Macroeconomic determinants of remittances to India

Economic Change and Restructuring - Migration and remittances have always been an exciting arena of research for economists around the globe. Remittance flows have evolved as a significant economic...     

Chinese agriculture: A quantitative look

Chinese agriculture has undoubtedly achieved a significant increase in gross agricultural output since the beginning of the new regime. However, for lack of sufficient information, it is difficult to make quantitative estimates of such an increase. Knowledge of the Chinese agriculture even before the Communist take‐over is far from complete. This is a further handicap in an assessment of the contribution of recent developmental efforts. There is some qualitative evidence in historical writings^l which suggests that the level of pre‐modem agricultural technology and practice in China was already very high² long before the present century but the quantitative information available from such historical studies is fragmentary, and often inconclusive. Even when reasonably reliable information seems to be available, its representativeness is open to question. The only reasonably representative account of the Chinese agriculture is available for the early 1930s in Buck's Land Utilization in China. Except for the first decade of the Communist rule in China, the quality of statistics deteriorated markedly. Any attempt, however painstaking, to estimate the rate of growth of the agricultural sector or of agriculture's contribution to the gross national product is bound to be nothing more than broad approximations. The aim of this paper, therefore, is not to add one more ‘guess estimate’ to many such estimates of dubious validity that are already floating around. The aim is mainly to point out the limitation of the data on which such estimates are based. It is not an attempt at denigrating the painstaking efforts of careful Sinologists to piece together fragmentary information from both academic and non‐academic (largely intelligence and diplomatic) sources, but to warn the users that an unqualified acceptance of their results³ (e.g. such as the rates of growth, etc.) in comparative studies may not have sufficient justification.     

Farmers’ perceptions of milk-collecting centres in Thailand's dairy industry

This study assessed farmers’ perceptions of milk-collecting centres (MCCs) in the central and north-eastern regions of Thailand. MCCs can be divided into two groups, dairy cooperatives and private organisations. There were similar perceptions about the role of MCCs among the farmers regarding the basic needs of dairy farmers, but with a stronger focus of economic issues for private organisation members, while dairy cooperative members views were more from the perspective of ownership. The farmers were somewhat satisfied with their MCCs’ performance, except that private organisation farmers were less satisfied with credit services. Policy recommendations are presented.     

DNA profiling of disputed chilli samples (Capsicum annum) using ISSR-PCR and FISSR-PCR marker assays

A case of marketing of spurious seeds of chilli, Capsicum annum in the brand name of an elite variety referred to us from an Indian court of law, for identification is described here. The highly reproducible molecular marker assays, inter simple sequence repeat polymerase chain reaction [ISSR-PCR] and FISSR-PCR (for fluorescent ISSR-PCR) were used for differentiating the four disputed chilli samples. A total number of 17 ISSR anchored primers, which included nine di-, and eight tri-nucleotide primers were used for the analysis. The ISSR-PCR products were separated on a 2% agarose gel. A total of 212 and 288 bands were resolved by seven di- and eight tri-nucleotide primers, respectively, with an average of 30 bands per primer. Five out of nine dinucleotide primers and four out of eight trinucleotide primers could unambiguously differentiate all the four disputed chilli samples. The sensitivity and informativeness of the ISSR-PCR assay were further enhanced by the use of FISSR-PCR technique. The FISSR-PCR assay revealed a total number of 566 bands using three tri- and one di-nucleotide primers with an average of 141 bands per primer. These four primers could reliably distinguish all the four disputed samples unambiguously. In developing countries like India, violation of Plant Breeder's Rights is a major concern of law. The present report is, therefore, a step to protect the Plant Breeder's Rights by making use of reliable and modern DNA technologies.     

Correction to: Construing the Written Warranty

Liverpool Law Review -     

Ableing work,Disableing workers?

Grounded within the substantive conception of ableism (Wolbring 2008 Wolbring, G. 2008. “The Politics of Ableism.” Development 51 (2): 252–258. doi: 10.1057/dev.2008.17[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), this article explores the prejudices and discriminations that arise out of many different forms of ableism: of bodily abilities/disabilities, gender, social structure, and economic organisation. It illustrates the processes and outcomes of ableisms deployed on the shop-floor of a multiple-award winning small-scale manufacturing unit in India. By employing a number of persons with disabilities, single women, and widows, and with plans for engaging juvenile delinquents in the near future, the manufacturing unit has seemingly created opportunities for “empowerment” of those subjected to discrimination. However, the outcomes are not necessarily so.     

Regional economic regimes and the environment: stronger institutional design is weakening environmental policy capacity of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - International environmental governance by global and, especially, regional regimes is gaining attention in both political...     

Quantitative evaluation of europium in blue ballpoint pen inks/offset printing inks tagged with europium thenoyltrifluoroacetonate by spectrofluorometry and ICP-AES

Tagging of writing/printing inks with suitable inorganic taggants such as rare-earth chelates has the potential to help document examiners identify fraud in sensitive written/printed documents. Selection of rare-earth chelates as taggants primarily depends on the satisfactory sensitivity of analytical determination and the absence of the taggants in normal varieties of inks used for document writing/printing. Spectrofluorometric determination of trace amounts of europium in blue ballpoint pen inks and offset printing inks tagged with europium thenoyltrifluoroacetonate was carried out with sodium tungstate solution. Sodium tungstate acts as a specific reagent that enhances the fluorescence intensity of the Eu3+ ion. The excitation and emission wavelengths are 270 nm and 605 nm respectively. The results were compared with the data obtained with ICP-AES. Satisfactory recoveries were observed with precision better than 5% RSD and comparable accuracy. Under the optimized experimental conditions, detection limits and quantitation limits were determined. The detection limits obtained by spectrofluorometry and ICP-AES were 0.01 microg/mL and 0.006 microg/mL respectively whereas the limits of quantitation were about 0.03 microg/mL and 0.018 microg/mL respectively. The spectrofluorometric method is rapid, selective, sensitive and accurate for the determination of europium in blue ballpoint pen ink and offset printing inks and may be suitable for application in the examination of sensitive documents to aid in document related crime investigation. The advantages and limitations of the tagging approach and proposed analytical techniques are discussed.