Dubai: Changing Forms With Demography

Dubai is a living example of how people play an important role in moulding the shape of a city. It started off as a small settlement in the deserts of the Middle East along a natural creek. The old city is a testament of how the natural growth led to the birth to the vernacular architecture of the region to combat its extreme climate. From a group of fishing villages, Dubai went on to become a hub for global business. It has eventually weaved itself from its people, their culture, traditions, social norms, etc. Its architecture of has undergone dynamic transformation with amazing innovation over the recent decades. Dubai has paced faster than any other city on earth and grew into eminence over a few decades. Built on the Arabian deserts with scarce resources like water, food, building materials, etc, Dubai is now one of the greatest cities in the world. With global warming being a major concern, the world is moving towards a holistic approach of sustainable living. The city has always exhibited its feat of excellence, and is now aimed at becoming the most sustainable city. This paper is an effort to study the architectural styles of the past, their sustainability and how it has evolved though these years. The study is a summary of the vernacular architecture processes that allowed its occupants a comfortable indoor environment in the hot desert conditions

Recruitment and selection process of Robi Axiata Ltd.

This internship report is submitted in a partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Business Administration,2010.Cataloged from PDF version of Internship report.Includes bibliographical references (page 69).As a part of academic requirement and completion of BBA program, I have been assigned to complete internship report on “Recruitment and Selection process of Robi Axiata Ltd.” under the guidance of Ms. Afsana Akhter. “Recruitment and Selection process” is a segment of human resource process; As such I have selected this topic to make it clear. I have divided this report in some sub segments. As a young intern in a reputed telecommunication company like “Robi Axiata Limited” I have tried my best to go through their Recruitment and Selection process within little tenure of 03 months. The report starts with a general introduction “Robi Axiata Ltd” As well as its purpose, scope and limitation. Then this report proceeds onto the preliminary talk about “Robi Axiata Ltd.” Robi Axiata Ltd. one of the pioneers in the telecommunications private sector of Bangladesh, It is a joint venture company between Axiata Group Berhad, Malaysia and NTT DOCOMO INC, Japan. At first it introduced with a brand name AKTEL in 1997 then it started a new journey 28th March, 2010. I have shown the vision, strategic goal and principles of it. Afterward here discuss about Robi Axiata Ltd.’s different Division and Department. Then it carries on with Robi’s Long Term Vision, CSR activities, Achievement. Than the report proceeds with the job part, where the jobs which is done by me is discussed. After that I continue on to the my main focus of the report-“Robi’s Recruitment and Selection process” describing the different steps of it. The first part is manpower requisition and each department gives requisition according to its HR planning to HR Department. After getting approval from the CHRO, advertisement is given internally within the organization or in external media like bdjobs.com and career website of Robi. Following steps are arranging written exam, taking one or more interviews, and finally the medical checkup. A detail elaboration of selection of best candidate has been added in the project part and the contribution of HR department for selecting the most eligible employees for Robi has been highlighted. In this report, some other important topics of their HR division are also discussed like HR hierarchy, the environment within the organization and accommodation of a pull of candidates. After completion of this report it can easily say that efficient, competent and active part in Recruitment and Selection process take a company to the peak of the success.Upama KhayerB. Business Administratio

PENGARUH BEBAN PAJAK TANGGUHAN DAN PERENCANAAN PAJAK TERHADAP MANAJEMEN LABA (Studi Pada Perusahaan Manufaktur Subsektor Tekstil & Garmen Yang Terdaftar di Bursa Efek Indonesia Periode 2010-2014)

ABSTRAK Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisa Pengaruh Beban Pajak Tangguhan dan Perencanaan Pajak Terhadap Manajemen Laba (Studi Pada Perusahaan Manufaktur Subsektor tekstil dan garmen Yang Terdaftar Di Bursa Efek Indonesia Periode 2010-2014). Peneliti melakukan penelitian pada perusahaan manufaktur subsektor tekstil dan garmen yang terdaftar di Bursa Efek Indonesia periode 2010-2014. Tujuan diadakannya penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui beban pajak tangguhan dan perencanaan pajak terhadap manajemen laba di perusahaan manufaktur subsektor tekstil dan garmen yang terdaftar di Bursa Efek Indonesia periode 2010-2014. Teknik sampling yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah non probability sampling dengan metode purposive sampling. Data diperoleh dari publikasi Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX). Dimana populasi berjumlah 19 perusahaan, sedangkan sampelnya sebanyak 8 perusahaan manufaktur subsektor tekstil dan garmen yang terdaftar di Bursa Efek Indonesia periode 2010-2014. Pendekatan penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah analisis deskriptif dan analisis verifikatif. Analisis statistik yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah uji asumsi klasik, analisis regresi, analisis korelasi ETA, koefisien determinasi (Cox & Snell R Square) serta pengujian hipotesis menggunakan uji Wald Test dan pengolahan data dibantu dengan Software SPSS V 20.0 for Windows. Hasil uji statistik secara parsial menujukkan bahwa beban pajak tangguhan tidak berpengaruh signifikan terhadap manajemen laba. Perencanaan pajak tidak berpengaruh signifikan terhadap manajemen laba. Secara simultan hasil penelitian menunjukkan tidak ada pengaruh antara beban pajak tangguhan dan perencanaan pajak terhadap manajemen laba. Kata Kunci : Beban Pajak Tangguhan, Perencanaan Pajak, Manajemen Lab

STUDY OF THE ANTICONVULSANT POTENTIAL OF LEAVES OF CLITORIA TERNATEA LINN. IN PENTYLENETETRAZOLE AND MAXIMUM ELECTROSHOCK SEIZURE INDUCED-CONVULSIONS IN EXPERIMENTAL ANIMALS

ABSTRACTObjectives: To study the anticonvulsant potential of leaves of Clitoria ternatea Linn. in maximal electroshock seizure (MES) and pentylenetetrazole(PTZ)-induced convulsion in experimental animals.Methods: The anticonvulsant potential of the ethanolic extracts of C. ternatea Linn. (EECT) was tested in the MES and PTZ models, seizures wereinduced, respectively, by delivering electroshock of 50 mA for 0.2 s via a pair of transauricular electrodes using an electro-convulsiometer and byinjecting 80 mg/kg intraperitoneally PTZ. For MES model, parameters measured were the duration of hindlimb tonic extension (HLTE), total recoverytime, and percentage protection. For the PTZ model, parameters measured were the duration of time taken for the onset of clonic convulsions, durationof clonic convulsions, percentage reduction of clonic phase, and the mortality percentage.Results and Observation: The EECT at both the test doses (200 mg/kg and 400 mg/kg) reduced the duration of HLTE and total recovery time, andincreased the percentage protection from MES-induced convulsions, suggesting a dose-dependent anticonvulsant effect of EECT on MES-inducedseizures. The extract also produced a dose-dependent anticonvulsant effect on PTZ-induced seizures in albino mice as suggested by prolongation ofthe latency of clonic convulsion, reduction in the duration of convulsion and seizure score.Conclusion: The present study concludes that the EECT leaves have an anticonvulsant effect on PTZ and MES-induced convulsion in albino mice.Keywords: Antiepileptic, Clitoria ternatea Linn., Ethanolic extract, Maximal electroshock, Pentylenetetrazole, Seizure score

The effects of age and mating history on male reproductive success

Old age in males is commonly associated with negative effects on reproduction and offspring traits. Even so, how a male's age affects reproductive traits under sexual selection is poorly understood. In Chapter 1 I note that a problem in quantifying male age effect is that age and mating history are highly confounded: older males usually have more mating experience. This begs the question: to what extent does mating history rather than male age explain variation in traits under sexual selection? The answer requires an experimental approach. In this thesis, I disentangle the effects of male age and mating history to test for their independent and interactive effects on reproduction in eastern mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki). Chapter 2 investigates the effect of paternal lifetime mating history on offspring traits. I found that the daughters, but not the sons, of 'no-mating' treatment males matured significantly sooner, and at a significantly smaller size, than those of 'lifetime-mating' treatment males. Here I discuss sex-specific epigenetic effects of male mating history. Chapter 3 investigates the effect of male age and mating history on female choice. Females did not show a clear preference for males based on either characteristic. This was not due to a lack of female preference: females spent significantly more time with larger males. In addition, female choice was significantly repeatable across four trials: twice as a virgin and twice as a non-virgin. Although female mating status (virgin or non-virgin) did not affect her choice of mate, virgin females spent significantly more time associating with males. In Chapter 4 I tested if mating history rather than age explained variation in male mating behaviour, and determines paternity success when males competed for mates and fertilizations. Both old males, and naive males, spent significantly more time approaching females and attempting to mate, than did young males and those with greater mating experience. Male age and mating history interacted to affect paternity: old males benefited from having previous mating experience, but young males did not. In chapter 5 I tested if variation in the mating history of old and young males affects sperm traits under sexual selection, and paternity success under sperm competition. Old, naive males had more sperm than old, experienced males, while the reverse was true for young males. In contrast, neither male age nor mating history affected sperm velocity. Finally, old males sired significantly more offspring than young males independently of their mating history under sperm competition. The results from chapter 4 and 5 highlight that age-related changes in male reproductive traits, and even paternity, that have been described in many taxa may often be partly attributable to male mating history, and not only to age itself. In chapter 6 I manipulated male mating history to tease apart its effects from those of paternal age on female fertility and offspring traits. Male age did not affect female fertility. However, experienced males produced significantly larger broods. Intriguingly, sons of old, naive males were larger than those of old, experienced males. However, sons sired by old, naive males produced fewer sperm than those sired by old, experienced males, indicating a potential trade-off in beneficial paternal effects. Like their older fathers, sons of older males made significantly more mating attempts than those sired by young males. I discuss how inter-generational transfer of paternal ageing could partly arise due to a father's mating history, and not simply to his age. Overall, my results reveal the complexity of testing male age effects on reproductive traits and offspring traits. They bolster my claim that it is worthwhile to experimentally separate male mating history from age to test for male age effects under sexual selection

RICE FOR NUTRITION: A TEMPORAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE MAJOR SAARC COUNTRIES

Rice is the major source of nutrition in most of the South Asian countries. This paper examined the rice contribution status on nutrition supply viz. calorie, protein and fat from 1975 to 2009 among the major SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) countries. Among the major SAARC countries the people of Bangladesh highly relied on rice for calorie (72%), protein (62%) and fat supplies (17%) to meet their nutritional needs although it has not achieved yet rice yield sufficiency. It was found that India is the highest rice producer among the SAARC countries but they consume very littile amount of rice for their nutritional needs. It indicated that Bangladesh has been practicing rice monoculture widely and their food habit is rice based due to lack of variety of crop species. So it is needed to produce different crops like wheat, maize, potato and other fruits and vegetables for consumption. As well, poultry and livestock sectors have to be developed for more protein and fat supply from other sources along with rice in Bangladesh

Algorithm Based Fault Tolerance: A Perspective from Algorithmic and Communication Characteristics of Parallel Algorithms

Checkpoint and recovery cost imposed by checkpoint/restart (CP/R) is a crucial performance issue for high-performance computing (HPC) applications. In comparison, Algorithm-Based Fault Tolerance (ABFT) is a promising fault tolerance method with low recovery overhead, but it suffers from the inadequacy of universal applicability, i.e., tied to a specific application or algorithm. Till date, providing fault tolerance for matrix-based algorithms for linear systems has been the research focus of ABFT schemes. As a consequence, it necessitates a comprehensive exploration of ABFT research to widen its scope to other types of parallel algorithms and applications. In this thesis, we go beyond traditional ABFT and focus on other types of parallel applications not covered by traditional ABFT. In that regard, rather than an emphasis on a single application at a time, we consider the algorithmic and communication characteristics of a class of parallel applications to design efficient fault tolerance and recovery strategies for that class of parallel applications. The communication characteristics determine how to distributively replicate the fault recovery data (we call it the {\em critical data}) of a process, and the algorithmic characteristics determine what the application-specific data is to be replicated to minimize fault tolerance and recovery cost. Based on communication characteristics, parallel algorithms can be broadly classified as (i) embarrassingly parallel algorithms, where processes have infrequent or rare interactions, and (ii) communication-intensive parallel algorithms, where processes have significant interactions. In this thesis, through different case studies, we design ABFT for these two categories of algorithms by considering their algorithmic and communication characteristics. Analysis of these parallel algorithms reveals that a process contains sufficient information that can help to rebuild a computational state if any failure occurs during the computation. We define this information as critical data, the minimal application-level data required to be saved (securely) so that a failed process can be fully recovered from a most recent consistent state using this fault recovery data. How the communication dependencies among processes are utilized to replicate fault recovery data is directly related to the system’s fault tolerance performance. We propose ABFT for parallel search algorithms, which belong to the class of embarrassingly parallel algorithms. Parallel search algorithms are the well-known solution techniques for discrete optimization problems (DOP). DOP covers a broad class of (parallel) applications from search problems in AI to computer games, e.g., Chess and various games, traveling salesman problem, various AI search problems. As a case study, we choose the parallel iterative deepening A* (PIDA*) algorithm and integrate application-level fault tolerance with the algorithm by replicating critical data periodically to make it resilient. In the category of communication-intensive algorithms, we choose Dynamic programming (DP) which is a widely used algorithm paradigm for optimization problems. We choose parallel DP algorithm as a case study and propose ABFT for such applications. We present a detailed analysis of the characteristics of parallel DP algorithms and show that the algorithmic features reduce the cardinality of critical data into a single data in case of $n$-data dependent task. We demonstrate the idea with two popular DP class of applications: (i) the traveling salesman problem (TSP), and (ii) the longest common subsequence (LCS) problem. Minimal storage and recovery overhead are the prime concern in FT design. On that regard, we demonstrate that further optimization in critical data is possible for particular DP class of problems, where the degree of dependency for a subproblem is small and fixed at each iteration. We discuss it with the 0/1 knapsack problem as a case study and propose an ABFT scheme where, instead of replicating the critical data, we replicate a bit-vector flag in peer process's memory which is later used to rebuild the lost data of a failed process. Theoretical and experimental results demonstrate that our proposed methods perform significantly better than the conventional CP/R in terms of fault tolerance and recovery overheads, and also in storage overhead in the presence of single and multiple simultaneous failures

Robust Genomic Prediction and Heritability Estimation using Density Power Divergence

This manuscript delves into the intersection of genomics and phenotypic prediction, focusing on the statistical innovation required to navigate the complexities introduced by noisy covariates and confounders. The primary emphasis is on the development of advanced robust statistical models tailored for genomic prediction from single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data collected from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in plant and animal breeding and multi-field trials. The manuscript explores the limitations of traditional marker-assisted recurrent selection, highlighting the significance of incorporating all estimated effects of marker loci into the statistical framework and aiming to reduce the high dimensionality of GWAS data while preserving critical information. This paper introduces a new robust statistical framework for genomic prediction, employing one-stage and two-stage linear mixed model analyses along with utilizing the popular robust minimum density power divergence estimator (MDPDE) to estimate genetic effects on phenotypic traits. The study illustrates the superior performance of the proposed MDPDE-based genomic prediction and associated heritability estimation procedures over existing competitors through extensive empirical experiments on artificial datasets and application to a real-life maize breeding dataset. The results showcase the robustness and accuracy of the proposed MDPDE-based approaches, especially in the presence of data contamination, emphasizing their potential applications in improving breeding programs and advancing genomic prediction of phenotyping traits.Comment: Under Revie

Amaranth: An Ancient and High-Quality Wholesome Crop

Amaranth was a staple of the Aztec diet and is described as a “superfood” in part because of its high protein content and well-balanced amino acid profile. In terms of nutrient content, amaranth surpasses many staple crops such as rice, corn, and wheat. Additionally, lysine content is twice as much than in rice and thrice as much than in corn. Along with desirable agronomic traits, this crop has been hugely applauded for its gluten-free nature. Not only can it benefit vegan and gluten allergy personals, but it also has the potential to supply high-quality proteins and at the same time provides antimicrobial activities in the packaged food items. Despite all of these properties, this crop is still not in the mainstream cultivation practices in North America and in many parts of the world. As the planet is expecting massive increase in human population and global climate change, we firmly believe that this widely distributed, ancient, protein-rich pseudo-cereal has a potential to augment our food system. In this book chapter, we aim to report the nutritional properties of grain amaranth