Footprint Research Articles

Following the footprints of founding editor Stuart Quan, M.D.

Following the footprints of founding editor Stuart Quan, M.D.

Liquidity and Profitability Analysis of Commercial Banks in India - A Comparative Study

Indian economic environment is witnessing path breaking reform measures. The financial sector, of which the banking industry is the largest player, has also been undergoing a metamorphic change. This reform has not only influenced the productivity and efficiency of many of the Indian Banks, but has left everlasting footprints on the working of the banking sector in India. Certain trends like growing competition, product innovation and branding, focus on strengthening risk management systems, emphasis on technology have emerged in the recent past. Today the banking industry is stronger and capable of withstanding the pressures of competition. While internationally accepted prudential norms have been adopted, with higher disclosures and transparency, Indian banking industry is gradually moving towards adopting the best practices in accounting, corporate governance and risk management. The major role of banks is to collect money from the public in the form of deposits and then along with its own funds to serve the demands of the customers quickly, paying interest for the deposits and to meet out the expenses to carry out its activities. For this purpose, banks maintain adequate liquidity and earn profits from its activities. Profit is the main reason for the continued existence of every commercial organization and profitability depicts the relationship of the absolute amount of profit with various other factors. In any case, compared to other business concerns, banks in general have to pay much more attention for balancing profitability and liquidity. Liquidity is required to meet out the prompt demands of customers and profitability is required to meet out the expenses of banks. But both the terms are contradictory in nature. If banks maintain more liquidity, their profitability decrease and if they increase their profitability they will have to reduce their liquidity. In this way, banks act as an engine for a business organization. So in the present study an attempt has been made to evaluate the performance of different categories of banks viz. public, private and foreign bank groups in India. For evaluating the performance, eleven financial ratios have been used. These ratios further have been categorized into two categories viz. liquidity and profitability. The period of study cover the years 2005-06 to 2011-12. From the results, it has been found that during the study period the liquidity and profitability position of public sector bank group declined while it has improved in other two groups.

Integrating Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Life Cycle Assessment: Methodological Proposals for New Challenges

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a method used to quantify potential environmental impacts in the entire life cycle of a product or service, starting at raw material acquisition, production, use, and eventually its disposal. It is the leading methodology for environmental metrics today – the French government recently ran a pilot for a labelling program for consumer goods where indicators displayed in labels should be calculated using LCA. The European Commission did the same for their Product Footprint Guidelines. However, LCA features many methodological shortcomings when dealing with biophysical indicators. Land use, biodiversity and ecosystem services are relevant aspects to policy-makers and consumers, but their characterization factors are not yet accurately calculated. LCA has a hard time grasping effects that are dynamic, scale-dependent, non-linear and/or hard to quantify unambiguously. In fact, out of the four conventional types of ecosystem services (provisioning services, regulating services, cultural services and supporting services) only the first and the last are partially captured in LCA results. Similarly, out of the five drivers of change to biodiversity identified by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (habitat change, climate change, pollution, invasive alien species and overexploitation) only the first three are included in standard LCA calculations. This review article presents a brief assessment of how biodiversity and ecosystem services are incorporated in LCA today. The standard Life Cycle Impact Assessment models are described according to the most recent developments. Ground-breaking work is undergoing, making the field very active and constantly innovating. For example, regionalized characterization factors for the impacts of biodiversity are now available using species richness as a proxy for the overall state of biodiversity. Tools for ecosystem services have also been proposed. Finally, a compilation of some challenges ahead is listed to present several ideas for the improvement of current impact assessment methods.

Effect of ginkgo biloba extract on neuron apoptosis after acute spinal cord injury in a rat model

Objective To observe the effect of ginkgo biloba extract (EGb761) on neuron apoptosis and motor functional recovery after spinal cord injury(SCI) and the possible underlying mechanisms.Methods Sixty SD female rats were randomly divided into 3 equal groups (n =20):sham-operation,Allen impact SCI and EGb761-treatmrnt.Egb761-treated group received intraperitoneal injection of 100 mg/kg EGb761 per day; the other 2 groups were given normal saline of the same amount at the same time.After Basso Beattie Bresnahan (BBB) assessment and footprint analysis of the hind limb were performed on days 1,3,7 and 14 post-injury in each group,the animals were sacrificed to extract the spinal cord for HE staining.Apoptosis of nerve cells was observed by immunohistochemistry using TdT-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) and 3,3 '-diaminobenzidine tetrahydrochloride(DAB).Results In the sham-operation group,no influence on the BBB scores or footprint analysis of the hind limb was observed.There was no significant difference in ethology assessments on days l,3 and 7 between the SCI and EGb761 groups,but on the 14th day after surgery,the BBB score was significantly higher,the step length was significantly longer,and the step width was significantly smaller in the EGb761 group than in the SCI group (P ＜ 0.05).On days 1,3,7 and 14,there were significantly more TUNEL-positive and Caspase-3 protein-positive cells in the SCI and EGb761 groups than in the sham-operation group (P ＜ 0.05) ; on days 3 and 7 after surgery,the TUNEL-positive and Caspase-3 protein-positive cells in the EGb761 group were significantly fewer than in the SCI group (P ＜0.05).Conclusions EGb761 has a positive protective effect on nervous injury after SCI.This protective effect may be realized by down-regulating the expression of Caspase-3 protein,inhibiting cellula nervosa (especially glial cells) apoptosis at injured and surrounding portions in the myeloid tissue. Key words: Spinal cord injury; Apoptosis; Ginkgo biloba extract

Massively parallel read mapping on GPUs with the q-group index and PEANUT

We present the q-group index, a novel data structure for read mapping tailored towards graphics processing units (GPUs) with a small memory footprint and efficient parallel algorithms for querying and building. On top of the q-group index we introduce PEANUT, a highly parallel GPU-based read mapper. PEANUT provides the possibility to output both the best hits or all hits of a read. Our benchmarks show that PEANUT outperforms other state-of-the-art read mappers in terms of speed while maintaining or slightly increasing precision, recall and sensitivity. Subjects Bioinformatics, Computational Biology

Transportation related carbon, energy and water footprint analysis of U.S. manufacturing: An eco-efficiency assessment

In this paper, two-step hierarchical methodology is utilized to quantify the transportation related carbon, energy and water footprint (FP) of nation’s manufacturing sectors and evaluate the environmental vs. economic performance based on eco-efficiency scores. The methodology consists of an integrated application of the economic input output life cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approaches. In the first phase, EIO-LCA is employed to quantify the environmental impacts associated with the activities between 276 manufacturing sectors and the transportation industry and the second phase compares the overall environmental impact vs. economic benefit tradeoff by determining the eco-efficiency value of each sector. Results of EIO-LCA indicated that food manufacturing is found to be as the major driver of carbon, energy and water FP categories with an approximate share of 22% of the total impact on freight transportation activities in the transportation industry. Additionally, based on DEA-based sustainability performance assessment results, vast majority of U.S. manufacturing sectors were found to be inefficient (eco-efficiency <1). Only tobacco manufacturing was found to be eco-efficient among 53 major manufacturing sectors and the U.S. average was obtained as 0.5. Results indicated that inefficient U.S. manufacturing sectors need to reach an average reduction of 50% on the carbon, energy and water FP impacts to reach the 100% eco-efficiency frontier. Additionally, the weight of the transported goods was incorporated into the economic output as $/ton-km carriage, which yielded highly correlated results with the initial assessment based on total economic output only.

Carbon footprints of an in-center haemodialysis device, the NXSTAGE system one, and the VIVIA haemodialysis system

Carbon footprints of an in-center haemodialysis device, the NXSTAGE system one, and the VIVIA haemodialysis system

LEADING THROUGH UNCERTAINTY

Few people like uncertainty, yet Davis believes it can be profitably navigated, and can also contain opportunity. Before you can lead others, you have to be able to lead yourself. If you always tell the truth, you'll help guide others through fear of the unknown. You must also be sure that you are really good at the basics of whatever your field is—in Davis's case, banking. Umpqua, the bank he leads, has four core values: (1) absolute integrity, (2) extraordinary service, (3) innovative delivery, and (4) a strong sense of community as it expands its footprint.

Greening Africa-China Relations: African Agents Punching Below their Weight?

China is changing the global metabolism of goods and resources. In the last few decades, China has launched an unprecedented and unparalleled economic engagement with Africa. The level of Chinese investment on the continent is still very low relative to its investment in other regions whereas, for many African countries, China has already become the leading trading partner in terms of both import and export business. In fact, China has surpassed the U.S.A. as the single largest trading partner of Africa in 2009. One key area of debate in this evolving relationship has been the growing environmental footprint of the partnership. Unlike in the past, environmental issues have now taken center stage in world politics mainly due to the increasingly daunting challenges nations are confronted with in terms of environmental and climate change crises. It has taken China quite some time to realize that environmental protection is a matter of survival and not a luxury. Hence, the Government of China has been issuing rules, regulations, and guidelines to encourage more sustainable economic development. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been vigorously introduced to the business sector since the mid-2000s in an attempt to achieve this objective. The outcome of this policy direction has been positive in that many businesses have been forced to adhere to the strict guidelines; it also reflects burgeoning social activism against pollution and environmental destruction at home. This has, however, had its downside because companies started to expand to regions with poor governance and weak environmental regulations, notably Africa. There is already some evidence that Chinese investment in Africa, if not regulated properly, would repeat the history of pollution in China. This article argues that the limited success that CSR has registered in China could be repeated in Africa only when African states start to engage strategically with rising powers like China. African governments need to strictly enforce environmental policy and empower non-state actors, particularly civil society organizations (CSOs), to actively monitor developments and safeguard the environment.

An Automatic Extraction Approach of Worm Signatures Based on Behavioral Footprint Analysis

This paper presents an automatic extraction approach of worm signatures based on behavioral footprint analysis. Firstly, the suspicious worm traffic is detected based on worm behavior and is an instance of the Sequential Change Point Detection. To make the detection mechanism insensitive to site and access pattern, a non-parametric Cumulative Sum (CUSUM) method is applied, thus making the detection mechanism much more generally applicable and its deployment much easier. Secondly, worm behavioral footprint is defined and classified. The chronicle formalism is applied to correlate the footprint in suspicious worm traffic. Finally, worm signatures are extracted and ascertained by the evaluation function. The experiment shows that the approach can extract worm signatures effectively and accurately. There is a conclusion that worm behavioral footprint can't identify the worm accurately, but it helps to locate worm signatures, so signatures can be extracted effectively.

Enabling a Wider Footprint with Design

Enabling a Wider Footprint with Design

Morphology of spine and footprint in athletes from different sports: an integrate approach to evaluate posture

Posture is a complex process determined by the interaction of several body structures. In the past years, different direct and indirect procedures have been proposed to understand how these anatomical structures could be modified by forces exerted during sport practice (Queen et al, 2007). A particular attention has been focused on the variations in athletes from different sports to highlight eventual correlations between morpho-functional modifications, postural diseases and injuries (Cain et al, 2007). The aim of this work is to study the morphological aspects of the footprint and the spine in different athletes by an integrate approach. 115 subjects were tested and divided accordingly to the specific sport activity (control, basketball, volleyball, football, gymnastics); only subjects without previous or current diseases of the bones, joints and muscles have been considered. The electronic baropodometry has been used to measure the pressure distribution exerted on each foot during static and dynamic conditions; the Surfacer has been used to record the position of chosen points on the back. Our results indicated that, in comparison with controls, athletes from different sports displayed specific and significant modifications in foot type and in the back morphology; in particular, statistical analysis showed that in basketball and gymnastics athletes, significant changing in foot type and in the back morphology were present; moreover, in volleyball athletes, significant changing were found in foot type. Therefore, our results suggest that each sport could determinate specific postural changes during sport practice. Our data could be useful to develop specific training protocols aimed to prevent alterations in spine morphology and foot type that are associated with sport practice and could determine injuries or other postural diseases. References

Relative Study of Students Awareness & Usage of Green Computing with respect to Gender

Green Computing is the emerging computing technology. It is mainly used to save and protect environment as well as optimize energy consumption and try to keep green environment. It also refers to environmentally sustainable computing. Saving energy or reduction of carbon footprints is main aspects of Green Computing. This research is mainly focusing on to check awareness and usage of green computing with respect to gender. A questionnaire was prepared to check the level of awareness and usage of green computing. The questionnaires were given to 105 students. Now a days all students use computer for their study/work. Less than 50% of all the students are aware about green computing it means most of the students are not aware about green computing. The research finding established that more awareness is required in order to make IT users to take greener approaches of using technology its peripherals devices.

Sustainability and heritage: from a case study, new horizon of research

Changes in contemporary age force the scientific community to face the challenges of sustainability also within the historical context. It is not just a purely investigation on ecological footprint or energy efficiency; it is a crucial issue for human activity and behaviour. The article presents the new horizon of research opened within the work of a multidisciplinary group on the complex of the Albergo dei Poveri of Genoa, in order to facilitate its complete re-use as humanistic didactic university pole. The research is finalised to set up a knowledge system to improve the management process of any future intervention on the complex, touching the four pillars of sustainability: economics, environmental, social and cultural, beyond the purely technical and energetic sphere. Main objective is also to reach more general results, touching also the methodological sphere.

Economic Viability of Centralized Biogas Plants: A Case Study for Croatia

Biogas plants are an established and widely used technology in a number of European countries, but their utilization in Croatia is hampered by the state of its agriculture sector. Small farms, often with less than 15 heads of cattle, are common and they are not capable of independently running a biogas plant. For that reason, centralized biogas plants could present a viable option for smaller farms like the ones mostly present in Croatia. The utilization of biogas can have a number of positive effects on the day to day operations of a farm. Biogas plants can reduce the carbon footprint of a farm, help with manure management and additionally, they can provide a source of income to the owner. Since they present a sizeable investment, it is crucial to properly evaluate the feasibility of such investments. The goal of this work is to evaluate and present the impact that the size of the plant, content of manure in the substrate, the transport distance and efficiency have on the economic viability of centralized biogas plants. A case study for Croatia has been created for this purpose. The results will demonstrate the economic viability of larger biogas plants and the high impact transport has on it.

Interpretation of paleo-environment and origin of fractures based on deformation characteristics around Uhangri giant dinosaur footprints in Haenam

한반도 남서부 지역의 경상누층군 백악기 퇴적암에는 다양한 화석들이 발견된다. 특히 전라남도 해남군 우항리 지역에서 관찰되는 우항리층 하부의 흑색 셰일에는 다양한 화석들(공룡?익룡?새 발자국 등)이 보존되어 있다. 이 지역에서 발견되는 화석 주변으로는 몇 가지 흥미로운 점이 관찰된다. 일반적으로 발자국 화석은 미고결 퇴적물에서 생성되고, 단열은 고화된 암석에서 취성변형과 관련되어 발달하는 구조로 잘 알려져 있다. 그런데 이곳 우항리 공룡발자국 화석산지에서는 공룡의 발자국 주위로 환상의 분포를 보이며 단열들이 발달하고 있다. 이러한 단열과 발자국이 함께 형성되는 발달 메카니즘과 환경은 쉽게 이해하기 어렵다. 따라서 본 연구는 공룡 발자국 화석과 주위에 발달하는 단열들에 대한 변형특성과 통계적 분석을 근거로 둘 사이의 연관성을 조사함으로써 단열발달의 역사와 고환경 정보를 취득하고자 하였다. 이를 위해 우리는 단열의 밀도, 방향, 분포양상 등의 특징들에 대하여 측정하고 분석을 수행하였다. 이를 통하여 얻은 결론은 다음과 같다. 1) 이 지역에는 크게 4 개조의 단열군이 발달하고 있다. 2) 3개의 단열군은 공룡발자국이 형성된 이후 암석화가 진행된 취성의 환경에서 발달하였으며, 공룡발자국 주변으로 환상의 분포를 보이는 단열군은 공룡의 발자국형성과 연관된 것으로 해석된다. 3) 이러한 환상의 단열군과 공룡발자국 주변의 만곡된 양상, 그리고 공룡발자국 주변의 긁힌 자국과 중심의 별모양 등은 호수의 물이 빠지면서 건조되어 가는 반취성 환경에서 공룡발자국이 형성되었다는 것을 강하게 지시하고 있다.

Analysis of the Characteristics of Turbulent Flux and Its Footprint Climatology at An Agricultural Site

Analysis of the Characteristics of Turbulent Flux and Its Footprint Climatology at An Agricultural Site

On the Way to Standardize Bamboo as a Qualified Building Material

Bamboo is a grass. It is a natural versatile material with interesting properties such as low weight, hollow section internally reinforced by node walls, high elasticity modulus and high allowable tensile stress. Its contribution to CO2 capture is soundly higher that other species of trees, so, Bamboo should be considered a sustainable material if the characteristics of ecological footprint are studied and comparing it with other conventional materials used in building. This paper reviews the main properties of Bamboo in comparison to wood and outlines the Design Guidelines for Bamboo structures contained in NSR10, a Code for Seismic Buildings of Colombia. Mechanical features are discussed, as well as environmental and economic considerations. Finally, a discussion on the steps to Standardization is included

Effect of ultrasound on cyprid footprint and juvenile barnacle adhesion on a fouling release material

In our earlier studies, we have demonstrated that low and high intensity ultrasound can prevent barnacle cyprid settlement. In this study, we found that ultrasound treatment reduced the adhesion of newly metamorphosed barnacles up to 2 days’ old. This was observed in the reduction of adhesion strength of the newly settled barnacles from ultrasound treated cyprids on silicone substrate compared to the adhesion strength of barnacles metamorphosed from cyprids not exposed to ultrasound. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to analyze the effect of ultrasound on barnacle cyprid footprints (FPs), which are protein adhesives secreted when the larvae explore surfaces. The ultrasound treated cyprids were found to secrete less FPs, which appeared to spread a larger area than those generated by untreated cyprids. The evidence from this study suggests that ultrasound treatment results in a reduced cyprid settlement and footprint secretion, and may affect the subsequent recruitment of barnacles onto fouling release surfaces by reducing the ability of early settlement stage of barnacles (up to 2 days’ old) from firmly adhering to the substrates. Ultrasound therefore can be used in combination with fouling release coatings to offer a more efficient antifouling strategy.

Endo Looks to Geographic Expansion and Tax Advantages with US$1.6 B Paladin Buyout

In order to increase its global footprint and offset declining revenues from its key pain products, acquisitive Endo Health Solutions has agreed to buy Paladin Labs in a mostly stock deal that values the Canadian company at approximately US$1.6 B. As part of a complicated deal structure, the two companies will be acquired by a newly formed Irish holding company in a move to reduce Endo’s corporate tax rate. The acquisition will expand the company’s presence in Canada and provide it with access to emerging markets, including Mexico and South Africa.