Trade liberalisation and intra-household poverty in Vietnam: a q2 social impact analysis

Following extensive economic and market reforms and more than a decade of negotiations, Vietnam became the latest country to accede to the World Trade Organization in November 2006. While it is expected that greater liberalisation will boost Vietnam’s economic growth and contribute to the country’s ongoing transition towards a market economy, there are concerns about potentially negative impacts on vulnerable sectors of the population, including remote rural populations, women and children. In order to explore the possible impacts of Vietnam’s trade liberalisation on children in poor communities, this paper examines key mediating factors that impact child welfare and the ways that trade liberalisation could affect these variables. It focuses on three key aspects of child well-being – child work (domestic and extra-household), educational attainment and health status. It applies a mixed methods approach: econometrics analysis using data from the first wave of the Young Lives Vietnam longitudinal survey on childhood poverty combined within in-depth qualitative analysis of two key agricultural commodity sectors, aquaculture and sugarcane, that are expected to be significantly impacted by Vietnam’s integration into the world economy. Our main quantitative findings point to significant differences in child well-being outcomes based on ethnicity, household poverty status and vulnerability to declining living standards, parental (especially maternal) education levels, children’s involvement in work activities, and access to public services. Our qualitative findings highlight the implications of caregivers’ shifting time inputs to productive and care economy work on child well-being, familial coping strategies in the context of economic shocks, the importance of social capital in mediating economic opportunities as well as differences in livelihood patterns among majority and minority ethnic groups. The paper concludes by discussing why mixed methods research can play an important role in focusing greater policy attention on the linkages between economic globalisation and children’s experiences of poverty.Vietnam; Intrahousehold dynamics; Trade liberalisation; q2 analysis; Young lives;

Statistical Methods for Evaluating Treatment Effects from Surgical Registry Data

Thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR) is a commonly used, minimally invasive approach for treatment of thoracic aortic aneurysms (TAA). As there have been no randomized clinical trials, we often extract information for this treatment from observational data, such as the Vascular Quality Initiative registry of TEVAR patients. However, evaluating the effectiveness of the treatment using observational data can be challenging when there is no data on the untreated group (e.g TEVAR registry), and no reliable information on the cause of death. To address these issues, we propose using the relative survival approach, in which one estimates the excess mortality hazard attributable to a disease by comparing disease registry survival data to general-population control data. Popular modeling methods of estimating the relative survival have two shortcomings that render them unsuitable in some cases. First, they assume the excess hazard is positive, which is undoubtedly true for cancer, but may not hold for diseases treated with potentially curative therapy. Second, they consider survival to be continuous, whereas population control data is often available only in discrete form, rounded to the nearest year. To address these concerns, in Chapter 1, we propose describing discrete mortality hazards with a flexible logistic regression model that permits the registry hazard to be either larger or smaller iv than the population hazard. We apply our approach to analyze relative survival of patients who underwent thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR) for thoracic aortic aneurysm (TAA). Our results show that relative survival is favorable for the youngest and oldest TEVAR recipients and unfavorable for those in between. We hypothesized that the superior survival at older ages occurred because surgeons were recommending only the hardiest older TAA patients for TEVAR. Thus, some older patients may have been excluded from a treatment that could have increased their survival time. It is not possible to evaluate this bias directly because the registry includes only those TAA patients who underwent TEVAR. In Chapter 2, we address this bias by proposing the use of sensitivity analysis to investigate the extent at which results are sensitive to potential biases in sampling. Our model has two components: First, a one-parameter selection model posits a pool of “potential patients” who could have received the treatment but did not, with selection probability depending on age. Second, a mortality hazard model for the on-surgery potential outcomes of the excluded patients extends the hazard model that we used to describe mortality in the registry. We identify combinations of parameters of the models that eliminate the relative survival advantage in the older patients. The analysis confirms, and places a magnitude on, a “healthy screening effect”, which posits that older TEVAR patients are screened for hardiness more critically than younger patients. The size of the thoracic aneurysms is an important criterion for deciding whether and when to conduct the TEVAR. Although previous analyses have sought to identify the ideal TAA size at which to apply TEVAR, none have properly accounted for potential confounding of the size of the aneurysm with treatment outcome. In Chapter 3, we aim to study the marginal effect of aneurysm size on post-procedure survival in causal inference framework. We estimate a marginal structural model (MSM) using inverse propensity score weighting, and model nonlinearity in the effect of aneurysm size with a flexible fractional polynomial form for the MSM. We find that patients who are asymptomatic at presentation and undergo elective surgery have better survival outcomes if the operation takes place when the TAA size is near 60mm

MOLECULAR DYNAMICAL SIMULATION OF METAL-CROSSLINKED HYDROGELS

We develop a computational model to study the compaction, network topology and elastic response of hydrogel as a function of crosslink density. Our simulations start with a covalently bonded polymer network, to which we introduce additional crosslinks by binding metal cations to reactive groups distributed along the polymer chains. We find that these crosslinks increase the compaction of the polymer network in two ways: (i) by crosslinking neighboring groups on the same polymer chain and thereby shortening the effective length of polymer chains, and (ii) by linking together two or more distinct polymer chains. These two effects combine to overall hydrogel contraction and stiffening. Our results show that the elastic modulus of the hydrogel increases significantly due to the additional crosslinks, in agreement with recent experimental observations. With the help of computer simulations, we find the relations between parameters of our model and chemical characteristics of the hydrogel such as the modulus, the compaction of hydrogel, or the average number of reactive groups bound to a single crosslinker. We analyze geometric and topological characteristics of the hydrogel, such as the time evolution of distance between groups in the hydrogel, or the proportion of crosslinks that are retained, broken or newly formed during the course of simulations. These characteristics help us better understand the internal structure of the hydrogel and explain experimental observations such as the compaction of the hydrogel when metal crosslinkers are introduced. Despite its simplicity, the model qualitatively captures the important chemical properties of the crosslinkers

Foreign Policy Making and the U.S. Vision of European Integration in the Nixon Era

This paper offers an insight into Washington’s foreign policy establishment and its vision of European integration under the Nixon administration. It argues that President Nixon and his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, managed to formulate many important aspects of foreign policy at the White House. From a realist perspective, the Nixon-Kissinger team saw the emergence of a new world order and in it the evolvement of European integration in a way different from previous U.S. administrations. The paper begins by discussing the Nixon administration’s realist approach to foreign policy before analyzing President Nixon’s determination to make decisions on foreign relations at the White House. Next, the paper examines the main features of the Nixon-Kissinger team’s vision of European integration. It concludes that, as realists, the Nixon administration supported integration in Western Europe, yet Washington was ambivalent if a united Europe with increasing self-confidence and self-assertiveness would be in the U.S. national interest. Henceforth, the European integration process had to be, in the Nixon-Kissinger view, taking place under U.S. control in the form of the consultative mechanism and the U.S. military umbrella

Synthesis and reactivity of 4-(trifluoromethyl)azetidin-2-ones

Because of the beneficial effect of a trifluoromethyl group on the biological properties of bioactive compounds on the one hand and the versatile synthetic potential of beta-lactams on the other hand, 4-CF3-beta-lactams comprises interesting entities for the preparation of a large variety of CF3-substituted nitrogen-containing target structures with promising biological characteristics. In this review, we present an overview of different building block approach-based routes toward the synthesis of 4-(trifluoromethyl)azetidin-2-ones and the application of the "beta-lactam synthon method" for the synthesis of a diverse set of (a)cyclic CF3-substituted molecules by means of ring-opening and ring-transformation reactions