This paper investigates the relationship between energy use and economic development in five South-Asian countries using national-level panel data from 1990 to 2014. Although many studies have already addressed the nexus between energy consumption and economic growth, there is a mixed finding. According to many researchers, South Asian countries have expanded energy consumption since the 1990s. Therefore, energy consumption as a variable for a specific period is considered for the countries of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Furthermore, foreign direct investment (FDI) and international trade (IT) are also considered to be related variables in this study. Pooled ordinary least squares, random effects, and fixed effects estimation techniques are used to provide a reliable estimation, offsetting the country fixed effects. The fixed effect model is the most effective model that reveals the association between electricity usage and growth factors, as per the specification test and Hausman test. A statistically significant correlation was found between international trade, FDI, economic growth, and power usage. FDI has the highest impact on the rising power demand, followed by global commerce and per capita GDP (gross domestic product). More specifically, the study findings reveal that increased power consumption causes more investment, which results in increased economic growth in South Asian countries. The findings of the study further show that FDI significantly impacted upon power consumption and the area of SAARC’s energy demand, resulting in the entry of new technology and an increase in both economic growth and energy consumption. Future policies may focus on investment in the energy sector to promote economic development.

This paper presents a concept of humanoid robot motion generation using the dedicated simplified dynamic model of the robot (Extended Cart-Table model). Humanoid robot gait with equal steps length is considered. Motion pattern is obtained here with use of Preview Control method. Motion trajectories are first obtained in simulations (off-line) and then they are verified on a test-bed. Tests performed using the real robot confirmed the correctness of the method. Robot completed a set of steps without losing its balance.

Voting power methodology offers insights to understand coalition building in collective decision making. This paper proposes a new measure of voting power inspired from Banzhaf (1965) accounting for the proximity between voters by capturing how often they appear in winning coalitions together. Using this proximity index, we introduce a notion of relative linkages among coalition participants as determinant of coalition building. We propose an application to the governance structure of the International Monetary Fund, with linkages being represented by bilateral volumes of trade between voters. The results are able to explain several important features of the functioning of this particular voting body, and may be useful for other applications in international politics.

The words for the thigh have a complex distribution in Slavic. Thus, the word * lęžьka is found mainly in Russia and in the eastern parts of Belarus and Ukraine. The word *stegno is found in a few large and several smaller clusters in the Czech Republic, parts of Slovakia, in a large part of Ukraine and Belarus, in northern Russia, in some areas in Slovenia, Montenegro, and it is scattered in numerous other places. These words make extensive transitional belts along the border between Belorussia and Russia as well as between Ukraine and Russia. In Poland both the variants *udon and * udъ m are used. In a vast area in Northern Russia the term * χolъka is used. The Turkish borrowings *butъ and *butina occur in a large area in South Slavic. Along the border between Poland and the Czech Republic we find compact, although relatively small areas in which the forms *kyta i *kyto are found, whereas the areas next to the border between Poland and Slovakia use compound forms such as * grubO t ě lo , *noga v ъ grubizně, etc. Moreover, in large areas in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia we find Lithuanian borrowings. Many of the words for the thigh also refer to other parts of the body, such as the hip (the meanings “hip” and “thigh” are provided by many dictionaries alongside), the hip bone, the kidney, the calf, the shin, the foot or parts of the foot. Many of these words have been recorded in The General Slavic Linguistic Atlas (OLA) only in very rare instances, at times only at one point. However, most of them have been referred to in comparative documents other than the OLA.