The Political Economy of China-Myanmar Bilateral Relations Under the framework of Belt and Road Initiative

After the political transition of Myanmar in 2011, China’s engagement strategy toward Myanmar has led the changes from the state-to-state relations into the multi-layered relations. At the same time, Myanmar’s foreign policy has also challenged Beijing’s economic and political interests in Myanmar in terms of the Myit-Sone Dam suspension by Myanmar’s first reform government. Later, the Aung San Suu Kyi’s government looks more closely with the PRC under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative. In this sense, it could be interesting to find Myanmar’s policy on China’s engagement and China’s responses to Myanmar’s development. Moreover, Myanmar has agreed to the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) which is a strategically important economic corridor under the umbrella of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Among various China’s BRI projects in Myanmar, every case has a different characteristic, pattern, and situation, in terms of the different fundamental interaction relations among the state, market, and society. It means that China’s interest in Myanmar is a complicated and complex situation during Myanmar’s new political order. In this sense, the China-Myanmar bilateral relations have the multidimensional factors and it was shaped by the diverse state-holders’ interaction. Therefore, this paper will seek the China-Myanmar bilateral relations from the political economy perspective. At last, this paper will argue that the changing relations among state-market-society in Myanmar will play a crucial role in China-Myanmar bilateral relations by using the two-level game theory.

Experimental Study on Previous Concrete with Various Mix Ratios

The pervious concrete is designed with cementitious material content just enough to coat the coarse aggregate particles so that a configuration that allows the passage of water at a much higher rate than conventional concrete. The pervious concrete has many advantages that improves city environment, recharges the ground by rain water and could be used as pavement for light vehicles, pedestrian pathways, parking lots, also it reduces the tire pavement interaction noise etc. In this paper, structural property and permeability of pervious concrete made without and with different ratios of fine aggregate and pozzolan. 9.5 mm maximum size of crushed gravel and constant aggregate/cement ratio of 3.6 were used. Mix design void content is tested 20%. The specific gravity of fine aggregate 2.53 and the specific gravity of crushed stone 2.56. Type I Portland cement and water- reducing and retarding concrete admixture were used. Mix design is based on the no slump method from the American Concrete Institute’s Committee 211.3R-02, “Standard Practice for Selecting Proportions for No Slump Concrete.” This research work was divided into third/three sections. The first section is without pozzolan and fine aggregate and second section is with two different ratios of pozzolan third section is without pozzolan and with fine aggregate. Pozzolan is used as a supplementary cementitious material to partially replace Portland cement in pervious concrete mixes up to 20% by weight. Fine aggregate partially replace as a coarse aggregate in pervious concrete mixes up to 10% by weight. Mix design void content is tested 20%. This concrete is tested for its properties, such as density, void content, compressive strength and water permeability. The most important property of pervious concrete is its water permeability

The Safety of a Conservative Fluid Replacement Strategy in Adults Hospitalised with Malaria

BackgroundA conservative approach to fluid resuscitation improves survival in children with severe malaria; however, this strategy has not been formally evaluated in adults with the disease.MethodsAdults hospitalised with malaria at two tertiary referral hospitals in Myanmar received intravenous fluid replacement with isotonic saline, administered at a maintenance rate using a simple weight-based algorithm. Clinical and biochemical indices were followed sequentially.ResultsOf 61 adults enrolled, 34 (56%) had Plasmodium falciparum mono-infection, 17 (28%) Plasmodium vivax mono-infection and 10 (16%) mixed infection; 27 (44%) patients were at high risk of death (P. falciparum infection and RCAM score ≥ 2). In the first six hours of hospitalisation patients received a mean 1.7 ml/kg/hour (range: 1.3–2.2) of intravenous fluid and were able to drink a mean of 0.8 ml/kg/hour (range: 0–3). Intravenous fluid administration and oral intake were similar for the remainder of the first 48 hours of hospitalisation. All 61 patients survived to discharge. No patient developed Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome, a requirement for renal replacement therapy or hypotension (mean arterial pressure < 60mmHg). Plasma lactate was elevated (> 2 mmol/L) on enrolment in 26 (43%) patients but had declined by 6 hours in 25 (96%) and was declining at 24 hours in the other patient. Plasma creatinine was elevated (> 120 μmol/L) on enrolment in 17 (28%) patients, but was normal or falling in 16 (94%) at 48 hours and declining in the other patient by 72 hours. There was no clinically meaningful increase in plasma lactate or creatinine in any patient with a normal value on enrolment. Patients receiving fluid replacement with the conservative fluid replacement algorithm were more likely to survive than historical controls in the same hospitals who had received fluid replacement guided by clinical judgement in the year prior to the study (p = 0.03), despite having more severe disease (p < 0.001).ConclusionsA conservative fluid resuscitation strategy appears safe in adults hospitalised with malaria

Observational study of adult respiratory infections in primary care clinics in Myanmar: understanding the burden of melioidosis, tuberculosis and other infections not covered by empirical treatment regimes.

BACKGROUND: Lower respiratory infections constitute a major disease burden worldwide. Treatment is usually empiric and targeted towards typical bacterial pathogens. Understanding the prevalence of pathogens not covered by empirical treatment is important to improve diagnostic and treatment algorithms. METHODS: A prospective observational study in peri-urban communities of Yangon, Myanmar was conducted between July 2018 and April 2019. Sputum specimens of 299 adults presenting with fever and productive cough were tested for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (microscopy and GeneXpert MTB/RIF [Mycobacterium tuberculosis/resistance to rifampicin]) and Burkholderia pseudomallei (Active Melioidosis Detect Lateral Flow Assay and culture). Nasopharyngeal swabs underwent respiratory virus (influenza A, B, respiratory syncytial virus) polymerase chain reaction testing. RESULTS: Among 299 patients, 32% (95% confidence interval [CI] 26 to 37) were diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB), including 9 rifampicin-resistant cases. TB patients presented with a longer duration of fever (median 14 d) and productive cough (median 30 d) than non-TB patients (median fever duration 6 d, cough 7 d). One case of melioidosis pneumonia was detected by rapid test and confirmed by culture. Respiratory viruses were detected in 16% (95% CI 12 to 21) of patients. CONCLUSIONS: TB was very common in this population, suggesting that microscopy and GeneXpert MTB/RIF on all sputum samples should be routinely included in diagnostic algorithms for fever and cough. Melioidosis was uncommon in this population

Geographical distribution of Burkholderia pseudomallei in soil in Myanmar.

BACKGROUND: Burkholderia pseudomallei is a Gram-negative bacterium found in soil and water in many tropical countries. It causes melioidosis, a potentially fatal infection first described in 1911 in Myanmar. Melioidosis is a common cause of sepsis and death in South and South-east Asia, but it is rarely diagnosed in Myanmar. We conducted a nationwide soil study to identify areas where B. pseudomallei is present. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We collected soil samples from 387 locations in all 15 states and regions of Myanmar between September 2017 and June 2019. At each site, three samples were taken at each of three different depths (30, 60 and 90 cm) and were cultured for B. pseudomallei separately, along with a pooled sample from each site (i.e. 10 cultures per site). We used a negative binomial regression model to assess associations between isolation of B. pseudomallei and environmental factors (season, soil depth, soil type, land use and climate zones). B. pseudomallei was isolated in 7 of 15 states and regions. Of the 387 sites, 31 (8%) had one or more positive samples and of the 3,870 samples cultured, 103 (2.7%) tested positive for B. pseudomallei. B. pseudomallei was isolated more frequently during the monsoon season [RR-2.28 (95% CI: 0.70-7.38)] and less in the hot dry season [RR-0.70 (95% CI: 0.19-2.56)] compared to the cool dry season, and in the tropical monsoon climate zone [RR-2.26; 95% CI (0.21-6.21)] compared to the tropical dry winter climate zone. However, these associations were not statistically significant. B. pseudomallei was detected at all three depths and from various soil types (clay, silt and sand). Isolation was higher in agricultural land (2.2%), pasture land (8.5%) and disused land (5.8%) than in residential land (0.4%), but these differences were also not significant. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: This study confirms a widespread distribution of B. pseudomallei in Myanmar. Clinical studies should follow to obtain a better picture of the burden of melioidosis in Myanmar

Design and implementation of voltage regulator for a power supply

Voltage regulators are essential in every power supply module to provide stable supply. Their main purpose is acting as medium to withstand varying input while providing regulated output. In modern electronics era, regulating topologies, methods, and techniques are evolving to be more intelligent, smart, and energy efficient. A good regulator should keep target workload to function properly without sacrificing its power rating. In this project, various regulators ranging from simple integrated circuits (ICs) to complex adjustable switching regulator are learned, implemented, and tested. It illustrates a full learning process including software simulation, programming, troubleshooting, problem solving and prototyping. Two majority type of regulators, linear and switching regulators are studied in this project. In linear category, L7805 ICs are learned as 5V linear regulator. Ćuk Converter, Single ended primary inductor converter (SEPIC) as buck converter, and MC34063AB ICs in switching category are simulated in both buck and boost configurations. All circuit simulations are exercised through NI Multisim, and Proteus software. NI Ultiboard is used to design PCB circuit design. Input waveform to drive switching topologies are gained from Arduino IDE software. Hence, this final year project consists of several learning activities from software simulation, programming to hardware prototyping such as soldering and components assembly through breadboard and printed circuit boards PCB.Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical and Electronic Engineering

AI for human-computer interaction

The use of chatbots to have conversational interactions with users is growing in popularity. They are used for a variety of purposes, such as information retrieval, customer service, and entertainment. In this project, we analyze how to create a chatbot that can converse with users in a natural and the appropriate manner by utilizing the PyTorch deep learning library. We start by gathering a large amount of conversational data and pre-processing it by cleaning, filtering, and tokenizing it. The PyTorch library is then used to train a neural network model based on a sequence-to-sequence architecture with an attention mechanism. The model takes a sequence of tokens representing a user's message as input and produces a sequence of tokens representing the chatbot's response. We use both automatic metrics and human evaluation through user studies to evaluate the performance of our chatbot. Our results show that our chatbot can respond to user input in a coherent and contextually appropriate manner, outperforming several baseline models. Our model can also handle long and complex conversations, demonstrating resilience in maintaining context across multiple turns. In addition to evaluating our model's performance, we explore the effect of various model configurations, such as the number of layers, hidden size, and attention mechanism. We discovered that increasing the model's complexity can lead to better performance, but it also increases training time and demands more data to avoid overfitting. Overall, our findings show that PyTorch can be used to build conversational agents and highlight the potential for further improvements in chatbot performance using advanced deep learning techniques. Our work also adds to the growing research on building chatbots with deep learning methods, laying the groundwork for future work in this area.Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Science

Prevalence and correlates of physical, sexual, and threatened violence among partners of people who inject drugs living with HIV in Kenya

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2022Background: People who inject drugs (PWID) have a higher HIV burden compared to the general adult population in Kenya. Violence among PWID is also common and associated with increased HIV risk and decreased HIV service uptake. Understanding the nature, distribution, and correlates of violence among PWID in Kenya may inform population-specific public health interventions and policy recommendations. Methods: Using a cross-sectional study, we identified the prevalence and correlates of different types of violence experienced by sexual and injecting partners of HIV-positive PWID in Kenya, who were contacted through assisted partner services. We used a Chi-squared test to estimate the risk of violence and conducted a pairwise comparison and two-sided Fisher’s exact test to identify the socio-demographic characteristics associated with violence. Using the Woolf test for homogeneity, we conducted a stratified analysis and tested for effect modification by gender and HIV status. Results: Among 3302 participants, 1439 (44%) had experienced some form of violence within the past one year. Physical violence was the most common form of violence experienced (35%; 95%CI 33.3%, 36.5%), followed by being threatened (23%; 21.5%, 24.4%), and sexual violence (7%; 95% CI 6.2%, 7.9%). Being male (Relative risk [RR]=1.22; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.11, 1.33; p<0.001), living in coastal Kenya (RR=1.53; 95%CI 1.41, 1.66; p<0.001), having multiple sexual partners (vs. single) (RR=1.39; 95%CI 1.22, 1.6; p<0.001), being divorced/ separated or widowed (vs. single) (RR=1.24; 95%CI 1.13, 1.37; p<0.001), not having a stable place to live (RR=1.14; 95%CI 1.03, 1.27; p=0.019), being both a sexual and injecting partner (vs. sexual partner only) (RR=1.16; 95%CI 1.01, 1.33; p=0.041), being an active injection drug user not on methadone (vs. non-active injection drug users taking methadone) (RR=1.53; 95%CI 1.04, 2.25; p=0.018), and identifying as a man who has sex with men or man who have sex with both men and women (MSM/MSMW) (vs. man who has sex with women) (RR=1.36; 95%CI 1.21, 1.54; p<0.001) were associated with experiencing violence. The stratified analysis revealed that gender was an effect modifier on the association between partner characteristics (region, employment, partner type) and experiencing violence while HIV status was not. Conclusion: The study identified that the prevalence of violence among partners of PWID in Kenya differs for different genders and regions, and physical violence was the most frequent form of violence reported. There was strong evidence of an association between several partner characteristics and experiencing violence and it was modified by different Genders. This information will be useful to formulate and tailor effective public health interventions, and policy recommendations to increase HIV-related services among key populations in Kenya