An Exploratory Study of the Impact of Government Policies on the Development of Small and Medium Enterprises in Developing Countries

This paper explores the effects of government policies on the development of Small and Medium Enterprises in developing countries through the examination of the case of Nigeria. Many research studies reported that SMEs in Nigeria have not benefited from the policies formulated by the government. This paper investigates the impediments to manufacturing SMEs growth and the needed pre-requisite environment for SMEs to benefit from government specific policies. The study adopted a qualitative methodology depending on face to face interviews with 20 SME owners and/or managers in five of the six geographical arears of Nigeria, 20 bank managers in the capital city of Lagos and 20 government officials located in the federal capital city of Abuja. The study unveils unique contextually novel insights, including particularly the distinctive processes and different relationships related to lenders decision. The research findings are consistent with those reported by other scholars in the field, and confirm that government policies and support in the areas of technology, infrastructure and finance affects the performance of SMEs to a great extent in Nigeria

Examining the Impact of Job Security, Organizational Climate and Engagement on Motivation Level of Employees at IMC PVT LTD

The aim of this paper is to find out the relationship of Motivation with organization climate, engagement, and job security in a service organization, where the company is going through rightsizing. Moreover the company is also utilizing temp staff. This study finds out as to how employees working in the organization perceive it and how much they feel connected to it. Is there any variation on their Motivation regarding job security keeping in view the economic crises in the Country

A unique ZnFe2O4/graphene nanoplatelets nanocomposite for electrochemical energy storage and efficient visible light driven catalysis for the degradation of organic noxious in wastewater

A series of ZnFe₂O₄/graphene nanoplatelets ((ZF)(GNPs)) nanocomposites have been synthesized and characterized. By optimizing the weight ratio of graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs), the synthesized nanocomposites have been identified as an excellent material for electrochemical capacitors with outstanding electrochemical capacitance (314 Fg¯¹ at 0.5 Ag¯¹), high rate performance, and long-standing cyclic stability (77.6% retention). The enhanced electrochemical performance might be adduced to the improved electrode/electrolyte charge transfer interface and conducting nature of GNPs. Besides, (ZF)(GNPs) nanocomposites exhibit outstanding visible light driven photocatalytic efficiency for the removal of methylene blue (MB) dye in water i.e., 97.46% of the MB is degraded in 70 min, which can be primarily ascribed to the enhanced photo Fenton reaction, effective electron-hole (e/h) separation and strong interfacial coupling between ZnFe₂O₄ nanoparticles (ZF NPs) and GNPs. Our results offer new insights into multifunctional nanocomposites for the electrochemical energy storage and treatment of polluted wastewater

Brain Tumor and Glioma Grade Classification Using Gaussian Convolutional Neural Network

Understanding brain diseases such as categorizing Brain-Tumor (BT) is critical to assess the tumors and facilitate the patient with proper cure as per their categorizations. Numerous imaging schemes exist for BT detection, such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), generally utilized because of the better quality of images and the reality of depending on non-ionizing radiation. This paper proposes an approach to detect distinctive BT types using Gaussian Convolutional Neural Network (GCNN) on two datasets. One of the datasets is used to classify tumors into pituitary, glioma, and meningioma. The other one separates the three grades of glioma, i.e., Grade-two, Grade-three, and Grade-four. These datasets have ’233’ and ’73’ victims with a total of ’3064’ and ’516’ images on T1-weighted complexity improved pictures for the first and second datasets, separately. The proposed approach achieves an accuracy of 99.8% and 97.14% for the two datasets. The experimental results highlight the efficiency of the proposed approach for BT multi-class categorization

Predictive accuracy of boosted regression model in estimating risk of venous thromboembolism following minimally invasive radical surgery in pharmacological prophylaxis-naïve men with prostate cancer

Background: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a potentially life-threatening but preventable complication after urological surgery. Physicians are faced with the challenges of weighing the risks and benefits of thromboprophylaxis given scanty evidence for or against and practice variation worldwide.Objective: The primary objective of the study was to explore the possibility of a risk-stratified approach for thromboembolism prophylaxis following radical prostatectomy.Design, setting, and participants: A prospective database was accessed to cross-link venous thromboembolism events in 522 men who underwent minimally invasive prostatectomy between February 2010 and October 2021. A deterministic data linkage method was used to record events through electronic systems. Community Health Index (CHI) numbers were used to identify patients via electronic health records. Patient demographics and clinical characteristics such as age, comorbidities, Gleason staging, and readmission details accrued.Outcomes: VTE within 90 days and development of a risk-stratified scoring system. All statistical analysis was performed using R-Statistical Software and the risk of VTE within 90 days of surgery was estimated via gradient-boosting decision trees (BRT) model.Results and limitations: 1.1% (6/522) of patients developed deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism within 3 months post-minimally invasive prostatectomy. Statistical analysis demonstrated a significant difference in the body mass index (p = 0.016), duration of hospital stay (p &lt; 0.001), and number of readmissions (p = 0.036) between patients who developed VTE versus patients who did not develop VTE. BRT analysis found 8 variables that demonstrated relative importance in predicting VTE. The receiver operating curves (ROC) were constructed to assess the discrimination power of a new model. The model showed an AUC of 0.97 (95% confidence intervals [CI]: 0.945,0.999). For predicting VTE, a single-center study is a limitation.Conclusions: The incidence of VTE post-minimally invasive prostatectomy in men who did not receive prophylaxis with low molecular weight heparin is low (1.1%). The proposed risk-scoring system may aid in the identification of higher-risk patients for thromboprophylaxis. Patient summary: In this report, we looked at the outcomes of venous thromboembolism following minimally invasive radical prostatectomy for prostate cancer in consecutive men. We developed a new scoring system using advanced statistical analysis. We conclude that the VTE risk is very low and our model, if applied, can risk stratify men for the development of VTE following radical surgery for prostate cancer.</p

runt homology domain transcription factors (Runx, Cbfa, and AML) mediate repression of the bone sialoprotein promoter: evidence for promoter context-dependent activity of Cbfa proteins

Expression of the bone sialoprotein (BSP) gene, a marker of bone formation, is largely restricted to cells in mineralized tissues. Recent studies have shown that the Cbfa1 (also known as Runx2, AML-3, and PEBP2alphaA) transcription factor supports commitment and differentiation of progenitor cells to hypertrophic chondrocytes and osteoblasts. This study addresses the functional involvement of Cbfa sites in expression of the Gallus BSP gene. Gel mobility shift analyses with nuclear extracts from ROS 17/2.8 osteoblastic cells revealed that multiple Cbfa consensus sequences are functional Cbfa DNA binding sites. Responsiveness of the 1.2-kb Gallus BSP promoter to Cbfa factors Cbfa1, Cbfa2, and Cbfa3 was assayed in osseous and nonosseous cells. Each of the Cbfa factors mediated repression of the wild-type BSP promoter, in contrast to their well known activation of various hematopoietic and skeletal phenotypic genes. Suppression of BSP by Cbfa factors was not observed in BSP promoters in which Cbfa sites were deleted or mutated. Expression of the endogenous BSP gene in Gallus osteoblasts was similarly downregulated by forced expression of Cbfa factors. Our data indicate that Cbfa repression of the BSP promoter does not involve the transducin-like enhancer (TLE) proteins. Neither coexpression of TLE1 or TLE2 nor the absence of the TLE interaction motif of Cbfa1 (amino acids 501 to 513) influenced repressor activity. However, removal of the C terminus of Cbfa1 (amino acids 362 to 513) relieved suppression of the BSP promoter. Our results, together with the evolutionary conservation of the seven Cbfa sites in the Gallus and human BSP promoters, suggest that suppressor activity by Cbfa is of significant physiologic consequence and may contribute to spatiotemporal expression of BSP during bone development

Memory-Efficient Incremental Learning Through Feature Adaptation

We introduce an approach for incremental learning that preserves feature descriptors of training images from previously learned classes, instead of the images themselves, unlike most existing work. Keeping the much lower-dimensional feature embeddings of images reduces the memory footprint significantly. We assume that the model is updated incrementally for new classes as new data becomes available sequentially.This requires adapting the previously stored feature vectors to the updated feature space without having access to the corresponding original training images. Feature adaptation is learned with a multi-layer perceptron, which is trained on feature pairs corresponding to the outputs of the original and updated network on a training image. We validate experimentally that such a transformation generalizes well to the features of the previous set of classes, and maps features to a discriminative subspace in the feature space. As a result, the classifier is optimized jointly over new and old classes without requiring old class images. Experimental results show that our method achieves state-of-the-art classification accuracy in incremental learning benchmarks, while having at least an order of magnitude lower memory footprint compared to image-preserving strategies

Beta-Blocker Use and Outcomes Among Hospitalized Heart Failure Patients

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of beta-blocker therapy on outcomes of hospitalized heart failure (HF) patients enrolled in the Evaluation Study of Congestive Heart Failure and Pulmonary Artery Catheterization (ESCAPE). BACKGROUND The effect of beta-blocker therapy on outcomes among hospitalized HF patients is not well documented. METHODS We studied the association between beta-blocker therapy and outcomes among 432 hospitalized HF patients in the ESCAPE trial. RESULTS A total of 268 patients (62%) were on beta-blockers before admission. These patients had a shorter length of stay (7.9 ± 6.3 days vs. 9.4 ± 6.7 days; p 50% dose reduction or changed to alternative beta-blocker) in 28 patients during hospitalization. Factors associated with discontinuation of beta-blockers during hospitalization included respiratory rate >24 breaths/min (30.8% vs. 16.9%; p = 0.03), heart rate >100 beats/min (19.2% vs. 7.3%; p = 0.01), lower ejection fraction (17.9 ± 5.4% vs. 20.2 ± 7.1%; p = 0.04), diabetes (21.2% vs. 37.1%; p = 0.03), and systolic blood pressure <100 mm Hg during hospitalization (70.3% vs. 54.1%; p = 0.03). After adjusting for factors associated with beta-blocker use and those with outcomes, consistent beta-blocker use during hospitalization was associated with a significant reduction in the rate of rehospitalization or death within six months after discharge (odds ratio 0.27, 95% confidence interval 0.10 to 0.71; p < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS Beta-blocker therapy before and during hospitalization for HF is associated with improved outcomes

Automated Quantification of Neuropad Improves Its Diagnostic Ability in Patients with Diabetic Neuropathy.

PublishedResearch Support, N.I.H., ExtramuralResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tNeuropad is currently a categorical visual screening test that identifies diabetic patients at risk of foot ulceration. The diagnostic performance of Neuropad was compared between the categorical and continuous (image-analysis (Sudometrics)) outputs to diagnose diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN). 110 subjects with type 1 and 2 diabetes underwent assessment with Neuropad, Neuropathy Disability Score (NDS), peroneal motor nerve conduction velocity (PMNCV), sural nerve action potential (SNAP), Deep Breathing-Heart Rate Variability (DB-HRV), intraepidermal nerve fibre density (IENFD), and corneal confocal microscopy (CCM). 46/110 patients had DPN according to the Toronto consensus. The continuous output displayed high sensitivity and specificity for DB-HRV (91%, 83%), CNFD (88%, 78%), and SNAP (88%, 83%), whereas the categorical output showed high sensitivity but low specificity. The optimal cut-off points were 90% for the detection of autonomic dysfunction (DB-HRV) and 80% for small fibre neuropathy (CNFD). The diagnostic efficacy of the continuous Neuropad output for abnormal DB-HRV (AUC: 91%, P = 0.0003) and CNFD (AUC: 82%, P = 0.01) was better than for PMNCV (AUC: 60%). The categorical output showed no significant difference in diagnostic efficacy for these same measures. An image analysis algorithm generating a continuous output (Sudometrics) improved the diagnostic ability of Neuropad, particularly in detecting autonomic and small fibre neuropathy.National Institute of Health (NIH)Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF

CryoEM and stability analysis of virus-like particles of potyvirus and ipomovirus infecting a common host

Sweet potato feathery mottle virus (SPFMV) and Sweet potato mild mottle virus (SPMMV) are members of the genera Potyvirus and Ipomovirus, family Potyviridae, sharing Ipomoea batatas as common host, but transmitted, respectively, by aphids and whiteflies. Virions of family members consist of flexuous rods with multiple copies of a single coat protein (CP) surrounding the RNA genome. Here we report the generation of virus-like particles (VLPs) by transient expression of the CPs of SPFMV and SPMMV in the presence of a replicating RNA in Nicotiana benthamiana. Analysis of the purified VLPs by cryo-electron microscopy, gave structures with resolutions of 2.6 and 3.0 Å, respectively, showing a similar left-handed helical arrangement of 8.8 CP subunits per turn with the C-terminus at the inner surface and a binding pocket for the encapsidated ssRNA. Despite their similar architecture, thermal stability studies reveal that SPMMV VLPs are more stable than those of SPFMV