The Response of Consumption to Income Shocks: Evidence from the Indian Trade Liberalization

This paper uses the Indian tariff reforms of the early nineties to estimate how households responded to the negative income shocks caused by the tariff decreases. Households more hurt by the tariff reform decreased overall expenditure, but the response is not uniform across food items. In particular, households more hurt by the reform did not change their consumption of cereals, but decreased their consumption of all other food items. Although this coping mechanism helped maintain overall levels of calorie consumption, diet diversity and the associated benefits were sacrificed.Nutrition, Trade, Development, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, International Development, D7, D8, H2, O2,

Retroactive Anti-Jamming for MISO Broadcast Channels

Jamming attacks can significantly impact the performance of wireless communication systems. In addition to reducing the capacity, such attacks may lead to insurmountable overhead in terms of re-transmissions and increased power consumption. In this paper, we consider the multiple-input single-output (MISO) broadcast channel (BC) in the presence of a jamming attack in which a subset of the receivers can be jammed at any given time. Further, countermeasures for mitigating the effects of such jamming attacks are presented. The effectiveness of these anti-jamming countermeasures is quantified in terms of the degrees-of-freedom (DoF) of the MISO BC under various assumptions regarding the availability of the channel state information (CSIT) and the jammer state information at the transmitter (JSIT). The main contribution of this paper is the characterization of the DoF region of the two user MISO BC under various assumptions on the availability of CSIT and JSIT. Partial extensions to the multi-user broadcast channels are also presented.Comment: submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Skip-Sliding Window Codes

Constrained coding is used widely in digital communication and storage systems. In this paper, we study a generalized sliding window constraint called the skip-sliding window. A skip-sliding window (SSW) code is defined in terms of the length $L$ of a sliding window, skip length $J$, and cost constraint $E$ in each sliding window. Each valid codeword of length $L + kJ$ is determined by $k+1$ windows of length $L$ where window $i$ starts at $(iJ + 1)$th symbol for all non-negative integers $i$ such that $i \leq k$; and the cost constraint $E$ in each window must be satisfied. In this work, two methods are given to enumerate the size of SSW codes and further refinements are made to reduce the enumeration complexity. Using the proposed enumeration methods, the noiseless capacity of binary SSW codes is determined and observations such as greater capacity than other classes of codes are made. Moreover, some noisy capacity bounds are given. SSW coding constraints arise in various applications including simultaneous energy and information transfer.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figure

First-principles study of possible shallow donors in ZnAl2O4 spinel

ZnAl2O4 (gahnite) is a ceramic which is considered a possible transparent conducting oxide (TCO) due to its wide band gap and transparency for UV. Defects play an important role in controlling the conductivity of a TCO material along with the dopant, which is the main source of conductivity in an otherwise insulating oxide. A comprehensive first-principles density functional theory study for point defects in ZnAl2O4 spinel is presented using the Heyd, Scuseria, and Ernzerhof hybrid functional (HSE06) to overcome the band gap problem. We have investigated the formation energies of intrinsic defects which include the Zn, Al, and O vacancy and the antisite defects: Zn at the Al site (Zn-Al) and Al at the Zn site (Al-Zn). The antisite defect Al-Zn has the lowest formation energy and acts as a shallow donor, indicating possible n-type conductivity in ZnAl2O4 spinel by Al doping

Knowledge, attitude and practices about hemovigilance among practitioners: a cross-sectional study

Abstract: Transfusion by blood and blood products forms an important part of treatment. But this is not free from transfusion reactions which may be in the form of fever, rashes, shivering, anaphylaxis or even death. Hemovigilance is a programme of reporting such events.Materials and Methods: The present study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital of Jammu, (J& K). Permission was taken from Institutional Ethics Committee, Govt. Medical College, Jammu. A pretested questionnaire was prepared and circulated among practitioners. They were given time of 15 minutes to fill that questionnaire. After 15 minutes, the filled questionnaire were collected and were analysed. The data was presented in tabulated form.Results: Total 50 practitioners were included in the study. All the practitioners had knowledge about transfusion reactions. Only 10% of the practitioners had knowledge that transfusion reactions can be prevented, 40% of the practitioners had knowledge about hemovigilance programme and had an idea that transfusion reactions can be reported. But only 10% of the practitioners knew where to report and who can report, 6% knew how to report. Only 48% of the practitioners thought that transfusion reactions should be reported, 70% of the practitioners thought that transfusion reactions can be dangerous. 40% of practitioners told that seminars/CMEs should be planned. 80% of practitioners had encountered transfusion reactions, but only 2% had documented the same. 10% of the practitioners had attended seminars, CMEs. Many reasons were quoted for not reporting transfusion reactions.Conclusion:  Overall, most of the practitioners have a positive attitude towards transfusion reaction reporting but knowledge regarding the haemovigilance concept is poor and the majority of them never reported such reaction. Hence, our study demands increased awareness and continued training to strengthen the haemovigilance system

Sparse nonnegative matrix approximation: new formulations and algorithms

We introduce several new formulations for sparse nonnegative matrix approximation. Subsequently, we solve these formulations by developing generic algorithms. Further, to help selecting a particular sparse formulation, we briefly discuss the interpretation of each formulation. Finally, preliminary experiments are presented to illustrate the behavior of our formulations and algorithms

Adverse drug reactions due to fixed dose combinations: an observational cross sectional study

Background: In modern world, poor compliance has been the main reason of therapeutic failure. Many factors may be responsible for this. The reasons highlighted may be adverse drug reactions (ADRs), pill burden or economic reasons. Fixed drug combinations (FDC) have helped to solve this problem. The present study was conducted to see the ADR due to fixed dose combinations.Methods: After approval from institutional ethics committee, an observational study was conducted over a period of six months in December 2018 to May 2019 in adverse drug monitoring centre, GMC Jammu.Results: A total number of 112 ADRs were reported during the study period. FDCs were responsible for ADRs in 64 patients and single drug was responsible in 48 patients. As per latest WHO essential drug list, irrational FDC were responsible for ADRs in 44 patients and rational FDCs were responsible for ADRs in 20 patients.Conclusions: The results of present study underscores that drug combinations, FDC rational as well as irrational substantially contribute towards the pool of total ADRs