Study of the Chemical Fabrication Process of NSOM Probes and the Modification of the Probe Surface

Near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) merges scanning probe technology with the power of high-resolution optical microscopy and provides a natural view into the nanoworld. NSOM requires tapered probes with subwavelength optical apertures and wide cone angles to efficiently channel the illumination light to the tip apex so that it can acquire optical images beyond the diffraction limit. Tapered probes with a range of cone angles can be fabricated through chemical etching of optical fibers using hydrofluoric acid (HF) by varying the etching time. Apart from their use for NSOM imaging, such optical probes can also be transformed into nanosensors by attaching sensing elements to the NSOM probe surface. This work seeks to identify the maximum obtainable cone angle in an NSOM probe fabricated by chemical etching of an optical fiber and to create a nanosensor using this kind of probe. We investigate the progression of cone angles with etching time and propose a model of the etching process. We find that the variation of cone angle as a function of etching time does not follow the expected exponential plateau curve and we compare the experimental result to simulations with multiphysics models of the etching process of an optical fiber. Additionally, functionalization of NSOM probes with different fluorescent molecules is investigated and a fluorescent nanosensor is developed. We observe that the nanosensor is able to detect concentration changes of Cu^(2+) and Fe^(3+) ions in a droplet of sample solution

Artifact-Centric Semantic Social-Collaboration Network in an Online Healthcare Context

The emergence of Web 2.0 technology and associated social networking system, brings many possibilities and features for online collaboration. Several reference models, frameworks, tools and infrastructures have been proposed to support seamless interaction and communication between human entities in an online social environment. A few studies indicated that social networks are not only constructed on social connections of people, but also mediated by shared objects, known as object-centred sociality. However, most of the developed social software system was centred around the concept of maintaining human-centric social relationships only. This may be because of the common issues of exploiting social network approach for online collaboration related to maintaining the social behaviour, interaction and communication between human and artifacts themselves. These resources or artifacts (i.e., physical objects, software entities, documents, etc.) are active elements in a way that they may coordinate, cooperate, and even trigger collaborative work in a social environment, which is difficult understand and implement. Thus, it is essential to concentrate on exploring the artifact-centric social relations in a new generation of social-collaboration network. This paper explores the concept and characteristics of the social software system and emphasise the importance and role of objects and artifact-centric sociality in a social-collaboration network. We also outline the benefits of semantic representation of social-collaborative network structure by extending existing social ontologies such as FOAF, SIOC, and DC that define additional concepts, properties and complex social relationship of humans, social objects and collaboration artifacts. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach by applying it to a large-scale social-collaborative healthcare service called GRaCE-AGE within the United Kingdom

Generic autonomic adapter architecture and policy model for semantic socio-cyber-physical collaborative network

The cyber-physical system aims to improve the quality of life of citizens by providing intelligent and automated services in a wide variety of sectors like transportations, healthcare,enterprises, self-driving cars, energy sectors and so forth. Recently, considerable amounts of researches have focused on integrating cyber-physical systems in a social context. The idea is to socially connect cyber-physical resources (i.e., physical devices, software elements,networked components, digital contents, etc.) so that they can interact and collaborative for autonomous decision making like humans social networking. However, several challenges remain concerning the designing appropriate methodologies, frameworks and techniques for supporting cyber-physical relation and collaboration within the social context. Most of the existing social software modelling focuses on maintaining human-to-human or human-to object centric interaction only. Existing systems do not recognise how socio-cyber-physical resources can maintain their social status, communicate and interact with both humans and non human entities. The reason may be the lack of understanding and limited approaches or methodologies to semantically (a formal characterisation of the information) represent the socio-cyber-physical resources relation and interactions in a collaborative network. This limits data integration, interoperability, and knowledge discovery from its underlying data sources. Semantic Web’s ontology with a software agent model can help to overcome this limitation by describing and interconnecting socio-cyber-physical objects in a social space.The software agents can act as a representative of these resources to track, manage and update their collaborative activities in a social world.Nevertheless, due to the exponential network growth and uncertainties, the states and relations among socio-cyber-physical objects may keep changing when they are in different situations. Therefore, it is an ardours task and error-prone for humans or traditional software agents to keep track, manage and maintain the larger number of socio-cyber-physical resources and their social dynamics. One potential and flexible solution to this problem is to leverage the autonomic computing approach with social and adaptive goals to make the socio-cyber physical network self-managed and adaptive. Autonomic Computing (AC) approach has laid the necessary foundation to tackle this challenge by developing policy-based Autonomic Adapter (AA) model (e.g., autonomous agent). The AAs can continuously monitor socio cyber-physical resource status, analyse the situation and make a collaborative decision based on the policy knowledge defined by the system administrator. However, autonomic computing model must rely on input knowledge to decide self management operations such as “what”, “where” and “how” to perform the adaptation to the system. Previously, adaptation approaches in a different context have been done in an ad-hoc manner based on the algorithms to predict future circumstances and embed in the program code. This approach is inflexible to dynamic and uncertain environments where system configuration needs to adjust frequently. Defining a flexible policy model and integrating policy into knowledge repository outside the code itself is the most appropriate to manage the autonomic system behaviours during the run-time. Sadly, there has been relatively a little work on developing appropriate policy model and specification language for domain neutral autonomic system.To fulfil the above gaps, our proposed solutions in this thesis has three core contribution to the knowledge. First, we address the establishment of both socio-cyber-physical and human relations and interactions within a social-collaborative network. To achieve this, we propose a software agent-centric Semantic Social-Collaborative Network (SSCN) that provides the functionality to represent and manage cyber-physical resources in a social network. We discuss how nonhuman resources can be represented as socially connected nodes and manage by the software agents. The SSCN is supported by an extended ontology model for semantically describing the concept, properties and relations of human and nonhuman resources. A Java-based software agent API has been implemented to demonstrate some actions performed on behalf of the nonhuman resources in a real-world collaborative healthcare system called, GRiST (www.egrist.org). Second, we propose a Generic Autonomic Social-Collaborative Framework (GASCF) with a policy-based Autonomic Adapter (AA) architecture. The AAs are capable of monitoring system resources, analysing context information, and act accordingly using high-level policy. The AAs can also communicate and exchange data with other AAs through a social network for collaborative decisions making like human social interaction.Third, we propose Event-Condition-Action (ECA) rule-based policy model and specification language for AA by defining Policy Schema Definition (PSD) and Policy Script Specification(PSS) languages, modelled with XML syntax. Finally, we test and evaluate our approach by implementing it to the extended GRiST socio-healthcare service context and eGRiST clinical decision support system. We demonstrate and evaluate how socio-cyber-physical relation,interaction and autonomous decision-making is achieved by integrating AAs and using policy specification to manage AAs behaviour within socio-cyber-physical medical context

Impact of FDI and Joint Venture on Employment Generation: A Multi-sector Experience of Bangladesh Economy

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is very crucial for the sustainable development of developing countries in general and in specific for LDCs-like Bangladesh. For Bangladesh, inflow of foreign direct investment is the major stimulus for the sturdy and long-standing economic growth which is subject to the improvement of many socio-economic and political factors. As a promising hub for foreign direct investment, Bangladesh has already conquered popularity for its simplistic, liberal and most investments friendly climate throughout the globe. Being an open, flexible and promising destination for foreign direct investment, Bangladesh has been drawing attention of the global investors into a focal investment destination within South-Asian region. Its investment climate is mostly featured by munificent and alluring packages of incentives to investors. In addition, there is no discrimination between the local and foreign investors in facilitating the incentives they owe from the investment destination. The existing rules and regulations are structured in such a way so as to fully guarantee the safety of the incoming investment and their returns with gained profit or surplus. The positive and ensuring economic growth brings dramatic changes in the employment scenario of a country. The increased flow of foreign direct investment into multifarious sectors namely Agricultural, Chemical, Engineering, Textile and Service sectors significantly trims down the unemployment predicament of our country. Bangladesh has a large pool of vibrant young working force that is highly trained and skilled enough to cater the demands of the globalized world. Due to global economic recession of 2008, the financial markets were crashed jobs disappeared and growth took a sharp plunge in much of the developed world and its ripple effects were felt in the other parts of the globe. Though, many economists forecasted that Bangladesh would be severely affected by this speedy storm. Rather, the economy Bangladesh demonstrated extraordinary resilience, driven by sound macroeconomic policies, dynamic pool of private entrepreneurs and productive labour force. New and dynamic opportunities are emerging for foreign direct investment (FDl) in the traditional and emerging sectors while significantly improving involvement of female into the workforce. Keywords: FDI, Joint Venture Investment, Sectoral Investment, Employment Generation

Prospects and Evaluation of an Integrated Extension Model designed for Anthrax-free Area Development

The main purpose of this study wasto assess and evaluate anIntegrated Extension Modelto improve the overall knowledge, attitude and practice habits of community people over a sustained period.The survey questionnaire results have indicated that the various sources of anthrax message dissemination had played a significant role in the study. Among those responsible for disseminating the information, it was realized that studentsserving in the role of message disseminators played the most significant role (15%) indelivering the anthrax-related key information to the community. Majority community members (97.5%) were made aware of the nature, occurrence, public health importance, and management of the disease. Theirdangerous habits and attitudes toward slaughtering of sick animals were reduced (\u3c30%). The attention of local administration and the law enforcement agency focused distinctively on the issue of animal slaughter. Vaccination and clinical records reveal that the percentage of vaccination coverage was increased from 40% to 85% andthe percentage of farmers who can diagnose anthrax has been increased from 30% to 40%.On the other hand, their poor economic background together with the dispersed settlement nature of the farmers was the main gaps identified that continued to force them to slaughter infected animals, sell their products and to consequently concealthat information, all issues that are required to be addressed in the future. Based on the research findings, it can be concluded that this modelis an efficient, effective and suitable method to raise awareness levels in a large communitywith regards to a zoonotic disease like anthrax

Genome-wide identification, annotation and characterization of novel thermostable cytochrome P450 monooxygenases from the thermophilic biomass-degrading fungi Thielavia terrestris and Myceliophthora thermophila

Published ArticleCytochrome P450 monooxygenases (P450s) are ubiquitous heme-thiolate proteins that have potential biotechnological application. Thermostable-P450s that can withstand hostile industrial conditions, such as high temperatures, extremes of pH and organic solvents, are needed for biotechnological usage. Here, for the first time, we report a large number of thermostable-P450s from two thermophilic biomass-degrading fungi, Myceliophthora thermophila and Thielavia terrestris. Genome-wide P450 analysis revealed the presence of 79 and 70 P450s (P450ome) in T. terrestris and M. thermophila. Authentic P450s containing both the P450 signature domains (EXXRand CXG) were classified as follows: T. terrestris (50 families and 56 subfamilies) and M. thermophila (49 families and 53 subfamilies). Bioinformatics analysis of P450omes suggested the presence of a large number of thermostable-P450s. Based on aliphatic index cut-off ([90), 14 and 11 P450s were determined to be thermostable in T. terrestris and M. thermophila. Among the thermostable P450s, six P450s from T. terrestris and three from M. thermophila had a melting temperature (Tm) of [65 C, suggesting their hyperthermal tolerance. Analysis of the instability index of two ascomycete P450omes revealed the presence of 12 and 19 in vitro stable P450s in T. terrestris and M. thermophila. Overall, six P450s from T. terrestris and four from M. thermophila showed both thermal tolerance and in vitro stability. Thermophilic ascomycetes P450s are of potential interest from a structural, mechanistic and biotechnological point of view, as five P450s showed higher thermal tolerance and five showed higher in vitro stability compared to the wellcharacterized thermostable-P450s CYP175A1 (bacteria) and CYP119 (archaea)

The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Financial Performance

While it is a challenge to quantify its effect, corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities have dramatically evolved as a value-building business practice. The measuring challenge is, in part, explained by the unclear and variable meaning of the CSR principle. Despite thorough work on this issue, strong supporters and opponents are still firmly committed to CSR (ibid.). Some schools claim CSR involvement constitutes a misuse of money. In contrast, other schools suggest that businesses have responsibilities towards a greater range of participants and can also carry on social accountability. They also claim they utilize business assets for creating value, mainly towards shareholders. Valuable kits did stratification for a minimum of 10 percent of employees in all Lebanese retail divisions. Each stratum 10% of the overall number of workers analyzed participates. The final respondents have been selected randomly by stratum. Such services are chosen as they are grouped under many judicial branches, with all judicial authorities. This researchs practical implications outline the nature of the CSRfinancial performance relationship between Lebanese companies during 2006-2009. In the light of Lebanese businesses publicly traded, this information may allow additional companies and practitioners to understand the CSR and financial performance

Stochastic versus Ray Tracing Wireless Channel Modeling for 5G and V2X Applications: Opportunities and Challenges

Due to the rapid development of wireless communication applications, the study of Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) communication systems has gained comprehensive research activities since it can significantly increase the channel capacity and link reliability without sacrificing bandwidth and/or transmitted power levels. Researchers tend to evaluate the performance of their MIMO antenna arrays using various channel modeling tools. These channel models are mainly categorized into either deterministic channels based on Ray Tracing (RT) tools or Stochastic Channel Models (SCM). In this chapter, we compare these two categories in terms of the MIMO channel capacity using a complete description of the antennas at the transmitting and receiving ends in terms of 3D polarimetric radiation patterns and scattering parameters. The performance is evaluated for 5G New Radio (NR) Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) and Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (URLLC) services and Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) systems using state-of-the-art commercial SCM and RT tools to provide information regarding the capabilities and limitations of each approach under different channel environments and the Quality of Experience (QoE) for high data rate and low latency content delivery in the 5G NR sub-6GHz mid-band Frequency Range-1 (FR1) N77/N78 bands

Access to Financial Services and Women Empowerment, through Microfinance eligibility

The new movement of microfinance backs to the foundation of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh by Professor Muhammad Yunus in 1970. Since then, Microfinance is considered as an effective and powerful tool in poverty eradication, especially in developing countries. It helps the entrepreneurial poor, especially women, by facilitating the access to financial resources and provides a better life condition by increasing the household revenues and job creation for them. There is increased recognition of the importance of empowering poor people and helping them to become more productive in society they are living. Poverty alleviation can be achieved by increasing the access of the poor to all factors of production, including credit. Enhancing the quality of life of the poor so that they can have a sustainable future is not just a social responsibility of the governments and NGOs. Still, it is a prerequisite for global peace and development. This paper aims to describe the concept and the importance of Microfinance over the living standards and women empowerment under the complicated political and economic situation using previous Literature Reviews. In the end, our findings showed that people tend to have a positive perception of Microfinance. However, most perceive microfinance as the process of just providing loans without specifying for whom it is intended. We advise that the government introduces laws to regulate the microfinance market

Coronavirus disease 2019 and future pandemics: Impacts on livestock health and production and possible mitigation measures

The World Health Organization declared coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) a pandemic on March 11, 2020. COVID-19, the current global health emergency, is wreaking havoc on human health systems and, to a lesser degree, on animals globally. The outbreak has continued since the first report of COVID-19 in China in December 2019, and the second and third waves of the outbreak have already begun in several countries. COVID-19 is expected to have adverse effects on crop production, food security, integrated pest control, tourism, the car industry, and other sectors of the global economy. COVID-19 induces a range of effects in livestock that is reflected economically since human health and livelihood are intertwined with animal health. We summarize the potentially harmful effects of COVID-19 on livestock and possible mitigation steps in response to this global outbreak. Mitigation of the negative effects of COVID-19 and future pandemics on livestock requires the implementation of current guidelines