South-South FDI vs North-South FDI : A Comparative Analysis in the Context of India

Over the years FDI activities from developing countries have grown very rapidly and most of these investments end up in other developing countries. Such FDI flows are formally known as South-South FDI. This paper attempts to compare the characteristics of South-South FDI versus North-South FDI in the context of India. The analysis is carried at two levels. First we look at the overall trends of FDI flows (both inward & outward) region wise (North versus South), country wise and sector wise. Our results confirm that Indias FDI activities have broadly been consistent with the well known concept of Investment Development Path (Dunning, 1981). We also find that while country profiles have undergone changes, there has been no significant shift in the sectoral profile. Next we carry out econometric analysis at the sectoral /industry level for inward FDI from the North and from the South to examine the difference in the characters (if any) of FDI from the two sources. Our broad conclusion is that although there is not much difference between FDI from the north and from the south (both being concentrated in sectors with larger markets, higher export orientation & lower import intensity) southern FDIs appear to flow more into growing sectors while FDI from north do not have such indication. Ultimately however, it is at the firm level where one needs to identify the factors inhibit/attract FDI. The qualitative findings from a limited survey of 93 firms are presented in the appendix.FDI inflows and outflows, North-South FDI, South-South FDI

Measuring Sustainability with Macroeconomic Data for India

This paper investigates certain macro data on the Indian economy to draw inferences on the sustainability of the economic growth experienced over the last couple of decades. Interpreting sustainability in terms of the maintenance of different forms of capital to ensure that future consumption levels are at least as high as current levels, estimates of investment have been made using theoretically consistent models and data relevant to the Indian context. Subsequently, the paper investigates the extent to which the investment that has taken place over a thirty year period (from 1976-77 to 2004-05) has been aligned with the consumption path. Investment estimates are found to be a reliable indicator of sustainability of the future consumption path and average future consumption is likely to be higher than current consumption. The findings reveal that while capital formation in manufactured assets has been fuelling wealth accumulation in the economy, there has been a rise in the degradation of natural capital stocks. However, considering the aggregate picture, taking note of investment in human capital, produced capital and the depreciation of natural capital, there has been net wealth accumulation in the economy. Per capita wealth has been rising over the period, with a sharp rise observed from the mid 1990s onwards.sustainable development, investment, Future Consumption, Per Capita Wealth, Human and Natural capital

Ethical Issues in Designing Internet-Based Research: Recommendations for Good Practice

This article presents an overview of internet-based research, highlighting the absence of a standard terminology to define and classify such research. The label internet-based research or online research can cover a diverse range of research designs and methods, involving different degrees of ethical concern regarding privacy, transparency, confidentiality, and security. Although the basic principles of human research ethics (such as respect, integrity, justice, and beneficence) are still applicable in this context, interpreting and applying these principles correctly and protecting the interests of the research participants effectively are not easy to ensure. While the nature of the internet poses challenges of user authentication and confidentiality, the diversity of national laws and codes of ethics poses additional challenges. The article refers to relevant Canadian laws, with which the author is familiar. Finally, a set of recommendations are offered to mitigate the ethical challenges of internet-based research. These include ethical practices such as ensuring transparency while recruitment, considering participants’ expectations about privacy, ensuring legal compliance, using secure communication protocols, obtaining informed and knowledgeable consent, offering participants the opportunity to withdraw from the research and retract their data, and ensuring that data are not used for subsequent non-research purposes

The role of non-genetic variability in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia

Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is a heterogeneous clonal disorder of haematopoietic progenitor cells with a dismal survival. It has a strong reliance on epigenetic and transcriptional factors for disease progression. Accordingly, my lab has previously identified KAT2A, a histone acetyl-transferase, as a requirement for AML maintenance, where chemical inhibition of KAT2A promotes differentiation of AML cell lines (Tzelepis et al., 2016). More recently, using a conditional knockout mouse model for Kat2a our lab showed that it sustains KMT2A/MLLT3 AML stem cells. Kat2a is a classical regulator of transcriptional variability, its loss leading to cell-to-cell heterogeneity in transcription levels, including from genes involved in ribosomal biogenesis and translation (Domingues et al., 2020). No recurrent mutations in the KAT2A gene have been described in AML, and it is unclear if and how it participates in pre-leukaemia-to-AML progression. In this thesis, I studied Kat2a loss in 2 mouse models of AML representing forms of human disease with a prolonged pre-leukaemia phase which typically require additional mutations for leukaemia progression. Specifically, I analysed the biology of RUNX1RUNX1T1(9a) and Idh1R132H-initiated AML in a conditional Kat2aKO background and observed consistent acceleration of leukaemia initiation and progression with perpetuation of transformed Kat2aKO cells in vivo. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) of early-stage Kat2aWT and Kat2aKO RUNX1-RUNX1T1(9a) pre-leukaemia, suggested an increase in transcriptional variability upon Kat2a loss, which was accompanied by diversification of cell fates towards B-lymphocytes and monocytes. Furthermore, pseudo-temporal ordering of single Kat2aKO cells revealed a highly branched trajectory populated with intermediate stages of transformation, including accumulation of leukaemia progenitors with RUNX1-RUNX1T1 signature. In contrast, Kat2aWT cells displayed a linear haematopoiesis trajectory with minimal branching, and an abrupt transition towards the candidate leukaemia progenitor state. Pathway analysis combined with functional studies indicate a mechanistic contribution of cytoplasmic translation and ribosomal biogenesis-associated genes towards leukaemia progression in both models of pre-leukaemia. Taken together, my work suggests that loss of Kat2a results in accelerated pre-leukaemia transformation accompanied with diversification of cell fate transitions including with increased accessibility to cell states prone to transformation. Furthermore, transformation-prone cells may benefit from low biosynthetic activity to progress to a leukaemic state. I hypothesize that Kat2a loss may function similarly in the context of other malignancies. In the future, this knowledge may aid in the development of early diagnostic tools and suggest bespoke therapeutic interventions

Survey and Idea of Enhancement over Various RSA based Cryptographic Techniques

Internet and its applications are growing very fast, since the need to secure these applications are very fast. For secure transmission of data over network, encryption is very important methodology. This cause a major concern for privacy and security etc. cryptography is a standard way to secure the data over the medium. In a distributed network, when information has to be send over network, cryptography become important part of secure communication. Cryptography has been developed from the Greek word krypto and graphin which means is hiding information from unauthorized person. In recent years various encryption decryption methods have been proposed and used to protect confidential information. In this survey paper various RSA based techniques are studied and described. This paper includes the survey of the work done by various researchers in the field of cryptography and idea about modified approach

SVMDnet: A Novel Framework for Elderly Activity Recognition based on Transfer Learning

Elderly Activity Recognition has become very crucial now-a-days because majority of elderly people are living alone and are vulnerable. Despite the fact that several researchers employ ML (machine learning) and DL (deep learning) techniques to recognize elderly actions, relatively lesser research specifically aimed on transfer learning based elderly activity recognition. Even transfer learning is not sufficient to handle the complexity levels in the HAR related problems because it is a more general approach. A novel transfer leaning based framework SVMDnet is proposed in which pre-trained deep neural network extracts essential action features and to classify actions, Support Vector Machine (SVM) is used as a classifier. The proposed model is evaluated on Stanford-40 Dataset and self-made dataset. The older volunteers over the age of 60 were recruited for the main dataset, which was compiled from their responses in a uniform environment with 10 kinds of activities. Results from SVMDnet on the two datasets shows that our model behaves well with human recognition and human-object interactions as well

Unusual foreign body in oropharynx: a case report

Foreign body in oropharynx is common occurrence. We report a case of a 7 month old male baby who presented with complaint of feeding difficulty and later diagnosed as case of  foreign body oropharynx i.e. wheat stalk of 5 cm with overlying husk based on detailed history and meticulous examination

An Extensive Analysis of Machine Learning Based Boosting Algorithms for Software Maintainability Prediction

Software Maintainability is an indispensable factor to acclaim for the quality of particular software. It describes the ease to perform several maintenance activities to make a software adaptable to the modified environment. The availability & growing popularity of a wide range of Machine Learning (ML) algorithms for data analysis further provides the motivation for predicting this maintainability. However, an extensive analysis & comparison of various ML based Boosting Algorithms (BAs) for Software Maintainability Prediction (SMP) has not been made yet. Therefore, the current study analyzes and compares five different BAs, i.e., AdaBoost, GBM, XGB, LightGBM, and CatBoost, for SMP using open-source datasets. Performance of the propounded prediction models has been evaluated using Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Magnitude of Relative Error (MMRE), Pred(0.25), Pred(0.30), & Pred(0.75) as prediction accuracy measures followed by a non-parametric statistical test and a post hoc analysis to account for the differences in the performances of various BAs. Based on the residual errors obtained, it was observed that GBM is the best performer, followed by LightGBM for RMSE, whereas, in the case of MMRE, XGB performed the best for six out of the seven datasets, i.e., for 85.71% of the total datasets by providing minimum values for MMRE, ranging from 0.90 to 3.82. Further, on applying the statistical test and on performing the post hoc analysis, it was found that significant differences exist in the performance of different BAs and, XGB and CatBoost outperformed all other BAs for MMRE. Lastly, a comparison of BAs with four other ML algorithms has also been made to bring out BAs superiority over other algorithms. This study would open new doors for the software developers for carrying out comparatively more precise predictions well in time and hence reduce the overall maintenance costs

Developmental Disparities in Rural Health Care: Distant Dream to Achieve Universal Health Coverage in India

There is always a health gap striking between rural and urban, advantaged and marginalized section of society while accessing and utilizing health care services. This research paper tries to throw some light on the disparities and challenges faced by healthcare service recipients (rural community people) as well as healthcare service providers (Government Healthcare system like PHC and Rural Hospital). The study reveals that majority of the healthcare services in the remote & tribal „padaas‟ lack health centres, medical doctors, and medical equipment. Adding to it, the shortage of trained medical professionals especially lab technicians, pharmacist and nurses and non availability of essential medicines to poor patients adversely affects access to and utilization of health care service, thus making Universal Health Coverage a distant dream to achieve in India