Economic Evaluation of the PV Micro Utilities Installed by Grameen Shakti for Rural Electrification in Bangladesh

Sharing expensive technology can serve many users, even poor users. Grameen Shakti has developed a special programnamed PV micro utility to make it easier for those who cannot afford SHSs individually. Under this program, GrameenShakti allows people to share the cost and the subsequent benefit of using a SHS. In this study, operation and financialmechanism, analysis of cost of systems, tariff system, simple payback period, NPV and IRR of the micro utility systemshave been analyzed to show the financial viability of PV MU from the PV MU owner’s perspective. Results suggest thatthese systems have simple payback period of around 4-6 years. The NPV of systems varied from 27,000 BDT to 144,000BDT. The levelized electricity cost of PV MU systems is 70 BDT (~0.86 $)/kWh in Bangladesh. The owner has to spendonly 7.50 BDT/day but can earn at least 30-40 BDT per day, and up to 130-200 BDT/day.Keywords - Rural Electrification, Solar PV, Grameen Shakti, Bangladesh, Economic Evaluation

Processing of Spontaneous Emotional Responses in Adolescents and Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders Effect of Stimulus Type

YesRecent research has shown that adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have difficulty interpreting others' emotional responses, in order to work out what actually happened to them. It is unclear what underlies this difficulty; important cues may be missed from fast paced dynamic stimuli, or spontaneous emotional responses may be too complex for those with ASD to successfully recognise. To explore these possibilities, 17 adolescents and adults with ASD and 17 neurotypical controls viewed 21 videos and pictures of peoples' emotional responses to gifts (chocolate, a handmade novelty or Monopoly money), then inferred what gift the person received and the emotion expressed by the person while eye movements were measured. Participants with ASD were significantly more accurate at distinguishing who received a chocolate or homemade gift from static (compared to dynamic) stimuli, but significantly less accurate when inferring who received Monopoly money from static (compared to dynamic) stimuli. Both groups made similar emotion attributions to each gift in both conditions (positive for chocolate, feigned positive for homemade and confused for Monopoly money). Participants with ASD only made marginally significantly fewer fixations to the eyes of the face, and face of the person than typical controls in both conditions. Results suggest adolescents and adults with ASD can distinguish subtle emotion cues for certain emotions (genuine from feigned positive) when given sufficient processing time, however, dynamic cues are informative for recognising emotion blends (e.g. smiling in confusion). This indicates difficulties processing complex emotion responses in ASD

Socio-economic and environmental impacts of battery driven auto rickshaw at Rajshahi city in Bangladesh

This paper describes the socio-economic and environmental impacts of battery driven Auto Rickshaw at Rajshahi city in Bangladesh. Unemployment problem is one of the major problems in Bangladesh. The number of unemployed people in Bangladesh is 7 lacks. Auto Rickshaw reduces this unemployment problem near about 2%.In this thesis work various questions were asked to the Auto Rickshaw driver in the different point in the Rajshahi city. Then those data were calculated to know their socio economic condition. The average number of passenger per Auto Rickshaw was determined at various places of Rajshahi city (Talaimari mor, Hadir mor, Alupotti, Shaheb bazar zero point, Shodor Hospital mor, Fire brigade mor, CNB mor, Lakshipur mor, Bondo gate, Bornali, Panir tank, Rail gate, Rail Station, Bhodrar mor, Adorsha School mor). Air pollution is a great threat for human health. One of the major causes of the air pollution is the emission from various vehicles, which are running by the burning of the fossil fuel in different internal combustion(IC) engines. All the data’s about emission from various power plants were collected from internet. Then the amounts of emission (CO2, NOX and PM) from different power plant were calculated in terms of kg/km. The energy required by the Auto Rickshaw per km was also calculated. Then the histogram of emission from different vehicles in terms of kg/km was drawn. By analyzing the data and chart, it was found that, battery driven Auto Rickshaw increases income, social status, comfort and decreases unemployment problems

Pricing European Call Option in Scott’s Stochastic Volatility Model

In this paper, we derive pricing equations for the European call option under Scott’s stochastic volatility model and achieve a price for the European call option by creating a JAVA applet.  Through certain times of simulating we can observe the tendency of the options price, as a result, which it can provide the necessary data for implementing the optimal strategies of investment