Economic valuation of irrigation water under a major irrigation scheme (Gal Oya) in eastern Sri Lanka

The objective of this study was to estimate the economic value of irrigation water used in a crop farm (paddy and chilies) using a Linear Programming approach in the Senanayake Samudra (Gal-Oya Irrigation Scheme) Right Bank System area in the Ampara District.Length: pp.89-94Irrigation schemesIrrigation waterPricingModels

Analisis Portofolio Kredit Perbankan Umum dan Syariah Berdasarkan Sektor Ekonomi

The purpose of this research is tofind the optimum combination of banks credit portfolio with the smallestcreditrisk based on the economic sectors on each category of commercial bank and Islamic bank in Indonesia.The tools of the research are Markowitz and Value at Risk (VaR) methods.Type of data used is secondary dataconsist of monthly data ofthe credit position from the ten economic sectors of banks in the period 2009-2011. Alldata are taken from the Statistic Data of Central Bank of Indonesia. Totaldata used are 600 data consist of theten economicsectors such as agriculture; mining; manufacturing; electricity, gas and water;construction; trade,restaurant and hotels; transportation, warehousing andcommunication; business services; social services, andother.The result suggestthat optimum combination of credit portfolio on eachbanks contains five economic sectorsand number of VaR for credit risk on eachbanks almost same. Banks should make decision of creditportfoliowithdifferent combination of economic sectors to minimize credit risk.Keywords: portfolio of credit, economics sectors, VaR,Markowitz method

CallRank: Combating SPIT using call duration, social networks and global reputation

The growing popularity of IP telephony systems has made them attractive targets for spammers. Voice call spam, also known as Spam over Internet Telephony (SPIT), is potentially a more serious problem than email spam because of the real time processing requirements of voice packets. We explore a novel mechanism that uses duration of calls between users to combat SPIT. CallRank, the scheme proposed by us, uses call duration to establish social network linkages and global reputations for callers, based on which call recipients can decide whether the caller is legitimate or not. CallRank has been implemented within a VoIP system simulation and our results show that we are able to achieve a false negative rate of 10 % and a false positive rate of 3% even in the presence of a significant fraction of spammers

Lending structure and bank insolvency risk : a comparative study between Islamic and conventional Bank.

This study investigates the impact of lending structure on the insolvency risk exposure. A comparative analysis between the insolvency risk behavior between the Islamic and conventional banks is made. Our findings show that real estate lending is positively related to the conventional banks’ risk, but inversely related to the Islamic banks’ risk exposure. Thus, the policy makers as well as the banks should react accordingly in the decision making process

Cellular Harmony Search for Optimization Problems

Structured population in evolutionary algorithms (EAs) is an important research track where an individual only interacts with its neighboring individuals in the breeding step. The main rationale behind this is to provide a high level of diversity to overcome the genetic drift. Cellular automata concepts have been embedded to the process of EA in order to provide a decentralized method in order to preserve the population structure. Harmony search (HS) is a recent EA that considers the whole individuals in the breeding step. In this paper, the cellular automata concepts are embedded into the HS algorithm to come up with a new version called cellular harmony search (cHS). In cHS, the population is arranged as a two-dimensional toroidal grid, where each individual in the grid is a cell and only interacts with its neighbors.Thememory consideration and population update aremodified according to cellular EA theory. The experimental results using benchmark functions show that embedding the cellular automata concepts with HS processes directly affects the performance. Finally, a parameter sensitivity analysis of the cHS variation is analyzed and a comparative evaluation shows the success of cHS

Behavior of thin-walled tubes with combined cross-sectional geometries under oblique loading

Hollow tubes are the most important part of any structure because of their load-bearing capacity, lightweight and inexpensive manufacturing cost. One of the methods for improving the performance under quasi-static loading is to vary the cross-sectional shapes. In the real case, structures are seldom subjected to pure axial or pure bending rather they are subjected to a combination of two load cases i.e. oblique loading. In this paper, the circular cross-section was combined with four different polygonal cross-sections namely tetragon, hexagon, octagon and decagon and a total of 13 geometries were obtained. The buckling behavior of each tube was investigated numerically at various angles of inclination. Each tube was modeled in SOLIDWORKS and then was analyzed in ANSYS. Linear buckling code was used for finding the critical load at various angles ranging from 0° to 14°. The overall result was then compared and it was found that the proposed geometry can be a good alternative over conventional circular tubes in terms of load-bearing capacity at angular load

Efficacy and Safety of SPRINT and STAR Protocol on Malaysian Critically-ill Patients

Intensive care unit patients may have a better glycaemic management with the right control protocol. Results of virtual trial performance on Malaysian critically-ill patients adopting a model-derived and model-based control protocol known as SPRINT and STAR are presented in this paper. These ICU patients have been treated by intensive sliding-scale insulin infusion. The effectiveness and safety of glycaemic control are then analysed. Results showed that patient safety improved by 83% with SPRINT and STAR protocol as the number of hypoglycaemic patients significantly reduced (BG<;2.2 mmol/L). Percentage of time within desired bands and median BG improves in both SPRINT and STAR. However, the improvements are associated with higher number of BG measurements (workload)

Prevalence of CADASIL and Fabry Disease in a Cohort of MRI Defined Younger Onset Lacunar Stroke.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL), caused by mutations in the NOTCH3 gene, is the most common monogenic disorder causing lacunar stroke and cerebral small vessel disease (SVD). Fabry disease (FD) due to mutations in the GLA gene has been suggested as an underdiagnosed cause of stroke, and one feature is SVD. Previous studies reported varying prevalence of CADASIL and FD in stroke, likely due to varying subtypes studied; no studies have looked at a large cohort of younger onset SVD. We determined the prevalence in a well-defined, MRI-verified cohort of apparently sporadic patients with lacunar infarct. METHODS: Caucasian patients with lacunar infarction, aged ≤70 years (mean age 56.7 (SD8.6)), were recruited from 72 specialist stroke centres throughout the UK as part of the Young Lacunar Stroke DNA Resource. Patients with a previously confirmed monogenic cause of stroke were excluded. All MRI's and clinical histories were reviewed centrally. Screening was performed for NOTCH3 and GLA mutations. RESULTS: Of 994 subjects five had pathogenic NOTCH3 mutations (R169C, R207C, R587C, C1222G and C323S) all resulting in loss or gain of a cysteine in the NOTCH3 protein. All five patients had confluent leukoaraiosis (Fazekas grade ≥2). CADASIL prevalence overall was 0.5% (95% CI 0.2%-1.1%) and among cases with confluent leukoaraiosis 1.5% (95% CI 0.6%-3.3%). No classic pathogenic FD mutations were found; one patient had a missense mutation (R118C), associated with late-onset FD. CONCLUSION: CADASIL cases are rare and only detected in SVD patients with confluent leukoaraiosis. No definite FD cases were detected.The UK Young Lacunar Stroke DNA Study was funded by a grants from the Wellcome Trust (WT072952, www.wellcome.ac.uk) and the Stroke Association (TSA 2010/01& TSA 2013/02, www.stroke.org.uk). Fabry disease screening was supported by an unrestricted scientific grant from Shire Human Genetic Therapies (www.shire.com). The sponsors of the study had no role in the study design, data collection, data analysis, interpretation, writing of the manuscript, or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. L R-J’s salary is funded by a Stroke Association/ British Heart Foundation grant. (TSA/BHF 2010/01). HM is supported by an National Institute for Health Research Senior Investigator award (www.nihr.ac.uk). HM and SB are supported by the Cambridge University Trust National Institute for Health Research Comprehensive Research Centre (www.cambridge-brc.org.uk).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from PLoS via http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.013635