Tracing the income-fertility nexus: Nonparametric Estimates for a Panel of Countries

We apply the a nonparametric method of kernel regression on a dataset for 109 countries to estimate the income fertility nexus in demo-economic transition. The results suggest the existence of a critical level of per capita income above which fertility decreases exponentially with rising income. For income levels below fertility stays on a high level and its relation to income is of minor significance. The critical income threshold changes over time and is lower for more recent periods, which gives evidence of major structural shifts in the relationship under investigation.

Query-guided End-to-End Person Search

Person search has recently gained attention as the novel task of finding a person, provided as a cropped sample, from a gallery of non-cropped images, whereby several other people are also visible. We believe that i. person detection and re-identification should be pursued in a joint optimization framework and that ii. the person search should leverage the query image extensively (e.g. emphasizing unique query patterns). However, so far, no prior art realizes this. We introduce a novel query-guided end-to-end person search network (QEEPS) to address both aspects. We leverage a most recent joint detector and re-identification work, OIM [37]. We extend this with i. a query-guided Siamese squeeze-and-excitation network (QSSE-Net) that uses global context from both the query and gallery images, ii. a query-guided region proposal network (QRPN) to produce query-relevant proposals, and iii. a query-guided similarity subnetwork (QSimNet), to learn a query-guided reidentification score. QEEPS is the first end-to-end query-guided detection and re-id network. On both the most recent CUHK-SYSU [37] and PRW [46] datasets, we outperform the previous state-of-the-art by a large margin.Comment: Accepted as poster in CVPR 201

John Dewey and His Philosophy of Education

This review paper on John Dewey, the pioneering educationist of the 20th century, discusses his educational thoughts, and writings, which gave a new direction to education at the turn of the century. Dewey’s contributions are immense and overwhelming in the fields of education, politics, humanism, logic, and aesthetics. This discussion will focus on Dewey and his philosophy related to educational approaches, pedagogical issues, and the linkages that he made between education, democracy, experience, and society. At the heart of his educational thought is the child. Dewey’s idea on humanism springs from his democratic bent and his quest for freedom, equity, and the value of child’s experiences

Histopathology: An Old Yet Important Technique in Modern Science

Histopathology is a scientific study of disease at the tissue and cellular levels. Despite an old practice, the histopathology reserved one of the substantial sections of disease studies, both and medical and veterinary field in the modern scientific era. During the current molecular age, some improvements have been made in this practice. The early modification in histopathology is the introduction of immunohistochemistry, which playing an incredible role in tumor diagnosis. The new developments, including digital pathology, multiplex immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence, brain mapping, neuroimaging studies and artificial neuronal networking are emphasizing novel technologies and almost changed the previous ordinary diagnostic methods. The existing molecular pathobiology, was evolved mainly from biopsy and autopsy. Currently, the revolutions in molecular biology and in the technology of gene array have developed. The telepathology helping the society and deals with histopathological pictures. It is not far, when molecular techniques would be applied to the lesions prior to its paraffinizations, and the histopathological experts would previously recognize what to study in the sections. The productive move from a visual morphological explanation to obscure molecular science, may be delay, but ultimately be there. This chapter tries to express few of such characteristics of the histopathological practice which assured to be the fast progressing portion of the modern science

Making and breaking antibiotics – structural studies of Bottromycin biosynthesis and a mechanism of Albicidin resistance

The emergence of antibacterial resistance is a major public health threat that warrants urgent attention. The discovery of new antibacterial natural products and unravelling of their biosynthesis, coupled with the study of resistance mechanisms employed by bacteria to evade antibiotics will be vital in ensuring that we maintain a viable antibiotic development pipeline. This thesis covers two aspects of antibiotic research: deciphering bottromycin biosynthesis and AlbA mediated antibiotic resistance. Bottromycins are potent antibacterial peptides that bind a novel bacterial target: The A-site of the ribosome. Bottromycin biosynthesis is still not fully understood, especially the role of two hydrolases, BotAH and BotH. The in-depth functional and structural characterization studies presented here demonstrate that BotAH is responsible for a key proteolytic step, whereas BotH is an atypical hydrolase-like enzyme responsible for the post-translational epimerization of L-Asp to D-Asp in bottromycin biosynthesis. AlbA is a resistance protein that had previously been reported to neutralize a potent antibacterial compound, albicidin. The structural and functional studies of AlbA presented here not only reveal the mode of albicidin binding, but also the underlying mechanism of its modification by AlbA, resulting in loss of potency. The data also demonstrate that AlbA constitutes an autoregulated antibiotic resistance system, present in a wide variety of pathogenic bacteria.Die Entstehung von Antibiotikaresistenzen ist eine ernste Gefahr für die Gesundheit der Weltbevölkerung und bedarf dringender Aufmerksamkeit. Die Entdeckung neuer Naturstoffe mit antibiotischer Wirkung und ein Entschlüsseln ihrer Biosynthese zusammen mit einem besseren Verständnis der Resistenzmechanismen, die Bakterien entwickeln um sich zur Wehr zu setzen, ist essentiell um sicherzustellen, dass wir eine Tragfähige Strategie zur Entwicklung neuer Antibiotika haben. Diese Doktorarbeit beschäftigt sich mit zwei Aspekten der Antibiotikaforschung: Einem besseren Verständnis der Bottromycin Biosynthese und dem Resistenzprotein AlbA. Bottromycine sind potente antibakterielle Peptide und ihre Biosynthese ist noch nicht vollständig erforscht, besonders die Rolle der beiden Hydrolasen BotAH und BotH. Die detaillierte funktionelle und strukturelle Charakterisierung der beiden Proteine ist Teil dieser Arbeit. BotAH ist für einen wichtigen proteolytischen Schritt in der Biosynthese verantwortlich, wohingegen BotH eine sehr atypische Hydrolase ist und die post-translationale Umwandlung von l-Asp in d-Asp katalysiert. AlbA neutralisiert den potenten antibiotischen Naturstoff Albicidin. Die strukturelle und funktionelle Untersuchung von AlbA zeigte nicht nur auf wie AlbA Albicidin bindet und es dabei modifiziert, sondern auch das AlbA ein autoinduzierbares antibiotisches Resistenzprotein ist, das in vielen pathogenen Bakterien zu finden ist

Volatilization of volatile organic compounds from complex wastewaters

A variety of volatile organic solvents used in the pharmaceutical and specialty chemical industries end up in wastewater collection and treatment systems. EPA has classified these VOCs into groups depending on their potential to volatilize from the wastewaters. In making this classification, Henry\u27s Law, which is valid at very low concentrations, has been used to describe the vapor-liquid equilibrium. But, in reality the concentrations observed in the wastewaters are often too high for Henry\u27s Law to be valid and it is inappropriate to assume that equilibrium has been achieved for every compound. This project evaluates the volatilization rates, both experimental and theoretical, of VOCs (namely methanol, acetone and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO)) under a number of different operating scenarios. These different scenarios (e.g., quiescent, agitated, aerated, different free surface area exposed to the ambient air, different shapes of the vessel etc.) are supposed to closely simulate the range of different conditions that the VOCs are subjected to in the wastewater collection and treatment facilities in the industry. The aim is to determine how closely these compounds reach the equilibrium described by the Henry\u27s Law, when subjected to the different scenarios

Temperature Dependence of a Sub-wavelength Compact Graphene Plasmon-Slot Modulator

We investigate a plasmonic electro-optic modulator with an extinction ratio exceeding 1 dB/um by engineering the optical mode to be in-plane with the graphene layer, and show how lowering the operating temperature enables steeper switching. We show how cooling Graphene enables steeping thus improving dynamic energy consumption. Further, we show that multi-layer Graphene integrated with a plasmonic slot waveguide allows for in-plane electric field components, and 3-dB device lengths as short as several hundred nanometers only. Compact modulators approaching electronic length-scales pave a way for ultra-dense photonic integrated circuits with smallest footprint

Ethics and fiqh for daily life: an Islamic outline

Islam is a religion at the core of which lies belief and it blossoms and perpetually grows through a code of practice consisting of legal rules and moral principles. Iman will fade if it is not sustained by ethical values and moral ideals and reinforced by legal code pf practices. This book presents some of the pertinent aspects of ethics and fiqh for everyday life which benefits non-specialists in religious studies