The reasons behind the absence of a comprehensive Shariah Governance Framework of Islamic banks in Bangladesh

Purpose: The main objective of the study is to examine the reasons behind the absence of a comprehensive Shariah Governance Framework (SGF) of Islamic banks in Bangladesh. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study has covered 17 respondents through semistructured interviews from the Islamic banks and the Central Bank of Bangladesh with a combination of Shariah supervisory board members, Shariah department executives, Central Bank executives, and banking experts. Findings: Based on findings, this study outlines that the knowledge gap of management, unqualified Shariah supervisory boards members, executives in Central Bank and Islamic banks, and intention of the regulators, policymakers, Shariah experts, government executives, Islamic bankers, Board of directors, stakeholders and civil societies are responsible for the absence of a comprehensive SGF. Practical Implications: The study has significantly contributed to the national regulators, government, and the Central Bank of Bangladesh on the subject for developing a comprehensive Shariah Governance Framework. Originality/Value: The study highlights the reasons for the absence of a comprehensive Shariah Governance Framework which was unexplored for more than 30 years.peer-reviewe

Salmonella Fimbriae: What is the Clue to Their Hairdo?

Fimbriae are important virulence factors for Salmonella pathogenesis. They mediate adhesion to host cells (including plants), food, stainless steel and much more. The fimbrial systems are organised in gene clusters of four to fifteen genes that code for structural, assembly and regulatory proteins. There are three kinds of fimbriae depending on their mode of assembly. The chaperone/usher (CU) fimbriae use a dedicated chaperone and usher protein to coordinate the subunit biogenesis on the cell surface. The curli fimbriae are assembled by nucleation/precipitation pathway. The type IV fimbria assembly requires a transmembrane apparatus and ATP to energise the reaction. Several fimbriae are conserved among Salmonella serovars, while some are present in a limited set or only specific serovars. Expression and regulation of fimbrial genes are not well understood, and most Salmonella fimbriae are poorly expressed during in vitro culture, which further complicates research concerning their regulation and role during infection. However, Salmonella fim gene cluster, coding for type-1 fimbriae, was widely studied and presents its own set of regulators. Investigating fimbrial distribution, expression and regulation will further elucidate their roles in bacterial pathogenesis and host specificity. Furthermore, fimbriae are important for developing efficient diagnostic tests and antimicrobial strategies against Salmonella

Continued Progress: Promising Evidence on Personalized Learning

The findings are grouped into four sections. The first section on student achievement finds that there were positive effects on student mathematics and reading performance and that the lowest-performing students made substantial gains relative to their peers. The second section on implementation and the perceptions of stakeholders finds that adoption of personalized learning practices varied considerably. Personalized learning practices that are direct extensions of current practice were more common, but implementation of some of the more challenging personalized learning strategies was less common. The third section relates implementation features to outcomes and identifies three elements of personalized learning that were being implemented in tandem in the schools with the largest achievement effects. Finally, the fourth section compares teachers' and students' survey responses to a national sample and finds some differences, such as teachers' greater use of practices that support competency-based learning and greater use of technology for personalization in the schools in this study with implementation data

El Fin

EIC George K. Thiruvathukal says farewell in his final from the editors message

Fast Neural Network Predictions from Constrained Aerodynamics Datasets

Incorporating computational fluid dynamics in the design process of jets, spacecraft, or gas turbine engines is often challenged by the required computational resources and simulation time, which depend on the chosen physics-based computational models and grid resolutions. An ongoing problem in the field is how to simulate these systems faster but with sufficient accuracy. While many approaches involve simplified models of the underlying physics, others are model-free and make predictions based only on existing simulation data. We present a novel model-free approach in which we reformulate the simulation problem to effectively increase the size of constrained pre-computed datasets and introduce a novel neural network architecture (called a cluster network) with an inductive bias well-suited to highly nonlinear computational fluid dynamics solutions. Compared to the state-of-the-art in model-based approximations, we show that our approach is nearly as accurate, an order of magnitude faster, and easier to apply. Furthermore, we show that our method outperforms other model-free approaches

Investigation of biofilm development by antibiotic resistant urinary tract infection pathogens and evaluation of antimicrobial activity of Manuka honey on Escherichia coli CTX-M-15 biofilms

Background Antibiotic resistance is one of the major healthcare issues worldwide. Over time, bacteria are becoming more resistant, making antibiotics less effective, and this in turn will lead to an increase in the morbidity rate, the mortality rate, and the healthcare system expenses as well. The rise of antibiotic resistance is reaching critical levels as new mechanisms of resistance are emerging and spreading globally, limiting the available effective treatment options. In addition, biofilms are another significant health care issue: they act as a protective cover for infectious microbes. They are also hard to remove: they require a much higher dose of antibiotics than planktonic organisms. When treating biofilm-associated infections, it is important to understand the biology of biofilm development and biofilm-related gene expression. To understand the role of biofilm in pathogenesis, biofilm formation and gene expression in Escherichia coli CTX-M-15 were investigated in this study. The antivirulence efficacy of Manuka honey as an alternative treatment was analysed for this strain. Method Biofilm formation was measured using the Tissue Culture plate method at different times: after 6, 12, 24 and 48 hours of incubation. Assuming that times correlated with the stages of biofilm development, initial attachment occurred at 6 hours, microcolonies formed at 12 hours, biofilm maturation occurred at 24 hours and biofilm dispersion occurred at 48 hours. Biofilms were quantified in both static and shaking incubators and under three different growth media: nutrient-poor (AB broth), nutrient-rich (Luria-Bertani broth) and general (nutrient broth). A quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction was used to determine the biofilm-related gene expression at the in vitro biofilm development stages. It was also used to determine the antivirulence effect of Manuka honey on select biofilm-related gene expressions. Results The tested strains showed a variable biofilm formation ability when using different media under static and shaking conditions. Antibiotic-resistant strains were high biofilm formers. Regardless of the incubation conditions and growth media used, E. coli CTX-M-15 formed varying amounts of biofilm which did not correlate with the stages of biofilm development. Similarly, the same pattern of biofilm-related gene expression was observed, with a large variation in the growth condition tested. Manuka honey showed potent antibacterial activity: the minimum inhibitory concentration was 6 %, the minimum biocidal concentration was 8 %, and the minimum biofilm elimination concentration was 5 %. The results of the qPCR showed that Manuka honey downregulated the expression of biofilm related genes. Conclusion These findings suggested that, for both E. coli CTX-M-15 biofilm formation and biofilm-related gene expression, the profiles were not affected by the growth conditions tested in this study. This confirms the successful role of biofilm formation in pathogenesis by adapting to different environmental conditions. The findings suggest that this plays a significant role in the increased prevalence in biofilm-associated infections in third-generation cephalosporin-resistant E. coli CTX-M-15. Lastly, Manuka honey had powerful antibacterial and antibiofilm abilities and can be considered a reliable alternative therapy.The Higher Committee for Education Development in Iraq (HCED

Recovery and characterization of viral diversity from aquatic short- and long-read metagenomes

Viruses are the most abundant biological entities in marine ecosystems and play an essential role in global biogeochemical cycles. They have important ecological functions as drivers of bacterial populations through lytic infections and contribute to bacterial genetic diversification. Unfortunately, their study is severely limited by the difficulty to culture and isolate them in lab conditions. Culture-independent techniques such as metagenomics can complement culture-based approaches to capture more phage diversity. However, the vast majority of viral sequences recovered through these methods are uncharacterized and therefore do not provide any information about their interactions with the bacterial community, a phenomenon that has been named “viral dark matter”. In this thesis, several bioinformatic techniques are applied to both short- and long-read metagenomic datasets to recover biological information from marine viral sequences contained therein. A pipeline for recovering viral sequences based on a reference genome was developed and applied to the study of myophages infecting the alphaproteobacterial SAR11 clade, one of the most abundant bacterioplankton groups in surface marine and freshwater ecosystems. We were able to recover 22 new genomes which include the first genomes of myophages infecting LD12, the SAR11 freshwater clade. These sequences are underrepresented in datasets derived from the viral fraction, suggesting a bias of either technical or biological nature. Surprisingly, this family of phages code for an operon which resembles the secretion system type VIII operon in Escherichia coli. The function of this phage operon is still unknown. Next, a long-read dataset from the Mediterranean Sea was explored for viral contigs to contrast phage recovery between long- and short-read datasets. The analysis revealed that while long-read assemblies resulted in viral sequences of better quality, there was a sizable amount of intra-clade viral diversity that was not included in the assemblies. This viral diversity only found in long reads is even greater than previously thought. This untapped diversity could aid biotechnological efforts as evidenced by the discovery of new endolysins. Finally, a tool (Random Forest Assignment of Hosts, or RaFAH) for assigning hosts to phage sequences obtained from metagenomic datasets was created. The tool is based on a machine learning tool trained with phage protein clusters generated de novo. Benchmarking shows that RaFAH is on par with other state-of-the-art classifiers and is able to classify phage contigs at the level of Kingdom, which makes it the first classifier to accurately detect Archaea viruses from metagenomic samples. A feature importance analysis reveals that the protein clusters with the most predictive power are those involved in host recognition.Los bacteriófagos (”fagos”) son los organismos más abundantes en los ecosistemas marinos y tienen un papel esencial en los ciclos biogeoquímicos globales. Asimismo, influencian la evolución de las poblaciones bacterianas que infectan y contribuyen a la diversificación del acervo genético bacteriano. Desgraciadamente, su estudio se ve limitado por la dificultad de cultivar y aislar estos organismos en el laboratorio. El uso de técnicas que no requieren cultivo, como la metagenómica, pueden complementar el cultivo en laboratorio para recuperar una mayor diversidad de fagos. Sin embargo, la inmensa mayoría de secuencias virales recuperadas mediante metagenómica no pueden ser caracterizadas, por lo que no proporcionan ninguna información sobre sus interacciones con la comunidad bacteriana, un fenómeno que se ha nombrado “materia oscura viral”. En esta tesis se han utilizado múltiples procesos bioinformáticos en colecciones de metagenomas de lectura corta y larga para caracterizar las secuencias virales que contienen. Se ha desarrollado un procedimiento para recuperar secuencias virales a partir de un genoma de referencia y se ha aplicado al estudio de miofagos que infectan al clado SAR11 de las Alfaproteobacteria, uno de los grupos de bacterioplankton más abundantes en agua dulce y agua salada de superficie. Se consiguió recuperar 22 nuevos genomas que incluyen el primer genoma que infecta LD12, el subclado de SAR11 de agua dulce. Estos genomas están poco representados en colecciones obtenidas de la fracción viral, lo que sugiere que las afecta un sesgo técnico o biológico. Sorprendentemente, esta familia de fagos contiene un operón similar al sistema de secreción tipo VIII de Escherichia coli. La función de este operón es aún desconocida. Asimismo, se contrastó la recuperación de secuencias víricas entre colecciones de lectura corta y larga utilizando colecciones obtenidas en el mar Mediterráneo. Los resultados muestran que aunque los ensamblajes derivados de las lecturas largas producen secuencias virales de mejor calidad, en el proceso se pierde una gran cantidad de diversidad intraclado. Esta diversidad es mucho mayor de la recuperada con lecturas cortas, y podría explotarse para aplicaciones biotecnológicas, como el descubrimiento de nuevas endolisinas. Finalmente, se desarrolló un programa (Random Forest Assignment of Hosts, o RaFAH) para asignar hospedadores a secuencias virales obtenidas de colecciones metagenómicas. El programa se basa en el uso de algoritmos de machine learning entrenados con grupos de proteínas creados de novo. RaFAH muestra un rendimiento similar a otros clasificadores de secuencias y es capaz de clasificar secuencias víricas al nivel taxonómico de Reino, siendo así el primer clasificador capaz de detectar fagos que infectan arqueas con precisión. El análisis de importancia de rasgo revela que los grupos de proteínas con mayor poder predictivo son aquellos involucrados en el reconocimiento del hospedador

Pembentukan Grup Homogen pada Pembelajaran Kolaboratif menggunakan Performance Factor Analysis

Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) adalah bentuk pembelajaran kolaboratif yang dibantu oleh komputer. CSCL memanfaatkan teknologi komputer dalam berbagai aspek, mulai dari untuk meningkatkan interaksi antar anggota kelompok, berbagi pengetahuan, hingga membagi dan menggabungkan pekerjaan kelompok tersebut. CSCL tidak dapat berjalan tanpa adanya Computer-Supported Group Formation (CSGF). Pada tugas akhir ini penulis menganalisis dan merancang CSGF yang cocok untuk pengimplementasian algoritma Performance Factor Analysis. Pengimplementasian dan pengujian sistem serta parameter – parameter yang dibutuhkan oleh Performance Factor Analysis ditentukan dengan pendekatan bounded. Sistem CSGF yang dibangun menggunakan Stereotype model yang menggunakan knowledge base dan average performance sebagai atribut yang menjadi stereotype. Stereotype model dibangun menggunakan K-means clustering. Grup yang dibentuk bersifat ability group dan beranggotakan 3 orang. Parameter – parameter Performance Factor Analysis yaitu ?, ?, dan ? berpengaruh terhadap homogenitas grup yang dibentuk. Ketiga parameter berbanding terbalik dan memiliki pengaruh yang tidak begitu besar dengan homogenitas grup yang dibentuk. Sebaliknya, inisialisasi centroid pada saat pembuatan stereotype model menggunakan K-means memiliki pengaruh yang signifikan terhadap grup yang dibentuk, termasuk homogenitasnya. Dimana beberapa inisialisasi centroid yang dilakukan menghasilkan grup yang homogenitasnya baik, dan beberapa tidak