472 research outputs found
Family altruism and incentives
No full textThe author builds on the altruistic model of the family, to explore the strategic interaction between altruistic parents, and selfish children, when children's efforts are endogenous. If there is uncertainty about the amount of income the children will realize, and if parents have imperfect information, the children have an incentive to exert little effort, and to rely on their parent's altruistically motivated transfers. Because of this, parents face a tradeoff between the insurance that bequests implicitly provide their children, and the disincentive to work prompted by their altruism. The author shows that if parents can credibly commit to a pattern of transfers, they will choose not to compensate children in bad outcomes, as much as predicted by the standard (no uncertainty, no asymmetric information) dynastic model of the family. Alternatively, parents may choose to forgo any insurance, and offer a fixed level of bequest, to elicit greater effort from their children. The optimal transfers structure that the author derives, reconciles the predictions of the altruistic family model, with much of the existing evidence on inter-generational transfers, which suggests that parents compensate only partially, or not at all, for earnings differentials among their children. Moreover, the author shows that Ricardian equivalence holds in this setup, except when non-negativity constraints are binding.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Educational Sciences,Safety Nets and Transfers
Utilizing biomarkers in colorectal cancer: an interview with Ajay Goel
No full text Ajay Goel speaks to Rachel Jenkins, Commissioning Editor. Ajay Goel, PhD, is a Professor and Director, Center for Gastrointestinal Research, and Director, Center for Translational Genomics and Oncology, at the Baylor Scott & White Research Institute, Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. Dr Goel has spent more than 20 years researching cancer and has been the lead author or contributor to over 240 scientific articles published in peer-reviewed international journals and several book chapters. He is also a primary inventor on more than 15 international patents aimed at developing various biomarkers for the diagnosis, prognosis and prediction of gastrointestinal cancers. He is currently using advanced genomic and transcriptomic approaches to develop novel DNA- and miRNA-based biomarkers for the early detection of colorectal cancers. In addition, he is researching the prevention of gastrointestinal cancers using integrative and alternative approaches, including botanical products such as curcumin (from turmeric) and boswellia. Dr Goel is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the American Gastroenterology Association (AGA) and is on the international editorial boards of several journals including Gastroenterology, Clinical Cancer Research, Carcinogenesis, PLoS ONE, Scientific Reports, Epigenomics, Future Medicine, Alternative Therapies in Heath and Medicine and World Journal of Gastroenterology. He is also actively involved in peer-reviewing activities for more than 100 international scientific journals and various grant review panels of various national and international funding organizations. His research has been actively funded by various private and federal organizations, including funding from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the NIH, American Cancer Society (ACS) and other state organizations. He has won more than dozen awards and honors, including the Union of European Gastroenterology Federation's Distinguished Researcher Award, multiple Poster of Distinction Awards from the AGA, and Visiting Professorships from various national and international academic institutions and academic bodies. Some of his key research interests include: Understanding the basic genetics and epigenetic basis of gastrointestinal cancers; Use of epigenetic markers, both DNA and RNA, for the early detection of colorectal, pancreatic and other gastrointestinal cancers; Personalized medicine and treatment of gastrointestinal cancers; Chemoprevention, using complementary and alternative approaches using nutraceuticals such as curcumin, green tea, resveratrol and other botanicals. </jats:p
Hand-geometry recognition using entropy-based discretization
No full textAuthor name used in this publication: Ajay Kumar2006-2007 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishedVoR allowe
Can reforming global institutions help developing countries share more in the benefits from globalization?
No full textGlobalization could significantly expand trade, international investment, and technological advances, but the gains from global integration have been unevenly distributed across and within nations. Greater global interdependence has also brought greater macroeconomic volatility, resulting in several serious financial crises in the second half of the 1990s. The global matrix of Bretton Woods and United Nations institutions that developed starting in the 1940s, formed under a different balance of power, in a world of fixed exchange rates and limited capital mobility. Since the 1960s regional financial institutions have emerged because of the greater autonomy of different regions and the greater financial needs of development. The author reviews different proposals for reform of the international financial institutions and changes in the roles of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. He highlights the implications for developing countries of (1) Policy conditionality. (2) The countercyclical role of multilaterals'lending. (3) Greater lending to middle-income than to low-income developing countries. (3) Access to liquidity at times of crisis. (4) Mechanisms for giving low-income countries a greater voice in IMF and World Bank decisionmaking. The author streses the overlapping responsibilities of the Bretton Woods and regional financial institutions and the need to reassess the allocation of responsibilities and to develop better coordination mechanisms between these institutions. Those designing institutional reform must consider the corporate capabilities of each type of institution. The corporate cultures of global and regional institutions differ. So does the kind of knowledge they generate and disseminate, and so do patterns of interactions with, and mechanisms for representation of, client countries.Finally, the author calls attention to the need to harmonize national and global growth-oriented policies in a way that reduces volatility and promotes social equity.Environmental Economics&Policies,Governance Indicators,Financial Intermediation,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform
Fungal metabolites as a natural source of herbicide: a novel approach of weed management: Ajay Kumar Singh* and Akhilesh Kumar Pandey Mycological Research Laboratory, Department of Biological Science Rani Durgawati University, Jabalpur-482001, Madhya Pradesh. India *Corresponding Author: Dr Ajay Kumar Singh [email protected]
No full textWeeds are undesirable vegetation directly or indirectly inferring with human welfare. Conventional methods of weed control have failed due to one or other reason. Herbicide-resistant weeds are the main problem in weed control due to the number of weed biotypes resistant to herbicides that constantly increases by the continuous use of the same products for years. Development of alternative weed control methods is needed to help decrease reliance on herbicide use. Biological weed control is an alternative option for weed problems, particularly in agriculture and forestry. It is based on the use of natural enemies, particularly insects and pathogens to control weeds, as a sustainable, low cost and more environmentally acceptable method of weed control. One of the approaches to biological weed control using fungal phytotoxin applied in similar ways to conventional herbicides. Fungal phytotoxins are natural secondary metabolites produced by plant pathogenic fungi during host–pathogen interactions. They have received considerable particular attention for elucidating disease etiology, and consequently to design strategies for disease control. Due to wide differences in their chemical structures, these toxic metabolites have different ecological and environmental roles and mechanisms of action. This review aims at summarizing the studies on the possible use of fungal phytotoxin as a lucrative, novel source of secondary phytotoxic herbicidal compounds for management of broad spectrum, noxious and pernicious weeds
Yugoslavia - How redistribution hurts productivity in a socialist economy
No full textSocialism as practiced in Eastern Europe is characterized by massive income redistribution. This paper focuses on: (a) interfirm redistribution, consisting of taxing profitable firms in order to subsidize unprofitable ones; and (b) intrafirm redistribution, consisting of the compression of personal income differentials within a firm. The author constructs a theoretical model of redistribution of income as practiced in Yugoslav firms. Empirical results lead to the conclusions that efficiency in production could be improved at no cost if such redistribution were abolished. Furthermore, economies in which much of the GNP is redistributed through bargaining are also bound to be inefficient in distribution because some groups are less able to represent their common interests than others. Contrary to a common belief, socialist countries can not be praised on the count of equity either. This paper presents the estimating framework and the results of the empirical analysis obtained on the basis of a sample of Slovenian enterprises and a brief discussion of policy implications concludes the paper.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Inequality,Health Economics&Finance,Work&Working Conditions
Experimental evaluation of long term evolution-based NC OFDM secondary-to-secondary interference
No full textScarcity of spectrum resources, inefficient spectrum usage and the inflexibility of the current spectrum assignment are few of the major roadblocks in the development of new wireless communication standards. Secondary spectrum sharing has become a viable solution to alleviate this problem. Secondary users are unlicensed devices that use opportunistic spectrum access to identify vacant frequency bins and thereby utilize the spectrum. For advanced wireless communication standards like the Long Term Evolution (LTE) which primarily calls for higher data rates, evaluation of design parameters for ensuring efficient coexistence of heterogeneous secondary users and guaranteeing acceptable minimum level of performance becomes essential. Additionally, the understanding of the interference between secondary users occupying adjacent frequency bands for their transmission is imperative. This thesis focuses on the coexistence of secondary users in the same band assuming that the primary spectrum is found available. By Implementing two Non Contiguous Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing ( NC-OFDM) based secondary transmitters on a real time platform, the design parameters that need to be considered to ensure efficient coexistence have been identified and investigated. The performance degradations observed at a particular secondary link due to presence of another interfering secondary link occupying adjacent frequency bands for its transmission have also been studied. This thesis also focuses on implementation of algorithms to modify the existing NC-OFDM transmission at the secondary transmitter end to reduce its Interference effects on the other secondary links operating within the same band. The focus is on an LTE-based Secondary Non Contiguous Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing Transceiver on a Real Time Platform developed by National Instruments. The various blocks needed to design a real time LTE based communications links are discussed. An experimental LTE-to-LTE interference analysis based on the Real Time Platform and the designed system is presented.M.S.Includes bibliographical referencesby Ajay Ramkumar Iye
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