88 research outputs found
Negatively supercharging cellulases render them lignin-resistant
No full textNon-specific adsorption of cellulases to lignin hinders enzymatic deconstruction of lignocellulosic biomass. Here we tested the hypothesis that negatively supercharging cellulases could reduce lignin inhibition. Computational design was used to negatively supercharge the surfaces of Ruminoclostridium thermocellum family 5 CelE and a CelE-family 3a carbohydrate binding module fusion. Resulting designs maintained the same expression yield, thermal stability, and nearly identical activity on soluble substrate as the wild-type proteins. Four designs showed complete lack of inhibition by lignin but with lower cellulose conversion compared to original enzymes. Increasing salt concentrations could partially rescue the activity of supercharged enzymes, supporting a mechanism of electrostatic repulsion between designs and cellulose. Results showcase a protein engineering strategy to construct highly active cellulases that are resistant to lignin-mediated inactivation, although further work is needed to understand the relationship between negative protein surface potential and activity on insoluble polysaccharides.Peer reviewe
Current Issues in Economics and Finance
No full textThis study tries to analyse the impact of internal and external debt oneconomic growth in India during the period 1980?2014. Employing ARDL tech-nique of co-integration, the studyfinds the negative impact of both internal as wellas external debt on Indian economy in long run, thereby controlling for othervariables namely trade openness, investment and population growth. The results ofthe error correction model (ECM) show that internal debt, external debt, invest-ment, population growth and trade openness affect the economic growth both inshort and long run. The relationship between debt (both internal and external) andeconomic growth turns out to be negative in long run. However, the short-runimpact of internal debt isfluctuating; whereas external debt is negatively related togrowth
Appeasing Deprivation : The Meaning of Bandi (Bridewealth) among the Pinatubo Negritos
No full textBased on the materials the author collected during 19 months of field research in and around Kakilingan village, this paper presents an ethnographic description of marriage and bridewealth in the southwestern Pinatubo Negritos, western Luzon.In particular the author will discuss the meaning of bandi in their society by answering the following questions; why it is given at marriage; why the amount differs so much according to the socio-psychological distance between the bride\u27s and the groom\u27s extended families; and how it works alternatively to promote or to prevent social change.Among the Pinatubo Negritos, bandi is not a specific property with symbolic value, but ordinary goods of any kind such as pigs, chickens, cloth, clothes, radios, knives, and recently, water buffaloes and cash.It is neither given to compensate for the transfer of rights over a woman (c. f. Fortes 1962, Goody 1973) nor to balance the cost-benefit ratio at marriage (c. f. Spiro 1975).It is also not meant to put mating into a socially meaningful context and a universe of relations (c. f. Comaroff 1980).The author thinks that bandi is given to appease the anger and sense of deprivation of the bride\u27s family, while Negritos themselves explain it either as a custom or as a “breast-fee”(the costs of being brought up).Actual marriage procedures differ widely between two poles; i. e. arranged and/or forced by parents on the one hand, and elopement by a couple on the other hand.Marriage with near kin is prohibitted, because it is just like a bo-et, an animal with rabit-like shape, which eats its own droppings and has intercourse by itself.Marriage, therefore, is essentially thought of as depriving the family of a daughter (sister/niece).And even marriage by parents should be arranged outside a socio-psychologically intimate circle and involve a feeling of deprivation on the bride\u27s side.When marriage is initiated by elopement, the bride\u27s family gets angry and demands a big amount of bandi.If the groom\u27s family cannot meet the agreement at negotiations, or if it fails to fulfill the agreement later, a couple is forced to separate.Elopement takes a long time to achieve stability because of the heavy burdon of bandi, which is paid in long instalments.Thus bandi works to prevent all attempts at elopement from becoming successful and still maintains the importance of arranged marriage.But, if a groom\u27s side succeeds in appeasing a bride\u27s family by delivering the required bandi, even though it may not be fully paid, another dimension of soical relations by affinal bond is developed.While arranged marriage occurs in already established relations and strengthens the existing social circle, elopement initiates re-organization by introducing outside relations
Uncertainty and Effectiveness of Monetary Policy: A Bayesian Markov Switching-VAR Analysis
No full textThere is a growing body of literature examining the effectiveness of the monetary policy on the macroeconomy in different contexts for developed and developing countries. However, lately, especially after the GFC, the focus of research shifted to examine the role of uncertainty in economic activity and on the monetary policy effectiveness. Both theoretical and empirical studies suggest that uncertainty does influence monetary policy effectiveness. However, until now, empirical studies are restricted to only developed countries. To this end, the present study examines the influence of uncertainty on monetary policy effectiveness for a developing country, namely India. We applied a non-linear VAR, which allows us to examine the effect of monetary policy shocks during high and low uncertainty periods. The results exhibit that uncertainty influences the effectiveness of monetary policy shocks. We find weaker effects of the monetary policy shocks during high uncertainty regime relative to low uncertainty regime
Identifying regime shifts in Indian stock market: A Markov switching approach
No full textSeeking for the existence of bull and bear regimes in the Indian stock market, a two state Markov switching autoregressive model (MS (2)-AR (2)) is used to identify bull and bear market regimes. The model predicts that Indian stock market will remain under bull regime with very high probability compared to bear regime. The results also identify the bear phases during all major global economic crises including recent US sub-prime (2008) and European debt crisis (2010). The paper concludes that the Indian stock market is more sensitive to external shocks implying that there is ample scope of policy interventions
An empirical analysis of Indian business cycle dynamics
No full textThis paper attempts to construct a monthly Composite Index of Leading
Indicators (CILI) for the Indian business cycle between April 1994 and
December 2015. The cyclical component of the Index of Industrial Production
(IIP), generated by Baxter-King band pass filters, is considered as a
reference series for Indian business cycle analysis. A set of indicator
variables pertaining to different sectors of the economy are chosen on the
basis of their strong leading correlation with the reference series.
Further, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) technique is applied to assign
an appropriate weight to each leading variable, and a CILI is constructed.
The performance of the CILI is validated using the turning-point analysis of
BryBoschan and Harding-Pagan. The CILI accurately predicts two major troughs
in the Indian business cycle, with six and eleven month leads respectively
Predicting balance of payments crises for some emerging economies
No full textThe study aims at developing an Early Warning System for predicting balance of
payments crises for 17 emerging economies, which constitute a relatively homogenous
group, over the period 1975-2012. We construct an index of exchange market pressure,
based on monthly depreciations of the nominal exchange rate and declines in reserves, to
identify crisis episodes. To construct the index we propose a new weighting scheme using
principal components analysis, as an improvement over the conventionally used precisionweighting
scheme. Probit regressions are used to identify key macroeconomic indicator
variables that can predict the onset of a crisis. These include the ratio of M2 to reserves,
short-term debt to reserves, export growth, ratio of total reserves to external debt, change
in reserves, openness and overvaluation of the real exchange rate. From alternative
specifications, we identify the best model based on various accuracy measures. We use
criteria such as area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic, Quadratic Probability
Score, Pseudo R2 and Kuiper’s Score to evaluate model performance. Empirical results
show the warning system exhibits a high degree of accuracy and performs well. The
variables identified show significant ability to signal vulnerability of the external sector of
the economy. Policymakers can use the early warning system as the core of a larger set of
variables on their radar to take pre-emptive measures to avoid crises or dampen their
effects
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