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This paper attempts to empirically analyse the impact of India’s medium term perspective on its fiscal management, and their subsequent implications for subnational Governments’ fiscal situation. Using graphical analysis, exploratory statistics and regression techniques, this paper endeavours to investigate the impact of revenue forecast error on Centre’s primary balance, and in turn its impact on States’ fiscal imbalance. The illustrative empirical exercises of this paper reveal that optimistic medium term macro-fiscal forecasting has been a predominant feature of India’s fiscal policy ever since it adopted fiscal discipline. The forecast errors are found to have serious consequences for India’s primary balance and debt accumulation pronouncing even stronger over longer horizons. The forecast-error-induced primary balance at the Centre leads to a significant deterioration in the quality of fiscal deficit of State Governments. Financial irregularity emerges as an important determinant of forecast error. This paper, though illustrative in nature, provides useful insights for better fiscal planning and management in the era of fiscal consolidation in India.

Moore’s law has been a major driving force in the development of novel semiconductor devices and has continued to hold its relevance over the years. The resultant, smaller and more powerful, microprocessors not only cater to the ever-increasing demands of the existing needs but also are important enablers of novel applications and discoveries in different areas. Several critical features of these latest devices are in the atomic to nanometer scale, which has enhanced the necessity of a largescale transmission electron microscopy (TEM) imaging-based metrology and failure analysis for their process development. As a result, the automation of lamella preparation using focused ion beam (FIB) and TEM imaging has gathered an enormous momentum in last few years. A key aspect of automating a large-scale TEM sample preparation not only involves the calibration of a given FIB tool to achieve an acceptable and repeatable quality of TEM samples but also to ensure that sample quality is consistent across the entire fleet of toolsets. In this work, the performance of three ThermoFisher Exsolve toolsets using a common tool calibration method for both, lamella thickness and targeting, has been compared. It was found that in general, thickness of TEM lamella showed a larger variation as compared to targeting over the period of one month. Lamella thickness showed a decreasing trend, and it entailed a need of recalibrating the tools in an interval of two weeks so that the variation in both thickness and targeting for the fleet can be kept within the desired specifications of ±3 nm (2σ).

An unprecedented visible light-assisted and zinc triflate-catalyzed construction of a diaryl-substituted quaternary stereocenter is reported. 2-(4-Hydroxyphenyl)-substituted aldehydes and ketones have been prepared in moderate to high yields via multicomponent reaction of acetylene, benzoquinone (BQ), and indole/aniline/thiol. The reaction is believed to proceed via in situ generation of p-quinone methide through a [2+2] cycloaddition-retroelectrocyclization of BQ and acetylene in blue light followed by a zinc triflate-catalyzed vinylogous Michael addition reaction with nucleophiles.

An unprecedented visible light-assisted and zinc triflate-catalyzed construction of a diaryl-substituted quaternary stereocenter is reported. 2-(4-Hydroxyphenyl)-substituted aldehydes and ketones have been prepared in moderate to high yields via multicomponent reaction of acetylene, benzoquinone (BQ), and indole/aniline/thiol. The reaction is believed to proceed via

This paper attempts to investigate empirically the export-growth nexus for India from different theoretical perspectives. Using robust time series techniques, and considering both demand-side and supply-side explanations of the relationship between export and output growth, this paper finds empirical support for export-led growth hypothesis for India for long run and short run from supply-side as well as demand-side perspectives. The demand-side orientation appears to be the better explanation of this relationship during post-liberalisation period. The horizontal export diversification is observed to have U-shaped relationship with output growth. In terms of export composition (or vertical export diversification), share of manufactured exports bear a positive and significant relation with output growth, whereas the positive but insignificant impact of services exports on economic growth underlines the need for a rigorous policy action in this sector. The results of empirical estimation are further confirmed by lag-augmented vector autoregressive non-causality test.

It is generally argued that when an economy opens up, it is exposed to external risk and therefore, more government expenditure is demanded to compensate that risk and the increasing level of economic inequalities associated with openness. On the other hand, there is an opposite view which says that with higher capital openness, it would become difficult for national governments to tax and to issue public debt to finance public expenditures, as capital may easily move abroad. An attempt is, therefore, made in this article to understand the nature of relationship between trade openness, capital openness and government size in India over the period from 1980–1981 to 2009–2010. The empirical results of this study seems to challenge in general the validity of the compensation hypothesis, but finds support for Wagner’s law for most of the measures of government size. We also find evidences to favour efficiency hypothesis for some measures of government size, according to which, there exists a negative relationship between capital openness and government size. We have also been able to establish causal links between trade openness, capital openness and government size using TYDL non-causality test, which, indeed, not only complements the findings of autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) estimation, but also indicates the causal nexus in those cases where no long-run or short-run relationship is observed.

Temozolomide is a chemotherapeutic agent that is used in the treatment of glioblastoma and other malignant gliomas. It acts through DNA alkylation, but treatment is limited by its systemic toxicity and neutralization of DNA alkylation by upregulation of the O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase gene. Both of these limiting factors can be addressed by achieving higher concentrations of TMZ in the brain. Our research has led to the discovery of new analogs of temozolomide with improved brain:plasma ratios when dosed in vivo in rats. These compounds are imidazotetrazine analogs, expected to act through the same mechanism as temozolomide. With reduced systemic exposure, these new agents have the potential to improve efficacy and therapeutic index in the treatment of glioblastoma.

The management of public finances continues to be a challenging task not only for the central government, but also for the states since the initiation of rule-based fiscal consolidation. The states have been facing severe fiscal constraints, particularly in sharing own funds for capital formation. The problem sounds acute when it comes to the northeastern (NE) region of India which is faced with several economic and social challenges including financial constraints, poor infrastructure and of course, the unfriendly attitude of the neighbouring states. An attempt is, therefore, made in this chapter to analyse the impact of fiscal rule on social sector spending of NE states of India.

Aim Neurocognitive dysfunction continues to be the bane of open heart surgery despite vast improvements in surgical, anesthetic, and postoperative management. This observational cohort study was carried out to evaluate the efficacy of intraoperative CO2 insufflation by the field flooding technique in reducing postoperative neurocognitive dysfunction. Methods Three hundred randomly selected patients undergoing open heart surgery were observed: 150 (group A) were exposed to CO2 insufflation, and the other 150 (group B) were not exposed to CO2. Anesthetic, cardiopulmonary bypass, and myocardial protection techniques were standardized and similar in both groups. Neurocognitive function tests were performed preoperatively, 1 week postoperatively, and after 1 month. Results The analysis revealed that neurocognitive dysfunction occurred in 8 of 150 patients in group A (incidence p1 = 0.053) and 27 of 150 in group B (incidence p2 = 0.18). The relative risk of neurocognitive dysfunction was 0.30 ( p = 0.001, 95% confidence interval 0.14–0.63), implying that CO2 insufflation is protective against neurocognitive dysfunction. The risk difference was 0.13 ( p2– p1); this implies that 13% of patients can be prevented from developing neurocognitive dysfunction if exposed to CO2. Conclusion This study confirms the known advantage of the relatively underutilized practice of CO2 insufflation. We recommend that CO2 insufflation be performed in all open heart surgery cases to bring down the incidence of neurocognitive dysfunction. This technique is simple to use without any major paraphernalia or additional cost.