Buddha Air: The Ace Airline of Nepal

This is a case study of a pioneering airlines company in the Nepalese aviation sector. The airlines came into full operation in 1997 by flying a brand new Beachcraft-1900D for a regular sightseeing to Mount Everest. When the airlines entered the field which was opened for the private sector by the government of Nepal in the early nineties, the country’s nascent aviation sector was in a state of take-off attracting a growing number of airline companies. Despite tough competition, the company expanded its fleet from a single aircraft to seven in number in 10 years of its operation. In 2008, the company purchased two ATR-42 aircrafts under the financial assistance of the International Finance Corporations (IFC/World Bank) and added a 70-seat ATR 72-212 in June 2010. With a range of aircrafts in its fleet, Buddha Air has today spread its wings to 13 destinations, including two international (1 seasonal and 1 charter flight) and 11 domestic destinations. After more than two decades of its service to the country’s civil aviation and tourism sector, Buddha Air was recognized as “the most successful airlines” for its sustained growth as well as for the safety and satisfaction of its customers. However, it had tackled with the price war in the face of higher cost of operations as a result of the increased number of airlines in this sector. Recalling the difficult situation due to the indiscriminate price competition, the Managing Director of the airlines, said that the pricing strategy was challenging and there was a strong urge for an unfair price competition from the rivals. “The low cost strategy as pursued by our competitors was not appropriate for our company as we had relatively higher cost of operation as we owned bigger aircrafts,” he said. While the price war remained a major hurdle in its operation, an attempt to venture into international flights was another challenge it encountered for the sustained growth of the airlines.

Offensive/Defensive Talent and Sporting Success in Football: Evidence From the Big Five European Leagues

Over the past decade, the sustained growth of the football business has been associated with clubs’ interest in investing in players’ talent, which has boosted both the transfer market and players’ salaries. However, players’ talent is heterogeneous, given that both defensive and offensive talent are required. Therefore, clubs have to decide on the optimal talent composition, taking into account the differences in the cost and the productivity of both talents. The article shows that, firstly, clubs’ talent composition (ratio between offensive and defensive talent) presents significant differences over time among the Big Five European leagues. Secondly, the talent composition is consistent with maximizing sporting performance (or profit maximization) in the case of Serie A, but not in the case of Bundesliga. Results for Premier League, LaLiga and Ligue 1, are not conclusive with a few exceptions associated with the top teams.

Gay Pride in the Urban New South: Politics, Neighborhood, and Community in Atlanta and Charlotte

Atlanta, Georgia, and Charlotte, North Carolina, serve as urban centers of the Southeast and archetypal New South cities. In the last decades of the twentieth century, city and corporate leaders in Atlanta often welcomed the growth of gay visibility and the resulting queer tourism. While Charlotte’s leaders promoted growth and longed to be like Atlanta, they rebuffed queer visibility. For many queer people, Atlanta lived up to an oft-repeated maxim; it was a city too busy to hate. Charlotte’s pattern of significant and sustained growth throughout the twentieth century led to its well-chosen Chamber of Commerce slogan, labeling the city as a great place to make money, which proved true for many queer people. Still, this financial success did not equal support. City politicians often set aside opportunities to exploit the burgeoning gay market while rejecting Charlotte’s queer citizens wholesale.

Fair and Inclusive Markets

We show empirical evidence that there may not be a tradeoff between market income inequality and high sustained growth, which is key for poverty alleviation. We argue that the economies that achieved high sustained growth and low market income inequality are characterized by dynamism—a drive toward sophisticated export industries, innovation, and creative destruction and a high level of competition. What a country produces and how much it competes domestically and internationally are important for achieving fair and inclusive markets. We explore policy options to steer industrial and market structures toward providing growth opportunities for both workers and firms.

Morphological Awareness Test for Reading and Spelling (MATRS): Technical Report

We created a comprehensive, reliable, and valid morphological awareness assessment tool for students in grades 1-6: the MATRS (Morphological Awareness Test for Reading and Spelling). We targeted these grades for our project because research has demonstrated significant and sustained growth in morphological awareness across these school years (e.g., Berninger, Abbott, Nagy, & Carlisle 2010) and that morphological awareness interventions in these elementary school years lead to gains in morphological awareness and literacy skills in relatively short amounts of time (e.g., Apel, Brimo, Diehm, & Apel, 2013; Bower, Kirby, & Deacon, 2010; Goodwyn & Ahn, 2013). This technical manual details the results of the project.

Long Term Sustained Growth of Insulin Producing Cells Using Agarose-Chitosan Coated Silver Nanocomposites

Diabetes is a group of diseases characterized by high levels of blood sugar for an extended period. Despite newer and effective therapy, current treatment is riddled with fundamental challenges. To overcome the adverse effects of existing drugs, regenerative medicine has emerged as an essential treatment, for which tissue engineering may serve as a foundation for the repair of pancreatic cells secreting insulin. Different polymeric scaffolds have been explored for pancreatic tissue engineering. In the current study, a continuation of our preceding work we attempt to test the role of previously synthesized agarose-chitosan coated silver nanocomposite scaffold (AG-CHNp) for the long-term growth of pancreatic cells. Pancreatic cells were isolated from BALB/c mice and were characterized by dithizone (DTZ) staining, real time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), western blotting, and flow cytometry for characteristic pancreatic markers. The isolated population of cells was grown on scaffolds and its effectiveness towards insulin secretion was studied. The isolated population was found to be positive for glucagon, PDX-1 and Pax-4, while a 200-fold change transcript level of insulin was observed. The cells upon seeding on the scaffolds exhibited sustained growth and insulin secretion as confirmed by western blotting. Overall, the study demonstrates the suitability and application of AG-CHNp for pancreatic tissue engineering.