A Study on Hevea Brasiliensis for evaluation of phytochemical and pharmacological properties in Swiss Albino Mice

Hevea brasiliensis, a plant belonging family Euphorbiaceae. In Brazil this plant is not only use for medicinal purpose but also for cosmetics purpose. The present study was aimed to study analgesic and antidiarrheal activity of methanol extract of Hevea brasiliensis. Analgesic activity was evaluated by acetic acid- induced writhing method and antidiarrheal by gastrointestinal motility method (charcoal meal test) in mice. Phytochemical evaluation was carried out by qualitative analysis. For analgesic evaluation, the extract (250 mg and 500 mg) showed significant activity compared to control diclofenac Na. On the other hand, for antidiarrheal activity the extract (250 mg and 500 mg) significantly reduce charcoal propulsion. The phytochemical evaluation showed significant presence of Alkaloids, Carbohydrates, Glycosides, Saponins, Phytosterols, Proteins and amino acids, Fats & fixed oils. It’s concluded that the extract possesses both analgesic and antidiarrheal activity and containing wide range of phytochemicals

Network model and macroeconomics of systemic risk

This thesis highlights the importance of a holistic approach to understanding systemic risk. The cost of crises and their effects on the economy are catastrophic, thus necessitating a clearer understanding and proper risk mitigation to lessen future financial crises. In considering economic crises, the Basel guidelines emphasise the size of institutions and have limited reflection on how crises might disperse across the financial system network. This thesis aims to empirically comprehend the connection between the tools used by academics in field and systemic risk studies and the practical guides endorsed by policymakers. This study also explores the risk escalation and direction from or to other financial institutions by employing the network model. Another objective is to propose robust integration of micro and macro data to develop systemic risk monitoring tools for practical use. The missing link in current systemic risk research could be used to assess overall risk endogenously and externally expose systemically important financial institutions. Assessment of systemically important banks (SIBs) employed three theoretical models – conditional value at risk (CoVaR), marginal expected shortfall (MES) and systemic risk measure (SRISK) – and compared the results with the current Basel indicator-based results. Using Indonesia commercial bank datasets for the 2008-2019 period, the findings show that all three theoretical approaches have positive association with the Basel-based results, though the ‘best’ results vary across models. SRISK delivers more consistent rankings over the sample period, but for inter-theoretical approaches, CoVaR – MES has the highest positive correlation that converted to certain degree of rankings similarity. This finding suggests that scholars can build on or extend the estimation model to include bank balance sheets and economic data to better capture the specific risks of SIBs. This research also explores how capital market data and asset returns can be a good proxy to detect interconnectedness and map risk in the financial system. The sample employs a mixture of Indonesian banks’ stock market and prudential data for the 2012–2019 period. This thesis recommends practical integration of risk into the systemic risk assessment framework and its technical calculation to capture the holistic exposure of systemically important financial institutions

Microwave-Based Technique For Glucose Detection

Glucose biosensor is generally based on reaction between glucose and enzyme glucose oxidase (GOD) that produces gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide. The gluconic acid is a conducting medium while hydrogen peroxide is a polar molecule. This work discovers the changes of dielectric properties due to conductive loss below 4 GHz and dipole orientation of above 4 GHz of this reaction. The difference between the dielectric properties of an enzyme and glucose-enzyme reaction can be related to the glucose concentration in the sample. The dielectric properties of glucose solutions, enzyme GOD and glucose-enzyme reaction were measured using the Open Ended Coaxial Probe with frequency range from 200 MHz to 20 GHz at room temperature (25 'C). Two types of juice are used in this study; blackcurrant juice and lychee juice. The actual glucose content in juice samples were analyzed using High Performance Liquid Chromatography method. This technique has also been applied using the microstrip sensor for measuring glucose concentration in glucose solution, blackcurrant juice and lychee juice. The result shows that the highest sensitivity for the differences in dielectric changes with glucose concentrations due to the effect of ionic conductivity and dipole orientation were found at 0.99 GHz and 16.44 GHz respectively. The changes in dielectric loss are preferable for derivation of glucose concentration. In this proposed technique, the detection limit of glucose concentration is as low as 0.01 M (0.20 g/100 ml) with optimum ratio of 1:3 for an enzyme and glucose. Lychee juice has a higher dielectric loss difference for both frequencies followed by blackcurrant juice and glucose solution due to the contribution of free ions in the juice. The sensitivity of attenuation measurement using microstrip sensor is dependent on the dielectric loss of materials. The sensitivity of measurement about 0.002 dB/ (mg/ml) at 0.99 GHz and 0.004 dB/ (mg/ml) at 16.44 GHz which are comparable to the current microwave techniques. This technique gives benefit to the future development of microwave biosensor by which both ionic conductivity and dipole effects are occurred simultaneously

The influence of theories on factors affecting knowledge sharing and its relationship with innovation and organizational performance

Knowledge is an essential resource for organization. While knowledge sharing is an important human daily activity to create opportunities in maximizing employees innovation in organization to achieve performance.Knowledge sharing is the process of transferring knowledge from a person to another in organization.However, previous studies have indicated that employees are refused to share knowledge.Many factors influencing knowledge sharing were identified to solve the problem.A critical reviews on factors affecting knowledge sharing; individual, organization and technology factors are frequent mentioned in literature. Thus,this study proposes a conceptual model that takes into consideration the three factors and related theories to support the constructs in developing a fit knowledge sharing model.This study will be followed by an empirical study to test the hypothesis and to validate the model.This study will improve the understanding on theories, factors affecting knowledge sharing and its relationship with innovation and organizational performance

The study of probability model for compound similarity searching

Information Retrieval or IR system main task is to retrieve relevant documents according to the users query. One of IR most popular retrieval model is the Vector Space Model. This model assumes relevance based on similarity, which is defined as the distance between query and document in the concept space. All currently existing chemical compound database systems have adapt the vector space model to calculate the similarity of a database entry to a query compound. However, it assumes that fragments represented by the bits are independent of one another, which is not necessarily true. Hence, the possibility of applying another IR model is explored, which is the Probabilistic Model, for chemical compound searching. This model estimates the probabilities of a chemical structure to have the same bioactivity as a target compound. It is envisioned that by ranking chemical structures in decreasing order of their probability of relevance to the query structure, the effectiveness of a molecular similarity searching system can be increased. Both fragment dependencies and independencies assumption are taken into consideration in achieving improvement towards compound similarity searching system. After conducting a series of simulated similarity searching, it is concluded that PM approaches really did perform better than the existing similarity searching. It gave better result in all evaluation criteria to confirm this statement. In terms of which probability model performs better, the BD model shown improvement over the BIR model

Adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards in Bangladesh: Benefits and Challenges

The study focuses on the recent adoption status of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in a developing economy like Bangladesh. The objectives of this paper are to identify the development of the accounting profession in Bangladesh, the legal and regulatory framework of accounting, IFRS adoption process, benefits and challenges of adopting IFRS in Bangladesh. The issues raised in the paper are drawn mainly from prior works of literature and secondary information. IFRS adoption promises a lot of benefits like decreased cost of capital, improved financial reporting quality, increased ability to secure borders-listing, better Access to Global Capital Markets and attraction of foreign direct investment, etc. Some challenges also exist like the development of a legal and regulatory framework, low audit fees, awareness campaign and training of personnel etc. which must be overcome for successful adoption of IAS/IFRS. The paper also argues that the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), as proposed by the draft Financial Reporting Act 2013 (FRA) should not be handled by non-experts body. This paper strongly recommends that the ICAB council may be reformed consisting of Three Board - (i) Accounting Standard Board (ii) Auditing Standard Board and (iii) Financial Reports Review Board to ensure compliance of international standard and effective implementation. Keywords: International Financial Reporting Standards, Adoption, benefits and challenges, ICAB, Bangladesh

Construction Site Workers’ Awareness on Using Safety Equipment : Case Study

Construction sector is an important sector and contributed significantly to national development. However, this sector poses higher risk to accident. This is due to fact that construction site can be considered as a dangerous zone to workers and to the public. Due to the variety of cases occurs on site, the contractor will usually have to pay the cost related to accidents in the form of higher insurance premium. Despite various measures, accidents still occur at construction sites. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is one of the important means to protect the wearer from hazards in the workplace. Since this equipment is the last frontier of the wearer from worksite hazards, it is important to select it based on the job scope and the intended protection. Therefore, this study was formulated to find out the level of knowledge and awareness of construction workers on PPE usage. It was also important to know what make the workers would want or do not want to use the PPE. It was found in this study that the level of awareness and knowledge among workers on the proper use of PPE is moderate. Construction sites accident can be further be reduced with proper implementation of PPE voluntarily by all workers

Species Selection and Nursery Technique Adoption for Seedling Establishment in Bangladesh — Towards Enhancing Plantation Programme

Small-scale nursery owners can play a vital role in biodiversity conservation through providing seedlings of forest tree species, horticultural species, flower species and medicinal plants to afforestation, reforestation, social forestry, agro-forestry, shelter belt and home gardening in Bangladesh. The present study of the nursery status of Bangladesh investigated socio-demographic characteristics, farm and farming characteristics, species selection and adoption of nursery techniques by small-scale nursery owners. A survey was conducted of 252 sample nurseries which were selected randomly. The investigation revealed that majority of the nursery owners were mid-aged (30–49 years) male (82.4%) people who took it as primary occupation (86.3%) for more than 20 years (38.1%), but a considerable amount of the respondents had no schooling (34%). Most of the owners rented a small area of land (0.5–5 acre) for the activities on a term basis. About 39.9% of the respondents raised planting materials for horticultural and forest tree species together. The study revealed that fruit-bearing (RF-28.69) and fast-growing species (RF-17.47) were considered as the criteria for species selection. Mangefera indica, Manilkara zopota, Zizyphus mauritiana, Lichi chinensis, Artocarpus heterophyllus, Spondia dulcis, Citrus citrus, Swietenia mahagoni, Psidium guajava, Cocos nucifera, Albizia lebeck, Citrus grandis, Feronia limonia, Averrhoa carabola, Dulbergia sissoo were the top-ranked species preferred by the nursery owners. Majority of the respondents practiced grafting and budding for vegetative propagation and practiced submersion of seeds under water and scarification as pre-sowing treatment for seed germination. On the basis of research findings, it is suggested to facilitate widespread acceptance of forest tree species, along with fruit-bearing species, and take account of small-scale nursery owners’ views and preferences for achieving adoption of forest tree-based farming systems in a climate change situation

Pain Level Detection From Facial Image Captured by Smartphone

Accurate symptom of cancer patient in regular basis is highly concern to the medical service provider for clinical decision making such as adjustment of medication. Since patients have limitations to provide self-reported symptoms, we have investigated how mobile phone application can play the vital role to help the patients in this case. We have used facial images captured by smart phone to detect pain level accurately. In this pain detection process, existing algorithms and infrastructure are used for cancer patients to make cost low and user-friendly. The pain management solution is the first mobile-based study as far as we found today. The proposed algorithm has been used to classify faces, which is represented as a weighted combination of Eigenfaces. Here, angular distance, and support vector machines (SVMs) are used for the classification system. In this study, longitudinal data was collected for six months in Bangladesh. Again, cross-sectional pain images were collected from three different countries: Bangladesh, Nepal and the United States. In this study, we found that personalized model for pain assessment performs better for automatic pain assessment. We also got that the training set should contain varying levels of pain in each group: low, medium and high

Armendariz Semirings and Semicommutative Semirings

In this paper we study Armendariz semiring, which has been introduced by V.Gupta and P.kumar, in the paper entitled `Armendariz and qusi-Armendariz and PS-semirings' [8]. We extend some results of Armendariz rings and semi-commutative rings of [3] for semirings with $1\neq0$. (i)We obtain that for a semirings S, S is Armendariz if and only eS and (1+e)S are Armendariz for every idempotent e of S if and only if eS and (1+e)S are Armendariz for every central idempotent e of S. (ii) For a semiring S if S/I is an Armendariz semiring for some reduced ideal I of S then S is Armendariz