The New Food Safety Regime in the US: How Will it Affect Canadian Competitiveness

The FSMA appears to be a major undertaking with a very large responsibility placed on the FDA. It would seem that bottlenecks to exporting are bound to appear which will be very frustrating for Canadian firms. It is important for Canadian firms and Canadian policy makers to work hard to ensure that temporary bottlenecks do not become permanent inhibitors of trade. The Canadian government needs to understand industry concerns and use any mechanisms – including those in the NAFTA – to initiate consultations with the US. Given the likely lags in implementation, North American food markets are likely to exhibit considerable disequilibrium over the near term. Trade flows will be affected. As the implementation programs of the FSMA become more transparent, more sophisticated analysis into its effect on Canadian competitiveness in the US market can be undertaken.food, safety, competitiveness, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

The New Food Safety Regime in the US: How Will it Affect Canadian Competitiveness

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) which was signed into law in January, 2011 represents a major initiative to improve food safety in the US. The legislation mandates the US Food and Drug Administration with developing a regulatory system to implement the Act. As yet, the full effect of the Act cannot be evaluated because the regulatory requirements are yet to be developed. There is little doubt, however, that those firms, both domestic and foreign, that wish to supply US consumers with food will face a considerable increase in regulatory costs. This paper outlines the major requirements of the FSMA and suggests how the regulatory burden may fall on foreign versus US domestic suppliers. Areas where Canadian firms may be disadvantaged relative to US firms are outlined. Opportunities that may arise from the FSMA for Canadian agri-food firms are discussed, as are the areas where the FSMA may not conform with the international trade commitments of the United States.competitiveness, food safety, regulatory burden, SPS, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, International Relations/Trade,

Syzygium Cumini Leaf Extract Showed Vibriocidal Activity on Selected Diarrhea Causing Bacteria

The objective of the study was to investigate the effect of ethanolic leaf extract (ELE) of Syzygium cumini against Vibrio cholerae particularly two serogroups Ogawa and Inaba. The phenolic content of the ELE was found high which is comparable to ascorbic acid. Brine shrimp lethality bioassay was then performed to check the cytotoxic effects of ELE. The lower LC50 value of ELE obtained indicated its less cytotoxic properties. The antimicrobial activity of the extract was then evaluated by the disc diffusion method against multi-drug resistant Vibrio serogroups Ogawa and Inaba. The extract effectively inhibited the growth of both serogroups. Altogether, the results demonstrated that the ELE of S. cumini has a significant vibriocidal activity that might be useful as a drug for the treatment of cholera

Comparing the spatio-temporal variability of remotely sensed oceanographic parameters between the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal throughout a decade

The spatio-temporal variability of sea-surface temperature (SST), photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), chlorophyll-a (Chl-a), particulate organic carbon (POC) and particulate inorganic carbon (PIC) was evaluated in the Arabian Sea (ABS) and Bay of Bengal (BoB), from July 2002 to November 2014 by means of remotely sensed monthly composite Aqua MODIS level-3 data having a spatial resolution of 4.63 km. Throughout the time period under consideration, the surface waters of ABS (27.76 ± 1.12°C) were slightly cooler than BoB (28.93 ± 0.76°C); this was observed during all the seasons. On the contrary, the availability of PAR was higher in ABS (45.76 ± 3.41 mol m-2 d-1) compared to BoB (41.75 ± 3.75 mol m-2 d-1), and its spatial dynamics in the two basins was mainly regulated by cloud cover and turbidity of the water column. The magnitude and variability of Chl-a concentration were substantially higher in ABS (0.487 ± 0.984 mg m-3), compared to BoB (0.187 ± 0.243 mg m-3), and spatially higher values were observed near the coastal waters. Both POC and PIC exhibited higher magnitudes in ABS compared to BoB; however, the difference was substantially high in case of POC. None of the parameters showed any significant temporal trend during the 12-year span, except PIC, which exhibited a significant decreasing trend in ABS

Convolutional neural network training with artificial pattern for Bangla handwritten numeral recognition

Recognition of handwritten numerals has gained much interest in recent years due to its various application potentials. The progress of handwritten Bangla numeral is well behind Roman, Chinese and Arabic scripts although it is a major language in Indian subcontinent and is the first language of Bangladesh. Handwritten numeral classification is a high dimensional complex task and existing methods use distinct feature extraction techniques and various classification tools in their recognition schemes. Recently, convolutional neural network (CNN) is found efficient for image classification with its distinct features. In this study, a CNN based method has been investigated for Bangla handwritten numeral recognition. A moderated pre-processing has been adopted to produce patterns from handwritten scan images. On the other hand, CNN has been trained with the patterns plus a number of artificial patterns. A simple rotation based approach is employed to generate artificial patterns. The proposed CNN with artificial pattern is shown to outperform other existing methods while tested on a popular Bangla benchmark handwritten dataset

Multiple convolutional neural network training for Bangla handwritten numeral recognition

Recognition of handwritten numerals has gained much interest in recent years due to its various application potentials. The progress of handwritten Bangla numeral is well behind Roman, Chinese and Arabic scripts although it is a major language in Indian subcontinent and is the first language of Bangladesh. Handwritten numeral classification is a high-dimensional complex task and existing methods use distinct feature extraction techniques and various classification tools in their recognition schemes. Recently, convolutional neural network (CNN) is found efficient for image classification with its distinct features. In this study, three different CNNs with same architecture are trained with different training sets and combined their decisions for Bangla handwritten numeral recognition. One CNN is trained with ordinary training set prepared from handwritten scan images; and training sets for other two CNNs are prepared with fixed (positive and negative, respectively) rotational angles of original images. The proposed multiple CNN based approach is shown to outperform other existing methods while tested on a popular Bangla benchmark handwritten dataset

Ultimate Strength of a Continuous Decking of Cold-Drawn Low-ductility High Strength Steel

Profiled decking of cold-drawn low-ductility high strength steel is a relatively new introduction to composite floor construction. This type of decking shows high sensitivity to distortional as well as local buckling. Prediction of ultimate strength of such decking in continuous configuration is not adequately covered in any of the analytical methods of modern day codes. Instead, due to inadequate guidance, various design codes currently apply additional restrictions on their design and use. The support moment-rotation and ultimate moment of resistance of such decking are the two most important parameters in designing such decking as continuous structure for the construction stage of a composite floor. The current practices require laboratory testing to determine these parameters, which is costly. Finite element analyses are rarely used to derive these parameters. The present paper deals on prediction of ultimate strength of such a decking in continuous configuration using parameters derived from nonlinear finite element analyses. It is demonstrated that a nonlinear finite element model can give a superior estimates of the parameters needed for ultimate strength design of such a decking

Evolving US Food Safety Regulations and International Competitors: Implementation Dynamics

The 2011 US Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) represents a major initiative to improve food safety. The legislation mandates the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with developing a regulatory system to implement the Act. Both domestic and foreign firms that wish to supply US consumers with food will face a considerable increase in regulatory costs. Implementation has proved challenging for the FDA leading to delays which increase investment risks for foreign suppliers, particulalry from developing countries. This paper sets out the major FSMA requirements and examines how the regulatory burden may fall on foreign versus US suppliers

Hot-spot traffic pattern on hierarchical 3D mesh network

A Hierarchical 3D-Mesh (H3DM) Network s a 2D-mesh network of multiple basic modules (BMs), in which the basic modules are 3D-torus networks that are hierarchically interconnected for higher-level networks. In this paper, we evaluate the dynamic communication performance of a H3DM network under hot-spot traffic pattern using a deadlock-free dimension order routing algorithm with minimum number of virtual channels. We have also evaluated the dynamic communication performance of the mesh and torus networks. It is shown that under most imbalance hot-spot traffic pattern H3DM network yields high throughput and low average transfer time than that of mesh and torus networks, providing better dynamic communication performance compared to those networks

Blue carbon stock of the Bangladesh Sundarban mangroves: what could be the scenario after a century?

The total blue carbon stock of the Bangladesh Sundarban mangroves was evaluated and the probable future status after a century was predicted based on the recent trend of changes in the last 30 years and implementing a hybrid model of Markov Chain and Cellular automata. At present 36.24 Tg C and 54.95 Tg C are stored in the above-ground and below-ground compartments respectively resulting in total blue carbon stock of 91.19 Tg C. According to the prediction 15.88 Tg C would be lost from this region by the year 2115. The low saline species composition classes dominated mainly by Heritiera spp. accounts for the major portion of the carbon sock at present (45.60 Tg C), while the highly saline regions stores only 14.90 Tg C. The prediction shows that after a hundred years almost 22.42 Tg C would be lost from the low saline regions accompanied by an increase of 8.20 Tg C in the high saline regions dominated mainly by Excoecaria sp. and Avicennia spp. The net carbon loss would be due to both mangrove area loss (~ 510 km2) and change in species composition leading to 58.28 Tg of potential CO2 emission within the year 2115