The Determinants of Services Sector Growth: A Comparative Analysis of Selected Developed and Developing Economies

This study empirically examines the possible factors that determine the services sector growth, both in selected developed and developing economies. For estimation purpose, the study employs the static as well as the dynamic panel data estimation technique with panel data over the period 1990-2014. The results suggest that GDP per capita, FDI net inflow, trade openness and innovations are the common factors that significantly affect the services sector growth both in developed and in developing economies. However, the productivity gap is the only factor that does not have any significant impact on services sector growth, both in developed and developing economies, which indicates that the Baumol's cost disease has been cured. Keywords: Services Sector Growth, Panel Data Analysis, Innovation

Postmortem computed tomography for diagnosis of cause of death in male prisoners

Objective: To determine the utility of postmortem CT (PMCT) examination in establishing the cause of death among male prisoners dying in Karachi jails.Methods: A descriptive study was carried out from February 2006 to September 2007, CT Scan section, Civil Hospital Karachi and the Mortuary, Dow Medical College, Dow University of Health Sciences, Karachi. Adult male prisoners dying in the Karachi central prison and referred to the study setting for determining the cause of death for medico legal purpose were included. Female prisoners and those cases where the final report of cause of death was not available were excluded. CT scan of the vital body regions (head, neck, thorax, abdomen and pelvis) was carried out in all cases. The scan was read and reported by two radiologists. Anatomical dissection based autopsy was carried out by the forensic expert. Final report regarding the cause of death was issued by the forensic expert based on the combined findings, histopathology, toxicology results and circumstantial evidence. The CT scan and autopsy findings were compared and percentage agreement was determined using kappa statistics.Results: There were 14 cases in all with mean age of 41.2 +/- 17 years. The alleged mode of death was custodial torture in all cases. CT scan determined the cause of death to be natural cardio-respiratory failure in 10, strangulation in 01, pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) in 02 and trauma to spine in 01 case. The autopsy determined natural death in 11 and pulmonary TB in 02 and asphyxia in 01. The percentage agreement between CT and autopsy was 92% (k = 0.92) and between CT and finalized cause of death was 100% (k = 1.0).Conclusion: PMCT is as effective as dissection autopsy in identifying pulmonary infections and natural causes of death. It is more effective in identifying vertebral fractures which may exclude hanging and corroborate trauma to spine

Date-Palm Fiber as a Reinforcement Filler in Polymer Composites

Natural fibers offer a great advantage of being used as a reinforcement in polymer matrix composites because of the many advantages natural fibers offer over conventional reinforcement fillers. Date palm fiber is one of the most available natural fibrous materials in the Middle Eastern region to be exploited as a fiber reinforcement in polymers. In the present work, the fibers extracted from the date palm tree trunk, branches, and leaves were used for the reinforcement of the polypropylene matrix. Electron microscopic images show excellent bonding between the fiber and matrix as no fiber pullout is observed. The thermal (heat deflection temperature) and mechanical properties (Izod impact, tensile and flexural modulus) of the composites increased with an increase in the fiber loading from 20% to 60%, which in turn resulted in excellent mechanical properties in the final product. The work has immense significance in using date palm as an easily available natural resource for a useful product

An Empirical Analysis of the Child Labor in the Carpet Industry of Kashmir: Some Major Findings

In the present paper an attempt has been made to study various facts of child labor. Children have been defined here as those in the age group of 6-14 years, working in their family owned or non-family carpet weaving units. The major focus was (I ) to find socio-educational life pattern of child labor, (ii) to locate factors compelling them to join labor force, (iii) to identify their socio-economic and family background, (iv) to delineate various positive and negative aspects of their working conditions,(v) to find the level of earnings of child and its  impact on household income, (vi) to highlight the effects of abolition of child labor on the household, (vii) to identify the role of employers in eliminating child labor, and (viii) to know the opinion of parents and employers on child labor. Multi- stage sampling was used to select child labors from 100 households engaged in carpet units of five village of Quimoh development block of Kulgam district, which was the universe of the present study. In its effort to collect more authentic data, the study has included parents (82) of the child workers and their employers (50) as well. The tools used for data collection were interview schedules besides observations, block development offices etc. The major findings and conclusions that emerge from the analysis and discussion are briefly summarized in the present paper. Apart from these, certain important recommendations are made to ameliorate the condition of child workers in contemporary society and also to prevent the entry of children in carpet weaving in future society

Bounds on Two Parametric New Generalized Fuzzy Entropy

In this paper we define a new two parametric generalized fuzzy average code-word length...Keywords Fuzzy set, Membership function, Shannon’s entropy, Fuzzy entropy, Code-word length, Kraft inequality, Coding theorem, Holder’s inequality and Optimal code length. More details can be found in the full paper.

Fuzzy C-Means Clustering with Histogram based Cluster Selection for Skin Lesion Segmentation using Non-Dermoscopic Images

Purpose – Pre-screening of skin lesion for malignancy is highly demanded as melanoma being a life-threatening skin cancer due to unpaired DNA damage. In this paper, lesion segmentation based on Fuzzy C-Means clustering using non-dermoscopic images has been proposed. Design/methodology/approach – The proposed methodology consists of automatic cluster selection for FCM using the histogram property. The system used the local maxima along with Euclidean distance to detect the binomial distribution property of the image histogram, to segment the melanoma from normal skin. As the Value channel of HSV color image provides better and distinct histogram distribution based on the entropy, it has been used for segmentation purpose. Findings – The proposed system can effectively segment the lesion region from the normal skin. The system provides a segmentation accuracy of 95.69 % and the comparative analysis has been performed with various segmentation methods. From the analysis, it has been observed that the proposed system can effectively segment the lesion region from normal skin automatically. Originality/Value – This paper suggests a new approach for skin lesion segmentation based on FCM with automatic cluster selection. Here, different color channel has also been analyzed using entropy to select the better channel for segmentation. In future, the classification of melanoma from benign naevi can be performed

Erythrocyte Features for Malaria Parasite Detection in Microscopic Images of Thin Blood Smear: A Review

Microscopic image analysis of blood smear plays a very important role in characterization of erythrocytes in screening of malaria parasites. The characteristics feature of erythrocyte changes due to malaria parasite infection. The microscopic features of the erythrocyte include morphology, intensity and texture. In this paper, the different features used to differentiate the non- infected and malaria infected erythrocyte have been reviewed

Natural convection in a square inclined enclosure with vee-corrugated sidewalls subjected to constant flux heating from below

Two-dimensional steady natural convective flow in a square inclined enclosure with vertical vee-corrugated sidewalls and horizontal top and bottom surfaces has been numerically studied. A discrete heat flux strip of 24% of the total length is flush-mounted on the bottom wall, while the other non-heated parts of the bottom wall and the top wall are considered adiabatic. The two vee-corrugated sidewalls are maintained at constant cold temperature. Grashof number is varied from 103 to 106, corrugation frequency is varied from 0.5 to 2.0, corrugation amplitude has been fixed at 10% of the enclosure height and the enclosure inclination angle is varied to 0◦, 10◦, 20◦ and 30◦ respectively. The enclosure is filled with air (Pr = 0.71). The flow has been assumed to be steady and laminar. Fluid properties have been assumed constant except for the density change with temperature that gives rise to the buoyancy forces. The solution has been obtained using the governing equations written in terms of dimensionless variables. The dimensionless governing equations are solved using finite volume method. Results are presented in the form of streamline and isotherm plots. The results of the present work show that the natural convection phenomenon is greatly affected by increasing the enclosure inclination angle. The variation in the average Nusselt number at the bottom wall, where the heat source exists and the maximum dimensionless temperature are also presented. The results are compared and found to be in a good agreement with other published results

SU(2Nf)⊗O(3)SU(2N_{f})\otimes O(3) light diquark symmetry and current-induced heavy baryon transition form factors

We study the current-induced bottom baryon to charm baryon transitions in the Heavy Quark Symmetry limit as $m_{q}\rightarrow \infty$. Our discussion involves $s$-wave to $s$-wave as well as $s$-wave to $p$-wave transitions. Using a constituent quark model picture for the light diquark system with an underlying $SU(2N_{f})\otimes O(3)$ symmetry and the heavy quark symmetry we arrive at a number of new predictions for the reduced form factors that describe these transitions.Comment: Corrected spelling mistake in title, 19 pages, latex, no figure

Flower Pollination Algorithm to Tune PID Controller of TCP/AQM Wireless Networks

The current study aims to conduct a simulation that is useful in developing an appropriate design that addresses the problem of congestion in the Internet network through controlling the queue of the router. The simulation is conducted through the proposed model for simulation with different control systems that help in raising the quality of performance such as traditional Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) and advanced optimal by Flower Pollination Algorithm  (FPA). It depends for Transmission Control Protocol/ Active Queue Management( TCP/AQM )simulation model for a linear system and another non-linear system. To adjust the network work and raise the level of performance, different control systems were chosen, taking into account all the things that appear through conducting experiments and for different purposes. One of the most important things that must be taken into consideration is the system disturbances as a result of the volume and values of the data, causing congestion . It was shown through the results of the experiments that were conducted considering the cases of the linear and nonlinear system to pass data traffic in the network and by adopting the different techniques of the control units, the preference of optimizasion systems over the traditional ones, as well as the preference of the traditional over  without control in close loop, is the improvement of the performance of linear systems compared to the open and closed system without control. The simulation results showed that very clear the superiority of the optimization by FPA-PID controller over the conventional system (PID)  , as well as very clear the superiority of  the traditional system (PID)over closed system without control and open loop system