Ownership, technological capabilities and exports of garment firms in Myanmar

This paper uses the evolutionary framework to examine the relationship between ownership, technological capabilities and export intensities using garment manufacturing in the Least Developed Country of Myanmar as an empirical case. The results show that foreign firms with production connected to global value chains enjoy higher export intensity than national firms even when controlled for age. Also, foreign firms with access to superior support from parent plants enjoy higher technology capability than national firms even after controlling for age. The Levene's two-tail ‘t’ tests show that foreign firms also enjoyed higher human resource, process technology and adaptive capabilities than national firms. Foreign firms are also larger and pay higher wages than national firms. The results show that foreign firms’ superior market access and technological capabilities can offer the potential for knowledge spillover to national firms provided the government stabilizes the political situation and strengthens the basic and high technology infrastructure in Myanmar. Unlike the Maquiladoras of Latin America, not only that a quarter of the inputs are sourced by garment firms from Myanmar, a handful of national firms have already acquired the export and technological capabilities to compete with foreign firms

Gene Correction Technology and Its Impact on Viral Research and Therapy

Aim

TRIBOLOGICAL STUDY AND FINITE ELEMENT MODELLING OF SURFACE TEXTURES ON SU-8 AND PDMS POLYMER SURFACES

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Comparison of Signal Strength Prediction Models for Indoor-to-Outdoor and Outdoor-to-Indoor Wireless Communications

In wireless communication system, the propagation characteristics of the radio coverage areas such as indoor, outdoor, indoor-to-outdoor and outdoor-to-indoor are very important to acquire the accurate received signal strength. In this paper, the experiments are conducted for both indoor-to-outdoor and outdoor-to-indoor wireless communication environments to investigate how much the received signal strength values are different between them. To obtain the accurate received signal strength between the outdoor-to-indoor and indoor-to-outdoor areas, the COST 231 radio wave propagation model is extended by including additional path loss factors (Af) such as the building parameters, the heights of the transmitter and receiver, the distance between the transmitter and the receiver for each scenario. The proposed received signal strength prediction models for indoor-to-outdoor and outdoor-to-indoor wireless communication are validated by comparing with the experimental and predicted the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) values. According to the comparison results, the received signal power from the outdoor to indoor communication is higher than that of indoor-to-outdoor ones about -2 dBm or -3 dBm

Health literacy - is it useful in prevention of behavioral risk factors of NCDs?

Background: Health literacy means cognitive and social skills of a person that determine his or her ability to access, understand and use health information to maintain and promote health. People need to understand and use health information in order to choose a healthy lifestyle or to take advantage of preventive measures. The occurrence and consequences of NCDs are related to unhealthy life styles. Insight into the relationship between health literacy and modifiable behavioral risk factors of NCDs may support the prevention and control of these diseases.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 1367 adults. Multi-stage random sampling was used. Data entry and analysis was done using Stata 11.0 statistical package. Multiple logistic regression analysis was applied to assess the association between health literacy and behavioral risk factors.Results: The proportion of participants who reported ever smoking, ever alcohol drinking and not-practicing daily-exercise was 19.8%, 16.2% and 85.2%, respectively. The prevalence of satisfactory level of health literacy was 31.5%. Health literacy was significantly related to behavioral risk factors even if age, sex, education status and monthly household’s expenditure were adjusted. By improving the health literacy status of adults up to satisfactory level, the prevalence of ever smoking, ever drinking and not-practicing daily exercise among them would be reduced by 34%, 32.1% and 38.9%, respectively.Conclusions: Health literacy status of community should be assessed, monitored and improved. Health literacy may be an effective tool in prevention and control of NCDs because of its preventive effect on modifiable behavioral risk factors.

MEDICAL AND BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF SAFETY OF SPACE FLIGHTS

The space ship with astronauts flying through space is a small island of life in the vast lifeless ocean. The crew safety depends on many factors. One of the main reasons is medical-biological problems

FEATURES OF FOUNDATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF SPACE BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE

Human space exploration is one of the greatest scientific and technological achievements of the XX century. This is a new stage in the development of human civilization - a breakthrough into the new physical dimension, new possibilities of research in physics, climatology, economics, biology and in solving social problems