Flexible Trade Policies in Agriculture Sectors of Developing Countries: Proposing a Technical Approach for Sri Lanka

After two decades of liberalized economic policies together with early accession to WTO, Sri Lanka could not achieve the exp ected fast economic growth. Agriculture growth in particular fell sharply. WTO Doha round expects a deeper liberalization. Instead, we will benefit more from being a friend of the "Development Box" and securing flexibility in tariff revisions. In asserting this, the paper analyzes impacts of liberalized policies on agriculture, stress the need for flexible trade policies and formulate a design for self designating Special Products (SP) and Special Safeguard Mechanisms (SSM). The past economic growth favoured mostly urbanised population. Sluggish rural agricultural growth, hurt with increased food imports, was the main cause of this unbalance development. Therefore the sustainable growth of the agriculture sector, facilitated by some protection, is necessary for equitable economic development. As the country budget restricts domestic support, the SP and SSM modalities would be the most suitable protective tools. WTO Hong Kong meeting allows flexibility in tariff schedules to address rural development (RD), food security (FS) and livelihood security (LS) needs through protection. The study identified appropriate criteria to designate agriculture products contributing to RD, FS, and LS for protection from dumping and import surges. The study recommends SP and also Volume and Price triggers for products as appropriate to invoke SSM for Sri Lanka.Sri Lanka, trade liberalization, market access, special products, special safeguard mechanisms, International Relations/Trade,

Investigative Simulation: Towards Utilizing Graph Pattern Matching for Investigative Search

This paper proposes the use of graph pattern matching for investigative graph search, which is the process of searching for and prioritizing persons of interest who may exhibit part or all of a pattern of suspicious behaviors or connections. While there are a variety of applications, our principal motivation is to aid law enforcement in the detection of homegrown violent extremists. We introduce investigative simulation, which consists of several necessary extensions to the existing dual simulation graph pattern matching scheme in order to make it appropriate for intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials. Specifically, we impose a categorical label structure on nodes consistent with the nature of indicators in investigations, as well as prune or complete search results to ensure sensibility and usefulness of partial matches to analysts. Lastly, we introduce a natural top-k ranking scheme that can help analysts prioritize investigative efforts. We demonstrate performance of investigative simulation on a real-world large dataset.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures. Paper to appear in the Fosint-SI 2016 conference proceedings in conjunction with the 2016 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining ASONAM 201

The mother of all protocols: Restructuring quantum information's family tree

We give a simple, direct proof of the "mother" protocol of quantum information theory. In this new formulation, it is easy to see that the mother, or rather her generalization to the fully quantum Slepian-Wolf protocol, simultaneously accomplishes two goals: quantum communication-assisted entanglement distillation, and state transfer from the sender to the receiver. As a result, in addition to her other "children," the mother protocol generates the state merging primitive of Horodecki, Oppenheim and Winter, a fully quantum reverse Shannon theorem, and a new class of distributed compression protocols for correlated quantum sources which are optimal for sources described by separable density operators. Moreover, the mother protocol described here is easily transformed into the so-called "father" protocol whose children provide the quantum capacity and the entanglement-assisted capacity of a quantum channel, demonstrating that the division of single-sender/single-receiver protocols into two families was unnecessary: all protocols in the family are children of the mother.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figure

Optimal superdense coding of entangled states

We present a one-shot method for preparing pure entangled states between a sender and a receiver at a minimal cost of entanglement and quantum communication. In the case of preparing unentangled states, an earlier paper showed that a 2n-qubit quantum state could be communicated to a receiver by physically transmitting only n+o(n) qubits in addition to consuming n ebits of entanglement and some shared randomness. When the states to be prepared are entangled, we find that there is a reduction in the number of qubits that need to be transmitted, interpolating between no communication at all for maximally entangled states and the earlier two-for-one result of the unentangled case, all without the use of any shared randomness. We also present two applications of our result: a direct proof of the achievability of the optimal superdense coding protocol for entangled states produced by a memoryless source, and a demonstration that the quantum identification capacity of an ebit is two qubits.Comment: Final Version. Several technical issues clarifie

What is development communication?

Development communication is often looked upon, by writers on the subject, as a tool to bring about development in less developed countries. In this sense, what is emphasised is the use of communication media for development. In a recently published Orientation and Resource Kit on Development Communication by UNESCO, Mayo and Servaes (1994) begin with the observation, that communication media are often called upon to support development programmes. They go on to state that, whereas development strategies could vary within and across countries, the communication activities associated with them are often quite similar. These activities are informing people about specific initiatives and urging their support for them. What I am going to discuss in this paper, however, are the much broader aspects of the intellectual discourse that underlie the concept of development communication. The practicalities of the use of communication for development will be mentioned, only in so far, as it is necessary to illustrate this intellectual tradition..

RFiD Threads® Technology for Circular Economy and Future Sustainability

Problem The fashion industry is the second most polluting industry globally [UNEP2021] - 85% of all textiles go to landfill each year [WEF2021]. There is growing demand for a shift to circular business models, with new concepts emerging such as “extended producer responsibility” [DEFRA2022], and policy announcements such as the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles, mandating Digital Product Passports (DPP) [EC2023].The Ellen McArthur Foundation [EMF2021] has stated that “Sustainability concerns among customers are also projected to heighten”. This fact, coupled with the preparation of potential new regulatory instruments such as ‘Extended Producer Responsibility’ and other critical regulatory developments, is pushing the industry to consider different and more sustainable ways of producing textile products. A new technology-infrastructure to facilitate this transition is required, to support companiesand consumers access critical data on individual garments. 150 billion items of clothing are produced annually worldwide [EMF2022], of which around 12.5 billion were tagged in 2022, using radiofrequency identification (RFID) technology [Checkpoint2022]. The use of RFID tags is increasing rapidly, with the market projected to reach $35.6 Billion by 2030 [MarketsAndMarkets2022]. However, there are mainly two sustainability related problems holding back the full potential of RFID in the fashion industry: Weaknesses in current RFID-tag technologies: low robustness, non-washability, and attachment to temporary labels not integrated with the garment itself. 12.5 Billion RFID-tags were used last year in the fashion industry, mainly for inventory management [Checkpoint2022]. Those billions of paper/metal/label tags are usually removed immediately after sale and end up in landfill (which is very bad for the environment), because they are not washable or comfortable to wear with thegarment. For garments to be traceable throughout their lifecycle (enabling efficiencies and circular models), there is a need for integrating permanent 'Digital Passports' (e.g. RFID) in each textile-based product, and for easy access to data contained in these Digital Passports. Lack of data access, exchange and integration between supply chain actors: Currently, stakeholders use their own independent data management system/s. Therefore, the biggest challenges for efficient recycling/reuse of clothing is lack of access to data on fibre/material content. This makes it very difficult to implement automated systems for breaking up and separating used clothing items into their different fibre components. &nbsp

Liver segmentation using 3D CT scans.

Master of Science in Computer Science. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2018.Abstract available in PDF file

The diagnosis and treatment of sleep disordered breathing in patients with cardiovascular disease in England: current pathways and barriers to optimal care

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a major health burden accounting for more than 30% of deaths worldwide, but there have been significant advances in its management in recent years. These have been adopted into clinical practice guidelines, however, there is a mismatch between the widely perceived ‘best practice’ and how patients are actually managed in clinical practice. In most healthcare systems, the delivery of care is not standardised. Sleep disordered breathing (SDB) is highly prevalent in patients with CVD and can further potentiate their cardiovascular risk and lead to adverse cardiovascular mortality. A literature review of the association between cardiovascular disease and SDB will be evaluated in relation to pathophysiology, screening, diagnosis and treatment in this thesis. The current evidence for the management of SDB in CVD will also be reviewed. SDB has been traditionally considered as a discipline in respiratory medicine, therefore there are diagnosis and treatment challenges and most patients with SDB are undiagnosed and untreated. Patients with both CVD and SDB are likely to have multiple comorbidities requiring complex management strategies. Thus, the main aim of this thesis is to identify these practice barriers to diagnosis and treatment in patients with SDB and CVD, using both quantitative and qualitative methodology. Publicly available data sources related to SDB (such as Hospital Episode Statistics [HES data] and NHS RightCare), were used help understand the variation in service provision and diagnostic rates. To identify the barriers to diagnosis and treatment of patients with SDB and CVD, mixed-methods were used (i.e. both quantitative and qualitative methodology). For primary care, previously conducted GP and patient surveys were analysed and semi-structured interviews of healthcare professionals were carried out to identify barriers in secondary and tertiary care. In the past two decades, large number of QI tools have been widely in the management of cardiovascular disease with aim of overcoming barriers, however, we do not know whether they change cardiovascular outcome. Thus, a secondary aim of this thesis is to identify effective QI methodology and utilise them to improve and redesign local practice. A systematic review (of randomised/cluster controlled trials) was also carried out with the aim of exploring the impact of QI methodology on CVD outcome. Although the current evidence suggests that treating patients with SDB using PAP therapy may not have strong benefits as previously thought, the diagnosis of SDB is still important in patients with CVD because it reflects a group with higher CV risk. There are a variety of barriers that could delay the diagnosis and treatment of SDB, such as the lack of local access to sleep studies, lack of guidelines and hard outcome data, patient perceptions and cultural barriers between HPs. QI methods can be used to potentially overcome these barriers and care pathways seems to be the most effective.Open Acces

Cost-effectiveness implications of GP intervention to promote physical activity: evidence from Perth, Australia

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Physical inactivity is a major risk factor for many chronic diseases including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and some cancers. It is estimated that, in Australia, physical inactivity contributes to 13,500 annual deaths and incurs an annual cost of AU$21 billion to the health care system. The cost of physical inactivity to the Western Australian (WA) economy is estimated to be about AU$ 2.1 billion. Increased burden of physical inactivity has motivated health professionals to seek cost effective intervention to promote physical activity. One such strategy is encouraging general practitioners (GPs) to advocate physical activity to the patients who are at high risk of developing chronic diseases associated with physical inactivity. This study intends to investigate the cost-effectiveness of a subsidy program for GP advice to promote physical activity.</p> <p>Methodology</p> <p>The percentage of population that could potentially move from insufficiently active to sufficiently active, on GP advice was drawn from the Western Australian (WA) Premier's Physical Activity Taskforce (PATF) survey in 2006. Population impact fractions (<it>PIF</it>) for diseases attributable to physical inactivity together with disability adjusted life years (<it>DALYs</it>) and health care expenditure were used to estimate the net cost of intervention for varying subsidies. Cost-effectiveness of subsidy programs were evaluated in terms of cost per <it>DALY </it>saved at different compliance rates.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>With a 50% adherence to GP advice, an annual health care cost of AU$24 million could be potentially saved to the WA economy. A <it>DALY </it>can be saved at a cost of AU$ 11,000 with a AU$ 25 subsidy at a 50% compliance rate. Cost effectiveness of such a subsidy program decreases at higher subsidy and lower compliance rates.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Implementing a subsidy for GP advice could potentially reduce the burden of physical inactivity. However, the cost-effectiveness of a subsidy program for GP advice depends on the percentage of population who comply with GP advice.</p