Role of Institutional Quality on Bilateral Exports

This paper empirically examines the effect of institutional quality on trade considering the gravity equation model. Taking data for 252 countries covering the period of 19 years from 1996 to 2014, the research has been done with two stage regression analysis. In the first stage, we estimate the effect of gravity factors that either benefit or hinder trade along with OECD membership and Linder’s effect by Poisson-Pseudo-Maximum-Likelihood (PPML) estimator with importer- time, and exporter- time fixed effects. Taking the estimated exporter- time fixed effects from the first stage, we regress it with institutional variables in the second stage by OLS method with country and time fixed effects. Results indicate that institutional quality has a significant and positive impact on bilateral export with mostly 1% and 5% significance level. Interestingly, our study also shows that Linder’s effect is negative only for trade among the OCED countries

An Empirical Analysis on Remittances and Financial Development in Latin American Countries

Remittances have become one of the driving forces of development for countries all over the world, especially in lower-middle-income nations. This paper empirically investigates the association between remittance flows and financial development in 4 lower-middle-income countries of Latin America. By using a panel data set from 1996 to 2019, the study revealed that remittances and financial development are positively associated in these countries. The study also discovered that foreign direct investment and inflation were positively correlated with financial development while trade openness had a negative association with financial development. Therefore, policymakers of these countries should implement and formulate such policies so that migrant workers would have the incentives to send money through formal channels, which will augment the effect of remittances on the recipient country

Leisure Experience among Students Seeking Counseling Help

The study aims to underline the benefit of leisure in maintaining and restoring psychological wellbeing

Primary biliary cholangitis presenting as acute ischemic stroke: A rare association

Primary biliary cholangitis is associated with hyperlipidemia, but studies show that the condition does not increase cardiovascular risks. The case presents acute ischemic stroke with no underlying risk factors and subsequent new diagnosis of primary biliary cholangitis, which can suggest possible association between primary biliary cholangitis and acute stroke

Effect of Machining Velocity in Nanoscale Machining Operations

The aim of this study is to investigate the generated forces and deformations of single crystal Cu with (100), (110) and (111) crystallographic orientations at nanoscale machining operation. A nanoindenter equipped with nanoscratching attachment was used for machining operations and in-situ observation of a nano scale groove. As a machining parameter, the machining velocity was varied to measure the normal and cutting forces. At a fixed machining velocity, different levels of normal and cutting forces were generated due to different crystallographic orientations of the specimens. Moreover, after machining operation percentage of elastic recovery was measured and it was found that both the elastic and plastic deformations were responsible for producing a nano scale groove within the range of machining velocities from 250-1000 nm/s

Japanese encephalitis virus infection in South-East Asia: An immuno-epidemiological twist

Background:Japanese encephalitis (JE) is one of the most important zoonotic diseases in a cosmopolitan manner.  Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) infection represents at least 70 % of emerging diseases caused by the mosquito-borne  JEV. Nearly 20-30% of case fatality corroborated in JEV infections with 30-50% neurologic and psychiatric disorders. A strong epidemic distribution is observed mainly in South-East Asia, demonstrating typical seasonal characteristics and occasional outbreaks. Depending on the genetic diversity, geographical distribution, and emerging natures of JEV, the disease surveillance, and immunization strategies are also varied. Uncontrolled population growth, haphazard agro-animal farming, and ecological imbalance steer the emergence and reemergence of JEV occurrences. Some murine models elucidate the immunological phenomena of JEV infections, the more detailed pathogenesis depending on the genetic variation is yet to be well defined. And the immune-epidemiological traits also address significant concerns regarding the effective vaccines and immunotherapeutics against JEV infections. Therefore, we summarized some critical notions on molecular epidemiology, immunogenicity, and genetic variance of JEV in South-East Asia

Finite Element Analysis of Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete (SFRC): Validation of Experimental Shear Capacities of Beams

AbstractFinite element models are analyzed and validated with the experimental shear capacities of steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) as well as plain concretes. In this work, steel fibers with low aspect ratio which are commonly available in Bangladesh are used and sufficient capacity enhancements are attained. Two different aggregate types are used to make the SFRC and plain concrete beam specimens, i.e. stone and brick, and also modelled in the finite element (FE) platform of ANSYS 10.0 with SOLID65 element. The experimental plan intended to investigate the shear capacity enhancement of three different types of beam specimens, i.e. single shear, double shear and flexural shear. All the specimens are tested in the 1000kN capacity digital universal testing machine (UTM) and the strain data are obtained from digital image correlation technique (DICT) using high definition (HD) images and high speed video clips. Test results showed the increase in shear capacity of about 30% to 170% of beams made of SFRC with an indication of increase in ductility. FE models are analyzed extensively and validated with the experimental stress-strain behaviours by optimizing the Poisson's ratio, modulus of elasticity, tensile capacity and stress-strain behaviours. FE models showed the same structural response and failure modes as found in experimental investigation. This paper can contribute to the construction industry of Bangladesh about SFRC with reliable experimental data and FE analyses

Synthesis, Characterization and Bioactivities of Some Novel Oxovanadium(IV) Glycinato Complexes

The novel oxovanadium(IV) complexes, [VIVO(GlyH)(Gly)]+ClO4 - .H2O (1), [VIVO(GlyH)(Gly)]+NO3 - .H2O (2), [VIVO(GlyH)(Gly)]+CH3COO- .H2O (3) were synthesized and characterized by FT-IR, UV-Vis and 1H NMR spectroscopic measurements. The cumulative spectroscopic assessment envisaged that, the complexes adopt a square pyramidal structure, in which the two glycine ligands coordinate to vanadium(IV) center in bidentate fashions conforming a homoleptic structure. The amino nitrogen and a carboxylato oxygen atom coordinate the vanadium(IV) center from both sides making a five members chelate by each side. All the complexes are stable in amorphous state and in aerobic and anaerobic solution. Significantly, all the complexes have the antifungal activities against Aspergillus niger and Penicillium notatum but ineffective against Candida tropicalis. No antibacterial activity was observed for the complexes against tested bacteria and unfortunately, they were found cytotoxic against brine shrimp bioassay

A multilayer multimodal detection and prediction model based on explainable artificial intelligence for Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia. Its diagnosis and progression detection have been intensively studied. Nevertheless, research studies often have little effect on clinical practice mainly due to the following reasons: (1) Most studies depend mainly on a single modality, especially neuroimaging; (2) diagnosis and progression detection are usually studied separately as two independent problems; and (3) current studies concentrate mainly on optimizing the performance of complex machine learning models, while disregarding their explainability. As a result, physicians struggle to interpret these models, and feel it is hard to trust them. In this paper, we carefully develop an accurate and interpretable AD diagnosis and progression detection model. This model provides physicians with accurate decisions along with a set of explanations for every decision. Specifically, the model integrates 11 modalities of 1048 subjects from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) real-world dataset: 294 cognitively normal, 254 stable mild cognitive impairment (MCI), 232 progressive MCI, and 268 AD. It is actually a two-layer model with random forest (RF) as classifier algorithm. In the first layer, the model carries out a multi-class classification for the early diagnosis of AD patients. In the second layer, the model applies binary classification to detect possible MCI-to-AD progression within three years from a baseline diagnosis. The performance of the model is optimized with key markers selected from a large set of biological and clinical measures. Regarding explainability, we provide, for each layer, global and instance-based explanations of the RF classifier by using the SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) feature attribution framework. In addition, we implement 22 explainers based on decision trees and fuzzy rule-based systems to provide complementary justifications for every RF decision in each layer. Furthermore, these explanations are represented in natural language form to help physicians understand the predictions. The designed model achieves a cross-validation accuracy of 93.95% and an F1-score of 93.94% in the first layer, while it achieves a cross-validation accuracy of 87.08% and an F1-Score of 87.09% in the second layer. The resulting system is not only accurate, but also trustworthy, accountable, and medically applicable, thanks to the provided explanations which are broadly consistent with each other and with the AD medical literature. The proposed system can help to enhance the clinical understanding of AD diagnosis and progression processes by providing detailed insights into the effect of different modalities on the disease riskThis work was supported by National Research Foundation of Korea-Grant funded by the Korean Government (Ministry of Science and ICT)-NRF-2020R1A2B5B02002478). In addition, Dr. Jose M. Alonso is Ramon y Cajal Researcher (RYC-2016-19802), and its research is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (grants RTI2018-099646-B-I00, TIN2017-84796-C2-1-R, TIN2017-90773-REDT, and RED2018-102641-T) and the Galician Ministry of Education, University and Professional Training (grants ED431F 2018/02, ED431C 2018/29, ED431G/08, and ED431G2019/04), with all grants co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF/FEDER program)S