Approaches to liberalizing services

Inly since completion of the Uruguay Round have developing countries in East AsOnly since completion of the Uruguay Round have developing countries in East Asia and the Western Hemisphere shown interest in liberalizing services. Ambitious effortsare now being made to incorporate services in liberalization objectives of both sub-regional and regional integration efforts, including in the Asia-Pacific region under APEC and in the Western Hemisphere under the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) process. At the sub-regional level, member countries of both ASEAN (in East Asia) and MERCOSUR (in Latin America) have chosen to follow the liberalization model set forth in the World Trade Organization's (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), and to open their services markets gradually and piecemeal. In the Western Hemisphere, Mexico has successfully promoted the NAFTA model of a more comprehensive liberalization of services markets - and several Latin American countries have adopted the same approach. Regionally, APEC has chosen a concerted voluntary approach to liberalizing services markets. Within the Western Hemisphere, participants are defining which approach they will use in the negotiations on services launched as part of the FTAA in April 1998. In all these efforts, a stated desire to promote more efficient services markets is often hindered by reluctance to open services markets rapidly or comprehensively because of historically entrenched protectionism in the sector and ignorance of the regulatory measures that impede trade in services. Presumably it would be easier to liberalize services at the sub-regional level, among countries at similar stages of development (although the liberalization's economic value there might be questioned). Liberalizing services at the broader regional level is a difficult and ambitious goal, given the diversity of countries involved in such efforts. Thus liberalization will probably move more slowly at the regional than at the sub-regional level - perhaps even more slowly than at the multilateral level. It is possible that the new round of multilateral talks on services scheduled to begin under the WTO in 2000 may well eclipse the recently begun regional efforts.Economic Theory&Research,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Decentralization,Enterprise Development&Reform,ICT Policy and Strategies,Economic Theory&Research,Health Economics&Finance,Trade and Services,Governance Indicators,ICT Policy and Strategies

A reliable liquid helium detector

Detector and indicator system, utilizing commercial perforated germanium cryogenic thermometer as level sensor containing adjustable level discriminator with indicators, operates reliably over pressure range from 50 to 900 mm Hg without electronic adjustments

Collaborating to develop an online resource for parents

Background The development and evaluation of Online Parent Information and Support (OPIS) involved the creation of a web resource for parents who needed support for the home-based management of their child's chronic kidney disease (CKD)

Perceptual thresholds for the effects of room modes as a function of modal decay

Room modes cause audible artefacts in listening environments. Modal control approaches have emerged in scientific literature over the years and, often, their performance is measured by criteria that may be perceptually unfounded. Previous research has shown modal decay as a key perceptual factor in detecting modal effects. In this work, perceptual thresholds for the effects of modes as a function of modal decay have been measured in the region between 32Hz and 250Hz. A test methodology has been developed to include modal interaction and temporal masking from musical events, which are important aspects in recreating an ecologically valid test regime. This method has been deployed in addition to artificial test stimuli traditionally used in psychometric studies, which provide unmasked, absolute thresholds. For artificial stimuli, thresholds decrease monotonically from 0.9 seconds at 32 Hz to 0.17 seconds at 200 Hz, with a knee at 63 Hz. For music stimuli, thresholds decrease monotonically from 0.51 seconds at 63 Hz to 0.12 seconds at 250 Hz. Perceptual thresholds are shown to be dependent on frequency and to a much lesser extent on level. Results presented here define absolute and practical thresholds, which are useful as perceptually relevant optimization targets for modal control methods

Shuttle passenger couch

Conceptual design and fabrication of a full scale shuttle passenger couch engineering model are reported. The model was utilized to verify anthropometric dimensions, reach dimensions, ingress/egress, couch operation, storage space, restraint locations, and crew acceptability. These data were then incorported in the design of the passenger couch verification model that underwent performance tests

Nonadiabatic Electronic Interactions In The Ion-Pair States Of NelCl

Nonadiabatic interactions in the NeIC1 van der Waals complex have been explored in the lowest energy triad of IC1 ion-pair states (approximately 39 000 cm-1). Dispersed fluorescence measurements reveal emission characteristic of multiple ion-pair electronic states, with the relative contributions from the E(O+ ), beta(1), and D\u27(2) states changing with the initial IC1 vibrational excitation (v(IC1)). Emission directly from NeIC1 (v(IC1) = O) complexes indicates that the initially prepared NeIC1 levels have mixed electronic character and that the IC1 electronic parentage changes with the initial van der Waals vibrational level selected. NeIC1 complexes prepared with 1-4 quanta of IC1 stretch undergo rapid vibrational predissociation with a strong propensity for DELTA-V(IC1) = - 1 relaxation. The electronic state(s) populated in the IC1 fragments differ from the mixed electronic character of the initially prepared level, demonstrating that vibrational predissociation is accompanied by nonadiabatic electronic state changing processes. The observed final state selectivity may be attributed to the relative strength of the nonadiabatic couplings between the initial NeIC1 bound state and the final IC1 states or a momentum gap rationale based on the overlap between the NeIC1 bound state wave function and the highly oscillatory continuum wave function of the separating fragments

Neutral buoyancy testing of a shuttle orbiter crew compartment

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Extended Bose-Hubbard model with incompressible states at fractional numbers

The Bose-Hubbard model is extended to include nearest and far neighbor interactions and is related to the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE). Both models may be studied in optical lattices with quantum gases. The ground state is calculated for the extended Bose-Hubbard model with strong repulsive interactions (weak hopping). Incompressible Mott insulator states are found at rational filling fractions compatible with the principal and secondary FQHE filling fractions of the lowest Landau levels observed experimentally. It is discussed to which extent these states at fractional filling survive or undergoes a Mott insulator transition to a superfluid as hopping terms are included.Comment: Revised version, to appear in PR