Impact of Road Crashes on Poverty in Myanmar: A Case Study in Yangon

This paper reveals the impacts of road crashes on poor people in Yangon Myanmar The study aims to investigate whether poor people are more likely to be involved in road crashes and to identify whether the consequences of road crashes have higher impacts on poor households than on non-poor households The study was based on a questionnaire survey conducted in Yangon To identify involvement in road crashes and impacts on the households of poor and non-poor people hypothesis tests were applied A linear regression model and logit model were applied to evaluate contributing factors to a declining situation of household income after road crash involvement The results show that lower social economic groups are more involved in road crashes in Yangon than are higher social economic groups The costs and impacts of road crashes are higher burdens for poor people The findings can assist policy makers in determining appropriate policies to mitigate the impacts and improve poverty alleviation actions Other than that transportation planning such as the improvement of public transport and basic road infrastructure could reduce the road crash problem for poor people who are the main group of road users in Yango

Characterizing The Role And Regulation Of Glycogen Metabolism In Dendritic Cell Immune Responses

Dendritic cells (DCs) are the most potent professional antigen presenting cells (pAPCs) of the immune system and play a fundamental role in coordinating innate and adaptive immune responses. Through the expression of a wide array of pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), such as toll-like receptors (TLRs), DCs recognize a variety of microbial pathogens and infectious stimuli. Stimulation of DCs through TLR ligation results in a rapid series of activation-associated events, termed maturation, which include the upregulation of surface co-stimulatory molecule expression, inflammatory cytokine secretion, and stimulation of naïve T cells via antigen presentation by MHC molecules. Activation of DCs through TLRs is coupled with an increased metabolic demand fulfilled by a rapid change in DC glucose metabolism and characterized by increased aerobic glycolysis rates. TLR-driven glycolytic reprogramming plays an essential role in generating building blocks required for high level protein synthesis associated with maturation. Although glucose imported from extracellular environments has been broadly considered as the major driver of glycolytic metabolism in immune cells, the contributions of intracellular glucose stores to these processes are not well-defined. The role of intracellular stores of glucose, in the form of glycogen, is widely appreciated in non-immune systems. However, very little is known about the implication of glycogen metabolism in DC immune responses. This work unveils the role and potential regulatory mechanisms of glycogen metabolism in support of DC effector function. The first part of this work primarily focuses on our characterization of the role of glycogen metabolism in early DC activation responses; while in the last chapter, we describe a potential regulatory mechanism of DC glycogen metabolism by activation-associated nitric oxide (NO) production. In this work, we tested the overarching hypothesis that DC-intrinsic glycogen metabolism supports the early glycolytic reprogramming required for effector responses and that nitric oxide can regulate this metabolism. We demonstrate that DCs possess the enzymes required for glycogen metabolic machinery and that glycogen metabolism supports DC immune effector response, particularly during early activation and in nutrient-limited environments. More importantly, we uncover a very intriguing metabolic phenomenon, in which DCs engage in the differential metabolic pathways driven by carbons derived distinctively from glycogen and free glucose. Our studies present the fundamental role and regulatory mechanisms of DC-intrinsic glycogen metabolism and underline the differential utilization of glycogen and glucose metabolism to support their effector responses. Overall, this work adds to a growing field of immuno-metabolism an improved understanding of an intricate layer of metabolic mechanisms that immune cells undertake in response to immune stimuli

Continuous Professional Development for Teacher Educator Development in Myanmar Education Colleges

This article reports on the role of teacher education in the curriculum reform of basic education in Myanmar. There was political change in Myanmar, a transition from military administration to democracy in 2010. Political change impacts on various sectors such as economic, education and health. As the education system was changed to meet the international standards, curriculum in basic education and teacher education were updated. In the previous education of Myanmar that has progressed from the old monastic education to the current modern education, there has never been a curriculum framework although syllabi, textbooks, teacher’s guides with different teaching methods and various assessment forms were designed and used. Therefore, Myanmar Ministry of Education is now implementing the educational reforms by setting the curriculum framework with the direction of the National Education Law (Soe, et al.; 2017, Htet, 2020). This paper provides an overview of teacher education, basic education, curriculum reforms. Although teacher education including three institutions cooperates with basic education in implementation of the new curriculum, it found that there are still few weaknesses in implementation of the new curriculum of basic education. Soe et al. (2017) recommended that the new curriculum will fulfill local needs and circumstances and discourage the practice of rote-learning and will ensure that students grow as independent thinkers with their own sense of creativity

Hand Gesture Detection and Recognition System: A Critical Review

Hand gesture recognition is used enormously in the recent years for interact human and machine. There are many type of gestures such as arm, hand, face and many other but hand gestures give more meaningful information than other types of gestures.  There are many techniques for hand gesture recognition, such as color marker approach, vision-based approach, glove-based approach and depth-based approach. The main purpose of gesture recognition system is to develop a useful system which can recognize human hand gestures and used them to control electronic devices. This paper reviewed the most common used hand gesture recognition methods, tools and analysis the strength and weakness of these methods, and lists the current challenging problems of hand gesture recognition system

Immunogenicity of the Plasmodium vivax merozoite surface protein 1 paralog in the induction of naturally acquired antibody and memory B cell responses

Background: The Plasmodium vivax merozoite surface protein 1 paralog (PvMSP1P-19) is a glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-anchored blood-stage protein that is expressed on the merozoite surface. It is proposed as a blood-stage vaccine candidate against P. vivax because of its ability to induce immune responses upon natural P. vivax exposure and in immunized animals. This study aimed to demonstrate the presence of inhibitory antibodies and memory B cell responses to the PvMSP1P-19 antigen during acute P. vivax infection and after recovery from infection. Methods: To evaluate the antibody responses to PvMSP1P-19 during and after recovery from P. vivax infection, heparinized blood was collected from P. vivax-infected patients and recovered subjects to detect the total IgG response. The seropositive samples were defined into high and low responders, according to their optical density (OD) values obtained from ELISA. High responders were the subjects who had OD values above the OD of antisera from non-exposed controls plus 4x standard deviations, whereas low responders were the subjects who had OD values less than OD of antisera from non-exposed controls plus 4x standard deviations. The plasma from high and low responders were taken for testing the inhibitory activity against PvMSP1P-19-erythrocyte binding by in vitro EBIA. The sustainability of PvMSP1P-19-specific memory B cell responses after recovery from infection was analysed by ELISPOT. Results: The anti-PvMSP1P-19 antibody levels were significantly higher in acutely infected P. vivax patients compared to healthy controls (P <0.0001). Monitoring of the anti-PvMSP1P-19 antibody titre showed that the antibody was maintained for up to 9 months after recovery. Almost all high-responder groups strongly inhibited PvMSP1P-19 binding to erythrocytes, whereas no inhibition was shown in most low-responder samples. Interestingly, the inhibitory activity of the antibodies in some individuals from high-responder samples were stable for at least 12 months. The longevity of the antibody response was associated with the presence of PvMSP1P-19-specific memory B cells at 9 months after recovery from infection. Conclusions: The PvMSP1P-19 antigen has immunogenicity during the induction of the antibody response, in which both the levels and inhibitory activity are maintained after the patient recovered from P. vivax infection. The maintenance of the antibody response was associated with the response of PvMSP1P-19-specific memory B cells. Therefore, the PvMSP1P-19 antigen should also be considered as a reliable vaccine candidate to develop a blood-stage vaccine against P. vivax.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Investigating Lifelong Learning Competencies of Teacher Trainers in Myanmar

Systematic literature review in lifelong learning identified that there are three common research trends: concepts used in lifelong learning policies, lifelong learning abilities, and influencing factors of lifelong learning and/or lifelong learning abilities. However, the number of previous studies that used mixed methods and were conducted in Asia is limited. Thus, the main aim of this research is to explore the perceptions of teacher trainers on lifelong learning and their perceived level of lifelong learning competencies through the advanced mixed method; explanatory sequential design. The participants in this study were teacher trainers from selected education degree colleges in Myanmar. The main instrument, LLLCS used in this study was developed based on the eight key competencies of lifelong learning identified by the European Commission, namely, Literacy competence, Multilingual competence, Mathematical competence and competence in Science, Learning to learn competence, Entrepreneurship competence and Cultural awareness and expression competence. Its reliability, face validity, content validity and construct validity were presented. In the quantative part, multiple linear regression analysis was performed to formulate the regression models for lifelong learning competencies of teacher trainers, and analysis of variance was also utilized to create comparison between the outcome models. The results indicated that the model including region, teaching experience, perception of lifelong learning, and learning strategies may be the best regression model for predicting lifelong learning competencies in teacher trainers. In the quantitative part of the formal study, the relationships among the perception of lifelong learning, lifelong learning competencies, and learning strategies were investigated and each competency of lifelong learning was also analysed. The findings indicated the perception of teacher trainers of lifelong learning and lifelong learning competencies is high. The study found that perception of lifelong learning, competencies, and learning strategies did not differ based on gender, education level, or teaching tenure. However, significant differences were observed in perception of lifelong learning and learning strategies, but not lifelong learning competencies in terms of age. The study also found a highly positive correlation between lifelong learning competencies and learning strategies. Competencies were typically high in learning how to learn, but low in math and science. Competencies in multilingual, digital, learning to learn, citizenship, entrepreneurship, and cultural awareness varied by region of education degree colleges, but not literacy, mathematics, and science. Literacy competence, digital competence and citizenship competence can also differ by age while teaching service can influence only the digital competence. By using a purposive sampling approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted in the qualitative phase. Their lifelong learning competencies, particularly in the areas of digital competence and multilingual competence, are affected both favourably and unfavourably by the new learning community. Most of them used self-regulated learning strategies to gain teaching competencies. They believed that teaching competencies are related to the lifelong learning competencies, which can also be influenced by various internal and external factors

Prevention of Man-In-The-Middle Attack in Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange Algorithm using Proposed Hash Function

The key exchange process is a very important feature for many parts in cryptography. In data encryption, symmetric encryption techniques need to share the same secret key securely between two parties before encryption and this is a challenging task for secure data transmission. Most symmetric key encryptions and key management systems widely use Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange (DHKE) algorithm for the purpose of key distribution because it has simple computation and supports forward security. However, there is no key authentication and Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attack has occurred during the key generation process. To overcome this problem, a new hash function is proposed to get the public key integrity during the public key sharing process of DHKE algorithm. This hash function is created by using six bitwise operators and operated in a variable length of the rounds depending on message length. Thus, the proposed system improves the security of DHKE and grantees the user authentication requirements

Proposed Framework for Pali Words to Myanmar Text Translation

The aim of this paper is to assist Buddhists andthe new Buddhist students who are unfamiliar withsome of the Pali words often used in the study ofBuddhism. Moreover this can also assist the students ofphilosophy or orientalist who has to know theterminology of their field, which for common parlanceis mostly not less ‘unfamiliar’ than are the words of thePali language found in the dictionary. As Myanmar isBuddhism country, needs to deeper understandBuddha-Dhamma. In this study both building of Pali-Myanmar dictionary and Pali-Myanamr wordssegmentation to translate the given Pali-Myanmarscriptures to Myanmar text are proposed. So proposedsystem has two sections, first is building of Pali-Myanmar dictionary and second is translation for Paliwords to Myanmar text in which Pali-Myanmar wordsis first needed the segmentation to provide translationof Pali-Myanmar words to Myanmar text . So wordssegmentation method is used with the combination ofrule-based syllable segmentation and dictionary-basedmatching method for translation of Pali words toMyanmar text