Given their political incentives, governments in more autocratic polities can strategically channel unearned government and household income in the form of foreign aid and remittances to finance ...patronage, which extends their tenure in political office. I substantiate this claim with duration models of government turnover for a sample of 97 countries between 1975 and 2004. Unearned foreign income received in more autocratic countries reduces the likelihood of government turnover, regime collapse, and outbreaks of major political discontent. To allay potential concerns with endogeneity, I harness a natural experiment of oil price–driven aid and remittance flows to poor, non–oil producing Muslim autocracies. The instrumental variables results confirm the baseline finding that authoritarian governments can harness unearned foreign income to prolong their rule. Finally, I provide evidence of the underlying causal mechanisms that governments in autocracies use aid and remittances inflows to reduce their expenditures on welfare goods to fund patronage.
Investigation of heat transfer is a potential research area to acquire the targets in engineering and various industries. Although, conventional liquids are good for many such applications but their ...heat transfer rate is limited and thus it is essential to study new fluids which meet the requirements. Therefore, a new ternary nanofluid model acquired using enhanced thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity, heat capacity, basic governing laws and similarity transforms. The model comprises the motivational aspects of thermal slip, convective condition, radiative flux and viscous dissipation and predict the parametric ranges for excellent heat transfer results. The nanoparticles (Al2O3, CuO and Cu) amount is kept up to 0.04. For the results simulation, the numerical technique based on shooting scheme is implemented and solved the model. It is scrutinized that induction of aforementioned physical quantities significantly improved thermal transport performance of ternary nanoliquid. These are an excellent sources to acquire the preferred amount of heat for industrial applications. Further, higher B1 near surface boosted the temperature with increasing B1 in the range of 0.1–0.4. The heat transfer rate at the surface effectively enhanced for thermal slip (α1), radiation number (Rd) and Biot number (B1) in the range of 0.1,0.3,0.5,0.7.
REMITTANCES DETERIORATE GOVERNANCE Ahmed, Faisal Z.
The review of economics and statistics,
10/2013, Volume:
95, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
I use a natural experiment of oil-price-driven remittance flows to poor, non-oil-producing Muslim countries to demonstrate that remittances deteriorate the quality of governance, especially in ...countries with weak democratic institutions. The results indicate that a 1 standard deviation increase in remittances raises corruption by 1.5 index points (on a 6-point scale), which is equivalent to a $ 600 decrease in per capita GDP. Concomitantly, remittances may enable governments to reduce their delivery of public services (for example, health care, school enrollment). The results suggest that political institutions may mediate the potentially beneficial socioeconomic effects of remittance inflows.
Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) is a group of autosomal recessive disorders affecting cortisol biosynthesis. Reduced activity of an enzyme required for cortisol production leads to chronic ...overstimulation of the adrenal cortex and accumulation of precursors proximal to the blocked enzymatic step. The most common form of CAH is caused by steroid 21-hydroxylase deficiency due to mutations in CYP21A2. Since the last publication summarizing CAH in Endocrine Reviews in 2000, there have been numerous new developments. These include more detailed understanding of steroidogenic pathways, refinements in neonatal screening, improved diagnostic measurements utilizing chromatography and mass spectrometry coupled with steroid profiling, and improved genotyping methods. Clinical trials of alternative medications and modes of delivery have been recently completed or are under way. Genetic and cell-based treatments are being explored. A large body of data concerning long-term outcomes in patients affected by CAH, including psychosexual well-being, has been enhanced by the establishment of disease registries. This review provides the reader with current insights in CAH with special attention to these new developments.
Electrical metal contacts to two-dimensional (2D) semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) are found to be the key bottleneck to the realization of high device performance due to ...strong Fermi level pinning and high contact resistances (R c). Until now, Fermi level pinning of monolayer TMDCs has been reported only theoretically, although that of bulk TMDCs has been reported experimentally. Here, we report the experimental study on Fermi level pinning of monolayer MoS2 and MoTe2 by interpreting the thermionic emission results. We also quantitatively compared our results with the theoretical simulation results of the monolayer structure as well as the experimental results of the bulk structure. We measured the pinning factor S to be 0.11 and −0.07 for monolayer MoS2 and MoTe2, respectively, suggesting a much stronger Fermi level pinning effect, a Schottky barrier height (SBH) lower than that by theoretical prediction, and interestingly similar pinning energy levels between monolayer and bulk MoS2. Our results further imply that metal work functions have very little influence on contact properties of 2D-material-based devices. Moreover, we found that R c is exponentially proportional to SBH, and these processing parameters can be controlled sensitively upon chemical doping into the 2D materials. These findings provide a practical guideline for depinning Fermi level at the 2D interfaces so that polarity control of TMDC-based semiconductors can be achieved efficiently.
The principle steroidal androgens are testosterone and its metabolite 5α-dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which is converted from testosterone by the enzyme 5α-reductase. Through the classic pathway with ...androgens crossing the plasma membrane and binding to the androgen receptor (AR) or via mechanisms independent of the ligand-dependent transactivation function of nuclear receptors, testosterone induces genomic and non-genomic effects respectively. AR is widely distributed in several tissues, including vascular endothelial and smooth muscle cells. Androgens are essential for many developmental and physiological processes, especially in male reproductive tissues. It is now clear that androgens have multiple actions besides sex differentiation and sexual maturation and that many physiological systems are influenced by androgens, including regulation of cardiovascular function nitric oxide (NO) release, Ca
mobilization, vascular apoptosis, hypertrophy, calcification, senescence and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation. This review focuses on evidence indicating that interplay between genomic and non-genomic actions of testosterone may influence cardiovascular function.
Objective
We aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of infliximab biosimilar, CT-P13, for patients with inflammatory bowel disease.
Methods
We searched PubMed, Scopus, Ovid, and Web of Science for ...relevant clinical trials discussing CT-P31 administration for IBD patients either naïve to biological therapy or switched from IFX therapy. Data of the rates of clinical response, clinical remission, and adverse events were extracted and pooled in a random effect model meta-analysis using CMA version 2.
Results
Thirty-two studies with a total of 3464 IBD patients treated with CT-P13 were identified. The pooled rates of clinical response among Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) at 8–14 weeks were 0.81 (95% CI = 0.72 to 0.87) and 0.68 (95% CI = 0.63 to 0.72), respectively, and at 48–63 weeks were 0.69 (95% CI = 0.48 to 0.85) and 0.54 (95% CI = 0.45 to 0.63) respectively. After switching from IFX to CT-P13, the pooled rates of sustained clinical response among CD and UC at 30–32 weeks were 0.84 (95% CI = 0.57 to 0.96) and 0.96 (95% CI = 0.58 to 0.99), respectively, and at 48–63 weeks were 0.51 (95% CI = 0.22 to 0.79) and 0.83 (95% CI = 0.19 to 0.99) respectively. Moreover, adverse events were reported (CD = 0.10, 95% CI 0.04 to 0.22; UC = 0.18, 95% CI 0.05 to 0.15).
Conclusion
CT-P13 is effective and well tolerated in short and long-term periods. Switching to CT-P13 is recommended for the management of IBD.
Sign language is an essential means of communication for individuals with hearing disabilities. However, there is a significant shortage of sign language interpreters in some languages, especially in ...Saudi Arabia. This shortage results in a large proportion of the hearing-impaired population being deprived of services, especially in public places. This paper aims to address this gap in accessibility by leveraging technology to develop systems capable of recognizing Arabic Sign Language (ArSL) using deep learning techniques. In this paper, we propose a hybrid model to capture the spatio-temporal aspects of sign language (i.e., letters and words). The hybrid model consists of a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) classifier to extract spatial features from sign language data and a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) classifier to extract spatial and temporal characteristics to handle sequential data (i.e., hand movements). To demonstrate the feasibility of our proposed hybrid model, we created a dataset of 20 different words, resulting in 4000 images for ArSL: 10 static gesture words and 500 videos for 10 dynamic gesture words. Our proposed hybrid model demonstrates promising performance, with the CNN and LSTM classifiers achieving accuracy rates of 94.40% and 82.70%, respectively. These results indicate that our approach can significantly enhance communication accessibility for the hearing-impaired community in Saudi Arabia. Thus, this paper represents a major step toward promoting inclusivity and improving the quality of life for the hearing impaired.
A high‐performance multilayer MoS2 p‐type field‐effect transistor is realized via controllable chemical doping, which shows an excellent on/off ratio of 109 and a maximum hole mobility of 132 cm2 V−1 ...s−1 at 133 K. The developed technique will enable 2D materials to be used for future high‐efficiency and low‐power semiconductor device applications.
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