introduction of real-time communication has created additional challenges in this area. The sensor node spends most of its life routing packets from one node to another until the packet reaches the sink; therefore, the node functions as a small router most of the time. Since sensor networks deal with time-critical applications, it is often necessary for communication to meet real time constraints. However, research that deals with providing QoS guarantees for real-time traffic in sensor networks is still in its infancy.This thesis presents a real-time communication framework to provide quality of service in sensor networks environments. The proposed framework consists of four components: First, present an analytical model for implementing Priority Queuing (PQ) in a sensor node to calculate the queuing delay. The exact packet delay for corresponding classes is calculated. Further, the analytical results are validated through an extensive simulation study. Second, report on a novel analytical model based on a limited service polling discipline. The model is based on an M/D/1 queuing system (a special class of M/G/1 queuing systems), which takes into account two different classes of traffic in a sensor node. The proposed model implements two queues in a sensor node that are served in a round robin fashion. The exact queuing delay in a sensor node for corresponding classes is calculated. Then, the analytical results are validated through an extensive simulation study. Third, exhibit a novel packet delivery mechanism, namely the Multiple Level Stateless Protocol (MLSP), as a real-time protocol for sensor networks to guarantee the traffic in wireless sensor networks. MLSP improves the packet loss rate and the handling of holes in sensor network much better than its counterpart, MMSPEED. It also introduces the k-limited polling model for the first time. In addition, the whole sending packets dropped significantly compared to MMSPEED, which it leads to decrease the consumption power. Fourth, explain a new framework for moving data from the sink to the user, at a low cost and low power, using the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS), which is standard for the Third Generation Mobile System (3G). The integration of sensor networks with the 3G mobile network infrastructure will reduce the cost of building new infrastructures and enable the large-scale deployment of sensor network