By How Much Does Conflict Reduce Financial Development?

Financial development, conflict, financial regulation

Enhanced bully algorithm for leader node election in synchronous distributed systems

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Food Insecurity and Conflict Events in Africa

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between food insecurity and conflict events short of war in Africa, taking account of a host of mediating factors, including the degree of inequality, the level of development, democratic quality, quality of governance and the degree of government expenditure, which we incorporate into our analysis. Our results suggest that food price volatility does contribute significantly to conflict events measured by political events in Africa (ACLED). Greater democracy can engender more conflict, but in a non-linear fashion. The broader V-DEM participatory index of democracy also encourages more protest. Our governance variables are significant, emphasising the salience of state capacity in this regard. An innovation of our study is the inclusion of inequality. We deploy two metrics of vertical inequality: the GINI coefficient and the broader V-DEM egalitarian index. The GINI index of income inequality has a counter-intuitive statistically insignificant sign, suggesting that greater income equality or middle-class share of income results in greater political unrest. We also utilise political measures of inter-group horizontal inequality which significantly engender conflict risk

Transcriptomic profiling disclosed the role of DNA methylation and histone modifications in tumor-infiltrating myeloid-derived suppressor cell subsets in colorectal cancer

Increased numbers of myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) are positively correlated with poor prognosis and reduced survivals of cancer patients. They play central roles in tumor immune evasion and tumor metastasis. However, limited data are available on phenotypic/transcriptomic characteristics of the different MDSCs subsets in cancer. These cells include immature (I-MDSCs), monocytic (M-MDSCs), and polymorphonuclear/granulocytic (PMN-MDSCs). Phenotypic characterization of myeloid subsets from 27 colorectal cancer (CRC) patients was assessed by flow cytometric analyses. RNA-sequencing of sorted I-MDSCs, PMN-MDSCs, and antigen-presenting cells (APCs) was also performed. We found that the levels of I-MDSCs and PMN-MDSCs were increased in tumor tissues (TT), compared with normal tissues (NT) in colorectal cancer. Our functional annotation analyses showed that genes associated with histone deacetylase (HDAC) activation- and DNA methylation-mediated transcriptional silencing were upregulated, and histone acetyl transferase (HAT)-related genes were downregulated in tumor-infiltrating I-MDSCs. Moreover, pathways implicated in cell trafficking and immune suppression, including Wnt, interleukin-6 (IL-6), and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling, were upregulated in I-MDSCs. Notably, PMN-MDSCs showed downregulation in genes related to DNA methylation and HDAC binding. Using an ex vivo model, we found that inhibition of HDAC activation or neutralization of IL-6 in CRC tumor tissues downregulates the expression of genes associated with immunosuppression and myeloid cell chemotaxis, confirming the importance of HDAC activation and IL-6 signaling pathway in MDSC function and chemotaxis. This study provides novel insights into the epigenetic regulations and other molecular pathways in different myeloid cell subsets within the CRC tumor microenvironment (TME), giving opportunities to potential targets for therapeutic benefits

Phenomenology for the decay of energy-containing eddies in homogeneous MHD turbulence

We evaluate a number of simple, one‐point phenomenological models for the decay of energy‐containing eddies in magnetohydrodynamic(MHD) and hydrodynamicturbulence. The MHDmodels include effects of cross helicity and Alfvénic couplings associated with a constant mean magnetic field, based on physical effects well‐described in the literature. The analytic structure of three separate MHDmodels is discussed. The single hydrodynamic model and several MHDmodels are compared against results from spectral‐method simulations. The hydrodynamic model phenomenology has been previously verified against experiments in wind tunnels, and certain experimentally determined parameters in the model are satisfactorily reproduced by the present simulation. This agreement supports the suitability of our numerical calculations for examining MHDturbulence, where practical difficulties make it more difficult to study physical examples. When the triple‐decorrelation time and effects of spectral anisotropy are properly taken into account, particular MHDmodels give decay rates that remain correct to within a factor of 2 for several energy‐halving times. A simple model of this type is likely to be useful in a number of applications in space physics, astrophysics, and laboratory plasma physics where the approximate effects of turbulence need to be included

Welfare Impacts of Fisheries Co-management System at Oxbow Lakes in Bangladesh

Fisheries co-management starts with the premise that stakeholders have the innate capacity to improve resource condition as well as the welfare of the society. If this is true, there is a need for rapid and substantial devolution of fisheries management institutions. The main purpose of this study was to examine net welfare change to society as a result of the co-management system at Oxbow Lakes in Bangladesh. The simultaneous equation model consisting of supply, demand and identity equations were estimated and Marshallian surplus measurement was used to estimate the welfare change before and after the co-management system. The pooling technique proposed by Kmenta (1971; 1986) was utilized for the estimation. The analysis showed that the co-management program had caused a welfare gain to society.Key words: Fisheries co-management, Oxbow Lake, Producer Surplus, Consumer Surplu

Determinants of financial inclusion in South Asia: The moderating and mediating roles of internal conflict settlement

Financial inclusion is recognized as a key enabler of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals agenda of the United Nations. Hence, this study investigates the impacts of internal conflicts, economic growth, information and communications technology, institutional quality, and remittance inflows on financial inclusion in selected South Asian countries. Notably, both the independent and moderating/mediating effects of internal conflict settlement on financial inclusion are explored for the countries of concern. Overall, the results from the econometric analysis reveal that internal conflict resolution, higher mobile subscriptions, and lower levels of corruption improve financial inclusivity while higher economic growth inhibits financial inclusion in South Asia. Further, resolving internal conflicts is found to indirectly boost financial inclusion by moderating the economic growth-financial inclusion nexus and mediating the remittance inflows-financial inclusion relationship. In line with these key findings, several financial inclusion-related policies are recommended to help promote financial inclusivity across South Asia

Differential gene expression of tumor-infiltrating CD33 + myeloid cells in advanced- versus early-stage colorectal cancer

Abstract: Colorectal cancer (CRC) has high mortality rates, especially in patients with advanced disease stages, who often do not respond to therapy. The cellular components of the tumor microenvironment are essentially responsible for dictating disease progression and response to therapy. Expansion of different myeloid cell subsets in CRC tumors has been reported previously. However, tumor-infiltrating myeloid cells have both pro- and anti-tumor roles in disease progression. In this study, we performed transcriptomic profiling of cells of myeloid lineage (CD33+) from bulk CRC tumors at varying disease stages. We identified differentially expressed genes and pathways between CRC patients with advanced stage and early stages. We found that pro-angiogenic and hypoxia-related genes were upregulated, while genes related to immune and inflammatory responses were downregulated in CD33+ myeloid cells from patients with advanced stages, implying that immune cell recruitment and activation could be compromised in advanced disease stages. Moreover, we identified a unique “poor prognosis CD33+ gene signature” by aligning top upregulated and downregulated genes in tumor-infiltrating myeloid cells from our analyses with data from The Cancer Genome Atlas. Our results showed that this gene signature is an independent prognostic indicator for disease-specific survival in CRC patients, potentially reflecting its clinical importance