Business Competitiveness in Bahrain: A Synopsis

Unbridled freedom to private business sector is a harbinger of business collapse and eventually the economic landscapes of nations. We have had ample examples very recently. Hence, suitable rules and regulations are essential in conditioning favourable business environment. The ease of doing business can be understood by the availability of a cross section of factors such as clarity of property rights, low cost of resolving disputes, predictability of economic policies and situation, protection to investments, impartial redressal mechanism, the freedom and low cost retrenchment policy and exit, ease of resource mobilisation etc. This report reviews two annual reports on Doing Business pertaining to Kingdom of Bahrain vis-a-vis major counterparts in the Middle East and other noted economies.Business competitiveness, Doing business, Business environment, Kingdom of Bahrain

Individual and organizational factors affecting the implementation of Green IT: a case study of an Indian business school

Green Information Technology (Green IT) emerged as a critical research agenda for reducing organizations' carbon footprints to achieve environmental sustainability. This paper aims to understand the factors that affect the adoption of Green Information Technology in the context of a developing country. Studies that have focused on both individual and organizational level factors (multi‐level approach) remain limited. The Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), and Technology‐Organization‐Environment (TOE) framework was used as a theoretical lens to address the gap in the literature. The theoretical background and participatory case study (qualitative) as the methodology was used to investigate the factors at multiple levels that could affect Green IT implementation in the developing country context (Indian business school). The findings reveal that three key dimensions affect the implementation of Green IT‐ Need, Scope, and the Inclination to adopt Green IT. Each dimension includes a mix of factors at the individual and organizational levels. This paper contributes to the theory by proposing a framework for multi‐level Green IT adoption. It also provides guidelines to the practitioners for considering the intervention factors at the individual and organizational levels

H2S paper strip method - A bacteriological test for faecal coliforms in drinking water at various temperatures

Epidemics arising from waterborne diseases are a global health problem. Faecal contamination of drinking water is the main cause of these outbreaks. According to WHO (1996) for drinking water to be safe, a 100 ml sample should not contain any coliform bacteria. The standard methods currently used for routine testing have many limitations especially when applied in remote areas. The H2S method has been developed as an on-site, inexpensive and easy to use method to test drinking water for remote and rural areas. The present work analyses the reliability of the H2S method for detecting faecal contamination in drinking water. The minimum level of faecal coliforms that could be detected and the incubation period required at various levels of contamination were studied. The range of temperatures at which the method was effective and the incubation period required at various temperatures were also determined. The H2S method was found to be able to detect contamination down to a level of 1 CFU/100 ml of coliform bacteria. Although the H2S method could be used at a temperature range of 20 to 44oC, temperatures between 28 to 37oC gave faster results. An incubation period of only 24 hours was required at 37oC, which was found to be the most suitable incubation temperature. The incubation period increased with a decrease or increase in temperature

Reductive alkylation of aromatic amines over copper chromite: Deactivation of catalyst

1115-1117Reaction of aniline with acetone in the presence of hydrogen and copper chromite as catalyst at 140°C and 50 kg/cm2 pressure has been studied with a view to understand the reasons for the rapid deactivation of the catalyst. Poisoning of the surface by the by-products of the reaction is the major cause of deactivation

Area Methods of Paper Chromatography: Part I – Determination of Alkali Metals and Sugars

A study has been made of the relation between spot area and spot content of alkali metals and sugars, separated on one - dimensional paper chromatograms. The usefulness of this relationship in the estimation of the components from mixtures of su~ars has been discussed. Waxed capillary pipettes have been used with advantage for the quantitative spotting of solutions

Absorption enhancement due to scattering by dipoles into silicon waveguides

We develop an optical model for absorption enhancement and diffuse reflectance by metal nanoparticles on a siliconwaveguide. A point dipole treatment is used, including the effects of the waveguide on both the angular emission spectrum and scattering cross section of the dipoles. The model agrees very well with our experimental results of greatly enhanced electroluminescence and photocurrent from silicon-on-insulator light-emitting diodes and also gives very good agreement with previously reported diffuse reflectance measurements. The results suggest that the main mechanism in the enhancement of diffuse reflectance in this system is a dramatic enhancement in the scattering cross section of waveguided light, rather than a waveguide-mediated dipole-dipole interaction. We also put lower bounds on the radiative efficiency of scattering by the nanoparticles.One of the authors K.R.C. acknowledges the support of an Australian Research Council fellowship. The authors acknowledge the support of the Centre of Excellence for Advanced Silicon Photovoltaics and Photonics, supported by the Australian Research Council

Artemether resistance in vitro is linked to mutations in PfATP6 that also interact with mutations in PfMDR1 in travellers returning with Plasmodium falciparum infections.

BACKGROUND: Monitoring resistance phenotypes for Plasmodium falciparum, using in vitro growth assays, and relating findings to parasite genotype has proved particularly challenging for the study of resistance to artemisinins. METHODS: Plasmodium falciparum isolates cultured from 28 returning travellers diagnosed with malaria were assessed for sensitivity to artemisinin, artemether, dihydroartemisinin and artesunate and findings related to mutations in pfatp6 and pfmdr1. RESULTS: Resistance to artemether in vitro was significantly associated with a pfatp6 haplotype encoding two amino acid substitutions (pfatp6 A623E and S769N; (mean IC50 (95% CI) values of 8.2 (5.7 - 10.7) for A623/S769 versus 623E/769 N 13.5 (9.8 - 17.3) nM with a mean increase of 65%; p = 0.012). Increased copy number of pfmdr1 was not itself associated with increased IC50 values for artemether, but when interactions between the pfatp6 haplotype and increased copy number of pfmdr1 were examined together, a highly significant association was noted with IC50 values for artemether (mean IC50 (95% CI) values of 8.7 (5.9 - 11.6) versus 16.3 (10.7 - 21.8) nM with a mean increase of 87%; p = 0.0068). Previously described SNPs in pfmdr1 are also associated with differences in sensitivity to some artemisinins. CONCLUSIONS: These findings were further explored in molecular modelling experiments that suggest mutations in pfatp6 are unlikely to affect differential binding of artemisinins at their proposed site, whereas there may be differences in such binding associated with mutations in pfmdr1. Implications for a hypothesis that artemisinin resistance may be exacerbated by interactions between PfATP6 and PfMDR1 and for epidemiological studies to monitor emerging resistance are discussed