The Bangladesh gender gap in education : biased intra-household educational expenditures

By investigating the educational expenditure of children over the ten years (2000 to 2010), we evaluate whether there exists any gender specific discrepancy at the household level and the trend of such discrepancy over the years. Using three rounds of nationally representative Household Income & Expenditure Surveys this study reveals that households spend less on education for their school-going girls compared to boys. By disaggregating the total expenditure into fixed and variable components, we find persistent gender imbalance in educational expenditure where households provide better quality of education for boys. Moreover, we find that gender based discrepancy has a very persistent trend and does not show any significant sign of narrowing the gap over the years. Cohort wise difference-in-difference estimation also reveals that the gap has initially widened and later converged but has not diminished beyond the initial level of discrepancy, which may warrant targeted policy intervention

THE DIFFERENTIAL IMPACT OF CORRUPTION ON MICROENTERPRISES IN RUSSIA

Over the past decade, the repressive legal and regulatory environment in transition economies has received considerable attention in the literature. In Russia, this framework has resulted in an environment in which rules and regulations govern almost all aspects of economic activity. The elaborate system of regulations with which firms must comply, in combination with a lack of accountability for regulatory enforcers, has created a corrupt cadre of government officials who frequently engage in rent-seeking behavior while monitoring and enforcing firm compliance. The objective of this paper is to investigate the manner in which corruption affects micro and small enterprises in Russia. Empirical evidence suggests that micro and small enterprises vary substantially in reporting how problematic corruption is for their enterprise. A theoretical model explores why extortion from regulators may occur in a non-uniform manner across firms. The theoretical model postulates that government regulators customize the nature of their rent-seeking activities towards, similar to a price-discriminating monopolist facing hidden information. The model shows that production technologies, input choices, and other firm characteristics such as location play a role in determining the bribe price that a regulator will charge a firm, as well as the number of times he will return to collect it. Supportive evidence comes from survey data collected on Russian microenterprises. The model described above is tested using econometrics, and numerical simulations.Political Economy,

Mumps myocarditis: a forgotten disease?

Mumps is an acute viral illness that follows a self-limiting course but up to 10% of cases have a complicated course with the involvement of other organ systems. Myocarditis is reported as a complication but the incidence has greatly fallen ever since the development of the mumps vaccine. A child presented to our department with parotid swelling and fever. Persistent tachycardia with irregular pulse led to further cardiac work up which showed decreased ejection fraction and raised serum cardiac enzymes, indicating myocardial damage. With ionotropic agents and supportive care, there was complete normalization of ejection fraction and serum cardiac enzyme levels. He was discharged within a week of admission. This case highlights the importance of suspecting myocarditis in the setting of mumps, a diagnosis that precludes early suspicion in mumps patients suffering from cardiac symptoms not explained by other potential aetiologies. Early suspicion and timely supportive care are essential to ensure favourable outcomes

A sustainable integration approach of chlor-alkali industries for the production of PVC and clean fuel hydrogen: prospects and Bangladesh perspectives

YesThe chlor-alkali industries produce caustic soda (NaOH), chlorine (Cl2 ), and hydrogen (H2 ) as primary products. In 2021, the global chlor-alkali market was valued at $63.2 billion. The article evaluates the global aspects of chlor-alkali industries and prospects for Bangladesh. The current production capacity of NaOH from the chlor-alkali industries in Bangladesh is around 282,150 metric tons/year (MT/y). The by-products, chlorine (Cl2 ) of 250,470 MT/y and hydrogen (H2 ) of 7055 MT/y, are produced domestically. The local demand of Cl2 is 68,779 MT/y. However, there are no systematic utilizations of the residual Cl2 and vented H2 , which threatens the sustainability of the chlor-alkali industries. The article prefigures that a 150,000 MT/y PVC plant can utilize 45.2 % of residual Cl2 of chlor-alkali plants, which would be an economical and environmental milestone for Bangladesh. The residual Cl2 can earn revenue of 908 million USD/y, which can be utilized to import ethylene. For the sustainable utilization of vented H2 , production of H2O2 , fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) and H2 fuel-cell-based power plant are the feasible solutions. Thus, for the long-term growth of the chlor-alkali industry in Bangladesh and other developing countries, systematic utilization of Cl2 and H2 is the only feasible solution.This research was funded by ‘BUET Chemical Engineering Forum (BCEF), 001-2020

Why Current Statistical Approaches to Ransomware Detection Fail

The frequent use of basic statistical techniques to detect ransomware is a popular and intuitive strategy; statistical tests can be used to identify randomness, which in turn can indicate the presence of encryption and, by extension, a ransomware attack. However, common file formats such as images and compressed data can look random from the perspective of some of these tests. In this work, we investigate the current frequent use of statistical tests in the context of ransomware detection, primarily focusing on false positive rates. The main aim of our work is to show that the current over-dependence on simple statistical tests within anti-ransomware tools can cause serious issues with the reliability and consistency of ransomware detection in the form of frequent false classifications. We determined thresholds for five key statistics frequently used in detecting randomness, namely Shannon entropy, chi-square, arithmetic mean, Monte Carlo estimation for Pi and serial correlation coefficient. We obtained a large data set of 84,327 files comprising of images, compressed data and encrypted data. We then tested these thresholds (taken from a variety of previous publications in the literature where possible) against our dataset, showing that the rate of false positives is far beyond what could be considered acceptable. False positive rates were often above 50% and even above 90% on several occasions. False negative rates were also generally between 5% and 20%, numbers which are also far too high. As a direct result of these experiments, we determine that relying on these simple statistical approaches is not good enough to detect ransomware attacks consistently. We instead recommend the exploration of higher-order statistics such as skewness and kurtosis for future ransomware detection techniques

On Deception-Based Protection Against Cryptographic Ransomware

In order to detect malicious file system activity, some commercial and academic anti-ransomware solutions implement deception-based techniques, specifically by placing decoy files among user files. While this approach raises the bar against current ransomware, as any access to a decoy file is a sign of malicious activity, the robustness of decoy strategies has not been formally analyzed and fully tested. In this paper, we analyze existing decoy strategies and discuss how they are effective in countering current ransomware by defining a set of metrics to measure their robustness. To demonstrate how ransomware can identify existing deception-based detection strategies, we have implemented a proof-of-concept anti-decoy ransomware that successfully bypasses decoys by using a decision engine with few rules. Finally, we discuss existing issues in decoy-based strategies and propose practical solutions to mitigate them