Theory of elementary particles

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Urbanization of Arable Land in Lahore City in Pakistan: A Case-Study

This paper is intended to explore the extent of converting arable land for urban use and the pace of construction activities on the residential housing schemes. In most of the schemes more than half of the plots are inbuilt because by-laws are very flexible and owners of vacant plots have no fear of cancellation and they consider this investment a better safeguard against inflation. Moreover,speculators invested their money in the plots because no cost/taxes are involved in the keeping of vacant plots. By implementing strict by-laws and imposing capital gains tax on vacant land and converting the collected taxes from the schemes to create revolving funds for house building for really needy, low-middle income groups, the extent of conversion arable land into housing schemes can be reduced.Key words: Speculators; Pace; Conversion; Vacant plots; Density; Land policyRésumé: Ce document est destiné à explorer l'étendue de la conversion de terres arables pour une utilisation urbaine et le rythme des activités de construction sur les programmes de logement résidentiel. Dans la plupart des régimes de plus de la moitié des parcelles sont intégré, car les règlements sont très flexibles et les contre l'inflation. Par ailleurs, les spéculateurs ont investi leur argent dans les parcelles, car aucun coût / taxes sont impliqués dans le maintien de parcelles vacantes. En mettant en œuvre stricte des règlements et d'imposer les gains en capital sur des terrains vacants et en convertissant les taxes perçues par les régimes de créer des fonds renouvelables pour la construction de la maison pour vraiment nécessiteuses, les groupes à revenu faible ou intermédiaire, l'étendue de la conversion des terres arables en programmes de logement peut être réduite.Mots clés: Les spéculateurs; Pace; Conversion; Terrains vagues; Densité; Politique foncièr

Demographic Dividend, Digital Innovation, and Economic Growth: Bangladesh Experience

This study aims to understand the linkages between demographic dividends, digital innovation, and economic growth, using Bangladesh as a case study. It adopts a three-stage least squares (3SLS) model to explore how and to what extent the digitization and demographic transition lead towards faster economic growth in Bangladesh. Results imply that economic growth is significantly influenced both by digitization and the demographic transition. Estimation reveals that with an increase of 1 percentage point in the number of internet users, the GDP would increase by 0.11%, ceteris paribus, while a 10-basis point decrease in the dependency ratio would increase the GDP by 7.2%, on average. The key driving factors for digitization are the labor participation rate, workers’ productivity, and mobile penetration. The urbanization rate, however, adversely impacts the rise in internet users. Estimations imply that the Human Development Index (HDI) score and urbanization rate have significant negative impacts on the dependency ratio, while female participation in the labor force has a positive impact on it. The study provides insights to assist the government and policymakers in framing a roadmap on how Bangladesh could utilize demographic transition to achieve faster economic growth while fostering digitization and technological innovation. Lessons learned could also be used in other developing countries in the Asia and Pacific region

Portfolio Shocks and the Dynamics of the Real Economy of Australia (1980-2014): A Structural Vector Autoregressive Model Approach

This paper analyses domestic and foreign equity shocks under long-run restrictions on the Australian macroeconomy using a five-variable SVAR model. Evidence reveals that aggregate supply shocks produce positive wealth effects coming from increasing real value of Australian equity as the goods prices fall. Moreover, the channels of how Australian portfolio shocks affect the Australian economy are through interest rates and prices in the goods market. Australian portfolio also acts as a channel for wealth effect arising from the foreign equity market. There was some reduction in the Australian households’ wealth following the global financial crises, but shows strong resilience as it quickly rebounded due to the strong aggregate supply shocks. The role of Australian equity to its domestic economy in recent time is getting stronger than in the past since the equity market capitalization has grown enormously in the last decade

Portfolio Shocks and the Dynamics of the Real Economy of Australia (1980-2014): A Structural Vector Autoregressive Model Approach

This paper analyses domestic and foreign equity shocks under long-run restrictions on the Australian macroeconomy using a five-variable SVAR model. Evidence reveals that aggregate supply shocks produce positive wealth effects coming from increasing real value of Australian equity as the goods prices fall. Moreover, the channels of how Australian portfolio shocks affect the Australian economy are through interest rates and prices in the goods market. Australian portfolio also acts as a channel for wealth effect arising from the foreign equity market. There was some reduction in the Australian households’ wealth following the global financial crises, but shows strong resilience as it quickly rebounded due to the strong aggregate supply shocks. The role of Australian equity to its domestic economy in recent time is getting stronger than in the past since the equity market capitalization has grown enormously in the last decade

Predicting Remaining Useful Life with Similarity-Based Priors

Prognostics is the area of research that is concerned with predicting the remaining useful life of machines and machine parts. The remaining useful life is the time during which a machine or part can be used, before it must be replaced or repaired. To create accurate predictions, predictive techniques must take external data into account on the operating conditions of the part and events that occurred during its lifetime. However, such data is often not available. Similarity-based techniques can help in such cases. They are based on the hypothesis that if a curve developed similarly to other curves up to a point, it will probably continue to do so. This paper presents a novel technique for similarity-based remaining useful life prediction. In particular, it combines Bayesian updating with priors that are based on similarity estimation. The paper shows that this technique outperforms other techniques on long-term predictions by a large margin, although other techniques still perform better on short-term predictions.</p

Pilot study on the current management of children with COVID-19 in hospitals in Bangladesh; findings and implications

Objective: The focus on COVID-19 in children in low- and middle-income countries including Bangladesh has been on addressing key issues including poor vaccination rates as well as mental health issues, domestic violence and child labour. However, the focus on optimally managing children in hospitals is changing with new variants and concerns with the development of hyperinflammatory syndromes. There are also concerns with the overuse of antimicrobials to treat patients with COVID-19 in hospitals enhancing resistance rates. The Bangladesh Paediatric Association have developed guidelines to improve patient care building on national guidance. Consequently, there is a need to document the current management of children with COVID-19 in Bangladesh and use the findings for future guidance. Methods: Rapid analysis of the management of children with COVID-19 among eight private and public hospitals in Bangladesh with varying numbers of in-patient beds using purposely developed case report forms (CRFs). The CRFs were piloted before full roll-out. Results: Overall low numbers of children in hospital with COVID-19 (4.3% of in-patient beds). The majority were male (59.6%) and aged 5 years or under (63.5%). Reasons for admission included respiratory distress/ breathing difficulties with 94.2% of COVID-19 cases confirmed. All children were prescribed antibiotics empirically, typically those on the Watch list of antibiotics and administered parenterally, with only a small minority switched to oral therapy before discharge. There was appreciable prescribing of Vitamins (C and D) and zinc and encouragingly limited prescribing of other antimicrobials (antivirals, antimalarials and antiparasitic medicines). Length of stay was typically 5 to 10 days. Conclusion: Encouraging to see low hospitalisation rates and limited use of antimicrobials apart from antibiotics. Concerns with high empiric use of antibiotics and limited switching to oral formulations can be addressed by instigating antimicrobial stewardship programmes. We will be monitoring this

Delineating Root System Architecture in Rapeseed/Canola (Brassica napus L.) through Molecular and Transcriptomic Approaches

Root system architecture of plant plays a key role in water and nutrient uptake from the soil, provides anchorage and acts as a storage organ. In this current research, we have focused on the molecular and physiological basis of root system variation in canola (Brassica napus L.). Genome wide association mappings in a diverse canola germplasm panel with ~37,500 and ~30,200 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers were conducted under greenhouse and field conditions, respectively. A total of 52 significant SNP markers associated with different root architectural traits were identified in the greenhouse study. Majority of the markers were distributed on five chromosomes, A01, A02, A04, C03 and C06, of B. napus. Twenty-two candidate genes related to root growth and development were detected within 50 kbp upstream and downstream of the significant markers. Three of these candidate genes, P-glycoprotein 6 (PGP6), Tetraspanin 7 (TET7) and ARABIDILLO-2, were co-localized with three markers on chromosome C03, A01 and A04, respectively. In the field study, 31 significant SNP markers associated with different root traits were detected. A total of 15 root related candidate genes were identified within 100 kbp upstream and downstream of different significant markers. We also analyzed and compared the transcriptomes from the root systems of spring (weak root system) and winter (vigorous root system) growth habits at two different time points, 30 and 60 days. A total of 169,646 transcripts were analyzed, of which, 582 and 555 transcripts were found to be significantly differentially expressed between spring and winter types at 30 and 60 days, respectively. Several cytokinin and gibberellin associated genes and genes sets were found to be upregulated in spring type compared to winter type at 60 days. Cytokinin has proven inhibitory effect on root system architecture in different crops, whereas, gibberellin promote root elongation but inhibit lateral root growth. Therefore, we suggest that cytokinin and gibberellin may play an important role in root system variation between spring and winter growth habits. Significant marker loci, candidate genes and transcriptome profile identified in this research will assist future research to understand the root system variation in rapeseed/canola.North Dakota State University. Center of Excellence for AgbiotechnologyNational institute of Food and Agriculture (U.S.)Northern Canola Growers Associatio

Failure and maintenance information extraction methodology using multiple databases from industry: A new data fusion approach

This study develops a new method to identify a vital input, i.e. failure times of an asset, to reliability models from multiple but commonly-available industrial maintenance databases. A text mining approach is employed to extract useful features from unstructured free texts of different maintenance work records. The proposed method is further developed using Active Learning algorithms to improve the robustness of the results. The outcomes of this study can be used to develop advanced and applicable reliability models from historical maintenance databases, which were not effectively utilised before. Two industry case studies were conducted to justify the method