Indonesian labor legislation in a comparative perspective : a study of six APEC countries

The author compares Indonesian labor legislations with labor policies in five other APEC countries: Chile, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, and the United States. The report focuses on legislation affecting union regulation, minimum wages, nonwage compensation, and working conditions. Current legislation in Indonesia is a mixed bag of laws protecting workers'welfare but controlling organized labor. Indonesian laws restrict the ability of labor organizations to effectively represent workers to management at the plant level. In this, they are similar to Malaysian laws and, to a lesser extent, new Korean legislation. They provide a stark contrast to current legislation in Chile and the United States. But Indonesia legislation governing minimum wages, mandated nonwage benefits, and other labor standards, appear to be at least as generous as legislation in the five other countries. Indonesia is under pressure to ease restrictions on unions. The author suggests that allowing effective plant-level bargaining could give workers more of a voice at the workplace, but that improving industrial relations will require more than legislative changes. Careful changes in legislation and industrial relations could help unions play a more positive role, while downplaying labor's more negative role. The author cautions against centrally mandating labor standards, instead of letting workers and their employers negotiate them at local plants.Environmental Economics&Policies,Labor Policies,Labor Management and Relations,Labor Standards,Work&Working Conditions,Work&Working Conditions,Banks&Banking Reform,Labor Management and Relations,Environmental Economics&Policies,Labor Standards

From Local to Global and Informal to Formal: Entering Mainstream Markets

women, informal economy, cooperative, India, poverty, institutions

Spectral analysis of the truncated Hilbert transform with overlap

We study a restriction of the Hilbert transform as an operator $H_T$ from $L^2(a_2,a_4)$ to $L^2(a_1,a_3)$ for real numbers $a_1 < a_2 < a_3 < a_4$. The operator $H_T$ arises in tomographic reconstruction from limited data, more precisely in the method of differentiated back-projection (DBP). There, the reconstruction requires recovering a family of one-dimensional functions $f$ supported on compact intervals $[a_2,a_4]$ from its Hilbert transform measured on intervals $[a_1,a_3]$ that might only overlap, but not cover $[a_2,a_4]$. We show that the inversion of $H_T$ is ill-posed, which is why we investigate the spectral properties of $H_T$. We relate the operator $H_T$ to a self-adjoint two-interval Sturm-Liouville problem, for which we prove that the spectrum is discrete. The Sturm-Liouville operator is found to commute with $H_T$, which then implies that the spectrum of $H_T^* H_T$ is discrete. Furthermore, we express the singular value decomposition of $H_T$ in terms of the solutions to the Sturm-Liouville problem. The singular values of $H_T$ accumulate at both $0$ and $1$, implying that $H_T$ is not a compact operator. We conclude by illustrating the properties obtained for $H_T$ numerically.Comment: 24 pages, revised versio

Detection of MicroRNAs in Dried Serum Blots

MicroRNAs are short RNAs which can be utilized as biomarkers for a variety of conditions. They are detectable in serum, and changes in the levels of circulating microRNAs have been associated with different diseases. We tested for the presence of microRNAs in serum that is dried on paper and stored unrefrigerated instead of being kept frozen. MicroRNAs were readily detectable in such blots, and their detectability was improved by using paper made of cellulose instead of glass fiber, and by re-hydrating dried blots with Trizol&#x2122; instead of water, phosphate-buffered saline, or guanidine hydrochloride before RNA extraction. MicroRNA preservation was not diminished by drying of blots at 37, 45 or 60 &#xba;C instead of room temperature or by storage of blots at 37, 45 or 60 &#xba;C instead of room temperature, but was worse when blots were dried incompletely or exposed to high humidity during storage. Preservation of microRNAs in serum was not adversely affected if instead of being kept frozen at -80 &#xba;C it was stored as dried blots at room temperature or 37 &#xba;C for ten or eight and a half months, respectively. In a group of ten individuals, microRNA quantifications of -80 &#xba;C-frozen or dried sera stored at room temperature correlated well. Dried blots may thus be a convenient and safer way to save, transport, and store serum without refrigeration for microRNA assays

Citizens can and should be involved in the process of shaping economic policy

Economics has long been tainted by the label ‘the dismal science’ and an image of grey haired old men poring over statistics, but could there ever be a ‘citizens economics’? Here, Reema Patel discusses a new RSA project which seeks to create just that, and an event which aims to contribute to its creation

From local to global and informal to formal: Entering mainstream markets

This is a brief sketch of the Self Employed Women’s Association’s (SEWA) threedecade- long journey from the local to global and informal to formal sector in search of finding work and income for now 720,000 women workers. Though SEWA remains a local and an informal economy workers’ organization, its aim has always been to mainstream its issues, hopes, and achievements

Performance Evaluation and Study of Routing Protocols: MANET vs VANET

In the recent years the number of vehicles on road increases at high speed. A lot of road accidents and traffic congestion emerges. So to control it vehicular ad-hoc network came in picture. In the last few years many protocols were proposed to route the packets efficiently and correctly. But no one was capable of routing the packets in case of cross links. So, a protocol named GEOCROSS was proposed. The introduction of MANETs, VANETs, their routing protocols, protocol structure of VANET, how broadcasting takes place in VANET, how information is disseminated in VANET and VANET communication routing protocols like vehicular collision warning communication (VCWC), vehicle heading based routing protocol (VHRP) and GEOCROSS routing protocol will discussed in this paper