Education as a means of smooth rural‐urban migration: some evidences from Ethiopia 1, 2

This paper models the impact of education on rural‐urban migration in selected villages of Ethiopia. Level of education is found to be significant in triggering ruralurban migration even after accounting for its indirect effect on migration through earnings differential. This may support the argument that education changes the preferences of individuals in rural villages in favour of public goods that are found in urban centers over cultural ‘status goods’ in rural areas. Income differential in the migration decision model is positive and significant lending support to the standard Harris‐Todaro model.Key words: Rural‐urban migration, status goods, education, self selectio

The Impact of Proximity to Urban Center on Crop Production Choice and Rural Income: Evidences from Villages in Wollo, Ethiopia

This article attempts to demonstrate how proximity to urban centers influences households' decision to allot their agricultural land to the production of either staple crops or high value cash crops. By applying fractional logit estimation technique on data collected from villages in Wolloof the Amhara Regional State in 2006, it has been found that proximity to urban centers, access to road, and education of the head of the householddetermine the crop choice in favor of the production of high value cash crops. While the purely liquid wealth positively affects the allocation of land for the production of cash crops, the direction of the impact of livestock on crop choice is found to depend on the particular location of the activities in relation to urban (market) centers. The pattern of crop choice has been translated into a variation in the level of per capita income across villages. Households operating in those villages located far from urban centers with no access to road are found to be the poorest among the villages covered by the study.Key Words: Location, Crop Choice, Rural Income, Fractional Logi

Symmetric informationally complete positive operator valued measure and probability representation of quantum mechanics

Symmetric informationally complete positive operator valued measures (SIC-POVMs) are studied within the framework of the probability representation of quantum mechanics. A SIC-POVM is shown to be a special case of the probability representation. The problem of SIC-POVM existence is formulated in terms of symbols of operators associated with a star-product quantization scheme. We show that SIC-POVMs (if they do exist) must obey general rules of the star product, and, starting from this fact, we derive new relations on SIC-projectors. The case of qubits is considered in detail, in particular, the relation between the SIC probability representation and other probability representations is established, the connection with mutually unbiased bases is discussed, and comments to the Lie algebraic structure of SIC-POVMs are presented.Comment: 22 pages, 1 figure, LaTeX, partially presented at the Workshop "Nonlinearity and Coherence in Classical and Quantum Systems" held at the University "Federico II" in Naples, Italy on December 4, 2009 in honor of Prof. Margarita A. Man'ko in connection with her 70th birthday, minor misprints are corrected in the second versio

Genomic analysis of DNA binding and gene regulation by homologous nucleoid-associated proteins IHF and HU in Escherichia coli K12.

IHF and HU are two heterodimeric nucleoid-associated proteins (NAP) that belong to the same protein family but interact differently with the DNA. IHF is a sequence-specific DNA-binding protein that bends the DNA by over 160°. HU is the most conserved NAP, which binds non-specifically to duplex DNA with a particular preference for targeting nicked and bent DNA. Despite their importance, the in vivo interactions of the two proteins to the DNA remain to be described at a high resolution and on a genome-wide scale. Further, the effects of these proteins on gene expression on a global scale remain contentious. Finally, the contrast between the functions of the homo- and heterodimeric forms of proteins deserves the attention of further study. Here we present a genome-scale study of HU- and IHF binding to the Escherichia coli K12 chromosome using ChIP-seq. We also perform microarray analysis of gene expression in single- and double-deletion mutants of each protein to identify their regulons. The sequence-specific binding profile of IHF encompasses ∼30% of all operons, though the expression of <10% of these is affected by its deletion suggesting combinatorial control or a molecular backup. The binding profile for HU is reflective of relatively non-specific binding to the chromosome, however, with a preference for A/T-rich DNA. The HU regulon comprises highly conserved genes including those that are essential and possibly supercoiling sensitive. Finally, by performing ChIP-seq experiments, where possible, of each subunit of IHF and HU in the absence of the other subunit, we define genome-wide maps of DNA binding of the proteins in their hetero- and homodimeric forms

Coconut trees detection and segmentation in aerial imagery using mask region-based convolution neural network

Food resources face severe damages under extraordinary situations of catastrophes such as earthquakes, cyclones, and tsunamis. Under such scenarios, speedy assessment of food resources from agricultural land is critical as it supports aid activity in the disaster-hit areas. In this article, a deep learning approach was presented for the detection and segmentation of coconut trees in aerial imagery provided through the AI competition organised by the World Bank in collaboration with OpenAerialMap and WeRobotics. Masked Region-based Convolution Neural Network (Mask R-CNN) approach was used for identification and segmentation of coconut trees. For the segmentation task, Mask R-CNN model with ResNet50 and ResNet101 based architectures was used. Several experiments with different configuration parameters were performed and the best configuration for the detection of coconut trees with more than 90% confidence factor was reported. For the purpose of evaluation, Microsoft COCO dataset evaluation metric namely mean average precision (mAP) was used.An overall 91% mean average precision for coconut trees’ detection was achieved

Focused action is required to protect ethnic minority populations from COVID-19 post-lockdown

Since the association between COVID-19 and ethnicity was first noted in April 2020,1 numerous large-scale national datasets have been analysed.2–6 The evidence is clear — ethnicity is a key risk factor for adverse COVID-19 outcome, alongside age, male sex, obesity, deprivation, and comorbidities.7 There are significant ethnic inequalities in the risk of admission to hospital and risk of death from COVID-19. Black and South Asian ethnic groups are at greatest risk, although most ethnic minorities have been shown to have increased risk when compared with white populations.7 Beyond admission to hospital and mortality risk, there is also concern over longer-term impacts, that is, post-acute COVID-19,8 which could significantly impact ethnic minority populations

Promiscuous prediction and conservancy analysis of CTL binding epitopes of HCV 3a viral proteome from Punjab Pakistan: an In Silico Approach

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>HCV is a positive sense RNA virus affecting approximately 180 million people world wide and about 10 million Pakistani populations. HCV genotype 3a is the major cause of infection in Pakistani population. One of the major problems of HCV infection especially in the developing countries that limits the limits the antiviral therapy is the long term treatment, high dosage and side effects. Studies of antigenic epitopes of viral sequences of a specific origin can provide an effective way to overcome the mutation rate and to determine the promiscuous binders to be used for epitope based subunit vaccine design. An <it>in silico </it>approach was applied for the analysis of entire HCV proteome of Pakistani origin, aimed to identify the viral epitopes and their conservancy in HCV genotypes 1, 2 and 3 of diverse origin.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Immunoinformatic tools were applied for the predictive analysis of HCV 3a antigenic epitopes of Pakistani origin. All the predicted epitopes were then subjected for their conservancy analysis in HCV genotypes 1, 2 and 3 of diverse origin (worldwide). Using freely available web servers, 150 MHC II epitopes were predicted as promiscuous binders against 51 subjected alleles. E2 protein represented the 20% of all the predicted MHC II epitopes. 75.33% of the predicted MHC II epitopes were (77-100%) conserve in genotype 3; 47.33% and 40.66% in genotype 1 and 2 respectively. 69 MHC I epitopes were predicted as promiscuous binders against 47 subjected alleles. NS4b represented 26% of all the MHC I predicted epitopes. Significantly higher epitope conservancy was represented by genotype 3 i.e. 78.26% and 21.05% for genotype 1 and 2.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The study revealed comprehensive catalogue of potential HCV derived CTL epitopes from viral proteome of Pakistan origin. A considerable number of predicted epitopes were found to be conserved in different HCV genotype. However, the number of conserved epitopes in HCV genotype 3 was significantly higher in contrast to its conservancy in HCV genotype 1 and 2. Despite of the lower conservancy in genotype 1 and 2, all the predicted epitopes have important implications in diagnostics as well as CTL-based rational vaccine design, effective for most population of the world and especially the Pakistani Population.</p

Predominant mechanisms for the removal of nickel metal ion from aqueous solution using cement kiln dust

The experimental methodology achieved in the present study signified that the adsorption and precipitation were mainly mechanisms occurred together in the removal of nickel from aqueous solutions by sorption using cement kiln dust (CKD) byproduct as sorbent. Finding the contribution of each mechanism in the removal process and derivation an analytical model for finding the portion of precipitation were the focal points of this work. Results proved that the pure precipitation was increased with the increase of CKD dosage and metal concentration where total removal (adsorption-precipitation) ranged from 45 to 100%. The SEM micrographs of the CKD sorbent before and after sorption process certified that there was a crystal precipitates on the surface of the CKD. Also, these graphs in combination with FT-IR tests proved that [Ni(OH2)n]+2 (n=4-6) species were bonded with CKD and insoluble hydroxide species may be precipitated onto the CaO surfaces by co-precipitation, while K-O, Si-O and Ca-O groups enhanced the adsorption mechanism

Do Basic Psychomotor Skills Transfer Between Different Image-based Procedures?

Background - Surgical techniques that draw from multiple types of image-based procedures (IBP) are increasing, such as Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery, fusing laparoscopy and flexible endoscopy. However, little is known about the relation between psychomotor skills for performing different types of IBP. For example, do basic psychomotor colonoscopy and laparoscopy skills interact? Methods - Following a cross-over study design, 29 naïve endoscopists were trained on the Simbionix GI Mentor and the SimSurgery SEP simulators. Group C (n = 15) commenced with a laparoscopy session, followed by four colonoscopy sessions and a second laparoscopy session. Group L (n = 14) started with a colonoscopy session, followed by four laparoscopy sessions and a second colonoscopy session. Results - No significant differences were found between the performances of group L and group C in their first training sessions on either technique. With additional colonoscopy training, group C outperformed group L in the second laparoscopy training session on the camera navigation task. Conclusions - Overall, training in the basic colonoscopy tasks does not affect performance of basic laparoscopy tasks (and vice versa). However, to limited extent, training of basic psychomotor skills for colonoscopy do appear to contribute to the performance of angled laparoscope navigation tasks. Thus, training and assessment of IBP typespecific skills should focus on each type of tasks independently. Future research should further investigate the influence of psychometric abilities on the performance of IBP and the transfer of skills for physicians who are experienced in one IBP type and would like to become proficient in another type of IBP.Industrial DesignIndustrial Design Engineerin