Energy – Growth Nexus- A Case of South Asian Countries

The relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is a hot issue in today's society. This paper aims to empirically verify the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth. This article analyzes the relation of energy consumption with the economic growth taking the case of South Asian countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal) along with the macroeconomic determinants that affect the total economic growth – FDI growth, CPI rate and population growth in order to avoid omitted variable bias and misleading results. The time span of this study covers the period of 1980–2019. To examine the significant relation of these determinants and impact of energy consumption on economic growth, In-pooled regression, Fixed-effects, Bidirectional fixed effect, Random-effects, and GLS estimation regression model are used. The estimated results show a positive correlation of energy consumption and all other economic determinants with economic growth except CPI, where there is a negative correlation founded

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Roots and routes: a reimaging of Chinese immigrant adolescents' identity constructions in Toronto

I explore the complex relationships between the two metaphors of "roots" and "routes" in the process of identity constructions through an inquiry of Chinese immigrants' reflections and reflexive thinking about their immigration life experiences. I adopt a social constructivist, social cultural frame work to examine the discourses, claims, counterclaims, and voices of five Chinese immigrant adolescents in Toronto. By presenting how these five Chinese immigrant adolescents represent, reposition, and reconstruct themselves in the Toronto urban context, I map out the "routes" they take to be who they perceive they are and are not. I examine the roles their cultural "roots" played in these processes of identity construction. This study reveals that these five Chinese immigrant adolescents' identity constructions are relational, contextual and ambivalent processes in which the discourses of race, nationality and culture are constantly emerging, altered, and renewed. These "routes" and their cultural "roots" are mutually intertwined in these processes of identity construction.J'étudie les rapports complexes entre les deux métaphores homonymes « roots » (racines) et « routes » (voies, routes) dans le processus de construction d'identité en analysant les réflexions et les pensées d'immigrants chinois sur leur expérience de vie. J'adopte un cadre socio-constructiviste, socio-culturel pour examiner les discours, les affirmations et contre-affirmations et les voix de cinq adolescents immigrés chinois de Toronto. En montrant comment ces adolescents se représentent, se repositionnent et se reconstruisent dans le contexte urbain de Toronto, je trace les « routes » qu'ils empruntent pour être qui ils se perçoivent être et ne pas être. J'examine les rôles que leurs « racines » culturelles ont joués dans ces processus de construction d'identité. Cette étude révèle que les constructions d'identité de ces cinq adolescents immigrés chinois sont des processus relationnels, contextuels et ambivalents dans lesquels les discours de race, de nationalité et de culture sont constamment évoqués, modifiés et renouvelés. Ces « routes » et leurs « racines » culturelles sont mutuellement entrelacées dans ces processus de construction d'identité

Molecular epidemiology of hybrid CTX-M type beta-lactamases among Escherichia coli isolates from human and animals

A novel and effective mechanism of forming resistance to beta-lactam antibiotics by producing hybrid CTX-M-type beta-lactamases through genetic recombination was reported recently, albeit sporadically. Its primary introductory factor is the horizontal resistant gene transfer that occurs within the 876 bp 〖bla〗_(CTX-M) gene in Escherichia coli isolates, followed by the extensive application of beta-lactam antimicrobials. 〖bla〗_(CTX-M) originated from the nonpathogenic commensal Kluyvera spp., but it has become widely distributed in pathogenic organisms by plasmid-mediated gene transfer. Beta-lactams are effective against both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. However, misusing or overusing of beta-lactams has caused a globally corresponding emergence of antimicrobial resistant strains because of the selective pressure. This study included a total of 1,441 E. coli isolates, including 1,101 from six categories of animals and 340 from humans of both sexes. In total 612 strains were detected as extended spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-positive. By using molecular tests on 248 ESBL-producers, 14 non-duplicate strains harbouring hybrid CTX-M-type beta-lactamases were found in a subset of 170 animal strains. A total of three alleles for hybrid CTX-M-type beta-lactamases (n = 14) were found, namely, CTX-M-64 (n = 6), CTX-M-123 (n = 6), and CTX-M-132 (n = 2). Six 〖bla〗_(CTX-M-64) and one 〖bla〗_(CTX-M-132) genes were located on approximately 70 kb IncI2 plasmids, and five 〖bla 〗_(CTX-M-123) genes were carried by 110 kb IncI1 (plasmid ST108) plasmids. All the 〖bla〗_(hybrid CTX-M) genes were placed between ISEcp1 followed by a 45 bp spacer and a 47 bp spacer followed by a 344 bp orf477delta gene. Among the six CTX-M-64-harbouring isolates detected, three of them were ST1011, phylogroup E, from chickens; the remaining three were ST224, phylogroup B1; ST93 CC168, phylogroup A; and ST117, phylogroup F. Every CTX-M-64-harbouring isolate had the co-resistance trait against both ciprofloxacin and tetracycline. The CTX-M-123-harbouring isolates were ST1485, phylogroup E; ST2732, phylogroup D; ST10, phylogroup A; ST457, phylogroup F; and ST 1196, phylogroup B1. All six CTX-M-123-harbouring strains were co-resistant to trimethoprim-sulphamethoxazole and tetracycline, and all of their transconjugants or transformants inherited the ability to resist fosfomycin. Both CTX-M-132-harbouring strains came from phylogroup A. One strain was ST3103, and the other one with a non-transferable plasmid was ST746. This study unravels the molecular epidemiology of hybrid CTX-M-type beta-lactamase-harbouring E. coli isolates. It also compared the prevalence of these isolates among both animal and human strains. Although hybrid CTX-Mtype beta-lactamases were not found in 340 clinical urinary isolates, 14 hybrid CTX-M-type beta-lactamases were identified in 14 animals in just one year. Hence, this study sets off alarm bells for the public to become more concerned about the antimicrobial resistance situation among animals. Furthermore, the discovery of hybrid CTX-M-type beta-lactamase-harbouring isolates also indicates a novel mechanism of antimicrobial resistance, i.e., homologous recombination, and shows a new way to study antimicrobial resistance.published_or_final_versionMicrobiologyMasterMaster of Medical Science

Comprehensive analysis for the immune related biomarkers of platinum-based chemotherapy in ovarian cancer

Background: Ovarian cancer (OC) is one of the most lethal gynecological malignancies. This study aimed to identify biomarkers that were sensitive to platinum-based chemotherapeutic agents and can be used in immunotherapy and explore the importance of their mechanisms of action. Methods: RNA-seq profiles and clinicopathological data for OC samples were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and cBioPortal platform, respectively. Platinum-sensitive and platinum-resistant OC samples in the TCGA cohort were selected based on the clinical information. RNA-seq data for 70 OC samples withSingle-sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA) and unsupervised clustering were used to classify OC patients from the TCGA cohort into clusters with different proportions of infiltrating immune cells. ESTIMATE analysis was used to assess the immune landscape among clusters. Differential expression, univariate Cox regression, and LASSO regression analyses were performed to construct prognostic model. Spearman correlation analysis was conducted to investigate the correlations among immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) and risk score, half-maximal drug inhibitory concentration (IC50) and risk score. Results: Using ssGSEA and unsupervised clustering, OC samples were divided into two clusters with different immune cell infiltration. Then, 1715 differentially expressed immune-related genes (DEIRGs) were identified between two clusters, 984 differentially expressed platinum-sensitive related genes (DEPSRGs) between 149 platinum-sensitive and 63 platinum-resistant OC samples were identified, and 5384 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between 380 OC and 194 normal samples were detected from the TCGA cohort. Six biomarkers (GMPPB, SRPK1, STC1, PRSS16, HPDL, and SPTSSB) were detected to establish a prognostic model. The OC patients in the TCGA cohort were classified into high- and low-risk groups. The receive operating characteristic (ROC) curve was plotted and demonstrated that the prognostic model performed well with the area under ROC curve (AUC) greater than 0.6. The expressions of 5 ICIs, including CD200, TNFRSF18, CD160, CD200R1, and CD274 (PD-L1), were significantly different between two risk groups, and the risk score was significant negative associated with CTLA4, TNFRSF4, TNFRSF18, and CD274. Moreover, there were significant differences in IC50 of 10 chemo drugs between two risk groups, patients in the high-risk group could be more resistant to po0tinib, dasatinib, and neratinib. Conclusion: In summary, this study constructed a novel prognostic model based on six prognostic biomarkers, including GMPPB, SRPK1, STC1, PRSS16, HPDL, and SPTSSB, which can be utilized for predicting the prognosis of OC patients. These biomarkers were the potential therapeutic targets

High-performance binary blazed grating coupler used in silicon-based hybrid photodetector integration

An efficient and high-performance binary blazed grating coupler was designed based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) used for silicon-based hybrid photodetector integration in an arrayed waveguide grating demodulation integrated microsystem. A relatively high coupling efficiency was obtained to optimize mode matching by the finite-difference time-domain method by choosing appropriate grating parameters, including period, etching depth, and fill factor. Coupling efficiency output at 1550 nm for the TE mode reached 68%. This value was \u3e60% in the wavelength range of 1450 to 1600 nm, specifically 71.4% around 1478 nm. An InP/InGaAs photodetector and SOI wafer were integrated by using benzocyclobutene (BCB) bonding. When the thickness of the BCB bonding layer was 440 nm, power absorption efficiency at 1550 nm for the TE mode reached 78.5%, whereas efficiency reached similar to 81.8% around 1475 nm

Synthesis of cu-doped WO3 materials with photonic structures for high performance sensors

Cu-doped photonic crystal (PC) WO3 replicas from Morpho butterfly wings have been prepared by using a combined sol–gel templating and calcination method. The exact replications in the Cu-doped PC WO3 replicas at the micro- and nanoscales were confirmed by scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). A combination of X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), Raman and X-ray photoelectron spectra (XPS) measurements revealed that copper does not form clusters, but is randomly distributed inside the WO3 matrix lattice. The optical properties of the Cu-doped PC WO3 replica as well as the Morpho butterfly wing template were investigated by using reflectance spectroscopy, and it was found that the reflected light chromaticity of the Cu-doped PC WO3 replica was inherited from the PC Morpho butterfly wings. Cu-doped WO3 replicas without photonic crystal structures (Cu-W replica) were also fabricated in the same way as the Cu-doped PC WO3 replica but using Euploea mulciber butterfly wings as the template. Chemical sensors fabricated from the Cu-doped PC WO3 as well as the non-PC Cu-doped WO3 replicas were tested for a range of gases: (CH3)3N (TMA), NH3, C2H5OH, HCHO, CH3OH, acetone, H2, CO and NO2 and they showed a high selectivity for TMA. The sensitivity of the Cu-doped PC WO3 replica sensors can reach up to 2.0 for a trimethylamine concentration as low as 0.5 ppm at 290 °C. The high sensitivity of the Cu-doped WO3 replica sensors to TMA is attributed to the catalytic effect of Cu on the reaction between the testing gas and the oxide surface. Furthermore, the Cu-doped PC WO3 replica sensor is twice as sensitive as the Cu-doped non-PC WO3 replica to trimethylamine. This may be explained by the photonic crystal structure of the Cu-doped PC WO3