Agricultural Transformation, Economic Growth, and Poverty in Indonesia

This paper explores the link between agricultural transformation, economic growth and poverty in Indonesia. Based on descriptive analysis, it shows that the Indonesia's economic growth and poverty reduction performance are more influenced by the service sector than the agriculture sector. The two major challenges to implement agricultural transformation in Indonesia are the limited availability of land and agricultural contract issue. To address these challenges, a gradual change is the best solution. The fixed rent scheme should be introduced properly to the society so as to increase the agricultural production, while support from the government is needed to help the smallholder's farmers to avoid povert

Synthesis of Some Heterocyclic Compounds derived from 2-mercapto pyrimidine

In this work 2-hydrazino pyrimidine (1) was prepared from 2-mercapto pyrimidine with hydrazine hydrate. Treatment of (1) with active methylene compounds gave 2-(3,5-dimethyl -1 H – Pyrazole-1-yl) pyrimidine , whereas the reaction of (1) with carboxylic anhydride namely maleic anhydride or 1,2,3,6-tetra hydro phthalic anhydride yielded 1-Pyrimidine-2-yl-1,2-dihydro pyridazine-3,6-dione (3) and 2 – Pyrimidin -2-yl -2,3,4 a ,5,8 a – hexahydro phthalazine 1,4 – dione (4) . Reaction of (1) with phenyl isothiocyanate and ethyl chloro acetate afforded 3-Phenyl-1,3-thiazolidine-2,4-dione-2( pyrimidine -2- yl hydrazone (6) Azomethine (7-10) were prepared through condensation of (1) with aromatic aldehydes or ketones, then compounds (7-9) are converted into a number of tetrazole derivatives (11-13). Treatment of (1) with acetic acid afforded the derivative (14) . The reaction of 2-mercapto pyrimidine with ethyl chloro acetate afforded (15),whereas the reaction of (15) with thiosemicarbazide and 4% sodum hydroxide leads to ring closure giving 1,2,4 triazole derivative (17). Moreover the reaction of 2-mercapto pyrimidine with chloro acetic acid gave (18) followed by refluxing (18) with o- amino aniline to give the benzimidazole derivative (19).the structure of these compounds were characterized by FR-IR, UV spectra and some of them were characterized by element analysis

Synthesis of Some Heterocyclic Compounds Derived from 2-Mercapto Benzoxazole

New series of 2-mecapto benzoxazole derivatives (1-20) incorporated into fused to different nitrogen and suphur containing heterocyclic were prepared from 2-meracpto benzoxazole, when treated with hydrazine hydrate to afford 2-hydrazino benzoxazol (1). Compound (1) converted to a variety of pyridazinone andphthalazinone derivatives (2-4) by reaction with different carboxylic anhydride. Also, reaction of (1) with phenyl isothiocyanate and ethyl chloro acetate afforded 3-phenyl-1,3-thiazolidin-2,4-dione-2-(benzoxazole-2-yl-hydrazone) (6). Azomethines (7-10) were prepared through reaction of (1) with aromatic aldehyde, then (7, 8) converted to thaizolidinone derivatives (11, 12). Treatment of (1) with active methylene compounds afforded derivative (13). Reaction of (1) with CS2 and NaOH gave 1,2,4-triazole derivative (14). Treatment of (1) with p-bromophenancyl bromide afforded another 1,2,4-triazole (15). The reaction of 2-mercapto benzoxazole with chloro acetic acid gave (16) followed by refluxing (16) with ortho-amino aniline giving benzimidazol (17). Moreover, the reaction of 2-mercapto benzoxazole with ethyl chloroacetate afforded (18), and then reaction of (18) with thiosemicarbazide and 4% NaOH leads to ring closure giving 1,2,4-triazole derivative (20). All compounds were confirmed by their melting point, FT-IR, UV-Vis spectra and 1H-NMR spectra for some of them

Pupil Localisation and Eye Centre Estimation using Machine Learning and Computer Vision

Various methods have been used to estimate the pupil location within an image or a real-time video frame in many fields. However, these methods lack the performance specifically in low-resolution images and varying background conditions. We propose a coarse-to-fine pupil localisation method using a composite of machine learning and image processing algorithms. First, a pre-trained model is employed for the facial landmark identification to extract the desired eye-frames within the input image. We then use multi-stage convolution to find the optimal horizontal and vertical coordinates of the pupil within the identified eye-frames. For this purpose, we define an adaptive kernel to deal with the varying resolution and size of input images. Furthermore, a dynamic threshold is calculated for reliable identification of the best-matched candidate. We evaluated our method using various statistical and standard metrics along-with a standardized distance metric we introduce first time in this study. Proposed method outperforms previous works in terms of accuracy and reliability when benchmarked on multiple standard datasets. The work has diverse artificial intelligence and industrial applications including human computer interfaces, emotion recognition, psychological profiling, healthcare and automated deception detection

Synthesis and biological evaluation of new Benzimidazole derivatives

Agroup of benzimidazole derivatives bearing different heterocyclic moieties such as Schiff bases, 2-azetidinone and  4-thiazolidinone were efficiently prepared. The structures of the newly compounds were characterized by FTIRand ¹H NMR spectra. The synthesized compounds were evaluated for their antimicrobial activities against gram-positive and gram negative bacteria and fungi using the microdilution procedure

Developing a multiple glazing system to minimize transmission of direct insolation for particular latitudes

Too often, in the last 50 years, the energy-thrift lessons of vernacular architecture have been forgotten or ignored. In the Middle East, many recently-designed commercial buildings, with large areas of glazing, incur excessively high electricity-demands to provide energy for the required air-conditioning plant. One way of reducing the magnitude of this demand is through better window design. A new glazing system is proposed that utilizes the insertion of a clear glazing element within the cavity of a double glazed window. The main objective of this system is to achieve acceptable levels of daylight within a building by attempting to maintain the diffuse component of insolation while reducing the penetration of direct component by using the increased reflectivity of these materials with the angle of incidence of the direct beam component of solar irradiation. By using clear glazing materials the proposed system attempts to achieve acceptable performance without the need for elaborate and expensive coatings or substrates. Because solar geometry varies with latitude a varying performance of glazing systems is expected with current glazing systems. However, the suggested system utilizes an optimal angle for overall daylighting and thermal performance that relates to the particular solar geometry of interest, New software is also developed to assess the performance of the suggested system; this involved examining all the modes of heat transfer through the entire glazing system. Results then were assessed to calculate the optimal angle of the element that corresponds to the solar geometry of particular latitude. Such proposal takes a new perspective, once it is acknowledged that though different forms of advanced glazing systems currently are being used to inhibit the penetration of direct solar radiation, still the main disadvantages of such advanced glazing systems are that they are relatively expensive and would reduce the penetration of a considerable part of the daylight entering the space.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Lossy and Lossless Video Frame Compression: A Novel Approach for the High-Temporal Video Data Analytics

The smart city concept has attracted high research attention in recent years within diverse application domains, such as crime suspect identification, border security, transportation, aerospace, and so on. Specific focus has been on increased automation using data driven approaches, while leveraging remote sensing and real-time streaming of heterogenous data from various resources, including unmanned aerial vehicles, surveillance cameras, and low-earth-orbit satellites. One of the core challenges in exploitation of such high temporal data streams, specifically videos, is the trade-off between the quality of video streaming and limited transmission bandwidth. An optimal compromise is needed between video quality and subsequently, recognition and understanding and efficient processing of large amounts of video data. This research proposes a novel unified approach to lossy and lossless video frame compression, which is beneficial for the autonomous processing and enhanced representation of high-resolution video data in various domains. The proposed fast block matching motion estimation technique, namely mean predictive block matching, is based on the principle that general motion in any video frame is usually coherent. This coherent nature of the video frames dictates a high probability of a macroblock having the same direction of motion as the macroblocks surrounding it. The technique employs the partial distortion elimination algorithm to condense the exploration time, where partial summation of the matching distortion between the current macroblock and its contender ones will be used, when the matching distortion surpasses the current lowest error. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach over state-of-the-art techniques, including the four step search, three step search, diamond search, and new three step search