Firm behavior and the labor market in the Hungarian transition

The authors describe the main changes in the Hungarian labor market since 1989. They focus especially on changes in behavior in state and privatized firms, since the shedding and restructuring of labor are at the heart of the transition. They describe five types of firms: 1) state firms (often in bad shape and/or natural monopolies); 2) firms privatized by insiders; 3) firms privatized by outside (but domestic) investors; 4) new small-scale ("de novo") private firms. The state and de novo firms are increasingly outside the tax system - the state firms by de facto tax exemptions, the de novo firms through tax evasion. As the de novo sector grows, the effective tax yield will tend to fall, shifting the tax burden to the other three types of firms. Subsidizing the growth of the private sector may have been desirable initially, but it is dynamically undesirable. It is important to change the distribution of the tax burden, while setting tax rates that enhance the growth of labor. Thetype of growth seen in the last four years is probably not sustainable. With tax evasion high, average payroll taxes in the taxable sector have until recently risen sharply. Social insurance spending and other labor taxes represented about 34 percent of hourly compensation costs in 1992 - significantly more proportionately than in OECD and most transition economies. And high contribution rates together with apparent real wage rigidity have depressed the rate of job creation in the taxed sectors. Wage levels are lower than in neighboring countries but higher than in other transition economies. Despite adverse shocks to output and employment, consumption wages have risen slightly and unit labor costs have clearly increased. The authors emphasize the continuing loss of employment and its changing distribution in terms of ownership, sector, and taxation - as well as associated changes in unemployment that have resulted from the asymmetric paths of the state and private sectors.Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Municipal Financial Management,Economic Theory&Research,Private Participation in Infrastructure

Analysis of Multi-Hop Emergency Message Propagation in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are attracting the attention of researchers, industry, and governments for their potential of significantly increasing the safety level on the road. In order to understand whether VANETs can actually realize this goal, in this paper we analyze the dynamics of multihop emergency message dissemination in VANETs. Under a probabilistic wireless channel model that accounts for interference, we derive lower bounds on the probability that a car at distance d from the source of the emergency message correctly receives the message within time t. Besides d and t, this probability depends also on 1-hop channel reliability, which we model as a probability value p, and on the message dissemination strategy. Our bounds are derived for an idealized dissemination strategy which ignores interference, and for two provably near-optimal dissemination strategies under protocol interference. The bounds derived in the first part of the paper are used to carefully analyze the tradeoff between the safety level on the road (modeled by parameters d and t), and the value of 1-hop message reliability p. The analysis of this tradeoff discloses several interesting insights that can be very useful in the design of practical emergency message dissemination strategies

Plasmin Promotes Keratinocyte Migration and Phagocytic-killing Accompanied by Suppression of Cell Proliferation which may Facilitate Re-epithelialization of Wound Beds

Abstract Keratinocytes were shown to induce the activation of plasminogen activator resulting in the formation of plasmin and the initiation of proteolysis in vitro. Activation of surface bound plasminogen may localize protease activity in the pericellular microenvironment and play a role in inducing both a conformational change and cell locomotion. Plasmin, however, can induce non-proteolytic effects on certain cell functions in a variety of cell lineages. In the present study we examined the effects of plasmin on keratinocytes with a focus on its role in the process of re-epithelialization, which included studies of cell migration, phagocytic-killing and cell proliferation. Migration of freshly isolated human epidermal keratinocytes was analyzed utilizing the agarose gel assay in the presence of 10% human serum. Plasmin at the concentration of 25 U/l induced a 160% increase in the chemotactic migration of keratinocytes that was completely blocked by the plasmin inhibitor α2-antiplasmin (Serpin). In the absence of serum, plasmin also induced a reversible chemotactic migration of HaCaT keratinocytes as determined utilizing the microchemotaxis assay. Dose-response analysis showed a bi-phasic effect of plasmin with a maximum increase of 52% in keratinocyte chemotaxis at a concentration of 25 U/l. HaCaT cells on the other hand, showed no detectable in vitro chemokinesis by plasmin. Phagocytic-killing of Candida albicans by freshly isolated epidermal keratinocytes was enhanced in the presence of 25 U/l plasmin which was also reversible by the addition of Serpin. Spontaneous proliferation of HaCaT keratinocytes as determined by 3H-Thymidine uptake on the other hand, was reduced by 47 and 13% in cultures with 25 U/l plasmin for 24 and 48 h respectively, in a Serpin reversible manner. These data suggest that plasmin-induced chemotactic migration of epidermal keratinocytes is accompanied by enhanced phagocytic-killing coupled with suppression of proliferation of these cells which may facilitate re-epithelialization following skin injury

Autonomous Wheeled Mobile Robot Control

The autonomous wheeled mobile robots are very interesting subject both in scientific research and practical applications. The article deals with the fuzzy control of autonomous wheeled mobile robotic platform motion in an unstructured environment with obstacles. The simulation results show the effectiveness and the validity of the obstacle avoidance behaviour in unstructured environments and the velocity control of a wheeled mobile robotic platform motion of the proposed fuzzy control strategy

Concepts of the Internet of Things from the Aspect of the Autonomous Mobile Robots

The Internet of Things (IoT) is slowly gaining grounds and through the properties of barcodes, QR codes, RFID, active sensors and IPv6, objects are fitted with some form of readability and traceability. People are becoming part of digital global network driven by personal interests. The feeling being part of a community and the constant drive of getting connected from real life finds it continuation in digital networks. This article investigates the concepts of the internet of things from the aspect of the autonomous mobile robots with an overview of the performances of the currently available database systems

Critical Overview of the Cloud-Based Internet of Things Pilot Platforms for Smart Cities

The Internet of Things (IoT) has started to appear everywhere in many shapes and forms. But security is one of the crucial topics that could trip up the growth of the IoT. Following security principles used in enterprise computing can help clear that issue. Already there are more connected devices than people on the planet, according to leading researchers in this area. By 2020, there will be 50 billion connected devices, outnumbering people by more than 6 to 1. Most of these devices will be controllable over the Internet, and they will increasingly be responsible for collecting and transmitting sensitive data. Today consumers might own an app that collects information on their exercise routine. In a few years, those same people might have an Internet-enabled medical device that continually delivers data to their doctor. In the wrong hands, data from home management systems could be used to assess user’s whereabouts. Likewise, businesses could be vulnerable when they connect things like HVAC, irrigation, or commercial appliances