Islamic Banking and Green Banking for Sustainable Development: Evidence From Bangladesh

Green banking is an integral part of Islamic banking that makes a basis of environmental protection. This study attempts to examine the relationship between Islamic banking and green banking that contribute to sustainable development. The study has used the primary data through a structural questionnaire that includes various dimensions on green banking of Islamic banking in Bangladesh. The investigation revealed that Islamic banks had made a significant contribution to green banking that improves the environment as means of cost and energy savings, preservation of natural resources and the need to respect all living things. The study seems to carry an enormous academic value since a few studies have undertaken in this areaDOI: 10.15408/aiq.v10i1.456

P-T conditions of Pan-African orogeny in southeastern Nigeria

Abstract Different rock types from the area northeast of Obudu, southeastern Nigeria were investigated in order to place constraints on their metamorphic conditions. Detailed petrographic studies indicate four main rock groups in the studied area, namely migmatitic gneiss, migmatitic schist, granite gneiss and a minor amount of amphibolite, metagabbro and dolerite. The chemistry of minerals in these rocks is used to estimate metamorphic pressure and temperature (P-T) using appropriate geothermometers and geobarometers. The estimated temperature for migmatitic gneiss of the area is ∼600–625 °C and 600–650 °C for migmatitic schist; the pressure is ∼ 8 kbar. For amphibolite the temperature is ∼600–700 °C and pressure is 8–12 kbar. The estimated pressures and temperatures for the northeast Obudu rocks correspond to upper amphibolite to lower granulite facies metamorphism. The metamorphism occurred due to continent-continent collision during the Pan-African orogeny, most likely during the D1 deformational phase of the area. The recorded high pressures possibly resulted from crustal thickening in the area. P-T conditions for Pan-African orogeny in northeast Obudu area are in good agreement with P-T estimations for the Pan-African event in adjacent areas

Superexchange coupling of donor qubits in silicon

Atomic engineering in a solid-state material has the potential to functionalize the host with novel phenomena. STM-based lithographic techniques have enabled the placement of individual phosphorus atoms at selective lattice sites of silicon with atomic precision. Here, we show that by placing four phosphorus donors spaced 10-15 nm apart from their neighbours in a linear chain, it is possible to realize coherent spin coupling between the end dopants of the chain, analogous to the superexchange interaction in magnetic materials. Since phosphorus atoms are a promising building block of a silicon quantum computer, this enables spin coupling between their bound electrons beyond nearest neighbours, allowing the qubits to be spaced out by 30-45 nm. The added flexibility in architecture brought about by this long-range coupling not only reduces gate densities but can also reduce correlated noise between qubits from local noise sources that are detrimental to error correction codes. We base our calculations on a full configuration interaction technique in the atomistic tight-binding basis, solving the 4-electron problem exactly, over a domain of a million silicon atoms. Our calculations show that superexchange can be tuned electrically through gate voltages where it is less sensitive to charge noise and donor placement errors

Using hospitalization for ambulatory care sensitive conditions to measure access to primary health care: an application of spatial structural equation modeling

BACKGROUND: In data commonly used for health services research, a number of relevant variables are unobservable. These include population lifestyle and socio-economic status, physician practice behaviors, population tendency to use health care resources, and disease prevalence. These variables may be considered latent constructs of many observed variables. Using health care data from South Carolina, we show an application of spatial structural equation modeling to identify how these latent constructs are associated with access to primary health care, as measured by hospitalizations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions. We applied the confirmatory factor analysis approach, using the Bayesian paradigm, to identify the spatial distribution of these latent factors. We then applied cluster detection tools to identify counties that have a higher probability of hospitalization for each of the twelve adult ambulatory care sensitive conditions, using a multivariate approach that incorporated the correlation structure among the ambulatory care sensitive conditions into the model. RESULTS: For the South Carolina population ages 18 and over, we found that counties with high rates of emergency department visits also had less access to primary health care. We also observed that in those counties there are no community health centers. CONCLUSION: Locating such clusters will be useful to health services researchers and health policy makers; doing so enables targeted policy interventions to efficiently improve access to primary care

Rational Design of an Epitope-Based Hepatitis C Virus Vaccine

Despite improving treatment methods and therapeutic options, hepatitis C virus (HCV) remains a major global disease burden, and a vaccine would help greatly in reducing its incidence. Due to its extremely high sequence variability, HCV can readily escape the immune response, thus a vaccine must elicit an immune response toward conserved, functionally important epitopes. Using structural data of the broadly neutralizing antibody HCV1 in complex with a conserved linear epitope from the HCV E2 protein (aa 412-423, referred to as epitope I or domain E), we performed structure-based design to generate vaccine immunogens to induce antibody responses to this epitope. Designs selected for immunological characterization included a stabilized minimal epitope structure based on a defensin protein, as well as a bivalent vaccine featuring two copies of epitope I on the E2 surface. In vivo studies confirmed that these designs successfully generated robust antibody responses to this epitope, and sera from vaccinated mice neutralized HCV. In addition to presenting several effective HCV vaccine immunogens, this study demonstrates that induction of neutralizing anti-HCV antibodies is possible using an epitope-based vaccine, providing the basis for further efforts in structure-based vaccine design to target this and other critical epitopes of HCV

Spin-photon coupling for atomic qubit devices in silicon

Electrically addressing spin systems is predicted to be a key component in developing scalable semiconductor-based quantum processing architectures, to enable fast spin qubit manipulation and long-distance entanglement via microwave photons. However, single spins have no electric dipole, and therefore a spin-orbit mechanism must be integrated in the qubit design. Here, we propose to couple microwave photons to atomically precise donor spin qubit devices in silicon using the hyperfine interaction intrinsic to donor systems and an electrically-induced spin-orbit coupling. We characterise a one-electron system bound to a tunnel-coupled donor pair (1P-1P) using the tight-binding method, and then estimate the spin-photon coupling achievable under realistic assumptions. We address the recent experiments on double quantum dots (DQDs) in silicon and indicate the differences between DQD and 1P-1P systems. Our analysis shows that it is possible to achieve strong spin-photon coupling in 1P-1P systems in realistic device conditions without the need for an external magnetic field gradient