Trade Liberalisation, Subcontracting and Unionised Wage

We develop a simple framework to show the effects of trade cost reduction on unionized wage, employment and domestic welfare when a domestic firm strategically chooses the amount of formal in-house production and subcontracting to the informal sector. We show that a lower trade cost increases unionized wage and domestic firm’s formal production and employment, and reduces its informal production. Free trade maximizes domestic welfare if the trade cost represents a transportation cost. However, if the trade cost represents a domestic tariff, the domestic welfare maximizing tariff is positive.In-house production; Informal sector; Subcontracting; Wage; welfare

Governance, Foreign Direct Investment and Domestic Welfare

The issue of economic governance is highly discussed pertaining to the question of industrialisation of a country, but the literature on trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) hardly pays attention to this aspect. We develop a simple model to show how better governance affects inward FDI and domestic welfare. We find that whether better governance in the domestic country attracts inward FDI depends on the way it affects the costs of the firms. The effect of better governance is ambiguous on domestic welfare and depends on the marginal cost difference between the firms, transportation cost and the extent of cost reduction through better governance. Our analysis reveals a strategic reason for poor governance in the presence of foreign competition.Foreign direct investment; Governance; Welfare

Stereo Correspondence Based On Multiresolution Analysis

Disparity estimation from stereo imagery has gained substantial interest of research community from its commencement with the recent trend being the use of multiresolution methods. Existing multiresolution based methods generally rely on approximate band based matching neglecting other subbands that carry high-frequency information. Present research is an effort to find a multiresolution based stereo correspondence method that effectively uses the high and low-frequency subbands in multiple resolutions, bridges the gap between feature-based and area-based matching by incorporating the vast feature space of multiresolution and develops an optimum approach between global and local area-based methods in terms of accuracy, implementation and computational complexity. As a response to the lack of exploration of different multiresolution based stereo, a novel comprehensive comparison framework is proposed to evaluate different multiresolution based disparity estimation methods. Extensive qualitative and quantitative results with detailed analysis have been provided to support the claims of the work

Enhancing the Potential of the Conventional Gaussian Mixture Model for Segmentation: from Images to Videos

Segmentation in images and videos has continuously played an important role in image processing, pattern recognition and machine vision. Despite having been studied for over three decades, the problem of segmentation remains challenging yet appealing due to its ill-posed nature. Maintaining spatial coherence, particularly at object boundaries, remains difficult for image segmentation. Extending to videos, maintaining spatial and temporal coherence, even partially, proves computationally burdensome for recent methods. Finally, connecting these two, foreground segmentation, also known as background suppression, suffers from noisy or dynamic backgrounds, slow foregrounds and illumination variations, to name a few. This dissertation focuses more on probabilistic model based segmentation, primarily due to its applicability in images as well as videos, its past success and mainly because it can be enhanced by incorporating spatial and temporal cues. The first part of the dissertation focuses on enhancing conventional GMM for image segmentation using Bilateral filter due to its power of spatial smoothing while preserving object boundaries. Quantitative and qualitative evaluations are done to show the improvements over a number of recent approaches. The later part of the dissertation concentrates on enhancing GMM towards foreground segmentation as a connection between image and video segmentation. First, we propose an efficient way to include multiresolution features in GMM. This novel procedure implicitly incorporates spatial information to improve foreground segmentation by suppressing noisy backgrounds. The procedure is shown with Wavelets, and gradually extended to propose a generic framework to include other multiresolution decompositions. Second, we propose a more accurate foreground segmentation method by enhancing GMM with the use of Adaptive Support Weights and Histogram of Gradients. Extensive analyses, quantitative and qualitative experiments are presented to demonstrate their performances as comparable to other state-of-the-art methods. The final part of the dissertation proposes the novel application of GMM towards spatio-temporal video segmentation connecting spatial segmentation for images and temporal segmentation to extract foreground. The proposed approach has a simple architecture and requires a low amount of memory for processing. The analysis section demonstrates the architectural efficiency over other methods while quantitative and qualitative experiments are carried out to show the competitive performance of the proposed method

Tuning the Photoexcitation Response of Cyanobacterial Photosystem I via Reconstitution into Proteoliposomes

The role of natural thylakoid membrane housing of Photosystem I (PSI), the transmembrane photosynthetic protein, in its robust photoactivated charge separation with near unity quantum efficiency is not fundamentally understood. To this end, incorporation of suitable protein scaffolds for PSI incorporation is of great scientific and device manufacturing interest. Areas of interest include solidstate bioelectronics, and photoelectrochemical devices that require bio-abio interfaces that do not compromise the photoactivity and photostability of PSI. Therefore, the surfactant-induced membrane solubilization of a negatively charged phospholipid (DPhPG) with the motivation of creating biomimetic reconstructs of PSI reconstitution in DPhPG liposomes is studied. Specifically, a simple yet elegant method for incorporation of PSI trimeric complexes into DPhPG bilayer membranes that mimic the natural thylakoid membrane housing of PSI is introduced. The efficacy of this method is demonstrated via absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy measurements as well as direct visualization using atomic force microscopy. This study provides direct evidence that PSI confinements in synthetic lipid scaffolds can be used for tuning the photoexcitation characteristics of PSI. Hence, it paves the way for development of fundamental understanding of microenvironment alterations on photochemical response of light activated membrane proteins

Association of depression in rheumatoid arthritis: a single centre experience

Background: To identify clinically important predictors of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) associated self-reported depression (SRD) in Eastern India.Methods: A questionnaire-based study was conducted among adult RA patients attending Rheumatology clinic at KPC Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata between 1st January 2016 to 31st December 2016.Results: A total of 246 questionnaires were returned (responder rate: 64.9%). 180 (47.49%) completed pairs were selected and were subsequently analyzed. Most RA patients had disease >5 years (61%), belonged to rural background (>50%) and middle-income group (43.3%). 89 patients (49.4%) reported having another major disease. Nearly 13% (working age group) claimed to be unemployed due to ‘health reasons.’ Unconditional logistic regression revealed that SRD was also related to work status (p 3 months of DMARDs (38% versus 17%; p<0.05). Moreover, SRD was higher in presence of co-morbidities, highest being in cancer (HR: 2.39, 95% CI 1.41-4.18), followed by chronic renal disease (HR: 2.26, 95% CI 1.05-4.12) and stroke (HR: 1.79, 95% CI 1.02-2.92).Conclusions: Depression is significantly higher patients with early RA. Pain level and work status is related, and may implicate a vicious circle. Early psychiatric evaluation may improve pain scores in RA

An ABRE-binding factor, OSBZ8, is highly expressed in salt tolerant cultivars than in salt sensitive cultivars of indica rice

BACKGROUND: The bZIP class Abscisic acid Responsive Element (ABRE)-binding factor, OSBZ8 (38.5 kD) has been considered to regulate ABA-mediated transcription in the suspension cultured cells of japonica rice. Still, nothing is known about the expression of OSBZ8 at protein level in vegetative tissue of salt sensitive and salt tolerant rice plants. In our previous study, Electrophoretic Mobility Shift Assay (EMSA) of [(32)P]ABRE-DNA and nuclear extracts prepared from the lamina of Pokkali rice plants has detected the presence of an ABRE-binding factor. Northern analysis has also detected salinity stress induced accumulation of transcripts for bZIP class of factor. Therefore, OSBZ8 was considered to play an important role in the regulation of transcription in the vegetative tissue of rice. The aim of this study is to find out whether OSBZ8 has any role in regulating the NaCl-stress induced gene expression in vegetative tissue and whether the expression of OSBZ8 factor directly correlates with the stress tolerance of different varieties of indica type rice. RESULTS: Northern analysis of total RNA from roots and lamina of salt-sensitive M-I-48 and salt-tolerant Nonabokra, when probed with the N-terminal unique region of OSBZ8 (OSBZ8p, without the highly conserved basic region), a transcript of 1.3 kb hybridized and its level was much higher in tolerant cultivar. EMSA with Em1a, the strongest ABA Responsive Element till reported from the upstream of EmBP1, and the nuclear extracts from laminar tissue of untreated and salt-treated seedlings of three salt sensitive, one moderately sensitive and two salt tolerant indica rice cultivars showed specific binding of nuclear factor to ABRE element. Intensity of binding was low and inducible in salt sensitive rice cultivars while high and constitutive in salt tolerant cultivars. EMSA with 300 bp 5'upstream region of Rab16A gene, a well known salt stress and ABA-inducible gene of rice, showed formation of two complexes, again very weak in salt sensitive and strong in salt tolerant rice cultivar. CONCLUSION: The bZIP factor OSBZ8 was found to be present in the ABRE-DNA: protein complex as shown by the supershift of the complex by the purified antiserum raised against OSBZ8p. Treatment of the seedlings with NaCl was found to enhance the complex formation, suggesting the regulation of OSBZ8 gene at both transcriptional and post-translational steps. Comparative EMSA with different varieties of rice suggests a positive correlation with the expression pattern of OSBZ8 and salt tolerance in rice cultivars

Evidence for Phytoremediation and Phytoexcretion of NTO from Industrial Wastewater by Vetiver Grass

The use of insensitive munitions such as 3-nitro-1,2,4-triazol-5-one (NTO) is rapidly increasing and is expected to replace conventional munitions in the near future. Various NTO treatment technologies are being developed for the treatment of wastewater from industrial munition facilities. This is the first study to explore the potential phytoremediation of industrial NTO-wastewater using vetiver grass (Chrysopogon zizanioides L.). Here, we present evidence that vetiver can effectively remove NTO from wastewater, and also translocated NTO from root to shoot. NTO was phytotoxic and resulted in a loss of plant biomass and chlorophyll. The metabolomic analysis showed significant differences between treated and control samples, with the upregulation of specific pathways such as glycerophosphate metabolism and amino acid metabolism, providing a glimpse into the stress alleviation strategy of vetiver. One of the mechanisms of NTO stress reduction was the excretion of solid crystals. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS), and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis confirmed the presence of NTO crystals in the plant exudates. Further characterization of the exudates is in progress to ascertain the purity of these crystals, and if vetiver could be used for phytomining NTO from industrial wastewater