142 research outputs found
Why infrastructure financing facilities often fall short of their objectives
Get PDFTo encourage the private funding and provision of infrastructure services, governments have used specialized financing facilities to offer financial support to investors, often in the form of grants, soft loans, or guarantees. The authors present case studies of infrastructure financing facilities in various stages of development in Colombia, India, and Pakistan. They also present case studies of government-sponsored financing facilities (not of infrastructure) in Argentina, and Moldova. They find that these facilities have often fallen short of their objectives for two main reasons. First, the environment was not conducive to private participation in infrastructure because of poor sector policies, an unstable macroeconomic environment, and inadequate financial sector policies, among other reasons. Second, the facility was faulty in design - in terms of sectors targeted, pricing of instruments, and consistency of objectives, and instruments.Decentralization,Banks&Banking Reform,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Municipal Financial Management,Municipal Financial Management,Banks&Banking Reform,Housing Finance,Public Sector Economics&Finance,National Governance
Structure, Organization, and Expression of the lct Gene for Lacticin 481, a Novel Lantibiotic Produced by Lactococcus lactis
Get PDFThe structural gene for the lactococcal lantibiotic lacticin 481 (lct) has been identified and cloned using a degenerated 20-mer DNA oligonucleotide based on the amino-terminal 7 amino acid residues of the purified protein. The transcription of the lct gene was analyzed, and its promoter was mapped. DNA sequence analysis of the lct gene revealed an open reading frame encoding a peptide of 51 amino acids. Comparison of its deduced amino acid sequence with the amino-terminal sequence and the amino acid composition of lacticin 481 indicates that the 61-residue peptide is prelacticin 481, containing a 27-residue carboxyl-terminal propeptide and a 24-residue amino-terminal leader peptide which lacks the properties of a typical signal sequence and which is significantly different from the leaders of other lantibiotics. The predicted amino acid sequence of prolacticin 481 contains 3 cysteines, 2 serines, and 2 threonines which were not detectable in amino acid analyses of mature lacticin 481. Based on these results and on characterization by two-dimensional NMR techniques, a structural model is proposed in which 2 cysteine residues are involved in lanthionine and one in β-methyllanthionine formation, and a 4th threonine residue is dehydrated. This model predicts a molecular mass for lacticin 481 of 2,901, which is in excellent agreement with that obtained from mass spectrometry.
Kleine Schritte gegen rechte Tritte? Konzepte gegen Rechtsextremismus; Dokumentation der Tagung am 28./29. November 2003 in Tutzing
No full textInhaltsverzeichnis: Hans-Gerd Jaschke: Erscheinungsformen des Rechtsextremismus in Deutschland. Organisation - Entwicklung -Positionen (5-11); Birgit Rommelspacher: Rechtsextremismus und die Mitte der Gesellschaft (12-18); Rebecca Weis: Gesicht Zeigen. Aktion weltoffenes Deutschland e.V. (19-22); Reiner Schiller-Dickhut: Das Buendnis fuer Demokratie und Toleranz (23-27); Fridolin Wimmer: Rechtsradikale Musik im Unterricht (28-33); Stefan Glaser: Rechtsextremismus im Internet (34-36); Bernhard Krohn: Projekt 'Schule gegen Rassismus' an der Berufsschule 2 in Passau (37-39); Jakob Ruster, Silke Schuster: Trainings gegen Rechts - LIDIA (40-42); Erich Schriever, Gandhi Chahine: 'Rap fuer Courage' (43-47); Matthias Adrian: EXIT - das Austeigerprogramm fuer Rechtsextreme (48-51); Birgit Rommelspacher: Erfolgreich oder nicht? Zur Wirkung der Konzepte (52-57); Manfred Schwarzmeier: Wie weiter? Zusammenfassung der Abschlussdiskussion (58)SIGLEAvailable from Petra-Kelly-Stiftung, Muenchen (DE) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekDEGerman
CP-690,550 INHIBITS INTERLEUKIN2-MEDIATED STAT5 ACTIVATION IN CD4+ T CELLS OF ADULT KIDNEY RECIPIENTS
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MIcroRNA Profiling Suggests Tolerant Allografts Mirror the Profile Seen in Syngeneic Grafts.
No full textGovernance in the gullies : democratic responsiveness and leadership in Delhi's slums
Get PDFThe authors use detailed ethnographic evidence to design and interpret a broad representative survey of 800 households in Delhi's slums, examining the processes by which residents gain access to formal government and develop their own informal modes of leadership. While ethnically homogeneous slums transplant rural institutions to the city, newer and ethnically diverse slums depend on informal leaders who gain their authority through political connections, education, and network entrepreneurship. Education and political affiliation are more important than seniority in determining a leader's influence. Informal leaders are accessible to all slum dwellers, but formal government figures are most accessed by the wealthy and the well-connected.City Development Strategies,National Governance,Housing&Human Habitats,Urban Environment,Urban Services to the Poor
The welfare effects of private sector participation in Guinea's urban water supply
Get PDFIn 1989 the government of Guinea enacted far-reaching reform of its water sector, which had been dominated by a poorly run public agency. The government signed a lease contract for operations and maintenance with a private operator, making a separate public enterprise responsible for ownershipof assets and investment. Although based on a successful model that had operated in Cote d'Ivoire for nearly 30 years, the reform had many highly innovative features. It is being transplanted to several other developing countries, so the authors evaluate its successes and failures in the early years of reform. They present standard performance measures and results from a cost-benefit analysis to assess reform's net effect on various stakeholders in the sector. They conclude that, compared with what might have been expected under continued public ownership, reform benefited consumers, the government, and, to a lesser extent, the foreign owners or the private operator. Most sector performance indicators improved, but some problems remain. The three most troublesome areas are water that is unaccounted for (there are many illegal connections and the quality of infrastructure is poor), poor collection rates, and high prices. The weak institutional environment makes it difficult to improve collection rates, but the government could take some steps to correct the problem. To begin with, it could pay its own bills on time. Also, the legislature could authorize the collection of unpaid bills from private individuals.Water Conservation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Water and Industry,Economic Theory&Research,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Environmental Economics&Policies,Water and Industry,Water Supply and Sanitation Governance and Institutions,Water Conservation,Town Water Supply and Sanitation
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Electrical gating effects on the magnetic properties of (Ga,Mn)As diluted magnetic semiconductors
Get PDFThe aim of the research project presented in this thesis is to investigate the effects
of electrostatic gating on the magnetic properties of carrier-mediated ferromagnetic
Ga1−xMnxAs diluted magnetic semiconductors. (Ga,Mn)As can be regarded as a prototype material because of its strong spin-orbit coupling and its crystalline properties
which can be described within a simple band structure model. Compressively strained (Ga,Mn)As epilayer with more complex in-plane competing cubic and uniaxial
magnetic anisotropies is of particular interest since a small variation of these
competing anisotropy fields provide a means for the manipulation of its magnetization
via external electric field.
An all-semiconductor epitaxial p-n junction field-effect transistor (FET) based on low-doped Ga0.975Mn0.025As was fabricated. It has an in-built n-GaAs back-gate, which, in addition to being a normal gate, enhances the gating effects, especially in the depletion of the epilayer, by decreasing the effective channel thickness by means of a depletion region. A shift in the Curie temperature of ∼2 K and enhanced anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) (which at saturation reaches ∼30%) is achieved with a depletion of a few volts. Persistent magnetization switchings with short electric field pulses are also observed. The magnitude of the switching field is found to decrease with increasing depletion of the (Ga,Mn)As layer. By employing the k · p semiconductor theory approach (performed by our collaborators in Institute of Physics, ASCR, Prague), including strong spin-orbit coupling effects in the host semiconductor valence band, a change in sign of Kc at hole density of approximately 1.5×1020 cm−3 is observed. Below this density, the [110]/[1¯10] magnetization directions are favoured, consistent with experimental data.
A double-gated FET, with an ionic-gel top-gate coupled with a p-n junction
back-gate based on the same material, was also employed in an attempt to achieve
larger effects through gating. It reaffirms the results obtained and demonstrates
enhanced gating effects on the magnetic properties of (Ga,Mn)As
Nederlands in de Lerarenopleiding op Curaçao en Bonaire:Een onderzoek naar het ontwerp en de uitvoering van een programma Taalvaardigheid Nederlands
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