Corruption, Trade Openness, and Environmental Quality: A Panel Data Analysis of Selected South Asian Countries

The second half of the twentieth century emerged with two important concepts of the economic world. In the start of the second half, economists, developmentalists, etc., introduced the idea of “development”, while; latter it was replaced by a more meaningful and attractive term “sustainable development”. Sustainable development is defined as “balancing the fulfillment of human needs with the protection of the natural environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also in the indefinite future” [Wikipedia (2007)]. Or “Sustainable development means that pattern of development that permits future generations to live at least as well as the current generation” [Todaro and Smith (2005)], eighth edition]. The field of sustainable development can be conceptually broken into four constituent parts: environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, social sustainability and political sustainability. Although, the word sustainable development is very vast and deep, but the main emphasis of our study will be on environmental sustainability

PM2.5 ARISING FROM DIFFERENT COOKING FUELS IN RURAL RESIDENTIAL HOUSES

A study was conducted in the rural area of Kasur district, Pakistan to monitor PM2.5levels generated by different fuel types. Three rural houses were selected, one burning wood as primary cooking fuel while the other two employed LPG for cooking purposes. Burning of wood caused PM levels to increase 37 times above the WHO recommended limit of 25 µg/m³ while smoking also contributed significantly increasing PM levels up to 48 times than the recommended limit. LPG was observed to increase the levels up to 14 times. It is important to promote the use of cleaner fuels as increased exposure to PM levels generated by biomass fuel burning can have a significant impact upon human health

An Agent-based CBIR System for Medical Images

The growing number of image acquisition and storage systems in the digital world demand for the new retrieval methods. Most of the existing retrieval methods use textual information, which has been mainly entered manually for every image in the image collection. In order to access the images of interest, user gives textual input against which images are retrieved from the image collection. Sometimes, this results in garbage retrieval due the human involvement in the image annotation process. So more efficient image retrieval mechanism is needed. To overcome the issue, other approach which is generally considered is content-based image retrieval (CBIR). CBIR depends on the automatically extracted features for every image in the image collection as well as their storage and comparison upon a query. Therefore, feature extraction technique and their storage space are important aspects of CBIR. In this paper, we design and develop agent-based CBIR system for image retrieval and suggest the best feature extraction technique in terms of less storage space and more accurate search results. Although the proposed image retrieval technique can be used for any type image collection, our work focuses on the medical images

A Systematic Review on the Climate and Ecosystem Change Associated With the COVID-19 Epidemic: Global Challenges

The most serious current challenge in the world is COVID-19 disease incidence. With the spread of COVID-19, in addition to widespread human and economic damages, concerns have increased about the world’s climate and ecosystem change. This change alters the genetic structure of viruses, leading to newer strains. This study addressed global challenges regarding the COVID-19 epidemic effects and possible two-way changes in climate and ecosystems. Studies conducted from 2019 to 2022 were reviewed in this systematic review. Articles on climate and ecosystem change related to the COVID-19 epidemic were searched in the Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed databases in accordance with the MeSH search strategy using keywords such as "Climate Change" and "Ecosystem" or "COVID-19". In this research, the coding method based on the PRISMA chart was used, and 13 related articles were included in the study after qualitative evaluation. The COVID-19 epidemic is likely to have significant implications for progress in climate and ecosystem change. The phenomenon of climate change and its interaction with the COVID-19 epidemic is not limited to natural issues. One of the most important consequences is its impact on the social and economic issues of human societies, the most important of which are air pollution and environmental degradation. An increase in normal and special wastes, water consumption and wastewater production, air pollution after the start of the global economy, damage to forests and animals, and tendencies to use fossil fuels are only a part of the direct and indirect negative effects of COVID-19 on climate and ecosystem change. Epidemics directly threaten people and the health system, while climate and ecosystem change more broadly weakens natural and human systems. The COVID-19 crisis requires solutions within weeks and months, whereas responses to the climate and ecosystem change crisis seem less acute. However, the effects of climate and ecosystem change worsen with further procrastination. Thus, such crises with overlapping conditions and interactions require more attention and immediate public mobilization. Thus, the necessary planning should be implemented to moderate and reduce its effects

DETERMINANTS OF TERRORISM: A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS OF SELECTED SOUTH ASIAN COUNTRIES

The phenomenon of terrorism has riveted world's unwavering attention since 9/11. The underlying study investigates the determinants of terrorism in the South Asian region. Applying negative binomial regression, the study finds that both political structure and economic conditions are responsible for terrorism. On the economic front, relative deprivation represented by income disparity is the major cause of terrorism. On the other hand, deprivation of the people of their political rights and civil liberties, exhibited by political repression, compels them to be involved in terrorist activities. Our findings illustrates that high literacy rate is one of the foremost reason for terrorism in the region.Terrorism, political repression, inequality, education, population, D74, H56

Effects Hospital Incident Command System Establishment on Disaster Preparedness of Tehran Hospitals Affiliated to Law Enforcement Staff Under Simulated Conditions

Background: Hospitals as the essential health service providers should manage their performance during incidents and disasters. The Hospital Incident Command System (HICS) is helpful in this regard. The establishment of this system assists the hospital disaster risk management committee to get prepared in emergency situations. This study aimed to assess the effect of HICS establishment on preparedness of Police Hospitals in Tehran, Iran during disasters, under simulated conditions. Materials and Methods: This was a quasi-experimental interventional study. The study participants were 55 managers of Imam Sajjad and Vali Asr hospitals in Tehran selected by census method (23 from Imam Sajjad Hospital as the control group, and 32 from Vali Asr Hospital as the experimental group). The preparedness of hospitals was measured before the intervention using Hospital Preparedness Scale (HPS) designed by Khankeh (2012). After establishment of HICS in Vali Asr Hospital, the hospital managers received a 3-day training through incident scenario. After one month, their preparedness was measured again by HPS instrument. The collected data were analyzed in SPSS (Version 18) using descriptive statistics, Independent t test and Chi-square test. Results: Establishment of HICS significantly increased preparedness of hospitals in communications, continuity of vital services, manpower, and procurement and logistics areas. Conclusion: Establishment of HICS can improve the hospitals preparedness at times of disasters in many aspects. It is suggested that similar studies be conducted in private and public hospitals with longer follow-up time

Health Services Vulnerability During the Ebola Outbreak: A Qualitative Report

Ebola is an infectious disease, which is caused by a virus belonging to the Filoviridae group. The outbreak of the disease in the African countries in 2015 caused massive death and contamination of the healthcare personnel those who were engaged in treating the infected patients and caused irreparable damage to the healthcare system. In this study, the vulnerability of the team of health service providers during the Ebola outbreak in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone is studied. The article also proposes solutions that can be learned as a lesson, help in increasing their resilience in similar biological hazards and planning management strategies for similar events in the future. Long before the outbreak took place, West African countries were already facing acute problems in terms of access to health services and health infrastructure. The most important shortcomings for the same were identified as insufficient number of health personnel and capacity shortage that prevented the people from being ready to deal with such uncalled events viz. accidents and epidemic disease outbreak. The Ebola epidemic exacerbated the persisting problems caused due to a shortage of personnel in these countries and caused the death of a large number of common people as well as healthcare personnel. Generally, the vulnerability of the health team working during the Ebola outbreak could be divided into five general dimensions: 1. Management weakness; 2. Lack of engineering and environmental control; 3. Obstacles in the use of personal protective equipment; 4. Not having enough skills and practice exercises; and 5. Ignoring the social factors and satisfaction of the healthcare personnel. The main theme of the study was failure to understand the risk of personnel in accidents and disasters. Findings revealed building capacity and reducing vulnerability of the healthcare personnel against disasters and epidemics depends upon the perceived risk, which is a decisive factor for any intervention. Maintenance of human resources is impossible unless with the sole aim of promoting resilience in various areas of management, health, environmental control, the proper use of personal protective equipment, teaching training, skill upgrading of personnel, and increased social and material support are achieved

The Role of Volunteer Citizens in Response to Accidents and Disasters

Background: Many organizations, especially at the time of accidents, disasters, and critical conditions, cannot provide their services without the presence of volunteers. When accidents and disasters occur, the first persons who normally appear at the scene are citizens. Volunteer citizens with the skills and local knowledge can play important roles when accidents and disasters occur and can provide valuable assistance to the relief forces. The current article aimed at examining the role of volunteer citizens in response to accidents and disasters.   Materials and Methods: The current study examined the published articles from 2000 to 2016 based on the following keywords: informal volunteers in the disasters, challenges facing volunteer citizens in accidents and disasters, informal volunteers and disasters in local and foreign electronic databases including SID, Magiran, Iran Medex, ISC, Google Scholar, PubMed, ISI, and Scopus. Results: Based on the search strategy, 50 articles were examined and the keywords, definitions, volunteer roles, role of volunteers in accidents and disasters, various types of informal voluntary activities, and volunteer citizens’ participation were examined.  Conclusion: Studies referred to the roles, definitions, and challenges that informal volunteers face in various stages of accidents and disasters and the obvious point in the research was that more adaptive and comprehensive crisis and emergency management models are needed to utilize the capacities and flexibility of volunteers available within and between communities in disasters, and the network structure management can be helpful to manage the volunteers.&nbsp