The Roman Dogma of Animal Breeding: Bark aeological Findings Reveal the Effects of Selective Pressures on Roman Dogs

Animals as a whole are often overlooked when studying ancient Rome, but there is one animal that even Roman authors of farming guides often dismissed as being insignificant; this animal being the dog. The Romans kept dogs for many purposes; such as for hunting game, protecting a flock of sheep, guarding the house, and providing companionship. The authors of Roman farming guides often provided guidelines as to which characteristics were ideal for each type of working dog, but are these ideal characteristics reflected in the reality of Roman dogs? I set out to conclude to what extent the Romans influenced observable dog traits by the process of selective breeding. The ideal dogs described in the guides written by Columella, Varro, and the Greek author Xenophon have been analyzed and compared to archaeological findings depicting real Roman dogs in the forms of vases, mosaics, and actual dog bones. It was found that the Romans placed selective pressures most strongly on their hunting and herding dogs, followed closely by their guard dogs, and then minimally on their lap dogs. The nearly uniform traits shared by herding and hunting dogs is most likely due to the high stakes positions that these dogs held, as their owner depended on them for money and food. The guard dog also held a high stakes position in protecting the household, so it is not surprising that it experienced selection in a similar way. The lap dog did not contribute to its household as working dogs did, and selection for a lap dog’s traits was likely done on an individual basis, based on the owner’s personal preferences. This leads to the highest degree of diversity being observed in Roman lap dogs

Heat and fluid flow downstream of a row of finite-height circular cylinders

Induced turbulence created by a row of finite height cylinders is applicable in different engineering applications, e.g., for promoting convective cooling of solar panel. In this study, flow past a row of 13 side-by-side finite-height circular cylinders having a height-diameter (h/d) ratio of 2 (20mm/10mm) and center to center distance between adjacent cylinders (g) of 2d was scrutinized at a Reynolds number based on cylinder height of 4700 inside a wind tunnel over a flat plate. The flow at 5h and 10h downstream of the cylinder array was characterized using a 2-d hot wire anemometer. To understand the convective heat transfer from the hot plate, Nusselt number normalized by the reference no-cylinder case, Nu/Nu0, was deduced based on the temperature difference between the lower and upper surfaces of the hot plate. Significant heat transfer enhancement occurred which was explained in terms of flow properties. A regression analysis was performed, and it was revealed that the most influential parameters for enhancing heat transfer were the stream-wise turbulent intensity followed by the stream-wise velocity

Tax Compliance in Immigrant Communities: Bangladeshis in the UK

This thesis employs Bourdieu’s theory of practice to explore small immigrant business owners’ adaptation to the host country’s income tax system. In doing this, the thesis applies a sociological perspective in the theorizing and study of their tax compliance behaviour. Drawing on a survey (N=101) and in-depth interviews (N=27) with Bangladeshi family business owners and their tax advisers in the UK, this thesis demonstrates that immigrant business owners’ engagement with the host country’s tax system is grounded in the sociocultural status they inherit from their country of origin, even though their social class positions in the new society unconsciously condition and impact on how they practise tax compliance. Findings suggest that the power relations inherent in the tax professional-taxpayer relationship act as a critical factor in the reproduction and transformation of immigrant business owners’ moral disposition towards compliance with tax laws. The thesis argues that the ways small Bangladeshi family business owners think, feel and act in their approach to tax compliance is likely to differ not only from those of native business communities but also from those of other immigrant communities in the UK

The Roman Dogma of Animal Breeding: “Bark”aeological Findings Reveal the Effects of Selective Pressures on Roman Dogs

Animals as a whole are often overlooked when studying ancient Rome, but there is one animal that even Roman authors of farming guides often dismissed as being insignificant; this animal being the dog. The Romans kept dogs for many purposes; such as for hunting game, protecting a flock of sheep, guarding the house, and providing companionship. The authors of Roman farming guides often provided guidelines as to which characteristics were ideal for each type of working dog, but are these ideal characteristics reflected in the reality of Roman dogs? I set out to conclude to what extent the Romans influenced observable dog traits by the process of selective breeding. The ideal dogs described in the guides written by Columella, Varro, and the Greek author Xenophon have been analyzed and compared to archaeological findings depicting real Roman dogs in the forms of vases, mosaics, and actual dog bones. It was found that the Romans placed selective pressures most strongly on their hunting and herding dogs, followed closely by their guard dogs, and then minimally on their lap dogs. The nearly uniform traits shared by herding and hunting dogs are most likely due to the high stakes positions that these dogs held, as their owner depended on them for money and food. The guard dog also held a high stakes position in protecting the household, so it is not surprising that it experienced selection in a similar way. The lap dog did not contribute to its household as working dogs did, and selection for a lap dog’s traits was likely done on an individual basis, based on the owner’s personal preferences. This leads to the highest degree of diversity being observed in Roman lap dogs

Learn Your Learner; Assess Later: Addressing Individual Learner Differences in a Writing Class

We all have a way in which we best learn.  Likewise every student in our class has a different preferred learning style, which can make it difficult for us to be the most effective teacher especially in a writing course.  However, by trying to find out the learners’ differences and incorporating various methods into our teaching, we may be able to reach the majority of our students and can yield optimum result in our writing class. In the different studies of learner characteristics in applied linguistics, learning attitudes, strategies and motivation have received most attention. These learner individual difference variables have usually been seen as background learner variables that modify and personalize the overall trajectory of the language acquisition processes (Dörnyei, 2009). This paper, thus, sheds light on different types of learners based on their learning strategies that define students’ preferences and guide a teacher to design her/his lesson. This is very important for a heterogeneous class for any kind of mismatches between the teaching style of a teacher and the students’ learning styles, we will not be able to attain the objective of a course that might result in a demotivated class and the extreme consequence might be the increase in the drop outs from the university. Keywords: Multiple Intelligences, Learning Styles, Learning Strategies, Individual Learner Difference

Impact of Collaborative Reading Annotation System on EFL/ESL Learners on A Digital Platform: A Case Study of Tertiary Level Students in Bangladesh

The year 2020 is a significant milestone in the history of human civilization. Due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the whole world literally came to stand still. The loss of human lives, the financial setback, new-norms of social behavior, potential threat to the progress of education and the mass paranoia have forced the world order to re-consider the traditional lifestyle and values. As a part of this re-consideration, Bangladesh with the aid of Bangladesh Research and Education Network (BDREN) came forward to offer the Zoom platform to all the educational institutions in the country for free in order to continue the progress of education. As a result the screen time of all the students increased. They started to spend considerable time reading electronic materials and media. Nevertheless, many studies show that screen-based reading tends to lead students to surface reading, attention deficiency and that results in poor comprehension. This study, thus, explores the use of a collaborative reading annotation system (CRAS) that enhances digital reading performance on an online platform. A group of thirty low-achievers in a Short Stories course was selected and CRAS was introduced to them. At the end of four months’ intensive instruction, a significant change in their performance was noted. Moreover, the group showed a remarkable interest in the reading tasks and high learning satisfaction. Keywords: Collaborative Reading, Reading Strategies, Digital Reading, EFL/ESL teaching/learning strategies DOI: 10.7176/JEP/14-18-07 Publication date:June 30th 202

The Foreign-Income and Real-Exchange-Rate Elasticities of Bangladesh Exports

Bangladesh began implementing trade-reform policies in the mid 1980s, leading to a gradual change in its anti-export-policy. Since then the share of exports in her GDP has been rising steadily with the economy growing at about 5 percent per annum. This growth is associated with structural change in the country’s export composition favouring non-traditional exports, namely garments and frozen foods. This paper specifies and estimates an aggregate export-demand function; deploys Pesaran’s bounds-testing approach to estimate export-elasticities of foreign income and the exchange rate; and tests for the stability of the estimated function. The empirical results, based on annual data for the period 1973-2010, suggest a long-run relationship between real exports and export-weighted foreign real income. Similarly, real exports and the real effective exchange rate of the taka are found to be related. Finally, the results suggest that the dynamic behaviour of exports possesses an error-correction representation. The CUSUM and CUSUMSQ tests suggest no significant instability in the export-demand function. However, the recursive and rolling-regression coefficients indicate that the export-demand function has undergone some structural change since the early 1990s. This is reflected in the decreasing sensitivity of real exports vis á vis the exchange rate. JEL classification: C32, F11 Keywords: Exports’ Elasticities, Pesaran’s Bounds Test, Export-demand Stability, Banglades

Rural Labour Market Developments, Agricultural Productivity, and Real Wages in Bangladesh, 1950–2006

This paper provides an overview of recent developments in rural labour markets in Bangladesh and also examines the trends and movements of agricultural productivity and real wages with annual data for the period 1950–2006. The paper links the movements of agricultural real wages to macroeconomic developments in general and agricultural development in particular. As part of empirical investigation, the paper develops a simple model of agricultural real wages that depend on agricultural productivity. In order to examine the long-run relationship between agricultural productivity and real wages, the paper applies the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Bounds testing approach. Empirical results suggest that there exists a long-run relationship between agricultural productivity and real wages, and that agricultural productivity can be treated as a ‘long-run forcing variable’ in explaining agricultural real wages. In the dynamic specification of real wages, the coefficient on oneperiod lagged error-correction term bears the expected negative sign and is significant. The forecasting ability of the error correction model is satisfactory with respect to the level or the percentage change of real wages. The overall results are consistent with the findings of earlier studies that agricultural productivity is a key determinant of real wages in Bangladesh.Rural Labour Markets, Agricultural Wages, Agricultural Productivity, ARDL Bounds Testing Approach, Bangladesh

The New Food Safety Regime in the US: How Will it Affect Canadian Competitiveness

The FSMA appears to be a major undertaking with a very large responsibility placed on the FDA. It would seem that bottlenecks to exporting are bound to appear which will be very frustrating for Canadian firms. It is important for Canadian firms and Canadian policy makers to work hard to ensure that temporary bottlenecks do not become permanent inhibitors of trade. The Canadian government needs to understand industry concerns and use any mechanisms – including those in the NAFTA – to initiate consultations with the US. Given the likely lags in implementation, North American food markets are likely to exhibit considerable disequilibrium over the near term. Trade flows will be affected. As the implementation programs of the FSMA become more transparent, more sophisticated analysis into its effect on Canadian competitiveness in the US market can be undertaken.food, safety, competitiveness, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,